Have to Do It

Alright, I had to do it. Given the matching blessing outfits, I had to pick some to show of Ryan and of Brennan. Here we go...

Smiley Babies

Content Babies

Upset Babies

What do you think?

Brennan's Baby Blessing

We were able to have a lot of family in town to bless Brennan on his two-month birthday. He wore the same blessing outfit Ryan wore almost 29-1/2 years ago, which I thought was super cool.

From my family, we had my mom and dad (St Louis), my Aunt Geri (Kansas), and my sister Kim (Springville, UT) with her daughter Janice (4-1/2 years) and daughter Brianna (2 months). They came Saturday night and left Sunday night.

Brianna was born just 8 days before my little Brennan, so I figure they are practically twins. Unfortunately, two thousand miles usually separates them. They liked each other right away, despite their terrific size difference. You'd hardly believe they weighed the same at birth!

From Ryan's family, we had his mom and dad (Portland, OR). They were able to stay Friday through Monday.

We had a great time. Thanks everyone for coming to celebrate with us!

Yuki Eyes

Collin has a name for each store we visit. As we pull in each parking lot, he begins to tell me where we are. Now that I know most of the nicknames, I try to prepare him for what we'll be doing each day by using his names. Here are a few of his favorites...

- Barnes & Noble: Choo-choo story time

They have a Thomas the Train table in their children's department that he plays with every Monday before or after their story time.

- Target: Big Ball store Our Target has giant, red concrete balls out front so people don't drive up on the curb.

- Borders: Egg story time Each week as part of their Tuesday story time, they pass out plastic eggs with popcorn kernals inside for the kids to shake along with a song.

- Walmart: It varies. For example, in October, they had pumpkins on shelves in front of their store. Since Collin called all pumpkins "boos" last Fall (see The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything, by Linda Williams), Walmart was the Boo store.

- Dunlap Library: Pig story time
Our library, who has a story time every Wednesday, has a giant, paper-mache pig on top of one of the shelves in the kid's department.

- Sam's Club: Pizza store We get pizza in their little cafe just about every time we stop in.

- McDonald's: Eat Lunch Dad We pick up Ryan from work almost every Thursday and go to McDonald's for chicken nuggets and playing on their indoor playland. Oh, and by the way, every McDonald's in the world is called "Eat lunch dad" too. (Side note: I'm a little concerned that when spring comes and we start doing pb&j in the park again that he'll be disappointed...)

Anyway, do you get the idea? He named each place on his own, and the names have stuck.

Alright, there's your background information. So yesterday we were running errands, and in an effort to teach him the REAL name of a store, I actually told him as we pulled in the parking lot, "This store is called Kohl's."

He quickly replied, "Yuki eyes."

I pondered for several seconds what we had most recently purchased at Kohl's that could resemble a snowman or its eyes.

And then it hit me...

Coal.

Yuki eyes.

I love my two-year old.