The Brooks Family Blog

“The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.”

I’m quoting Bo’s favorite Christmas movie (this year), Elf. Its not my favorite but it has its funny moments. So after being poked and prodded by some non-Facebooking family I figured I better update the blog with some new pictures

Here are our Christmas pictures:

Santa Baby – this is the only santa we saw.

Mad Santa. He didn’t like the hat very much.

Reading the Christmas story before bed.

Morning sleepy heads.

Not wasting any time.

Learning fast.

Dr. Bo is now accepting new patients.

Still working.

Duck! Not the bird kind, the train kind.

Don’t rush me!

Decorated, Levi opens up a stuffed elephant (his favorite animal).

And he loved it…until it made an elephant sound. Now he won’t go near it.

What’s next?

Play time.

Oh Food! Aww nuts, they are plastic. Still tasty though.

Next we headed to Uncle Chris & Aunt Erin’s house for Christmas Breakfast. Of course I forgot to clear off the camera’s memory card and it was full so I only got a couple (check Erin’s Blog for more )

Cousin Gracie with Bo & Levi

Cousins Paul & Anna

For lunch/dinner we headed to Mimi & Papa’s (these pics are from Mimi’s camera)

Table Decor @ Mimi’s

Peppermint is Bo’s new favorite candy and he seemed to find it everywhere.

Levi thought Daddy needed a new hair style.

Mimi cooking the lasanga.

Gooey Goose

Cookie Love

Chocolate frosted Bo

Papa & Mimi

Uncle Brian & Daddy

Papa John & Granny Gloria

The Butlers (Lee, Jimmy & Ed) joined our family for dinner.

There’s a house on your head, Levi.

The Charmer – just as we were leaving Levi finally let Ms. Lee hold him.

So our house is packed with all the great gifts we got. Levi’s elephant is going to Grandma’s for surgery on Tuesday. Please pray that she can get the sound chip out and that the elephant will recover it’s place as Levi’s favorite

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Saturday was Levi’s 1st birthday…hard to believe he’s a year old already (sigh). We had a great party! All of our family was able to join us for pizza, cake and homemade ice cream Here are all the pictures of our fun (click to see them larger). BIG thanks to Joshua for being our photographer for the day. Special thanks to everyone who helped setup, clean up or brought stuff for the party!

P.S. If you would like to have these photos to print please email me for the original digital files, these are not suitable for printing.

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Last night Daddy and Bo went camping at Victoria Bryant State Park. They were joined by Mr. Josh (aka Fishing Mr. Josh) and here’s what happened….

They setup camp…

After camp was setup they enjoyed a little snack…

Playing in the creek…

Trying their hand at skipping rocks…

Bo had lots of fun playing in the rocks at the tent site…

After dinner we had smores and more Yoohoo…

We had a pretty good nights sleep and were up early for breakfast…

Daddy the cook…

Yummy!

Bo gave the food two thumbs up

Now we’re home and we’re packing thing up again to take the boys to Day Out With Thomas in North Carolina…shhhh…don’t tell the boys, it’s a surprise
Special thanks to our photographer Mr. Josh.

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Being such a good dancer is tough. Bo works on his skill whenever the music starts We went to the park with Grandma and listened to a band playing and Bo had lots of fun.

Besides dancing Bo likes playing with his monster trucks, Thomas trains, and his huge collection of cars.

We are currently working on his school work twice a week for about 30 minutes at a time. He enjoys doing school work, but we limit the time so that he will continue to enjoy it. His favorite things to do are mazes and cutting (what kid doesn’t like to cut things?). He already knows all of his upper and lower case letters and can count objects to 13 (then he skips to 17 )

Being a big brother definitely agrees with Bo. As I mentioned in the previous post, Bo loves sharing a bedroom with Levi and he calls it the “brother’s room”. He is usually very sensitive to Levi’s needs and tries to help whenever he isn’t otherwise occupied. We are having to work on being gentle as he wants to pick Levi up and tote him around which isn’t really possible considering he only has about 10 lbs on Levi.

As I type this Bo is role playing and mixing up some yogurt for us. He has all this cooking things laid out on the floor, mixing and adding, then tasting his ‘creation’. He is so dramatic and uses his hands when he talks. Bo keeps us laughing all day long and it’s never boring around here

These last two pictures show perfectly his aversion to cameras. He refused to smile for me and ran to Grandma when he figured out I was taking his picture

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Biscuit is growing so fast and moving faster so it’s hard to keep up with him. I decided it was way past time to update everyone on Levi’s progress so here we go

Levi is now 9 months old. At his 9 month check up the doctor proclaimed him perfect (we already knew that). He weighs 22lbs and is 28 inches long. Levi enjoys using all eight of his teeth to chomp through any kind of food that we give him. He loves to eat and squeals, like a the little piglet he is, if we don’t get the food in front of him fast enough.

We thought for sure he would skip crawling and go straight to walking. Levi is already pulling up on the furniture and seemed to prefer just army-crawling, but finally this past Thursday he started crawling for real and he’s so proud of himself.

Levi was still waking up during the night, not because he was hungry, but because he kept hearing us (me and Chip) moving. So we decided it was time to train him to sleep through the night. It took only three nights and he was sleeping through the night and sharing a room with Bo. Bo loves sharing a room with his little brother, and I’m not just saying that. Bo wants Levi to sleep the same time he does and wouldn’t go to sleep last night till I brought Levi in to the bedroom. I’ll write an update post for Bo later today.

I took these pictures at the park when we went to see Grandma on Thursday. The boys had lots of fun.

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Okay so I’ve been absolutely HORRIBLE about posting new pictures and stuff. I promise I will post our vacation pics soon. Editing all those pictures has me cringing in horror but in attempt to pacify your need for updates we had some family pictures taken last week and they sent us the thumbnail versions in case anyone wanted to order more. So here they are

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So just over a week ago I posted about the blizzard we were having. We got around 8 inches of snow and were without power for two days. Some families around us went 4-5 days without power. It was the first snow over 2/3 inches we had seen since 1993 (that’s 16 years!). So here we are a week out of the melted white stuff and its 80 degrees outside and we had to turn on the AC last night. I’m not sure what season this really is. Chip decided we should take advantage of the nice weather and wash/wax the Tahoe. Bo wanted to wash his car too.  Those blurry spots are where he squirted me and Levi with the hose.

Drying things off.

Ready to ride.

“Mama I’m going to Ingles!” (he actually told me that)

Here are a couple of pictures of Levi today.  He has become quite good at sitting up on his own!  His two little teeth are showing too (up until now I couldn’t get a good picture of them).

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What is white, wet, yucky and pretty all at the same time? Snow of course! I should know. We’re covered in about three inches right now and it’s still coming down. So less than 24 hours ago I was complaining about it being 60+ degrees in February. God really does have a sense of humor and said “Well Sara since you can’t be happy with warm weather in February, I’ll give you snow in March!” and He did. So this is what our house looks like.

Our poor horses are shivering. Who would think we need a barn when this happens once every 3-4 years?!

As I type this I can hear branches breaking under their icy coating.

Chip is out on the 4-wheeler riding the back roads clearing trees that have already fallen.

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Chip has been wanting some updated pictures of him (in his fire gear) and the boys for his Facebook profile so we went out this morning and took some.

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Having not been in a blogging mood lately it makes it hard to play catch up We have all been pretty busy lately! Lets see…

Bo, since turning three has had a healthy report from the doctor – measuring 37.5″ inches tall (95th percentile for his age) and 34 lbs (average for his age). He has also hit an eating slump and a for a while it was a daily struggle at meals, but Mommy & Daddy finally wised up and realized that he will (and does) eat when he’s hungry. The doctor assured us that he will not starve. We have set rules about eating though – once he says he’s all done and leaves the table, no snacks between meals, so he has to wait even if he changes his mind about being hungry. Sounds horrible to some, but anyone with a toddler who’s been through this knows it isn’t.

Bo also has grown up a little in his interests. He now loves monster trucks! His favorite is Grave Digger and knows “Bad to the Bone” (by George Thorogood) by heart, well most of it, and sings it all the time. I even bought the iTunes version for my iPod and added it to Bo’s Playlist He still loves his Thomas the Train table and trains as well as Lightening McQueen. He also enjoys doing his daily “school work”. We have already started homeschooling him and he does so great! He can already count objects up to 13. He can recognize all the letters of the alphabet and knows most of the letter sounds. He conquered shapes and colors a while back and we’ve started to build on those foundational skills.

Today’s blog title is also a tribute to Bo. He has a simple fascination with foaming hand soap. This is very helpful as he reminds me that he needs to wash his hands instead of the other way around. His current favorite soap is Dancing Waters by Bath and Body Works.

Keeping with normal toddler behavior he refuses to have his picture taken so I don’t have any of him to show off :p

Levi is growing way to fast for my tastes! Having just turned 6 months old he had a doctor check up this past week and he got a glowing report. He weighs 21.5 lbs (Bo weighed 19.3lbs at this age) and measures 27.5 inches. The nurse didn’t chart his measurements while we were there so I’m not sure how he compares to others his age. I’m sure its almost off the chart though.

Levi has also started eating solid foods and he loves them! From day one he has eaten the solids like a little piglet Adding one new food a week we are up to rice cereal, squash and apple sauce. Of course since adding the other foods he won’t eat the rice cereal alone so we usually mix it. Here’s a picture of Daddy feeding him:

Levi also has his first tooth! I hadn’t really been expecting a tooth to pop through and he had no trouble cutting it so I was surprised to see it in there one day! I was like “where did that come from?” – he laughed at me in his usual way. It came through February 10th. Here’s a little picture I snapped with my cell phone. If you look really close you can see it.

Still loving his bath time, Levi really likes to chew these rubber numbers/letters, especially during his baths. They are one of his favorite toys. Here are some pics I shot the other day.  I’m also happy to report that his eyes are officially green (like mine!) and even though he doesn’t look like me (or Chip or Bo) I’m still glad he has my hair and eyes.

Chip has been keeping very busy. He works twice each day in the chicken houses for some of my distant relatives (we call them Uncle Gene and Aunt Carol) and also tends to their cows. Chip will also be doing lots of training and classes for work over the next month. He was starting to pack a bag for his trip to Las Vegas. Apparently he decided he would miss the boys too much and was taking drastic measures! I happened by and saw something very strange.

And this is what was inside…a sock monster!

Okay so he wasn’t REALLY going to take Levi and the suitcase was NOT closed. Please don’t call anyone on us!! We just thought it would make a cute picture.

As for me my biggest news is my new computer! Chip got me the PC of my dreams!!!! The HP TouchSmart 20″ all-in-one computer is awesome! It arrived last Saturday (the perfect Valentine’s Day present!) and I’m still getting use to the touch screen and large display. I love the features it has and just the overall coolness of it.

My business is doing well. I stay busy but, thankfully, not overbooked. I just finished up with my 19th website design!

As a family we are all looking forward to a much-needed vacation in April to Florida. Mimi and Papa will be going too. Mimi found us a great house with a pool and lots of space for the boys to play.

Well that’s about all I can think of for now. TTFN

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