More Christmas Excitement

Christmas night my parents got here around nine o'clock. They had been her about five minutes and we were just chatting, when we heard a knock on the door! Confused, Ryan went to answer and I hear him say "No way!" Even after seeing them, it took a minute to register and I started screaming and crying! My sister Lori, and her family- husband, John and three kids- Tyler,15, Sidney, 6, and Ella, 4 had driven nine hours to completely surprise me. And I was SO surprised!! Isn't that the greatest feeling of having such a big and shocking surprise that you don't even in the slightest see coming!!! I think this may be only the second or third time that has happened in my life. Knowing how hard it is to take a trip like that with a working and busy family, with me being the only person in our family in Memphis, I never would have dreamed everyone would truck down here just for us!! This was the first time they had ever come to see me (other than right after Hannah was born and just my sister came with my mom). I loved every crazy fun second of having them here. I laid there in bed the first night just still in disbelief that there were 11 people sleeping in our little house. The kids had so much fun playing together- her kids love mine, and mine love hers. We didn't really get to go and do anything during their short stay here, but luckily the weather was really nice so the kids just played their hearts out. They had gotten a hotel one of the three nights they were here so the kids swim, and that night we ended up having about 15 of our old high school friends over to our house for a little get together- which as a side note was also so fun to get to see all them and catch up- it is amazing that we had a group of friends that we can still all get together and kind of pick up where we left off- I don't take them for granted!! Lori and John and the kids headed out on Sunday mid morning and my parents stayed until Monday lunch. As always, it was just so fun to have them here and enjoy their company. Things are finally slowing down now and even if it was one of the craziest weeks of my life, I loved every second and am so thankful for everything that happened and for ALL the loved ones I was privileged to be near for the holidays!! So that was our Christmas week in a nutshell and I hope yours was one filled with family and friends, food and fun, and the joy of the newborn King!

Christmas Day

I told Ryan last night, the chances of us having another Christmas like this year- ever in our lifetime is slim to none. We had spent Christmas Eve night after church over at Ross and Lori's and if we would have listened to our gut feeling (based on Lori's level of discomfort) we would have opened gifts then!! We woke up around 7:00 on Christmas morning and about thirty minutes later Ryan's cell phone was ringing. I knew at that moment Bailey was coming! So basically from the start of the day our Christmas was turned upside down- in such a great way of course! I took off to go see Lori while she was in labor. When I came home we opened our few Christmas presents from us for our kids- this was the quietest and shortest =) part of our day. I then grabbed a bagel as Ryan headed up to the hospital. He gave me a call when they were going to start pushing and I packed my kids up and we headed off to the waiting room to meet our newest member of the family! After meeting her we took the kids to Ryan's parents for naps and I went home to straighten out my house since my parents were coming in town that night. We then had a fly through gift opening and Christmas dinner at the Braithwait's as we were all anxious to get back to see Bailey. Ryan went to the hospital one more time Christmas night while I stayed home to get the kids ready for bed and make sure we had things ready for my parents to come. Little did I know, another huge surprise was looming just around the corner...

Bailey's Arrival

Well! Sweet Bailey is finally here and we are so excited! We never thought it would happen the way it did! Lori was so ready for Bailey to come (as all nine month pregnant mothers are!) but the only day she would not pick for her to come was Christmas Day. So of course, God has a sense of humor (she is a girl after all- right RJ=) and that is just the day she came! Lori went into labor pretty much as the clock struck midnight on Christmas Eve and Bailey was here by lunch! Everything went very well and she is a beautiful baby girl-as we were expecting nothing less. We can't wait to love on her and watch her grow and see our kids love on eachother to! Congrats Ross and Lori!

A Christmas to Remember!

This Christmas has been one for the record books!!!I am still in shock as I think of the way the past week has played out. Perhaps, the biggest surprise we got was Bailey on Christmas day and this was only the start of what lied ahead! I can't wait to tell everyone all about it, and that is what will follow in the next several posts! I am posting slide shows since we just have so many great pictures from such a memorable Christmas week!

This Weekend

Okay, so I am knocking these posts out tonight!!! I know 3 in one night!! But I don't want to get behind and I know that this week is going to get crazy!! We had a really fun weekend this weekend! We kicked it off Friday night with driving to a town that is an hour away, Brighton, TN, where a guy Ryan works with lives. In this little town they have a thing called Christmas City- that is literally set up like an entire city made of Christmas lights. You take a train through it and it was really pretty impressive and the kids LOVED it!!! A few families from Ryan's work went, and Hannah Grace bonded with one of the guys four year old daughter, Molly Ann. She let Hannah borrow one of her princess crowns (I think she so badly wanted Hannah Grace to understand the concept of dress up) and they wanted to sit by each other on the train. Bennett just took every bit of it in and was wide awake the whole time, until he finally crashed in the car ride home. It was such a fun thing to do with them and I am so glad we made the effort to go!!!

I am sad, I didn't take my camera though, so I have no pictures from that- I won't make the same mistake if we do it again next year!

Then Saturday morning, as I mentioned before, Hannah and I had a mother/daughter brunch at a friends house who lives just down the street. I have to admit it wasn't the greatest fun at first because Hannah decided to be very shy. I guess I don't really blame her- there were mostly girls that were a good bit older than her and that are used to playing together all the time, so I could see how it could be kind of intimidating, but she was clingy to say the least. After a while though, she found a couple little girls that were still two, just a little older two, and she really warmed up to them. It is always nice to get to see her interact with some other girls (older too) because she is used to boys littler than her all the time- it's not often she gets to play with the big girls!!! So it ended up being a lot of fun!! I had Ryan take a pic of us before we went...

She looked cute of course in her little Christmas dress. I joked tp Ryan later how it was a good thing I had a festive dress for her to wear b/c she would have been out of place- all those little girls were decked in their adorable Christmas outfits!!

I did get some pics of her playing at the brunch, but I think I will save them for Facebook. When I upload them I will put the link on here for any of you who might want to see them that aren't on Facebook!

Since my husband has long gone to bed, I guess I should follow- I'm sure this week will be filled with lots more to post about...

What Big Sisters Are For

Friday morning I turned around to see a frightening thing....



Not sure what the deal is?!? I took off his jammies and it was still there...
Thanks sissy, for the cup down my pants! That thing was full and a heavy load to be dragging around off his back side! It was pretty easy to figure out the culprit of this one- he may be able to do some crazy things all on his own, but I'm pretty sure this one would be nearly physically impossible =)

Another new game is them both climbing up on the table and Bennett drops everything off the side and Hannah Grace MORE than willingly gets up and down every time picking things up for him. I wonder how long that will last....

Dear Bennett...

I just laid you down to sleep in your crib. I rocked you tonight and sang and hummed Christmas hymns to you. You fell asleep in less than five minutes. I couldn't take my eyes off of you! I could have sat in that chair all night just staring at your sweet face. That perfect little nose and those perfect lips and cheeks, and the dark lines where your lashes brushed your faced- every mom knows that face and there is nothing like the sweet innocence of watching your child sleep. God really gives us as parents a taste of our own medicine- so sinful (as you displayed just hours earlier with your throwing your body into the kitchen cabinets for no reason fit) but so loved. I can't put into words how much we love you, Bennett. You are a special boy and we are so blessed that God has entrusted you to us. Staring at you sleeping in my arms tonight, I could definitely see how God made you in His image, always remember that and the responsibility that comes along with being a man made in His image. I just had to jot these thoughts down so that I will never forget the surreal feeling of holding your sleeping baby in your arms, I know it is fleeting and I don't want to take it for granted. We love you, Bennett!

(Sorry if this is weird to many of you who read this- again, the purpose of this blog is two-fold. 1-to update family and friends near and far of what's going on in our lives and 2- it is my way of journaling for my kids- so thanks for sticking with me through my sappy posts to them =)

(You can click on the picture to enlarge- the one on the right is Bennett working his dance moves!)

Waiting and Anticipating

Well, I can't believe it! Christmas is only a week away, that just doesn't seem right! We are excited and ready though! In fact, I think this week has kind of been the calm in the storm. We have been busy shopping and last weekend was our Sunday School class Christmas party, as well as our church's Christmas Music Program, so needless to say, it was a busy weekend. This coming weekend Hannah and I will being attending our 1st mother/daughter event and I am so excited. A friend is having a Jingle and Mingle mother/ daughter brunch, so we are looking forward to that! But the rest of this week has been pretty usual. Ryan's grandmother will come in town on Monday so I have a feeling holiday festivities will pick up again from there!
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This Christmas is going to be a very fun one in the sense that Hannah Grace especially, but Bennett too, will be able to enjoy opening presents, so that will be fun for us to see their faces light up- but we are still not yet into the Christmases I am really looking forward to- the Christmases that I can teach them what this whole thing is really all about and what we are really celebrating for. I can't wait to show them that Christmas is about giving and not getting. We haven't really been able to do anything with them that teaches them what Christmas is really about, they just aren't to the point yet where they even really know that presents are coming for them, but I have a feeling next year that we would be able to take Hannah to places and do things with her where she can learn it is not all about her and she can do things for other people during Christmas- that she can sacrifice for others, the way that God sacrificed His Son for her! That will really be the time that we can truly "get into" Christmas, and hopefully by next year she may be able to at least begin to understand and get a taste of that.
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One cute little thing Hannah has done this Christmas season, is we have been doing this little interactive nativity that Ryan's mom gave to us. There are seven boxes to open during random nights in December. There is a rhyming little story to go with each box, and when they open them there is a figurine to the nativity that she gets to place where she wants in the scene. We have only done three so far, but the night we do it- we pull her step stool over to her dresser where it is and we do our little thing- then I love it, when she gets down (this is always before bed) she sweetly says "night night Mary". We have done the angel, Mary and Joseph and she says them all, but for some reason Mary is her favorite so far, and it is always "night night Mary". I know it's kind of a silly story, but if you have kids, you know that sometimes it is the small things...
Here the kids are reading their "That's not my Snowman" book. I absolutely LOVE watching Bennett read it and feel all the spots so curiously. He may still be too small to say much, but you can always see his wheels are turning! Such a smart and sweet little boy he is!

I do have a cute little Bennett story for the week too =) We were all home on Saturday and doing stuff around the house. The kids had cartoons on the TV and I kept hearing Bennett mess with our space heater. By the time I made it in there to stop him, he had found the setting he wanted it on, had spread his blanky out on the floor right by it, and sat down in front of it with his little fuzzy hair blowing in the warm air. He was rocking back and forth to the song on TV and when he realized I was watching he just turned around to me and grinned form ear to ear. I desperately need to get the cord I need to upload video to our computer, because Bennett is at that age where he may not be old enough to be doing a lot of things I can type out, but if you could just SEE him!! He has so much personality and does the funniest things and makes the greatest expressions. One of my favorite things he does right now is he LOVES to spin in circles and he does it with such attitude. It is too cute! That will be my goal, to get a video uploaded on here so you can see it =)

All boy- and so handsome...

I know every mom thinks her daughter is beautiful- and I am no exception!

It is so hard to try to get a good pic of them together, but I took about a hundred trying =)...

I love this one of Bennett trying to give Hannah Grace a kiss!

And finally both smiling at least!!! Of course once they are not sitting posed anymore =)

Gotta love it!!!

So we are sadly not sending out holiday cards this year. Hopefully next year will be different but that's just one of the places I decided we could cut back this year- so consider this your holiday wishes from the Braithwaits! We hope you all have a blessed Christmas filled with loved ones and celebration of our Newborn King!!

Below is just some good holiday fun! Hannah Grace watched it and kept wanting to watch it over and over... she thinks its pretty funny! Just click the play button and make sure your volume is on!! Enjoy!

Merry Christmas YA'LL

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Pile' O' Fun

Laundry.... oh laundry! Laundry in our house is ridiculous! You would think I was washing clothes for the Gosslings (you know Jon and Kate Plus 8 =). I have to average at least two- three loads every day just to maintain the hampers from overflowing into every room of the house. May not seem like much, but that means if I were one of those one time a week laundry doers, I would have to do about 15-20 loads on that day. It's pretty much a constant thing that I am never totally caught up on. Well, one of the biggest downfalls of our house is that we don't have a laundry room- just a laundry closet, which is luckily at least off an open part of our spacious kitchen. So if a few days have passed since I have done laundry- which is what happened over the Thanksgiving holiday- I take up about a 6'x8' area in our kitchen to spread out and sort the mountains of laundry. If it's not just clothes from a family of four- it's sheets from three beds, rugs, towels from four people, blankets, the 10 wash clothes and dish rags I go through a day between wiping messes/faces/dishes. You get the idea- and there is really no point to me telling you this other than to try to make myself an excuse for the embarrassing disaster you are about to see, but i just can't help but share the laughs...

As I said- by Friday after Thanksgiving I had not done laundry since about Tuesday and I knew I had to get caught up. I spread my junk all over and got distracted into doing something else. I was sitting at the kitchen island talking to Ryan and I turned around and died laughing. Maybe this is one of those you had to be there kind of moments, but I promise on my life, this was not in the slightest staged. I turned around and found this...

Just an insane mess of laundry right?? Wrong! This is a pile of hide and seek fun! We seem to love this game at our house- so we will play it again (if you remember my "day in the life" post). Do you see Bennett in the picture above?!? I'll give you a hint- he is wearing brown pants and one sock. Did you find him??There he is!!! Haha, maybe I have an elementary sense of humor, but it makes me laugh out loud just looking at it again. These kids can make fun out of anything and make me laugh daily. Who knew my spread of laundry would be a play field for these clever kids?!

Deck the Halls

We have been thoroughly enjoying our Christmas decorations for over a week now. I got the itch early this year- or so I thought until I realized Thanksgiving was a week later, so really I could justify it- I was just on time! I LOVE Christmas decorations! Decorating for Christmas was always a HUGE deal growing up. My mom for a while had her own interior design business and decorating for Christmas was always to the nines. It was not just a tree in the living room, oh no, our whole house would transform inside and out. I loved it and it was always fun to get to help with the decorating process. In fact I remember my mom had several clients that lived in a Southwind, a very ritzy neighborhood here, that she was paid to decorate their houses for Christmas, and since I was out of school for the holidays, I would frequently get to tag along. Sure I always got the grunt work of "fluffing" every tree branch until my hands cracked and bled, but I loved it all the same =). Our house looks nothing like my mom's work, but it is just so warm and cozy to sit with all the lights on and a fire in our fireplace. I could just sit there all night, no TV or anything, just looking at the lights. One thing I was super excited about was this year Ryan's mom gave me her Dicken's village pieces. She had decided she wasn't going to put them up, and thought Hannah and I might have fun with it- and we did!! It just makes me want to shrink to that size and walk around. My grandmother (my dads mom) and my mom both have huge Dicken's collections and I have always loved to look at them , so now I am super excited to have a little collection of our very own! I wish that I could keep them up for longer than a month but I will just enjoy them as much as I can in the meantime.

Well, I don't want to disappoint with just boring pics of Christmas decorations so I will throw in a few extra for you. These were taken LAST week after we got home from church.

"There'll be much mistletoeing and hearts will be glowing when loved ones are near- it's the most wonderful time of the year!!"

Not the most flattering pic of Bennett- but how can you resist those big brown eyes?!?

Thankful for Thanksgiving!

I love Thanksgiving. I know I need to be more thankful year round, but I do love having a holiday that is dedicated just to be thankful!!! Our family has so much to be thankful for. I have a husband who loves me through thick and thin, healthy beautiful children whom I love to no end, a house that we enjoy living in, family near and far that care about us and our children more than we deserve, and a Savior who loves us deeper than we will ever grasp on this side of Heaven. Praise Him from whom all blessings flow!!!

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We had a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving!! The whole fam got to sleep in a bit, we had a yummy breakfast, and watched the parade and dog show- Hannah Grace was TOTALLY into both. She loved the "boons" (balloons) in the parade and thought every dog in the dog show was "aw! coot puppy!!" So that was fun. We hung out with the kids, checked out the deals in the paper, and Hannah Grace and I made apple pie and pumpkin gooey cake to take to Ryan's parents house for our big meal. We headed over there for the afternoon around 2:30. We hung out, had an amazing feast, and played our holiday tradition game of Taboo- nothing like a little family friendly competition to bring out the best in us!!

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I truly am thankful!

My little monkey!

I love him, I love him, I love him! Did I mention that I love him?!

Bennett thoroughly enjoying an entire roll- after enjoying a whole plate of ham, green bean casserole and baked beans, but before enjoying a whole cup of ice cream. Boy can eat!

Hannah enjoying her "aye cweam" and papa enjoying feeding it to her!

These guys are just too cute! I want to squeeze them both =)

Mommy and daddy to be! Only one more month!!!

My husband is handsome.

Papa watching Veggie Tales with the kiddOs on their hang out pad =)

After numerous attempts with a camera timer and trying to get the kids to look at the camera- we managed a couple decent Braithwait clan shots. For, the record I kept some of the outtakes just for good fun ;-)