No Meet = Saturday Randomness

Since EVHS track did not have a meet today (varsity ran yesterday and the JV meet I was planning to go to got canceled), I had an unoccupied Saturday and didn't quite know what to do!

Good thing my sweet friend Kari came to the rescue and suggested that we skin up Vail Mountain. Me, Kari and Melissa made it almost all the way up to the top of the gondola. I am very grateful for their patience with me since I have only skinned once in the last two years. The weather started nice, turned into a blizzard, and then ended slightly sunny. Baxter was so worn out that I could hardly get him down the mountain! Some of those factors led to a slow moving Brandt clan, but in the end it is still sweet to get out and enjoy the mountain!

Then I got to go see some of my high school friends for Prom 2011 (Mack dressed the part). They all looked so nice and were so excited for a fun night out!

After the prom pics, it was back home for some laundry time...blah...but Justin was at Prom chaperoning (and made $100 I might add as he filled in for another guy that didn't want to work!).

Where are you Spring????

Dear Clouds Above Gypsum,

Please go away. I prefer if you would stop bringing precipitation on a daily basis. In case you didn't know, it is April 29th. This is way too late to see you on a regular basis, especially when you are filled with rain and snow to dump down on us. I would like your counterpart, the sun, to make its presence known more. My child would like to go for walks and play in the park, but it is difficult when you are around. the random flowers that do come up in my yard would like to bloom but you keep preventing that from happening. My husband is getting annoyed that he cannot finish staining our fence and go rock climbing...he is getting a bit antsy inside. Also, I have too many track workout pages that are all wrinkly because you bring your rain between 3-6pm everyday. Please consider my request and go away for a little while!

Sincerely,

The Brandts

Caught Up on Life

Woohoo!

After a crazy unpredictable spring break and lots of track, I feel as though documenting Macklin's every move :) is back on track! (blogging and baby book!)

The baby book has been updated and I have lots of posts up on this very thorough blog for all grandparents and friends to see.

Happy Catching Up!

(they go on past beyond this page)

Weekend Plans:

Track meet all day Friday

Saturday hopefully play with friends!

Sunday start tutoring a bit more and get ready for the final weeks of track

Cloth Diapers

To all my Cloth Diapering Friends....I need help!

We use the Bum Genius 3.0 diaper (like the one here, just one version older).

I have LOVED my cloth diapers and totally planned to use them for any future kids. I get excited thinking about how much money we save on buying regular diapers. I think they are cute when Mack walks around in the them. I tell everyone al the details they want to know about them. I don't think they are too much of a hassle. I even expected to have to change out the velcro at some point, but other than that, I thought they would just keep lasting forever!

BUT...

The waterproof layer is totally breaking down! I had never heard of this and am anxious to figure out why! I haven't had too much of an issue with the inserts. I did do a "cleanse" on them once since I thought they were not absorbing anymore. That seemed to fix the issue though. But not Macklin will have wet spots right in the middle of his tush! So strange.

I am upset about this because I had planned to use them for so long.

Now I just want to know what I am doing wrong.

Here is how I care for them....

-Spray off any access solids immediately upon changing

-Throw into dry pail until washing

-Wash once on cold with special detergent (recommended by Cotton Babies)

-Wash once on hot with bleach and special detergent

-One more rinse cycle on warm

-Hang dry the covers

-Put inserts into the dryer

One of my friends suggested putting the covers in the dryer for a hot cycle to try to melt the waxy waterproof layer back together, but that didn't really do anything for mine

(even though I had all the hope in the world that it was going to fix them!).

I need help. If anyone has any options/suggestions for me, please share!

I am now just "x"-ing out the ones that are leaking and slowing putting them aside. I have to load up the night time ones so thick that it must be uncomfortable for Macklin, but he doesn't seem to mind yet :)

Drumming Boy

Macklin has been LOVING his little music set which includes drum sticks (thank you Grandma Kathy)! He bangs on everything and loves to make noise! I came home after practice this week to find our little man sporting Justin's bandana and rocking it! I thought it was so precious.

One warning....don't take away the drum sticks from our budding rock star!

I don't even know what happen!

Little Man

I am going to save this for when he gets older :)

Something Interesting?

So hard to focus on breakfast when buses and trash trucks are going by! We have now moved the chair so that he can look out the window!

Easter 2011

We had a great Easter! We were able to go to church in the morning (with our friend Daniel joining us!). Then we headed up to Edwards to drop off Macklin with some sweet friends so that we could hit the moutain for closing day at Vail. We got cleaned up and came back over to the Herberts for a fun Easter dinner.

Opening his basket!

(thank you "Easter Bunny")

Loving any kind of ball!

Easter Family Pic

Who knew that Easter parties should have bounce houses from now on!

Mack and Trev in their sweater vests!

Macklin didn't need a basket for the Easter egg hunt...he only needed two, one for each hand!

He loved to shake them and even managed to open a few!

Thank you Jesus for going to the cross to die for us so that we might have life!

Here is a video of Macklin playing with one of his Easter toys....so funny! He really likes it!

Vail Closing Day

We were out for the annual closing day festivities at Vail on Sunday (after church and before Easter dinner). We got to sport spandex and the Minturn Middle School track uniforms from the 70s(?). It was a great day on the mountain with lots of fun had by all! More pics to come of the whole 8 man relay team!

Aquarium Trip

On Monday, we were having a little bit of cabin fever. We had planned to go backpacking, but the weather was rain, rain, and more rain. So we decided that our first backpacking trip with Macklin would have to wait until the fortcast looked brighter. Here we were, it was spring break and we are just sitting around. I texting with the Brummers and they said that they were in Denver at the Aquarium. I said, "Justin that is a good reason to go to Denver...the Aquarium! We should take Macklin there sometime." He said, "Let's go today. Want to?" And then we were off for Macklin's first trip to the Denver Aquarium! It was a blast and we even got a buy one, get one free coupon for signing up for the weekly emails on our way out the door!

Macklin thought it was pretty darn cool!

We got to watch a suba diver do some cleaning :)

My favorite picture from the day! Holy shark!

We ended the visit with a little aquatic petting zoo!

Fence

We have started to stain the fence! Justin has been wanting to get it done and he made some good progress over spring break! The only problem....he got rained out and couldn't finish it! It has been raining so much lately! I was pretty content with it not stained after Justin built the whole thing last summer. But now that it is stained, it looks so much better! Amazing!

Just getting started

(side note --- see that grass...yah, that is only outside the fence...

that is THIS summers project...grass everywhere!)

Carden was helping Justin!

We choose a color that would be close to our little covered porch!

In other house news, Justin also finished painting the trim work in the kitchen! Yah! After our counters were installed in 2009, we just never did the touch up! Amazing what that does for ya! I love it! Thanks to my wonderful hubby!

6...7...Teeth!

Macklin now has 7 teeth with an 8th on the way! He had 5 teeth on his birthday. With my absense from blogging, he got his 6th tooth on the 4th of April and his 6th one came in on the 17th. He now has four top teeth and three bottom teeth. And the big news that surprised me...he is getting one of his first upper molars in! Crazy growing boy!

Birthday Gifts

Just wanted to send out some special thanks for some gifts that Macklin got and we snagged some pics of.

Check out these sweet, cozy knitted pants from the Rosenbergs! I can't even think of how you make these and then get the precious MACK on the back! Thank you so much!

Uncle John sent Macklin this huge box of birthday and Easter goodies. It was so fun to open it with him. Thanks for the much needed sun hat (with a strap so it takes longer than 4 seconds for him to rip it off).

And, of course, Macklin still loves his drum sticks!

There are so many more super thoughtful people that send things for our baby boy,

so thank you!

Macklin's 1st Birthday

I was very excited to plan Macklin's 1st Birthday!

It was a ton of fun to plan....the only downside....I couldn't invite EVERYONE I knew :(

I had to be reasonable with my first kid birthday as I didn't quite know what to expect.

It was so nice to have my parents in town to help with the final preparations.

Here are some of the details. If anyone would like to know more, please let me know!

Here is the original idea.

Here is the first blog posting from our photographer again.

While I am posting links, this is my favorite party blog.

Also, I have some leftovers from this party, so if any of my readers want them (or you know someone that does), just send me a quick comment and I can let you know what I have that would make another great party without all the work :)

The Invitation

I put together the invite in Photoshop, but learned that I should have done it in Illustrator (thank you Abbie!). I became quite the Adobe pro through this party and I learned easier ways to do things after I had done it the slow way first! I just printed them from my computer onto cardstock. I made the filmstrip by snagging a templet off of the internet and then pulling it all together in Photoshop. I then put two strips on one 4x6 print and had them printed off at Walmart (ended up at like 6 cents per strip)

Dessert Table

I just tried to find anything Orange and Teal! We had cupcakes, Jello Jigglers, Goldfish, cheese cubes, rice krispies, cookies and creme Hersey Kisses, blue Gatorade, orange juice, and Jelly Belly jelly beans. It was probably a bit too much, but super fun to plan out. The biggest hit....the Jello Jigglers!

Time Capsule

I had everyone just bring a little note for Macklin instead of a gift. I am going to put all of these in a little time capsule for him to open on his 18th birthday. I was so excited to sneak a peak at the messages and hope we still have all of these sweet friends in 17 years.

Favors

With the photo/memory theme, I snagged these little glasses from Hobby Lobby and wrapped them up in little bags with a note that said, "Thanks for a picture perfect first birthday!"

Photo Props

We had mouths and mustaches that we just printed and cut out from card stock. They acted as photo props for the photo booth. They were a lot of fun to play with and served as center pieces on the little kid tables in the bucket of crayons!

Using the photo props to the extreme! The black bubbles are just cut wood (thank you Ryan) painted with chalk board paint (thank you Mel).

My sweet bible study friends (thanks for celebrating with us)!

Month Pictures

I printed off a 5x7 picture from each month of Macklin's life and strung them up for guests to see. Come on, I can't do this for his 18th birthday so I might as well take advantage when I can!

Highchair Decor

We just used our everyday highchair (which is Justin's from when he was a child). I made a little sign out of scrapbook paper and foam alpha stickers. I think I would make it a little smaller in the future.

Other Decor

We used homemade pennants to decorate behind the dessert table (background of pic below) and strings of hand-sewn circle garland for the kid tables and other gift/favor tables. Sewing together paper is a great cheap decoration idea. I got the circle garland idea from here.

Super Helpers...Thank you Mimi and Papa!

Getting all of the kiddos in one pic was a bit harder than I thought!

(We had the party at our church, hence the racks of toys in the nursery.)

One last huge THANK YOU to Melissa for taking all of our sweet pictures! You are awesome!

We even got to use the sign boards for a little thank you card!

This one was not the final winner but is still very cute!

Happy Birthday Mimi!!!!

Dear Mimi,

I hope you have the best day ever! And I hope you like the balloon I sent you! Since I don't know the days too well, the card I am going to send you will be a bit late..but don't think I love you any less! See you in 3 weeks!!!

Love,

Macklin