Mall of America and For Ben!

Chris' friend Brad came to visit two weeks after we got back from TN! He was our first non-family visitor. Brynne and I picked him up at the airport on Thursday, unfortunately Southwest lost his bag!! We ended up letting him borrow some of our clothes and washed his the night he got here. Brad wanted to go to the Mall of America and we hadn't been there yet, so we made the trip on Friday. Luckily, shortly before we left, Southwest called and said they found Brad's bag. The airport and Mall of America are one exit apart on the interstate so we picked up the bag on the way to the mall. He got his bag and a $100 flight voucher! Maybe he will come visit again :)

The mall is HUGE! Four stories covering almost 100 acres!! Here are some pics from our trip:

Lunch time!

Brynne really likes sitting in the highchair when we go out!

For all of our Spongebob loving nieces and nephews, this was outside Nickelodeon Universe.

Much to my surprise, we were able to get Brynne to fall asleep in the stroller. I didn't think she would with so much to look at.

Here is the amusement park inside the mall:

There were several rollercoasters and other amusement park type rides and games.

And the rest of this post is for our nephew Ben (and everyone else)! The Mall of America has LEGOland! It has several huge models made completely of LEGOs and an amazing LEGO store!I loved LEGOs when I was a kid, my aunt used to buy me a set almost every weekend. Ben loves them too, you can almost always find him playing with his LEGOs at some point during the day! It's hard to tell from the pictures, but these models are larger than life!

This robot is over 34 feet tall, that's 6 of me standing one on top of the other!!

Here's Chris and Woody in the LEGO store. I made him stand next to him for a size comparison, they are the same height!

This wall has 180 compartments, each filled with different colors and sizes of LEGOs!

They had 100s of different LEGO sets to choose from. They had some of the bigger ones on display outside the store. Here are some from Star Wars.

This one is probably my favorite, but if you click on the picture you can see the cost... Wow! I guess I will always just have this picture, haha!

We had a great time visiting with Brad and hope he comes to visit again!

7 Months!

Brynne is 7 months old today! I have definitely slacked on taking pictures this month and I have not uploaded any pictures since her 6 month post!! Shame on me :( Oh well, just means more posts on the way...

I weighed Brynne on our scale this morning and she was about 21 pounds. I'm guessing she is around 27 inches or so (last time I tried to measure her was several weeks ago). I just moved her up to size 4 diapers and she only has a handful of 6-9 month clothes left that she can squeeze into, but I refuse to buy more summer clothes because our summer is almost over! {tear}

The Hill house is gearing up for football season! Unfortunately we won't be able to see many of the games :(

The Titan's first preseason game was against the Vikings so we were excited to get to watch the first game! The game was set to start at 7:00, but Chris got called into work at 6:55! We couldn't believe it!! Luckily we have a DVR and were able to record it and watch it when he got home (and skip all the commercials!).

I got this dress for her right before we moved here. I knew Titan dog had to be in a few pictures; he was at our wedding and in the delivery room, haha!

The dog does a cheer and walks back and forth and raises it's arm for "touchdown," Brynne wasn't quite sure what to think!

Brynne has tried all sorts of new foods this month! She has had green beans, peas, carrots, sweet potato, butternut squash, peaches, pears, and banana. She has loved everything except the banana. I am making her food and it is hard to get bananas to the right consistency. After a little "incident" (she gagged and projectile vomited) I decided to just buy some banana baby food and she liked it much better!

I love this outfit! In case you can't read it, it says Tweet tweet, I'm so sweet! And she definitely is :)

It's hard to tell, but her hair has taken a major growth spurt over the last month! As I was posting the last of the pictures from TN, I noticed how much shorter it was then.

We also switched Brynne over to a bigger convertible car seat last weekend! She fits SO much better and sits up more like a big girl! Her first ride in it was our hour drive to church and she laughed most of the way there, it was so funny! I will post a picture later (and hopefully a video of the laughing too).

I have a feeling next month's post will include crawling! She is starting to try to get up on her hands and knees (but it is a little difficult with her massive thighs!) and rock back and forth!

Brynne is such a happy baby and I don't think we could love her any more!

We have an exciting month ahead, Mimi and Paps will be here at the end of this week! We love visitors {hint, hint}!

Bad Blogger...

I have definitely been slacking on the blog lately. I still haven't finished posting about our trip to TN and we got back well over a month ago... Oops!

Here are the rest of the pics from our trip:

We tried to have a little photo shoot on Granny and Grandaddy's front porch with Brynne in my rocking chair from when I was a kid...

She looked so cute, and coordinated so well, but she would NOT look at the camera!

The cars were much more interesting!!

Finally got her looking, but she wouldn't take her fingers out of her mouth!

We spent some time at Mimi and Paps' with Brynne's cousins (and their parents :) ). I definitely didn't get enough pictures! The kids LOVE Brynne so much, I was afraid to leave her alone with them, haha!!

This is Aunt Stephanie's dress from when she was a baby. (Look at those LEGS!)

Where's Brynne??

There she is!

Again I say, look at those legs! (that outfit wont snap anymore!)

Action shot: Brynne learned how to roll from belly to back while we were in TN! She has interesting style.

Brynne thought this very rare down time was a little boring... Yawn!

I made a few trips to MTSU to visit my old co-workers. They have some HUGE crepe myrtles in front of the building where I used to work. This picture doesn't even do them justice! We couldn't get Brynne to look up, I think the sun was hurting her eyes :(

More time with Mimi and Paps (Paps wasn't asleep, I just cought him mid blink, haha)

And this my friends is everything I fit into that one small suitcase! I think I should be a professional packer!! That is a hard plastic bath seat (that doesn't collapse), a play mat, 2 cushions to the glider in Brynne's room, my breast pump, and a whole lotta clothes! On the way to TN my bag got selected for a search. I have a feeling they opened it up, saw how tightly it was packed and closed it right back up, haha! It didn't look like anything had been moved. Also, the weight limit is 50 pounds and it weighed in at 48, go me :)

I am looking forward to our next trip home in November! The twins will celebrate their 1st birthday while we are there, Chris will be there for a week, and we will be there for Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday!

Playtime With Cousins!

Both Fridays we were in TN, Allison and her girls came up and we spent the day together. It was something else... I'm not sure my parents living room will ever be the same, haha!

Miss Whitney 

Brooke and Brynne both thought this was funny.

Whitney's up to no good :)

Got what she wanted too, ha!

Brookie and her crooked smile, she had fun with that scarf.

Brynne was trying to take a quick nap, amazingly she was able to despite this:

Jade and Granny had the cards out and Whitney found them fast! I asked Jade to put them up, Whitney thought she should help. I took this picture, plus one more and Jade was already yelling at me to stop with the pictures!!

We sat outside for a while and Brynne sat on my lap and dug her toes in the dirt the whole time. Took a while to get all the dirt off these little piggies!

Brynne LOVED watching the big girls!

Allison's mini-me (Whitney)

Allison is the twin's playgym. I don't know how she gets anything done!

Example #2:

These 3 will make quite the trio in a few years...

Brooke, Matt Jr.

Whitney woke up from her nap early so we took her outside while Brooke and Brynne finished their naps.

She was making this funny face and breathing hard in and out her nose, here she is in action:

I seriously laughed out loud at this one, so funny!!

Sweet girl!



This was supposed to be the first picture... But yet again blogger hates me!

Whatcha got Nanat?!

Funny story--

Allison and I decided to go out and do a little shopping. We left her girls with my mom and took Brynne with us. Well we got about a half a mile down the road and I noticed the car was acting funny. Something just didn't seem right, so I pulled into the Verizon parking lot and about the time I got into a parking spot the car died!! My mom was stuck at the house with the babies and my dad wasn't off work yet, so we sat for a couple minutes and tried to start the car again... nothing, nada. I was pretty sure it was the alternator and knew there was no way the car would start without being jumped if that was the case. Well my aunt lives in between my parents house and Verizon (probably a little closer to Verizon) so we decided to walk to her house and see if she could give us a ride. We stuck Brynne in the stroller and started walking. We both knew what street she lived on, but weren't sure which house. We knocked on the door of the one we thought it was and guess who answered the door? Someone's aunt I'm sure, but not our aunt, haha! She pointed us in the right direction and we found the right house, but our aunt wasn't home :( So we turned around and started walking back to my parents house. By the time we got there we had walked about a mile and we were dead. Sure a mile doesn't seem like much, but did I mention the heat index was 100+ degrees! We were both wearing jeans/jean capris and sandals, not the ideal walking attire. Brynne laughed the whole way home... I'm pretty sure she was laughing at us, haha! I know NOTHING about cars, but my alternator went out in my car a few years ago and kind of remembered what it was like, so I am just glad I noticed the car acting funny and was able to pull off the road before it died.  Funny stuff!