Easter in Hawaii

Brie and I are in Hawaii! We have seen Pearl Harbor and driven up to the North Shore. We had a little rainy weather at first, but now it's nice. We had our first trip to the ER the night before we were supposed to leave and ended up having to extend our trip so that Brie's eardrums wouldn't explode. Earlier that day we had a lovely coughing until puke incident while we were driving around the island. That was my first puke in the car incident as well. I don't know if we'll be able to visit Veronica again:) Hopefully when we leave on Thursday she'll be much better. Brie has had a ball with Koen and Jimmy and the neighbor girl Savannah.
The jumping on the bed pic is her and Koen. The one in the red sweatshirt is where Veronica was taking care of her while I was cleaning the puked on carseat in a camp shower. Not the most fun!

Missing the Cuteness

Well I don't have any more current pictures since I'm missing my little cutie, but I do have MANY that I didn't post from Christmas time. Plus, Mom has been keeping me abreast of new happenings. Apparently, Brie doesn't like to wake up early if she has stayed up too late. She will pull the covers over her head and say " Bed...Bed!" if mom tries to get her up. However, she can be bribed. All mom has to do is mention, "I've got coffee" and Brie sits up immediately alert..."coffee?". So she gets a splash of coffee in the milk in her sippy cup:) What am I going to do with her?!!?

Changing some more

Well, I'm now in the airport for an extended layover on my way to Germany. So, I finally have a chance to update. Christmas in Kentucky was a beautiful experience. She wrote her first letter on the white board at Papa's Christmas lunch at work. She wrote an A all by herself! On Christmas morning Brie went straight for her stocking and had to eat peaches before anything else could happen:) She had fun playing at Papa's house.

We moved after that into Mom's rental house. Things are just starting to settle and of course now I'm off to Germany for a few months. Brie will have a ton of fun with "Na" and Lucy, who will keep her when Na is working. She is so big. She hugged and kissed me and told me she loved me before I left. She has a ball bossing around the dogs and getting on their case for touching her bed or blanket or looking like they want her food. She'll wag her little finger and say, "No, no ..... eat." or "No, no bed". She has picked out new shoes and has a love for playing in her hats. The funniest thing that she has done lately... She can identify herself in pictures sometimes. Well we were putting out the pictures that we were unpacking and there is one of her with a headband on. She pointed at it and said it was a "bebe" and "Papa told her that it was her. She looked at it and then reached out to take the headband off of the baby in the picture and was saying "off, head". She hates headbands so much she didn't even want the Brie in the picture to be wearing one! It was too funny. I guess I won't have any baby news to update for the next couple of months. If I get enough info from Na to make a post I will. I'm going to miss the little booger.

Catchin Up

Okay, so I've been pretty slack about posting, but things have been VERY crazy. The condensed version :

We went to the Congaree Swamp with the Schallers and had a ball. Brie loved all the leaves and puddles. It was really neat to see her yelling excitedly about all the new sites. Then we had Christmas in October for Brie so Danny could be there for the experience.

After that Halloween was cool. Brie was a cat and we went trick or treating with the Castleman's and the Joy's at the Thompson's. We had a lot of fun and Brie meowed instead of saying trick or treat. It was incredibly adorable.

Then we prepared for Danny leaving on Nov. 11 for Kuwait for a year.

He's doing alright and we're finally adjusting.

Then we had the stomach bug for about 2 weeks for everyone to go through it. Then we did Thanksgiving in Tennessee. That was a lot of fun. Brie loves her cousins and had a ball playing with them. Now we are preparing for Mommy's ORI at McEntire. Brie is going to stay with Lucy and Valentina while I get to play wargames. Hopefully she will start learning Spanish! She only knows escuela right now. We'll see how she does at the end of next week:) And now the babe is waking up so I must go.

Discoveries

I know it's been a bit since I updated. Part of that is due to busyness and part of it due to me making an update and it not saving and not posting and me wanting to throw the computer...so I walked away instead.
Well...Sunday Mom and Brie and I went up to NC to see Joey for a short while before he begins some torturous Army selection school. Brie had a BALL seeing him. While walking around Sunday night she discovered the moon and was completely enamored with it all night. She just kept staring at it and screaming excitedly about " Moon! There it is! I see it!". It was of course incredibly adorable. She also read books to her uncle JoJo.


She is growing up so fast! Last night she was playing in her room and I got the camera to take pictures of her. I walked in there with it and she looked up at me and grinned real big and said, "Cheese!". She has discovered Ovals. She was looking at a book and pointed to some writing and kept saying oval, oval. I looked over her shoulder and she was pointing to 2 letter o's in the words! On Wednesday we were at the Castleman's and she was playing Barbie's in Katie's room. Not like a baby would play...she was putting sunglasses on the barbie, putting her in the driver's seat of the car and driving the car. It's ridiculous! I mean, I know they learn this stuff, it just seems soon. My baby is growing up so fast!!!

Love and Happiness

Well, within the past month Brie has grown so much, both physically and cognitively. She is saying TONS of words (too many to list) and signing with her video before they do the sign or even say what it is...she recognizes so many things by sight. She is loving and snuggly all of a sudden and hugs and kisses us and her animals and the couch:) She is hilarious! She goes to bed without arguing most of the time and asks to go night night when she's really tired. She will ask for a bath and for food. It's truly amazing.

We got a little pool for her that she has been having a ball in.

At mom and dad's she has taken a couple of baths in it since they have a privacy fenced yard. She ran around the yard trying to pick Grammy's flowers and tomatoes while I was weeding one day. She kept calling the tomatoes apples though:) At least she knows how to say apple!

Last week when she was at preschool she puked all over the classroom. I hate that for her preschool teachers, but I am SO glad that I didn't have to witness it. She is not a puker so I actually have never seen her do more than cough up a little phlegm or gag and spit up. Well, since I was planning a walk on the dam, she got to go with me and she and Micah had a BALL riding in their strollers together. They were passing things back and forth and he was sharing snacks with her. When we stopped for the photo session, he noticed that she was unbuckled on one side so he fixed it for her. It was TOO adorable!

This weekend has seen many injuries for the feisty little babe. She was running away from me when I was going to change her diaper and she fell and landed her head on the nice oak trim of the couch that you see behind her. Luckily she's young and she heals quickly but you can see the gorgeous battle bruise on her head. She does enjoy being a "chair"potato and watching her Baby Einstein or Noggin. She's got the pose down:P

First Chuck E. Cheese Trip

Who knew that such a young babe would have so much fun at Chuck E. Cheese?!? Her favorite part: dancing with the freaky robot/puppet band. She absolutely loved it! She rode a few rides and smacked a few sharks and ate almost 2 pieces of pizza! I was very impressed. She wasn't a booger at all and then passed out in the car within 5 minutes:) Katie had a ball walking her around. This was also our first chance to use the monkey "leash" that she picked out. She had the choice of a bear a puppy or the monkey and she absolutely had to have the monkey. She did quite well with it too. Never complained about having it on and never tried to run off without me (or some unsuspecting young "helper" type:)) holding onto it. It was a good day.

Preschool Begins!

So, 2 days after we returned from Houston and all the excitement of the McNeil Family Reunion

Gabrielle began preschool. She was tired and cranky because I had to actually wake her up, but once Micah got in the car with her it was all smiles:)

She has done great! She doesn't even run to me when I go to pick her up. She looks at me from across the room and starts pointing at things and people and jabbering 90 miles an hour. I can tell she is having a blast.

She has been expanding her vocabulary by leaps and bounds. Since we returned from Texas, she can say hair, chair, bear and she signs more, Daddy, cup, chair and sleep. Of course, cup and chair and Daddy are her versions of the signs. It's funny how they have their own language even with signing! She is much better at bye bye see ya later alligator. Even someone who doesn't know what she's trying to say would stand a good chance of figuring it out:)

She LOVES playing with her ball popper that scared her to death when she got it for Christmas. Now she can't get enough. She crawled into Skoshi's bed and sat there playing with that thing for 45 minutes!

Sylvan Beach

Gabrielle has turned into quite the horsewoman since Gramma Lee brought her the rocking horse. She's become so skilled at it, that she has figured out how to rock the giant Dinosaur at the park!

Dad played around with her a bit after she watched some boys tossing each other off the head of the T-Rex:)




She thought the slides were great fun, and has the innate sense that once you go down you have to climb back up the slide...not the ladder:)


We'll be home soon, but Brie has definitely enjoyed her adventures:)

Texas Babe

So, we made it safely through the 4th of July and to Texas for family visit. Brie had fun with fireworks and Danny had a ball making sure she didn't burn herself:)

Brie had her first plane ride and she did AMAZING! She fell asleep just before take off and never had any issues with her ears. She was a super sweet babe:)

Brie has met her Gramma Lee and today went to the cemetary to see Grampa Al.
She has the run of Gramma RuRu's place and is loving it.