All about my 7 year old!

How has it been 7 years since Bria came into our lives?
Honestly, I can't remember life without her so part of me is shocked that it's only been 7 years. But the other part of me still remembers her squishy cheeks and sweet baby feet and can't believe she's a full blown little human who reads and writes and has opinions and stuff.

Basic Information for Bria at age 7:
Height: ? Forty-something inches, I'd say she's in the middle to tall category compared to her peers
Hair: Getting darker by the day but still has blond framing her face
Teeth: Her front teeth finally started coming in! It has changed her smile so much, she looks so much older

School: 1st grade and is doing really well. She has a hard time focusing and paying attention and her teacher said she often daydreams/spaces out. That was SOOO me. Poor girl has her father's ADD tendencies plus my daydreaming...but she is a great reader and loves science and history related things. Math is getting better but word problems really confuse her so we are working hard in that area. Overall her teacher is happy with her progress and attitude.
Personality: Empathy. If I had one word to describe Bria it would be empathy. The girl literally feels pain when someone else is sad, especially Brian or myself. For example, Brian scared her the other night (usually she thinks it's funny) and she was not having it so started crying. Brian apologized and went out to the living room. She came out crying and telling him how worried she was that she hurt his feelings for not liking that he scared her.
I'll let that sink in.
She was apologizing to HIM, for being scared when HE scared HER. This girl has all the feelings there ever were.
In addition to her endless empathy, she has the kindest heart. The other day I was reading in my bed and I heard a bunch of commotion in the kitchen. 5 minutes later, in walks Bria with a plate of food for me: peanut butter and butter sandwich, a marshmallow, and a glass of water. Why? Just because. I repeat, my 7 year old literally just thought I was hungry and thirsty so she surprised me with food. It doesn't end there, she wrote her first poem. I will share it with you now:

M is for merukl (miracle)

O is for osum (awesome)

M is for marey (merry)

E is for eksulint (excellent)

E is for ech (each)

Y is for you

love Bria

I LOVE her phonetic spelling. I believe we need to change the written english language to how my daughter spells things. I may have my Mom goggles on, but she's the best. Oh and she also brought her sister a snack.
Seriously? What did I do to deserve her?!

Just bringing a snack for her little sister too

For her birthday party she chose Pump it Up, a bouncey house place that's pretty incredible. They do EVERYTHING for you. I brought the decorations and they set it all up in the room while we were playing in the bouncey stuff. They funnel you through 2 rooms and the kids go crazy the whole time. They take pictures of all the fun. Then when they are sweaty and tired, you go into the party room where they have drinks and pizza waiting. Then they cut the cake and dish it out, all the while you get to watch a tv screen with all the pictures from the fun you just had.
They write down the present information while you are helping your child read the cards and acknowledge whom all the presents are from, and then load up a cart with all the presents, left over food, and roll it out to your car. They clean up the room and basically make sure you don't lift a finger. I felt like I was a guest at the party. It was fabulous and totally worth it.
Now that I finished my commercial, here are pics from the fun party:

Well, we tried to get a group shot, TRIED being the key word

Time to eat!

Princess birthday cake

7 years old

Her BFF, Ruby

Her other bestie, Presleigh

She loves Charleigh like a sister

Her little sis

Georgia, school friend

Parker, current crush :)

I'm so proud of my little human. It's crazy for me to think that I'm raising a real live human being. I know, that sounds insane but when I start thinking about her growing up and having a life of her own I start to sweat and pray that I'm doing it right. Parenthood feels like navigating a windy road in the dark, are we even doing it right? Is there a right way? Am I screwing it up so bad that I don't even know how bad I'm doing? Am I so awesome at it that I should write a book and create a series on best parenting ever? Am I so mediocre that it's like I don't exist?
There are so many opinions and articles and books on the right way to do this parenting job, but they all contradict each other and reading them makes me feel guilty for not doing all the recommendations but also guilty for doing other things. So I am officially throwing those thoughts out of my head, letting them roll off and trusting mine and Brian's gut instincts. We have our core values and those are what we will instill in our children.
Will we mess up? We sure will!
Will we succeed sometimes? Hell yes.
Will we love our kids unconditionally? Without a doubt.

So to sum it up for you: I feel so good, guilty, proud, discouraged, successful, hopeless, and fulfilled at this Mom job.
Sometimes I look at Bria and want to cry at how amazing she is. I love her so much it literally hurts. A huge shout to God, ya know, for blessing me with this incredible angel. Also, to my baby daddy for being the kind of man a girl can count on. You have rocked this Dad thing babe.

Happy 7th year Bria Boo!

I LOVE surprises!!!

I love surprises. 

Especially when they involve a getaway.

Since Brian knows me oh-so-well, he did just that for Valentine's weekend and I was over the moon ecstatic!

He whisked me away to Walla Walla, Washington for wine tasting! You will be shocked to know that I have never been wine tasting, even though I am a huge fan of the fermented grape juice. I seriously could not have planned this better myself.

Brian's friend Craig and his girlfriend, Jessica (whom we have hiked Timberline with, twice), were housesitting for Jessica's brother who just happens to live on their families wine vineyard. So we got to stay there and it was such a nice place. 

Brian's Mom came up and stayed the weekend with the girls and Heather and Tracy helped. They took them swimming, out to pizza places, and spoiled them good! It takes a village and I'm grateful for my village. 

We headed up Friday afternoon and stopped at one of our favorite breweries, pFriem, in Hood River.

We arrived in Walla Walla that evening and got to have a private tour of the tasting room at Jessica's families winery.

 Believe it or not, I did not drink much wine that evening. I wanted to be fresh and ready for our Saturday wine tastings!

 But that doesn't mean I don't like to be a weirdo and be crazy :)

So, Saturday morning we started bright and early at 10:30 am. You may think that's too early to begin tasting wine...but you'd be crazy.

We had a local guy drive us around. It's actually such a cool service, instead of renting a limo or big SUV (that's cool, but it's also muchos dineros), he drove our car for us! His name was Tom, and Tom was the bomb.
My two favorite things about Tom:
1. His recommendation (Adamant Winery) ended up being our FAVORITE
2. Our last stop was closing up but when they saw we were with Tom (every winery knew and loved Tom) they welcomed us in :)

The wine tasting experience was slightly different than I had expected. Tasting rooms are very plain and simple and it's all about tasting the wine. I guess I had envisioned sitting at a table, looking over a gorgeous view, sipping wine and chatting. While the gorgeous view was sometimes true, you don't sit at a table, in fact most the time there was no seating at all and the rooms had very little.
This was not a bad thing, just different than I had expected. It did allow for us to visit more places which was great.

This is my favorite picture of us. Upon seeing this picture, my sister Jenny hit it spot on, she said, "This is the type of picture your girls will look at when they are older and think, THIS is mom and dad."

He makes me laugh like no one else can, damn I love him

 Another interesting wine tasting thing, there is a bucket for you to dump your wine if you don't want to drink all of it. I was hesitant to use it because I didn't want to be rude, but it was very much encouraged so I used it on almost every taste! They pour small amounts but still, with 9 wineries to visit, I didn't want to be passed out at noon.
And I wasn't, I enjoyed my wine tasting booty off until the very end. And our last place was actually the one place that was large, had seating and a gorgeous view off the balcony.

Lovers

Just a little serenade...pretty standard

Look at that face, he knows he did good!

Cheers

Our wine tasting buddies, Jess and Craig

Snacking in the car between wineries!

After we got back home we walked around the vineyard and met a sweet donkey named Sage. Random? Yes. Fun? Totally.

That evening we went to a special Valentine's dinner and the food was delicious. 

We woke up Sunday, went to brunch, and then headed home.

I seriously can't tell you how amazing the weekend was. Brian and I had the best time together and I LOVED having so much quality time with him. He really is my best friend and when life gets busy with traveling and kids...these getaways are essential in filling my love tank. 

Thank you amazing husband, you are the best!

Kids are everywhere!

We had a house full of kids and family and happiness a few weekends ago.
Lance and Kayla came up because Lance was taking a Crossfit Instructor class, and Jenny and the kids came up because Jenny was going wedding dress shopping with her sister in law.
We anxiously awaited their arrivals and were thrilled to have so much quality time with all the cousins and siblings.

Yes, it was a little a lot hectic. And there was chaos. But there was also laughter and memories...and wine :)

On Saturday when Lance was gone at class and Jenny was doing wedding stuff, we had 5 kids between me, Brian, and Kayla. Halfway through the morning I was already running out of patience with my kids so Brian swooped up the three oldest and went shopping.

He took them to the mall where they found vampire vests and capes on sale, he told them he would buy them on one condition: They were them throughout the mall.
Obviously they obliged happily and it was quite the little scene.

They of course had a blast and behaved so well.

He also went to a few other stores, Costco being one of them. So yeah, he's super Dad and earned a million points.
While Brian was out being awesome, Kayla and I took Ames and Zoey out for some shopping and lunch.
On the one hand it was actually easier to have just one baby each. No kids talking back and asking for things and having to go to the bathroom. No one was hiding inside the clothing racks or requesting water. So that was glorious. But man, I forgot how much stuff you have to lug around for little ones! We whipped out the double BOB and got some shopping done. When we got hungry we picked a place WE wanted to eat, as opposed to something my picky eaters would possibly eat 2 bites of.
And the best part of lunch?

 WINE. No judging us, it was a really late lunch so it's totally fine.

My Zoey girl, she looks exactly like my baby pictures so really I was just toting an adorable baby me around

We all gathered back home after our successful adventures and attempted to relax. But really just played and tried to keep the exhausted older kids from fighting.
This little guy knows how to make us all smile and laugh:

Bria proves to be pretty helpful and nurturing with the little ones.

 She gets so excited when they learn new sounds or words and wants to carry them around everywhere.

I must squeeze those cheeks!!!

There were cousin bath times and kissing cousins...

"I just peed."

Cousin loves

We survived the day and evening and even bedtime! In fact, bedtime was a huge success. Zoey and Jax went down in .2 seconds, our girls went down quickly (but got up a few times for water and other pointless stall tactics), and Ames eventually curled up and zonked out too.
We attempted to watch a movie, which worked for the most part. Lance fell asleep and we all got tired so headed to bed.
Sunday was the superbowl. We didn't have big plans, so I just put out a bunch of food and beer and called it good.

We actually had decent weather so we got to play outside for a little bit which the kids loved.
So that sums up our awesome family weekend.
Grateful beyond words for silly cousins, awesome Aunts and Uncles, and a fabulous hubby.

I went skyyyyydiving...

For Christmas I got Brian tickets for him and I to do Indoor Skydiving together. Its a relatively new thing (at least here in Portland) and it sounded pretty perfect. No need to jump out of an airplane, just step into a tube with fans blowing at 100 mph! 

We took the girls to check it out and what do you know, Bria was enamored. She wanted to go so badly and I couldn't say no, so Brian made reservations for him and Bria and they had a Daddy daughter date. 

Reese and I snuck in for the indoor skydiving part, because, well I'm her Mom and this is exciting and I will not miss a thing!

 She could not wait.

 I couldn't get over how cute these two looked all suited up.
You arrive early and go through a training with the other people in your group. They usually have groups of 10-12 doing it but we picked a slow time so there were only 4 of them doing it.
The instructor is there the whole time and is constantly adjusting your body position and helping.
Bria was INCREDIBLE. They say kids are naturals because they don't over think things and their body is more flexible so it assumes the correct position more easily.

You get 2, 1 minute turns. The last part of the 2nd turn you can have them take you up and turn which is so fun to watch and Bria had a blast. 

I can't say enough how proud I am of her. She was all smiles and had so much fun. Seeing her be so brave is inspiring.