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!

WICKED!!!!!

I am a music lover. That shouldn't be news to anyone reading this blog. Sometimes I even go around singing ordinary things to my kids as if we are a part of some big musical and everything must be sung instead of spoken. That being said, I had only been to one major Broadway-like production (Mama Mia in Vegas) before Wednesday night. We went to see WICKED. Now I can say I've been to two. And I need more.

It was amazing and I loved every minute of it. My only regret is not forking out a little more money for better seats. Next time I WILL be closer!

Actually I have one more regret. The lack of cheesecake. See, we (me, Tim, his borther Kip and his wife Sabrina, my niece Brittney and her husband Josh, and my niece Daniele) ate dinner at Cheesecake Factory before the show. Doing Weight Watchers, I sure as heck didn't want a whole piece of cheesecake in front of me. I thought surely one of the other 6 people would order a slice and I could have a bite of theirs. Just a bite. I only wanted one bite, people! But alas, no one wanted to order cheesecake. So I had NO BITES! I'm not bitter or anything... Thankfully, the show was amazing and all but made me forget about the missing dessert.

One of the best parts of the night was seeing Tim enjoy the show.

***DISCLAIMER: Cathy: musical. Tim: not-so-much.***

But he enjoyed himself none-the-less and said afterward that he really liked it. Not that he's going to turn into Mary Poppins and start singing everything he says like his crazy wife, haha! But I foresee more shows like this in our future and that makes me happy.

I didn't think to get a picture until after the show, 5 or 6 hours after our night began, so I don't look amazing, but it proves we went. Good times!

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.

Great Goat

As I'm sure you all know, my husband is a hunter. That's the middle name of our firstborn. It is what it is.

He's also a little addicted to getting things mounted and hanging them on our walls.

Last fall, he shot a mountain goat and promptly took it to the taxidermist. Sadly, he finished it last week. It's now in the family room next to the elk. The only good thing about it is that it somewhat balances out the elk and it's no longer quite so all alone. The only bad thing is it's ugly.

If me "letting" (I mean, it's his house, too...) him put it up there isn't proof enough of my undying love and devotion, then I don't know what is. I really don't LOVE it, but I don't HATE it, so I can live with it. It makes him happy.


Here it is next to the elk so you can see just how big it is.



Here is a little more close up. The rock is actually made out of plywood and foam. It looks so real though!



And here she is in all her glory, really close up. I still can't believe this is in my house!

They're Here!!

Well, they've been here about 2 weeks now, actually. That's just the awesome blogger that I am. It takes me a little while.

On Wednesday, April 6th around bedtime, as I was reading Jake "Dinosaur Roar" like we do every night, Tim hollered from the garage for me to come out there. I didn't know what he wanted and I still had songs to sing and Sydney to tuck in, so I didn't exactly hurry. When I got out there, he said he thought Molly was in labor and had her in the crate we had built for the pups. We hadn't thought she was due until the following Monday. It was a surprise, for sure.

It didn't take long before she birthed the first one, a black male. He was breach and didn't make it. It was so sad. We tried and tried to rub him and revive him, but it wasn't meant to be. She had another one about 30 minutes later, and it was o.k. And so cute! I hadn't ever seen newborn puppies and wasn't prepared for just how little they are. Just darling!

She kept going off and on all night. Tim wanted to be there for EVERYTHING, so we stayed out in the garage with her until 4am. By that point she had birthed 5 puppies, but both black males were stillborn (the breach one and one that was--we think--just too big and took too long in the birth canal). So we had 3 live puppies, and it had been almost 4 hours since the last one had been born. We were so sad that that was all we were going to get, but what could we do? We were exhausted and Tim had to leave for work in about 3 hours--yikes--so we went to bed a little sad and disappointed, but proud of Molly for how she had done.

At 7am, I went to check on her, and found that 2 more puppies had been born in those 3 hours. Then she had another one while I was taking the kids to school. I thought surely she was done. I kept checking on her every 30-40 minutes. When I checked at 11:30, there was another one! I was shocked! When I called Tim to tell him, he didn't even believe me at first. But that was it. She was finally done. Poor thing pushed out babies for 15 hours!

In the end, we had 7 healthy puppies--5 yellow (3 male, 2 female), 1 black (female), and 1 chocolate (male). She has been an awesome little mother and despite her recently diagnosed case of mastitis, seems like her old self again.

The kids have just been beside themselves with puppy love. Even little Jake, who doesn't like Molly at all, just loves them. And when he has one and I try to pet "his" puppy, he says, "No touch. My puppy." Oh, how that kid makes me smile. And don't get me started on Sydney. She goes straight for the puppies after school each day. She's in heaven.

So far, we have presold 2 puppies, so only 5 more to go. If any one's been looking for a great dog, let me know and I'll hook you up. :)









Yesterday they began opening their eyes and they got even cuter!

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...

So apparently they know what they're doing at WW

Today marks my one-month anniversary with Weight Watchers. It's not technically my weigh-in day, but I wanted to have an accurate measure of where I've come in the first month, so I weighed in anyway. I've lost 8 pounds! And when I add in the 4 pounds I lost on my own earlier this year, that's 12 for the year, and about halfway to my goal of 25. Feeling pretty freaking amazing right about now!!!

The best part is that it hasn't been too painful. There are no special workouts I have to do, no special protein shakes or special food I have to buy/choke down--just being smarter in my food choices and very deliberate in and accountable for what I am putting in my mouth. I so wish I would have tried this years ago, like right after I had Jake, but better late than never.

Just putting it out there, that if you're wondering about Weight Watchers or if it really works, I'll add my endorsement to the masses. For me, it has been just what I need and has fit into my busy family life--I still eat normal dinners with my family--I just usually load up on the veggies more than usual and keep my portions reasonable.

Anyway, that's a lot of rambling, and I feel like WW should pay me something for all the good things I just said, but I want to keep a record of my journey, and this blog is where I'm choosing to do that. Can't wait to see where I am one month from now!!!