Brixie Lee's First Pedicure...

Brixie Lee got her first pedicure today after I got home from mine. She wanted it at first, but then she didn't like the feeling of the paint going on. Mama's girlie-girl!

Check Out My Trike... I Mean Motorcycle...

After all the Christmas rains passed, we finally got to go outside and ride the trike! Brixie Lee actually calls it her motorcycle and Daddy said I'm not allowed to correct her. I slip up on that all the time!
Sweet ride huh!!

Christmas Day 2008!!!

Guess what! Grandma and Papaw drove all the way down from Bakersfield to celebrate Christmas with me! And look what they bought me!! A trike!!!


Santa even forgave me for drinking his milk! He got me this awesome doll house. I'm going to keep it in my room, right next to my bed!

He also got me this cool, pink tea set! I love Christmas!

Blocks too! Now I can tap-tap-tap at home like I do with Daddy in Kindermusik!

And a new nite-nite story that's all about my first year!

Thank you for driving down and bringing me an awesome trike Grandma and Papaw! Thank you for the doll house and all the other wonderful gifts Santa! Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone for making my 2nd Christmas soooo wonderful!

Love,

Brixie Lee :)

PS... if you want to see all my Christmas pictures, check out Daddy's Gallery!

Making Cookies For Santa...

It's Christmas Eve... so it's time to make cookies for Santa! We decided to go with snickerdoodle cookies because we thought Brixie Lee would enjoy rolling the balls in the cinnamon and sugar. We were right on! She didn't exactly "roll" them around. It was more of a "squish" them around. Oh yeah, it was also more fun to drop them on the cookie sheet than it was to set them on the cookie sheet.

Waiting the 8 minutes for the cookies to bake was still the hardest part for her. Poor baby!

Nice girl making cookies for Santa!
Naughty girl drinking Santa's milk!

Nite-nite sweet girl! I hope Santa forgives you for drinking his milk!

If you want to see all the pictures from Making Cookies for Santa, check out Don's Gallery!

Grandma & Papa Early Christmas

It's Grandma and Papa's Utah Christmas year, so we celebrated with them a couple days early! Brixie Lee was very excited to be able to open Christmas presents tonight because we had told her that she couldn't open presents until we got to the last link on our Countdown To Christmas Chain. It was like she was able to "break a rule," and we all know how fun that is!!!

Brixie Lee really, really enjoyed this cool railroad crossing toy that makes train sounds and has blinking lights. It was really cute to see her dancing to the train sounds (there is no music: just whistles, horns, ding-dongs, etc.)
Even with all the presents to open, she was still your typical kid and liked playing with the packaging more than the toy itself!

This girl LOVES her Grandma and Papa!
Grandma and Papa's gift this year was a large picture of all 8 grandkids that Don Lee took around the 4th of July. Turned out great! We're going to have to update that picture again soon!

Thank you very, very much Grandma and Papa for all the wonderful and yummy gifts. I know Mommy will be enjoying her Starbucks gift card tomorrow! If you want to see all the pictures from tonight, you can check out Don's Gallery!

Hugs & Kisses!

Don Lee, Brixie & Brixie Lee

34 Week Update

Oops! Missed a few updates! The good news is that nothing too exciting or out of the ordinary has been happening. Up until last Wednesday, I had been teaching Stroller Strides classes 3 days a week. It was getting quite hard towards the end and I must admit that I'm very glad to be done teaching. I know I'll go back to attending classes after I am released for exercise, but I'm not sure if I'll go back to teaching. I would at least like to lose a significant amount of weight first. Then it would be based on my comfort with committing to something with 2 kids to take care of and if the franchise owner needs another instructor.

Here's a picture we took last Friday when I was 33 weeks.

Brixie Lee is not used to me being the focus of Daddy's camera, so she kept jumping in the picture. What a cutie pie!

I had another ultrasound on Monday and this baby is nothing like Brixie Lee was. This baby is very conservative with it's "parts." Again, the technician saw no sign of boy parts, but she did see what she thinks were the girl parts. So we still don't know for sure, but I would be very surprised if this baby is a boy. We'll be happy either way, but we'll be in a world of hurt if we have to figure out a boy name.

Still Santa's Favorite!!!

A lot of our friends told us that the Santa at our new outdoor mall in Chino Hills (The Shoppes) was spectacular, so we went to check it out. We got Brixie Lee all dressed up in her "Santa's Favorite" shirt that Grandma got her. She was sooooo sweet and everyone was talking about how cute she was. Then I picked her up to put her on Santa's lap. As you can see that didn't go well. Santa was great and kept trying, but there was nothing we could do to stop the crying. Oh well! We love this pic!

This is the picture that Don got and you can see her face a little better. Poor Santa and Brixie Lee.

First Batch of Cookies!!!

Last year for Christmas Goma and Papaw got Brixie Lee her first baking set that included a chefs hat and Christmas apron. We decided to put her and her tools to work and have her make us some cookies! We had so much fun with this! She loves helping me in the kitchen and this was an all out adventure for her.

It was a little difficult to keep her from eating the cookie dough, but check out that smile. She was sooo extremely happy doing this!

Mommy and Daddy's proud little baker bear!

Finally... tasting the cookies of her labor!

Here you go Mommy & Daddy! Yummy!

There were lots more photos from this evening and you can check them out on Don's Gallery.

WARM... in Barstow!!!

Grandma and Papa took Brixie Lee and Don Lee up to Barstow last weekend to check out the trains. They were so kind to let me stay home and relax. It's hard missing one of Brixie Lee's "first" experiences, but she needed time with Grandma, Papa & Daddy and I needed time to relax. We all benefited!

Their first stop was Pearblossom Hwy off the 15 near Cajon. I understand it was extremely cold! As you can see below, Brixie Lee was having a total blast!



This was Daddy's first weekend off from school and as you can see Brixie Lee and Daddy were both thrilled to be spending the day together. My little girl loves her Daddy so much! Makes Mommy soooo happy!


Brixie Lee is so lucky to have such awesome Grandparents that take her to all these great places. Thank you Grandma and Papa!


In Barstow, they went to the Western America Railroad Museum (WARM). From what I understand Brixie Lee had a ton of fun. If you or your kids are into trains, I highly recommend you check this place out next time you're up for a drive! There are many more pictures on Don's Gallery, so check that out if you have time. I just can't upload all the pictures on this blog!

From here they went to the classification yard, but we don't have any pictures of that. From what I understand it's another must-see so if you're interested I can get specific information for you!

Christmas Lights With Friends!!!

We were invited to check-out the famous Christmas lights in Rancho with some of Brixie Lee's friends and let me tell you... it was spectacular! It was probably about 1-1/2 miles (3 miles round trip) of non-stop lights and vendors. By vendors, I mean the people that owned the homes were selling hot cocoa, cookies, churros, popcorn, etc. We had so much fun! Thank you for inviting us Lora!

The kids are as follows from left to right... Malaya, ??-Malaya's friend (sorry I forgot her name), Jacob, Brixie Lee and Alec. We are so lucky that Brixie Lee has such great friends with such great parents!


It's a hard to see here, but Brixie Lee is snacking on a cookie! You can see it better in the picture below. She ate on that thing for an hour!

If you would like to see all the pictures, check out Don's Gallery!

Brixie Lee & Our Christmas Tree!!!

Last weekend was Don's first weekend off from school, so we brought out all our Christmas decorations and put up the tree! Brixie Lee had a blast checking out all our stuff. I had no idea we had so much "stuff." My goodness, it's going to be hard to put it all away.

Anyway, it was drizzling off and on so we drank hot cocoa and listened to the Christmas Songs channel on TV. It was so much fun! Once all was done Don wanted to take a couple of shots of Brixie Lee by our little tree. She's sooo cute! We're soooo glad you're on break from school Daddy!!!!!

If you want to see all the pictures by the tree you can check out Don's Gallery!

Aunt Donna's Wedding!!!

On December 6th we went to Aunt Donna's wedding to Richard John (now Uncle Richard)! It was at a beautiful little church in Bakersfield and everything was perfect. Before the wedding Brixie Lee was able to have lots and lots of fun with her 2nd cousin Patty. Brixie Lee absolutely loves playing with her! Thanks for being such a great babysitter Patty!


Once the wedding started Brixie Lee decided to turn on her non-stop chatter. We tried to get her to stop talking... that didn't work. We tried to get her to whisper... that didn't work. We then gave up and Daddy took her outside.


As you can see below, she was much, much happier outside anyway! We didn't want to post the pictures until after we sent out our Christmas cards because Don got an awesome shot of Brixie Lee (it's on his Gallery if you want to see it) where she looked so sweet and angelic picking up leaves in the grass. This picture below was a close 2nd, but Daddy just loved the other picture!

Aunt Donna's favorite coler is plum and as you can see we went a bit Plum Crazy with what we were wearing.

It was a beautiful wedding and a wonderful day! Congratulations again Aunt Donna and Uncle Richard!

If you want to see all the pictures you can check out Don's Gallery.

Thank you Kimmie!!!

Thank for the yummy, yummy, yummy chocolates Kimmie! As you can see below Brixie Lee LOVED them very, very much :) We're still laughing over here, but it may be because we're her parents. Hugs!!!!!

Helping Daddy Build-A-BOB!!!

Goma, Papaw, Uncle Darryl and Aunt Vicky got Mommy, Brixie Lee & Baby #2 a double BOB stroller for a baby shower gift. The stroller came in and we wanted to take it to the shower so they could see this puppy in action! Brixie Lee decided that Daddy needed some help putting it together. She's such a good helper!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the wonderful gift everyone! I guarantee that we're going to put LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of miles on this puppy in our Stroller Strides classes :)

Lunch With Daddy!!!

Today we went on our first lunch date with Daddy down at his work in Irvine. Don has been working at Allergan for a year now and we wanted to celebrate his 1-year anniversary. We loved our lunch with you today Daddy!!!

Chino State Park Fires

As many people know we have been experiencing some really bad fires here in Southern California. One of those fires came very, very close to us. Below is one of the latest fire damage images that is on google. We are located to the left of the 71 Fwy circle (just below the fork in the freeway on the right side of the picture).
These are some pictures Don took from our front porch.

At this point we were told to pack-up and be ready to evacuate if need be. We packed until about 2am and then decided to get some rest.

Luckily we have not had to evacuate but there were times last night when 10 or so fire trucks were just down the street setting an offensive back fire to protect our neighborhood. They called it a "controlled burn," but that name still makes me laugh. Controlled burns are managed, but never truly controlled.

Anyway, the winds have stopped and now the smoke is starting to get pretty thick around us. I'm planning to unpack Brixie Lee's and my stuff, so we can head to Bakersfield tomorrow to get out of the smoke. Here we come Goma!!!!

Another tooth!

It's been ages from the last time Brixie Lee had a tooth come so I totally missed all the signs. I was brushing her teeth on Saturday and thought that she hurt her gums because she had a big-o chunk missing (sorry, kinda gross). The next day I could see the little white tooth starting to poke through. These 2nd molars are HUGE! Poor baby! No wonder she had been waking up at 4:15am and being so cranky. I thought she was starting her terrible 2's a little early. We've got 1 down and 3 more to go. Hang in there baby girl!

2 Weeks & Fingers Crossed...

Today marks 2 weeks for Brixie Lee wearing her mama panties all day and all night. Little explanation for that... we called her cloth diapers her "big girl panties" (used those for a bit hoping she would hate being wet... that didn't work), we called her pull-ups her "princess panties" (they have princesses on them), so when she got around to "real" panties she called them "mama panties" (reasons I assume are obvious).

Many people where quite shocked when we started sitting Brixie Lee on the potty when she was almost 7 months old.

I have always hated changing #2 diapers, so I started reading about early potty training when BL was about 6 months old. Everything I read had a basic point of putting them on the potty as soon as possible so they get used to the potty and sitting on one becomes routine. We were shocked when she peed on her potty the very first time she sat on it. That didn't happen again for a couple of days, but she really enjoyed just sitting there reading whenever she got up from sleeping.

Withing a months she was going #2 on the potty quite regularly and the momentum gained. The most exciting transition was when she was about 15 months old and we started putting her on the adult potty. It was great! No mess to clean-up! I never wanted her to feel pressured to start going on the potty, so we took it at her pace. About a month ago she started waking up with a dry diaper so two weeks ago we decide it was probably time to take the plunge and get into "mama panties" full-time. Our fingers are still crossed that she is really done with diapers! She has a little over 2 months before her little sister gets here so we're hoping it will be very routine by then and she wont digress.

Keep your fingers crossed for us!!!

13 Year Relationship Has Ended...

After 13 years at Cal Poly Pomona as a student and/or staff, I've called it quits. It was not an easy career decision, but it was an easy Mommy decision. I started Cal Poly Pomona in Sept of 1995 as freshman in the Collins School of Hospitality Management and I worked nights/weekends at Longs Drug Store in Upland. In my sophomore year I started working at Cal Poly in the Facilities Management Department as a student assistant because the commute to Upland was just too hard. My student assistant position in Facilities turned into a full-time position just after I graduated in June 2000. I decided to take advantage of the employee fee wavier benefit and started the evening MBA Program while I worked full-time in Facilities. I graduated from the MBA Program in June 2003 and then received Senior Budget Analyst position in the College of Science Dean's Office in October. I started my leave of absence when Brixe Lee was born in January 2007. What a ride!

Thank you to everyone that helped and supported my career at Cal Poly Pomona! I learned so much from so many people there. Thank you all!

Halloween 2008

After our Stroller Strides Halloween party at the park, we came home for a big lunch and a power nap before our plan of going to The Shoppes in Chino Hills for some kid friendly trick-or-treating. I'm sure you can tell from my words "our plan" that things did not go according to "our plan." Brixie Lee fell asleep late and woke up after the fun was already over at The Shoppes.

We ended up having a Mommy's Favorite snack, chips and salsa of course, while we decided if we were going to knock on any of our neighbors doors. Brixie Lee was feeding me chips and Don thought it was cute so he grabbed the camera to get it on video. This is what happened next...

... Don and I both tear up in laughter hours after it happened. Maybe it's just a parent thing??? Hopefully you get a kick out of it too.

From there we did decide to go stroll the condo complex so Brixie Lee could show off her Kimono outfit that Grandma Barbara made for her.

We only knew of one couple that was planning to hand out candy and they turned out to be the only ones in the complex that did. Brixie Lee got to knock on one door! Turned out to be the best door in the complex because we got candy and cupcakes! Thank you Desirae!!! Yummy!!!! Unfortunately, Brixie Lee thanked her by taking her entire basket of candy. I don't mean all the candy... I mean the entire basket. If you're going to go for it, go for it big time baby!

On our way back home Brixie Lee had to stop at her favorite sign (it's our complex directory) to read off the letters. Happy, happy, happy baby girl!

Back at home we enjoyed the fruits of her labor (cupcakes) and downed a big glass of milk each. Cross your fingers that she doesn't wet the bed tonight!

If you want to see all the pictures from Brixie Lee's first real Halloween adventure, you can check it out on Don's Gallery.