The Monson Family

This past Sunday we blessed Matthew. It was so fun to have all our family up to visit and participate in the blessing. We feel so blessed to have such wonderful family. We love you all! We love Matthew so much and we are so grateful for him. He is a chunky little guy but he sure is a sweetheart. Here are some pictures of this special day.

It seems like fall just vanished and winter blew right in. But before the snow fell this year Brenna loved playing the leaves.


Our leaves fell really late at our house so it was pretty cold, but we still had fun playing in the piles in our backyard and at Grandma and Grandpa Monson's house.

Halloween is one of our favorite holidays to celebrate and this year was no exception. We had fun carving and painting pumpkins and decorating the house with spooky decorations. I made these fun paper lanterns that we lit along our driveway on Halloween for the trick or treaters to enjoy. We ate loads of candy and of course went all out dressing up in costumes on Halloween night.
Brenna loves Minnie Mouse so I made her a Minnie dress and she has loved wearing it all month long. Brenna's friend Micah dressed up as Mickey Mouse this year so we had their family over for lunch and pictures.



Matthew was a very "little" league football player and gave us some fun smiles for the camera.


Brandon made a great Phantom of the Opera and I was a gypsy.


It was Brenna's first year to go trick or treating. Brandon had fun taking her around our new neighborhood. We were glad it wasn't too cold. She came home saying "Trick or Treat", "Go Walk", and "Nobody's Home" for the rest of the night. I guess a couple of our neighbors were not home, but she sure got a whole bunch of candy that she can share with Mommy and Daddy.
Happy Halloween everyone!

Our little boy has arrived!

Matthew Brandon Monson was born on Monday October 12th. He weighed 8.0 lbs. and was 21 inches long.
He is a little angel and we are so excited to have him here! Everything went great during delivery and Mommy and baby are doing very well. Brandon was such a great support through everything and is so thrilled to have his son finally here!







Brenna is very excited to be a big sister. She gave Matthew lots of kisses when he came home and she loves to help hold him and read him stories.


Thank you to all the wonderful family we've had here to help us out these past few days. We love and appreciate you all so much. We feel so blessed to have such a healthy happy little baby boy join our family.


Welcome to the world Matthew!!!

Wow!  What a month we have had!  June has had to be the craziest month ever for us.  We have had so many big things going on that blogging has taken a major back burner for a while.  But I finally have some time to give an update.   The biggest news of all is that we now are homeowners!  


We bought a house up in Smithfield and we love it!  It has 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and feels like a mansion to us compared to our little apartment.  It is on a quiet street and it has a big fenced backyard that Brenna is loving to run around in.  There is even room for a garden someday and we have a cherry tree and two apple trees.  It has been a massive task to get moved in, especially with all the work we have needed to get done.  We replaced all the carpets and put tile in the kitchen and replaced all the baseboards. Flooring is definitely a big job to redo.  We couldn't have done it without all the help from our families and friends.  We have had my parents and Brandon's parents and siblings up here one after another helping us do it all.  Thanks so much everyone for your help!  There is a mile long list of other things we would love to do but we have to remember to pace ourselves and not bite of any more than we can chew (much easier said than done).   We will have plenty of projects to work on for the next few years.   We feel so blessed to be able to live in a house and to raise our family here in Cache Valley.  It is exciting, but also kind of overwhelming!

If moving in to a new house isn't enough we packed the two weeks before we moved with some major summer adventures.   Brandon's whole office at work earned a trip to go on an Alaska cruise so from June 12-20th we got to go north and take a cruise!  We left Brenna with her two grandmas and we got have a getaway with just the two of us.  We got to see a glacier and go whale watching in Juneau, visit a gorgeous rainforest filled with bald eagles in Sitka, see lots of totem poles in Ketchikan, and visit some lovely gardens in Victoria B.C..  The cruise boat was amazing.  We loved the food and the entertainment.  We had a wonderful time.  







Here is a slide show of our trip.  
Crazy huh?  We have been having a lot of fun, but it sure is a lot of work.  Traveling and moving can be very exhausting, especially back to back to back, but we sure have felt blessed to have had so many great experiences already this summer.  Now that we survived June, July has been nice to settle in and find a routine again.  

We went in to the doctor yesterday and saw our little baby on an ultrasound. It was so amazing! Technology is incredible! We found out that we are going to be having a little boy! We are very excited. Now we will have one of each, (just what we wanted). It was fun when we saw his arm he had his little hand in a perfect thumbs up. I guess he was telling us that everything was good and that he was healthy and happy in there. Here is the picture of it. We can't wait until October to have him here!

We bought Brenna a pair of pink sunglasses yesterday. She loves them. When we got home she stood in front of the mirror forever staring at herself with them on. Here is a video we took of part of it. It is cute. Later she put them on again and kept running back and forth between rooms showing us her "cool summer look." It was way funny.

For those of you who may not know yet....We are expecting a new baby this October. Brenna is going to be a big sister! We are very excited to have our family grow. We will find out the gender at the end of May, so we will keep you posted. As for "Mama" I am feeling good and am glad to be in the second trimester now.

This past week was Spring Break for us so we went down south to find some warmer weather in Zion's National Park. We had a great time hiking around and spending time together as a family. It was a perfect time of year to be down there. It was a nice sunny 70 degrees most of the time and everything was budding in that pretty light green of spring.

We got one of those handy kiddie packs for Brenna to ride in when we hiked and she loved it (most of the time). She loved looking around and pointing to all the trees and water and playing with rocks. This girl loves to be outside. It was a perfect family trip for us.

We spent Easter weekend down with Brandon's family. We celebrated Grandma Georgie's birthday with all of his family. It was fun to have everyone together. We painted Easter eggs and had an Easter egg hunt. I think Brenna was more interested in being outside than in finding eggs, but she had fun and we had fun watching her and Rachel. Easter is such a great holiday, especially with little kids around. It is one of my favorite days because we get to pause and celebrate all the Savior has done for us. We also get to celebrate springtime and be with family.

It has been quite awhile since our last posting, but instead of just another update I decided to list some of Brenna's favorite things because she is so dang cute and seems to be the center of what we have been doing lately. She is getting so big. We spend a lot of time chasing her around the house and hearing her laugh. It is the best sound in the world. She loves to talk and babble all the time. She is learning new words everyday. We love her so much!!!

Brenna's Top 10 Favorite Things:

1. Her Minnie Mouse stuffed animal she calls "Ni-ni"

2. Yogart (she can't get enough of it)

3. Playing outside (bring on the good weather!)

4. Climbing up on and rocking herself in the rocking chair

5. When Daddy comes home (she runs and gives him a big hug and a kiss)

6. Necklaces and jewlery (she is a girl through and through)

7. Taking a Bath (whenever we say bath Brenna runs into the bathroom and waits for the water to turn on. She loves playing in the water)


8. Shoes (Brenna will spend hours trying to put on her own shoes. She has yet to accomplish it, but she is very determined.)

9. Kissing everything (from our cheeks to our knees, or her book or the wall or the broom, everything is loved with a kiss.)

10. Books, books and more books! (Ever since she was little Brenna has loved looking at books and she still spends most of her time with book after book.)