Ball Girl

Little Girl started basketball this year...in February, to be exact.  Our school district didn't have a regular basketball season (LAME!!!), so we put her in another league.  Good news: 3 of her friends from our "old" ward (more info to come in a later post...) are also on her team.  Bad news:  this basketball schedule is interfering/overlapping with her softball team, which started about 2 weeks ago.  Such is life.

She has had a really fun time.  Her game face is pretty awesome.  She has played 2 games so far, and in the first one she surprised us all and made 2 baskets...no baskets in game #2.  She is pretty short to be a basketball player, but she gets to be the point guard and gets to handle the ball a lot, which she likes. Instead of paying for team pictures, I just had Tim take some for me with my camera, so she's only with her good friends in these pictures (Ellie, Sydney, Ashlyn, and Kylee).

Go Angels!!!

Holey Ears

I've always told Sydney that when she was ready, she could get her ears pierced.  I figure there's no law or commandment saying when you can do it, so it's up to her, as long as I thought she was old enough to handle it.  For the longest time, it's freaked her out, so I didn't worry about it too much.  Then a few weeks ago, she and I had a little girls night out and were looking at earrings and she started to get the idea that she might be ready to get her ears pierced.  So we talked it over with Tim and convinced him it wasn't the end of the world, and she and I went on a Saturday morning to Claire's for the big event.

Here she is before the pain was inflicted--all smiles...

Now the lady is marking where to make the holes.  Notice she is still all smiles.  Little does she know...

 And here is right after the first one has been done.  I had assumed that surely there would be 2 employees at Claire's so that they could each do an ear at the same time before Syd realized how much it hurt.  Never assume...only the one lady on this particular Saturday morning...  Right about now she's starting to cry and telling me that she doesn't want to do the 2nd ear.  And I'm calmly reminding her that this was, after all, her idea, and besides, only having the one ear pierced will look quite silly.

 Look how pretty that sparkly purple earring is!  It would be a shame to not give it a match!  I love that you can see the little tears in this picture!  Get ready for #2, Syd!

 Even more close-up of her sad little tears.  But she's done!  She did it!  I really was quite surprised she went through with it.  She's been so scared to do it for so long...and even though there were a few tears, she really was quite brave and only whimpered a little bit.

 One sure way to get her to smile after inflicting that amount of pain is to give her a mirror and tell her how beautiful she is...she gets her vanity from me...  She's done really well taking care of her earrings and reminding me to put the solution on them day and night.  And we marked on the calendar when she will be able to take out the studs and put in something else...right around Halloween.

Sydney is SEVEN!!!

Sydney turned 7 a couple weeks ago! I can't believe that this time next year, me baby girl will be getting baptized! She shares her birthday with my mom, and we were lucky enough to be able to celebrate with them both. My parents drove up from Texas and got here just a few hours before the party. Sydney chose to have a pool party at our neighbors' house where she swims all the time. It sure made planning easy--let the kids swim a long time, do presents, swim some more, have treats, and done! She had a great time and had a ton of friends over. I even played the role of "FUN MOMMY" and swam with the kids the whole time. I can be fun when I want to. :)

She got way too many presents...I guess that happens when you invite so many friends.  I love her face in the picture on the top in the middle--pure joy and excitement.  She felt pretty special getting presents on her party day, which was 2 days before her actual birthday.  She tried real hard to let me open her gifts from us that day too. That was taking "fun mommy" too far...she had to wait!

 For her treats, she wanted to same rainbow cupcakes that we had done for Ryan, but with purple added, of course, to girly them up.  We also had ice cream cones, in keeping with the easy-on-Mommy party theme.  All 24 cupcakes and 3 containers of ice cream disappeared in no time!

 My dad was a great entertainer to Jake once he had spent enough time in the pool and while I was still swimming with the kids.  Jake thought it was great fun to get his hands wet, then shake them on my dad's face.  I can see where that would be fun. :)  It was so great to see my kids with my parents...they don't get much time together each year...

Once it was Sydney's and Mom's real birthday, I let Syd open her presents from us.  She has been begging for new bedding for her room for months, and we had been "window" shopping several places.  She really loved this zebra bedding with purple and hot pink as accent colors.  So she mostly got stuff for her "new" room.  I was pretty excited that she's moved on from Littlest Pet Shop...

That day, I took my parents and the kids out to Winger's.  It was nice to be able to treat my parents to lunch for once.  Too bad our service at Winger's was A-W-F-U-L!!!  But in the words of my mother, "We made a memory!"

For dessert that night, we had raspberry Jello poke cake and homemade vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries on top.  It was delish!  The best part, though, was Sydney...  Tim and my dad had gone to the little neighborhood park to fix the pump for our irrigation system and Syd wanted to go see what they were doing at one point.  She was gone for a while, then when she came back, she was COVERED in dirt (see photo above...).  I don't know that she's ever been that dirty.  I took the hose to her, but not until after I got a picture!  My sweet little girl--all boy!  That's why in the pics of her and my mom later at dessert shows her with wet hair--she had to have a spray down followed by a bath before dessert--typical Sydney Grace!

Working Out

Sometimes for my morning workout, I do Jillian Michaels's 30 Day Shred DVD.  It's a nice change from running sometimes.  And she kicks my butt.  Often, when the kids wake up, the first thing they see is me sweating to this DVD.  Well, a couple weeks ago, they caught me doing it and sat and watched me...then I went to shower...then when I came out all dressed a little later, this is what I saw:

I laughed so freaking hard!  They were both so intense.  It was awesome!

 Sydney is those stinkin' boots!  I asked her later why she was wearing them, and she said, "Well, I needed some shoes and these were the only ones I could find.  I think she's channeling her inner Wonder Woman!  If that weren't enough, she was also using canned soup as her weights, since Ryan was using my hand weights.  It was such a sight!

Ryan was trying not to laugh--he must have had an idea how ridiculous they looked!  I was pretty glad that they wanted to try the workout, too.  Of course, they went with Level 1.  Level 2 almost brings tears to my eyes...someday I hope to be able to get to Level 3...


Someday.

Mother-Daughter Weekend

This weekend was our ward's Fathers and Sons camp out. After a bit of begging from me, Tim agreed to take Jake with the other two so Sydney and I could have a mommy/daughter weekend by ourselves. These are the things you dream about when you first have a daughter. Sweet memories and good times. We had so much fun!

I let her choose where to go to dinner, and it came as no surprise that she chose McDonald's. She was in heaven with her burger, fries, and toy in her Happy Meal. She was also so excited that I said we could sit at the tall stools. Simple pleasures. I love this pic of the two of us!


Next we went to the grand opening of Hastings to check it out. We had a coupon from the paper for a free smoothie and that was a thrill for her.


Next we stopped by Target and I told her she could either pick some new nail polish or we could get fake nails and try those out. She went for the fakies. The funny thing was, though, that she couldn't stand them after about 10 minutes and ended up ripping them off, haha! That night all she wanted was to sleep in bed with me, which is never an option for any of my children. I let her fall asleep in with me, but by about midnight, I couldn't handle her heavy breathing anymore and moved her to her own bed. I'm so mean...


The next morning, we drove to my sister-in-law's to have my niece Daniele give us cute new haircuts. I cut several inches off of Syd's hair a couple weeks ago, but wanted to get her a cute A-line. I love it! I got mine done similar, but with bangs and lots more layers.


After our haircuts, we stopped at Blimpie, since it was my turn to choose the location, and had lunch before returning to our boys. It was so fun to have time with just her. She is such a blessing!


This picture is to show her cute Easter dress. She helped pick it out this year. I thought she did a great job. Ignore her goofy expression. :)


Here is a side view of her hair. It's so dark that it's hard to show how cute it is. It's stacked in the back and just suits her perfectly. Sassy!


Here we are together this morning with our sort-of-matching 'dos. I love this girl!

Easter

Going through the few pictures I took, I'm realizing I have no pictures of Sydney in her Easter dress. I'll make her wear it this week again and take a picture then. She and I went on a girls' night out to shop for it. She's a size 7 now, which means she is no longer grouped with little girls...her size is in the 7-14 "tween" category. Yikes! I helped sway her a little from the more "mature" dresses, but for the most part, she picked it out on her own and I love it. It's black and white and so darling...pics to come soon, hopefully.

This year we went to my sister-in-law Tammy's since her son Daniel was giving his talk before he leaves on his mission. It was fun to have a mini-Bryson-reunion and the kids loved seeing all the cousins. We had an egg hunt, and Jake had such a great time. I had found these great sand buckets at Michael's for a dollar and used my Silhouette to put their names on them...still love that thing!




Sydney going at it.






A Bryson tradition is the silver/gold eggs. They each have a dollar or two hidden in them and are hidden especially well. This year, Sydney found one and it had a gold dollar coin inside. She was so excited!


You can also see that we cut her hair. About a week ago I was cutting the boys' hair when she started begging me to cut hers "short." I told her to think about it for a while and if she still wanted to, then I would. Once that girl makes up her mind, there is no changing it. So now we pretty much look like twins. I think we'll both get A-lines pretty soon...it will be fun for summer.

Scar-face

Sydney had her first major bike "incident" almost 2 weeks ago. She was on her way home from a friend's house and I wasn't even home--I was picking up Brandon from track practice. When I got home, Tim was holding her in his arms with a wet paper towel over her whole face. I looked in his eyes, and without uttering a word, he said, "It's pretty bad." All I could think was, "Not my girl--why did it have to be my beautiful girl??" Not that I wish injuries on my boys...I just didn't want her to be scarred for life--literally.

Once she calmed down a little, she let me pull the towel off a little and I got to see something I really didn't want to. It was awful! Scraped all across her cheek and starting to swell up and turn purple. Great.





There really wasn't anything we could do to bandage it. After all, it was her face. And right under her eye. So we just kept ice and a towel on it for a while, then just had to let it scar. I figured it would be that way for quite some time. Thankfully I was wrong.



Within just about a week, the whole scab had come off and she was bascially back to normal, just a little pinker skin on that cheek. So glad it didn't last long and so jealous my scars don't heal that quickly. I'm thinking this won't be the last of her injuries with how much of a tough girl she is...

Yellow Belts

First off, a disclaimer as to why there have been no blog posts from me in a month: I repainted the entryway, family room, kitchen, and dining area over the last several weeks. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time now, but just never took the time or jumped in. Well, as part of my New Year's resolutions, I jumped in! It looks awesome and I'll post about it soon, but for now, I need to play catch up on what we've been up to over the last few months.

Ryan and Sydney had their first karate belt advancement tests in December. Pretty much nothing cuter than those 2 in their uniforms...especially Sydney with the bow in her hair... They are both doing an awesome job in their after-school class and love it. In fact last week, I asked Sydney if she still thought karate was better than dance, and she just rolled her eyes like she does and said, "DUH, of course!!!" (No offense, Ashley, if you're reading this...that's just Syd!) So I guess the lessons will continue. This is the 2 of them when we first got to the gym. Here is Ryan doing a kick. So focused.

Sydney preparing to knock this guy's socks off.

I love this shot of her side kick!

Another kick from Ryan.

We found out once we were there that each child was going to be able to try and break boards that night. That made Syd pretty nervous since they had never tried that before. It just made Ryan super-anxious! Here he is getting instructions on just how to do it. I remember something about it being very important to have your thumb on the outside of your fist...

Here's his practice, just to make sure he has the form down.

He did it!

Now my girlie gets a little instruction...

And of course, has to bow.

I love her expression in this one!

I didn't get a good shot of the break, but she did it! None of the other kids as little as her were able to break their boards with their fists. I wish I could say I was surprised, but she is just one tough cookie! She's so satisfied with herself in this photo!

Now to try and break one with a kick...she was successful in that too, as was Ryan. They both pretty much rocked!

Not the best angle, but this is Sydney being presented with her new yellow belt. Gotta love the guys covered in tats. And here's Ryan getting his new belt. He can't wait to advance again and break more boards!

Tribute to G-ma

Sydney and my mom share the same birthday. Pretty sweet, I know. Last year when my mom was visiting, she and Sydney spent some quality time together coloring huge Tinkerbell pages she had gotten for her birthday. She was so impressed w/ her grandmother's coloring abilities. Syd loves to hang pictures and drawings all over her room, and they can change quite often...and sometimes I don't even notice... Last week, I saw these pictures above her bed. The one on the left is Sydney's work, and the one on the right is my mom's. "How sweet," I thought. Then I looked a little closer and started to chuckle... Sydney's has her first and last name and a number 6 for her age...Meanwhile, G-ma's name is spelled like a 6-year-old would spell it, but that's not what made me laugh. It also has Grandma's age, or what Sydney guessed as her age...89!!! My mom might not be 20-something anymore, but she's a far cry from 89...have I mentioned how much I love my little girl?!?!? Makes me laugh every day...