A variety of halloween costumes

Alex is INSIDE the pumpkin. I think that may have gotten lost in translation.




I made Alex a vampire cape because her "fangs" were her first teeth. Well the middles ones have come in and taken over, so it's not as cute anymore. I still love the cape though.

Moving and Bed appreciation

So this weekend Tyler and I are going to pack up for the 5th time, and actually move to Montana. It hasn't really hit yet, and I'm not even thinking about it until Tyler is done with work.
This summer has been crazy. With Tyler gone firefighting all the time, I was planning on moving to Montana in August, until the end of the fire season, this Friday! Well, it didn't happen like that, and Alex and I have been in Utah instead. Since Ben and Kate moved in, (when we fake moved out) and will be here for awhile, Alex and I moved into the smaller bedroom while they set up in the bigger one. Not a problem at all, we are only there when we sleep anyways. Since Alex is in a crib now, we got rid of the queen size bed and set up a twin so they both could fit in the same room. While this sounds awful, it's not so bad. I've decided that it is preparing us for our road trip when we opt to save money and sleep in the back of the x-terra.
So, a few weeks back Tyler and I were in bed one night after he had just returned from a fire. Alex started her "hungry" cry and I started to roll over to get up and get her. Now when Tyler is gone, I sleep in the middle of the bed, with a good foot on each side. With Tyler here I forgot to adjust for the lack of space, and immediately rolled Off the bed. This would not have been bad, but our over sized cement nightstand caught the upper half of my body, and there I was, my legs on the ground and the rest of me jammed in the crack. This was my favorite twin bed experience. I will never take a queen bed for granted again ever.

THE DECATHLON

So it's about time I posted about the Decathlon. About a month and half ago, we (Ben, Kate, Devin, Kara, Me, Tyler/Pop) to do a decathlon to finally figure out who really rules the universe.
So we sat down and came up with 10 events.......
1. 4 card no peak
2. Domino's
3. Phase 10
4. Candyland
5. Croquet
6. Chutes and ladders
7. Ziltch
8. Boggle
9. Pumpkin carving
10. Bake off

Every Sunday and sometimes on a Friday or Saturday, we have all gotten together to play one or two games in our Decathlon. When Tyler wasn't here, Pop or some other random person fills in as the 6th player. Also as part of the bake off, each person has prepared one baked item that was then judged on creativity, taste and appearance. It has been pretty intense, we have all gotten a view into the competitive and sarcastic worlds of each person's game play.
Here are a few of my favorite moments......... Keep in mind, EVERYONE involved is usually pretty level headed and happy go lucky, usually.
-In Phase 10 when everyone was accusing everyone of cheating and we all had to take a breather at the end, or risk some fist fights.
-In Croquet when, having never before played, I took the cake and won the game.
-Eating Kates baked Apples.
-Eating the entire giant bowl of homemade peach ice cream Kara left us to "share".
-Carving the GIANT pumpkins that Pop grew this year. Biggest thing's I've ever seen!
-Laughing at how seriously frustrating Chutes and Ladders and Candyland can be when you really, really, really want to win!
-Listen to Kara (it's usually Ben's) made up words in Boggle.
I think the moral of the story is the person who cares about winning the least, is usually the one who always wins. Hence the reason Kara was first by such a HUGE margin, all she cared about was everyone getting along.
So THE WINNIER IS......................
KARA MARIE BRADY GAGON !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here is the run down....
2nd- Kate
3rd- Devin
4th- Kristen
5th- Ben
6th- Tyler, Pop, and others.
The prize we decided on was that we would each chip in and buy a new game, which the winner would then get to keep, although we all would get to play it.
Yay. Here are some pictures of the foods.......






Kate's Baked Apples - she won
Kara's peach icecream and carmel waffle type cones
Devin's pastry puff custard chocolate thing.
I forgot to take pictures of my.... apple fries and m&m sugar cookie oreos
and Ben's Indian lemon ginger tea and rice pudding.
Tyler forfeited.

no more teeth

Alex just finished getting her first batch of teeth for awhile (hopefully). 6 teeth in 10 days. CRAZY. 4 on top, 2 on bottom, she looks like a little person.

Lots of Great Pictures

Ben, Me, Kate, Pop, Devin, Kara... and our giant homegrown pumpkins.






There are a TON of great pictures, so you really need to watch the whole slide show. Sorry for the abundance of Alex shots. If you push the plus sign it speeds up. If you scroll over the picture it shows the text explanation and pauses it.
So I made these cookies that looked so cute in the cookbook. Well, they turned out great, I put everyone in the family's name on one (even the Brady's in North Carolina, sorry we ate yours). The only problem is that they tasted awful like chalk! No flavor at all, they wouldn't even absorb milk.

Marie-Therese Gown GIVEAWAY !!!!!!!

Marie-Therese Gown GIVEAWAY !!!!!!!

Pumpkin Carving

This year Tyler and I bought a packet of GIANT pumpkin seeds. We forgot to actually put these into the ground, but our wishful thinking paid off, and somehow the garden produced the LARGEST pumpkins I have ever seen in my life. These aren't even the biggest ones. There were about 7 others that were given away, and some of those were even better!
Anyway. As part of our family Decathlon,( which you will read about later) we carved pumpkins on Wednesday night. It was a lot of fun. Here are some pictures of Alex with the finished product.

October weekend

This weekend my Mother and Brother came to visit. We spent Friday hanging out together and enjoyed a Brady "Indian Night" with delicious pinapple curry and a movie. Saturday My Brothers, Danielle, Alex and I went to Salt Lake to see the "Body Works" exibit.


It was incredible. Since it was a Saturday we ended up waiting in line for about an hour and a half, and then it took another hour and a half to get through the exibit. If you didn't know, you wouldn't be able to tell that they wern't just detailed plastic figures. I learned a lot, and if Alex hadn't been such a fussy "up way past my bedtime" kid, it would have been much better.
this was a familiar scene while waiting in line, I just sat back, took pictures and laughed at how amused everyone was by Alex. Although I completly understand.



While we were waiting for our time to line up, we hiked to the top of the Salt Lake Library.

They had grass up there, Alex liked to chew on it.



I would like to take a minute to thank all the Uncles. Since Tyler has been gone for most of the last 6 months, Alex and I have depended a lot on her Uncles. So Thank you, for carrying her around all the time, pushing her in the stroller, playing with her, and hauling her up flights of stairs. Taking your turns trying to calm a fussy baby, feeding her, dressing her, and basically treating her like she was your own. On that note, thank you to all the Aunts and Grandparents as well.

More and More and More teeth

In the last 6 days, Alex has gotten 4 of her teeth in. I was always under the impression that kids got teeth one at a time, maybe two, over a matter of months. Poor kid has been so good even though she must be in such pain. So far she has her fangs and her bottom two teeth in, it's looking like her top middle two are about to pop any day now. wow.

I made a bonnet for Alex

My productive summer

At the beginning of the summer i mentioned that one of my goals was to finish this T-shirt picnic blanket quilt I had started. Well, nearly 6 months later, I am done!!!!!!!!! It was hard and frustrating, but it feels so wonderful to be finished, right as picnic weather has gone. Ta Da! It is so soft and wonderful. We tried it out yesterday.




In the midst of finishing my quilt i got preoccupied with a variety of other projects.

The care bear......

While making this i got so much fake fur up my nose I gave myself a sinus infection.


The quiet book........

This was a lot of fun to make, but now that i'm done, Alex has already lost half the Velcro shapes to half the pages.


The stuffed birds for a mobile I'll finish later.....






I made a bunch of these for Kate for her baby shower, They are so easy and they look great! Tyler likes throwing them.

The hardcover journals.......



Kate and I saw these at a farmers market and decided that we could do that. So we went to DI and bought a bunch of old hard cover books, and then found out no one in town would bind them for us. Finally a nice lady at Staples tried it and it worked!!! All we did was take out the middle pages of the book, add our own paper, and now we have cool hardcover spiral drawing pads or journals that are disguised as something else!

The Alice dolls......


These are actually called Black Apple dolls, but when I finished making one for Alex, i was taken aback at how much they reminded me of my friend Alice. So I renamed them Alice dolls, and Alice yes I made one for you, It is in a box waiting to be put in the mail, right now.


The wrap skirts........ Which I will add pictures later.
There was the portable wet wipe cover.... Also will add later.
There was also the bread making and cooking phase, that took up a lot of time and that I don't have many pictures of, but it was delicious.

Baby Teeth!

A few day's ago I noticed that Alex's gums were really swollen and you could perfectly see every tooth outline in her little mouth. Yesterday when we were playing I noticed something odd, upon further inquiry I discovered that it was a tooth!!!!! Strangely enough it was not one of the bottom 2 (heralded as the first to come in always) or one of the top 2. It was a lateral incisor on the top. A fang.
While this is odd, I am not so worried anymore, because this morning she got a bottom middle tooth. If we keep up this tooth a day schedule, her Dad isn't going to recognize her the next time he sees her! She is being such a trooper though, you wouldn't even know anything was happening at all!

Lemon Juice

Tyler decided that Alexandria needed to taste lemon juice. The video is not so clear, but about 9 seconds into it if you watch close, you will see the most hilarious face ever.

Tagged: 7 weird or random things about me

1. I am addicted to sewing/ crafts. But only functional or mostly functional things.
2. I have always dreamed of taking oil painting classes.
3. I can not play RISK because I get overly competitive and extremely upset when I lose.
4. I named my daughter after the Egyptian city of Alexandria, where the worlds greatest library was located until it was burned down. This in turn was named after Alexander the great who named about 70 cities after himself in his conquering the world phase. So in essence, We named her after Alexander the Great. Now that is a namesake.
5. I analyze words all the time. I break them down into what I know in other languages until I figure out the literal meaning. It happens alot.
6. I dream would be to visit the base camp of Mt. Everest. My favorite books are the "Death Daring and Disaster" kind where mountaineers make it to the peak, but run into crazy drama on the way down.
7.I wish I was Laura Ingles

PARADE!!!!!!

Kate and I really wanted to go to the BYU homecomming pancake breakfast and parade today. So even though it was snowing, we went. Alex had a great time I believe, and it was so fun seeing her and her daddy together!






Here we are in line for our pancakes. They were green.



All of the really nice stuff we bought for Alex we made sure we bought in green or blue or yellow, so boys could wear it as well. Unfortunatly because I don't put bows in Alex's hair, she is ALWAYS mistaken for a boy. Our adorable little boy got lots of compliments and even a blue balloon.

Shenandoah Costume GIVEAWAY !!!!!!!

Shenandoah Costume GIVEAWAY !!!!!!!: "somewhere around the civil war- hence the"

Alex's bipolar views on the presidental race

This is what dinner is like at the Brady house.

Alex blowing raspberries

I edited out the boring parts. She usually does a much more hilarious job, but this usually happens at from 6 am until 7 am.

These are a few of her favortie things

I took a picture of Alex's favorite toys. Yes you might notice that not one of them is technically a "toy". She loves the paint sample cards you can get at Lowes, her shoes are fantastic because it's a toy now, and later will function as clothing. Tyler and I bought her a bear bell so she can play with it like a rattle, and when she gets older and we go hiking and camping it will protect her from bears, and signal us as to where she is. Spatulas and plastic spoons are by far her favorite, followed closely by credit cards and paper. The only thing I didn't include a picture of is Kate. Kate's pant's, Kate's dresses, Kate's hair, Kate's face, Kate's feet. If Archie turns out anything like Kate, Alex and Arch will be the best of friends.
So Alex has started to Army crawl and scoot around which is nice and exciting yet not so nice as well. It is so fun watching her "crawl" over to what she wants and watching her enjoy the freedom, but it is not so nice having to got down on my belly and look at ever possible thing she might be able to get to in a room before I turn my back.

Counting down.

Tyler is home!!!! He showed up by surprise on Saturday afternoon. Apparently when there is a forecast for 7 days of rain they don't keep out of state hotshot crews around in the hopes a fire might start up. He was only gone for a week this time, and due to some misfortunes with their vehicles, it looks like they might be here for a bit.
Tyler has been a hotshot for 3 years, starting the year we met and started dating. The first year Tyler was almost smashed by a rolling boulder let loose by a helicopter dropping a Bambi bucket of water above them on the mountain.
The second year Tyler was almost hit by a rolling boulder let loose by a helicopter dropping a Bambi bucket of water above them. Unfortunately, instead of hitting him, it hit the guy next to him and sent him rolling down the mountain, almost over a cliff, and broke his leg.
So this year I have been very edgy waiting for this season's disaster, and Tyler has gotten pretty sick of me asking him to watch out for falling rocks. I was pretty afraid that the third time would be the charm, and I would lose him.
Well, the waiting is over! On their way back to Utah from Oregon, Tyler's rig blew a fuel line. (Not knowing much about cars, I don't know if you can actually "blow" a fuel line, but something happened to the rig that made gas leak on the road). The crew boss decided to press on since they were only a few hours away. It was raining hard and they went around a corner on the freeway and all the gas which had coated the tires by then made the crummy (technical term for their rig) spin out and they hit the median. The rest is sort of blurry for me, I know somehow they got a ride the rest of the way, and somehow the crummy got taken to the shop. the good news in all of this is, Tyler's season three near death experience has already happened, and now we are home free! Unfortunately for the crew, all three of their crummies have something wrong so they are sort of stranded for the time being. Their lemons are my lemonade!