Fall 2010

October has been a crazy busy month...and it's not over yet! We took our annual trip to pick out pumpkins with the Asay's...and sadly I didn't take any other pictures. Brielle did a little cheer clinic at Timpview High School with our family friend Eden and her friend Faith from school.
One night I was going to check on the kids before I went to bed and I found this little cutie at the bottom of the stairs. I'm guessing he got out of bed and came looking for me...but got too sleepy!

Brielle has been asking me for weeks if she could get her hair cut...I finally relented and let her chop it off. She looks adorable. Brielle lost one of her front teeth...so she could be our little jack o lantern! She was crossing the monkey bars with her eyes closed when her hands slipped and she fell. When she hit the ground her knee hit her lip/tooth and her (already loose) tooth popped out and was lost forever in the wood chips! She was quite shaken up and even told me that she saw "black bubbles" while she was sitting in the office holding an ice pack on her lip & gums....what a sweetheart. She was so worried about the Tooth Fairy finding her tooth, so we left ''her'' a note under Brielle's pillow telling her where to look. Luckily "she" has a special ''tooth locator" that will help her find it in the wood chips! :)

Two weeks ago my mom went to Paris. She was having a wonderful time until she lost her footing on a cobblestone street and fell...breaking her pelvis. Poor Di...she had a miserable week staring at the walls of her hotel room! The Lord answered our prayers and she was able to fly home...now she can be miserable at home. Before she came home my dad got a few things to make life a little easier for her...Deano thought they were super cool!

P.S. The neck brace is not my mom's, the kids just found it in the garage and thought it 'went well' with the other 'injury stuff.'

Chris had a birthday this month too...we celebrated by meeting him (he rode his bike) up Provo Canyon for a little hot dog roast & smores with our friends the Asay's.

Cash & Brielle
BEST BUDDIES

Deano & Gracie

Last week Brielle told me she was supposed to dress up the following day in clothes representing what she wanted to be when she grows up...

Me: "What do you want to be when you grow up?

Bri: "Umm....a mom"

Me: "OK..I'm not sure how you can dress like a mom, is there anything else you want to be when you grow up like a teacher, doctor, nurse..."

Bri: "No, I don't want to be any of those things but I would really like to work at The Italian Place with Daddy"

So, she dressed up like an Italian Place Employee...hilarious! I love this girlie!

Annual Bryant boys BYU visit!

The Bryant boys came to town in September for their annual BYU football game...these boys are FULL of energy...my sister in law Elise (the mom) is a super human (you'd have to be to have 5 boys between 3 & 10)! Brielle and Dean love having their cousins come, they were SO disappointed when they left! Deano thought he'd died and gone to heaven...he LOVED having all these boys to play with. I wish I'd taken better pictures...this was during a little birthday party we had for Matthew (who turned 3 while visiting us).

Mini Swiss Getaway

We LOVE Midway (a cute little town about 25 minutes up Provo Canyon that has very strong Swiss roots...most of the homes & building look Swiss, they have a Swiss days celebration every year etc.), it is such a charming town. We had a free nights stay (thanks to my parents) at the Zermatt Resort. We've been to dinner several times at Zermatt, but we'd never stayed there. It was SO much fun to be together and have nothing to do but hangout!
We went swimming in the indoor/outdoor pool...the kids LOVED this waterfallPlayed giant chess Took a ride on a cougar & hog

It was only an 18 hour vacation but it was so relaxing because we just hung around the resort... we've decided we need to take these little mini getaway's more often!

STAR WARS!

Deano is obsessed with Star Wars (there are light "savers"--as he calls them, all 6 movies & star wars guys, coloring books etc..EVERYWHERE I look) so of course we had a Star Wars Party! FYI- I spent a billion hours making the "Happy Birthday Deano" sign above...totally obsessive...I'm a mess!

We had a million little kiddo's join in the celebrating! Deano loved it!We decorated Star Wars sugar cookies, played a couple games & ate cake...I've never seen Deano so excited, he had such a great time!

He LOVED his Darth Vader pinata so much...he even wanted to wear it while he blew out his candles!

My "idea" slave!

This guy is my HERO! Chris is so patient with me and my "ideas"! He has been my 'idea slave' for the last few weeks...

A couple of weeks ago I saw some bar stools that I liked (they were really nice but not terribly priced for nice stools. I've wanted new bar stools for awhile--a couple of ours were breaking)...so I drove to SLC to find four of the same stool, brought them home...decided I had a bette idea...then took them all back! I spent hours researching "how" to carry it out and then on Saturday morning I asked Chris if we could build an island...and by the time we went to bed...

VOILA...a Kitchen Island custom built for me! We used unfinished oak cabinets (which happened to be 30% off at Home Depot)...Chris painted them, put bead board on the sides, added trim pieces and topped it all off with a butcher block counter top that the kids and I ran to Ikea to buy (while he slaved away at everything else! I got some really great/cheap stools at Target and now I have what I've always wanted in my kitchen...and I love it!

Unfortunately (for Chris), I was not satisfied...all the next week I researched again...I had another project in mind! I wanted to paint the kitchen cabinets! This is something I've always wanted to do, but I'd heard a million horror stories about how much work it is! The next Saturday morning I woke up and went to spin class (I thought this would butter him up...he loves the fact that I like going to spin at the gym...he keeps trying to get me to buy clip in bike shoes) and when I came home, I casually asked him (as he walked out the door for his bike ride..."Hey, what if we painted the kitchen cabinets white" and he agreed...I was ecstatic (obviously he has never heard the horror stories about painting cabinets)! After a week of sanding, priming, sanding, priming, sanding, painting, sanding, painting etc...our kitchen looks AMAZING! I cannot even tell you how much I love it! Chris wanted to kill me by the time it was over (b/c it is a lot of work) but it was worth it...he even thinks so now!

The finishing touch was this light fixture from Pottery Barn that my mom bought me for my birthday (in a few weeks). I love everything about our kitchen now, this is definitely my favorite update we've done to our house...it is ironic that it was by far the least expensive.

I am SO lucky to have a husband that is such a good sport!

1st Grade

Brielle started this year at Edgemont Elementary in Provo, where she is part of the French/English Dual Immersion Program. It has been so much fun to have her start learning French, I love it! It's a neat program--they spend half their day in their English Classroom w/ their English speaking teacher and the other half of the day in their French Classroom w/their French speaking teacher (whom they think only speaks French...she never speaks English to them).

I LOVE LOVE LOVE it when Brielle starts telling me what things are in French...body parts, colors, numbers, days of the week etc. and when she asks me to speak only French to her. The best part is that she has the cutest little accent...sometimes I'm afraid my heavy American accent is going to mess her up! After 1 month, her accent is already better than mine!

It has not been all roses...she love's her English teacher and she used to tell me all the time that she wished she could stay in her class all day. She would say that French class was 'boring'....which makes sense considering it has been a lot of repetition up to this point and they started out not understanding anything the teacher said! However, Brielle is starting to like it more each day...she loves Mademoiselle Lacroix--which is a bonus and she's started using her French words a lot. She sings songs in French (or at least I think it's French...I usually can't understand what she is saying since I don't know the songs and she does not really know all the words) and frequently asks me what "blank" means in French (which is also a fun game....considering I often can't tell what she is trying to say...so I ask her to repeat it 20x trying to figure it out)!

There are other Dual Immersion programs offered in public schools (Spanish & Mandarin) that are probably more useful, but it is SO much fun to have her learning French...it is a family tradition (my father, grandfather, uncle, mother in law, brother in law & sister in law are all fluent in French plus several other of Brielles Aunts have learned french in school)!