Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Pictures with My Grandpa

A few weeks ago, we drove up to Iowa to celebrate my Grandpa's 90th birthday. It was the first time in years the whole family was together. After church on Sunday, we attempted to take some family pictures...

The whole gang

Grandpa with his daughter and her family

Grandpa with his son and his family (including one uncooperative great-grandson!)

Grandpa with his son (my dad) and his daughter

Grandpa with his sister and her husband

Grandpa and all his grandchildren (including spouses)


Grandpa with his great-grandchildren

Four generations of Brandts

My Grandpa - looking pretty good at 90!

All of our family

The best picture we could get... don't know what Piper was doing with her arm :)

My brother's family

My parents (who just celebrated their 40th anniversary)

My aunt and her husband

My aunt's family

My cousin and her husband (they are expecting a baby in October)

My cousin and his wife

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Fun with Friends

Over Spring Break, I thought it would be fun to try and take some pictures of the kiddos. We went to a place in Frisco that has some fun textures in the background. I invited our good friends to go with us, so I was able to get some group shots of all the kids together.


Best buds.
Seriously, they are always so excited to see each other - even if they saw each other the day before!



I think this pic turned out so cute. I just told them to turn and look at each other, and this is what I got.








Being silly.

I photoshopped Lila's black eye (she got hit by a swing earlier in the week) out of the pictures that I was going to use on a card. 




Superhero pose.

I told them to show me their best ninja pose. Haha, gotta love Wyatt!


After taking pictures, we went to lunch with our friends. This was us waiting to be seated. It was a fun morning. I look at this picture and just feel so blessed. Love my job :)

Random Phone Pics

I dumped the pics off my phone onto my computer, so here are some highlights -- all in order but going back a few months!

Playing at a park. Wyatt kept saying "take a picture of me now, Mommy!"

Piper, on the other hand, never wanted to be still for a picture!

Playing a board game we created from a Kiwi Crate.

School valentines for this year - balls for Wyatt's class and glitter glue for Lila's class. I try hard to think of a non-candy valentine.

For Lila's teacher.

Taken at Lila's school valentine party. Piper stuck her visitor sticker to her forehead, just being silly.

The party consisted of making their own "trail mix" with all kinds of goodies (goldfish, m&m's, chocolate chips, marshmallows, pretzels, skittles, popcorn, etc.). Here Lila is checking out all the valentines she got from her classmates.

Valentine gifts for Wyatt's teachers - notepad and pen.

Wyatt's teacher's birthday is in the summer, so in February we celebrated her half-birthday. All the kids brought in half of a card and together we got her a gift card to HALF Price Books. I made a half cake for her. She was very surprised and really enjoyed it all.

I put half of my cake batter in a circle pan and the other half into 12 cupcakes. Luckily, there are 12 students in Wyatt's class, so it worked out perfectly!

Why she likes to sleep with the blanket completely over her head, I do not know. But she does.

Piper likes to wear this headband. She can put it on herself.

Dress up as your favorite book character day at school. Lila chose to go as Pinkalicious. She said she doesn't have a favorite book, so we just went with the costume we could do :)

Silence always means something is going on!!! In this case, she had managed to pull the inside of a marker out. By the time I got to her, the hands were blue. Unfortunately, it was not a washable marker, so her hands were blue for a couple days. Fortunately, her shirt was also blue :)

"Yay! Daddy is home!!"
They get so excited when Dad comes home from work (notice the headband again).

Random pic one day when the other two were at school.

Trying on t-ball equipment at the store.
Lila started t-ball in March. She's never really been interested in sports (kind of like her mama), but we thought the best time for her to try it would be when everyone else is starting out. One of her friends from school has parents who coach t-ball, so that's how we got the idea to try this sport. At first Lila did NOT want to do it, but finally after a few weeks we convinced her to give it a try.

Sometimes the things that come home from school need to be documented - and are just too humorous not to share - like this bucket list of Lila's.

Other things make me thankful - like this page from Lila's class dictionary. They each had to create their own definition of themselves. As I was looking through her book, I noticed that several of the kids put "sister" or descriptive words like "blue eyes" or even "nice" or "kind to others". But Lila was the only one who put "special to my parents" - and that was the first thing she thought to write! I'm so glad she knows she is special to us.

Outside on a nice day.

Pictures with my girls.

One time we went along to one of Lila's t-ball practices because the weather was so nice. There is a park near the field, so I took Piper and Wyatt to that for a little while during practice. This was inside a tube at the park.

I am happy to say that Lila has really enjoyed t-ball so far. In fact after her third practice, I asked her if she had fun when she got home. She nodded her head yes and then said, "You were right, Mommy. Sometimes you have to try something before you know if you like it." Haha, I should have had her write that down (the "you were right") so I can show it to her when she's a teenager :)

Wyatt on his new bike. Yes, he's being silly and sitting on the pedal. He loves to ride his bike around in a big circle on our driveway.

Lila's teacher recently had a baby, so I made a going-away gift for her (she will not be back before the school year ends).

Inside the take out box, I put a gift card to one of her favorite restaurants and a bunch of felt fortune cookies. I had the kids in her class answer some questions which I then turned into "fortunes". For example, "Where would she like to go on vacation?" turned into "You would like to vacation where your Grandma lives. - Lila"  Or "why is she a teacher?" became "You teach because you need the money. - Nolan" :) About half of the class answered questions for me, so I included a few fortunes from each student. It turned out cute, and the teacher really enjoyed it.