Brennan Bugle Online

Happy Thanksgiving, cyberspace.  We have A LOT to be thankful for.

by: Katrina

She's finally here!  Daisy Elizabeth was born on November 9th at about 5am, and weighed in at 7 pounds 14 ounces, 20 1/4 inches long.  She came rather quickly once she finally decided to come, as my water broke at 2:30 in the morning, and she was here before 5.  She is doing great - healthy, sleeping and eating a lot.  She has a bit less hair than our other 2, seems to have a smaller face/head, but is looking more like her brother and sister as the days go by.  Logan and Taya are anxious to see her when they get up in the morning, curious about the whole process, and seem to be enamored with her.  They probably wish she would hop up and start playing with them already.  We are thankful to have had another healthy baby and good birth experience.  She's our only one that was completely born and made in the USA.  :)  Enjoy the pictures!

by: Katrina

Three days past the due date and we are still waiting for the arrival of baby #3, trying to be patient.  My babies have all been late!  We are ready to meet you, baby!  I haven't gotten the usual load of comments about whether people think I'm carrying a boy or girl, etc.  Any bets on when this baby will finally arrive?

This is the first pregnancy that I have had gestational diabetes.  So I've been on a special diet for the past 2 1/2 months and have been exercising 5 times a week up until the last week or so.  So I haven't gained any weight since August and am feeling pretty good, which is a bonus.  I'm just ready to eat some cake and ice cream and meet this little one!  Maybe they can sense that we haven't decided 100% on the names yet.  :)

My mom has been here for a week almost, and is anxiously awaiting meeting grandchild #3.  Family and friends keep calling and sending messages asking if the baby has arrived YET.  Sorry folks, no news yet.  We will let you know and pray all goes smoothly when the time finally comes. 

by: Katrina

We now have a two-year old in the house again, and it is not so terrible.  :)  We celebrated on the actual birthday with just family, and then this weekend we had a party involving some of Taya's friends, as well as some of our own.  We spent Friday evening and most of Saturday making the cake and goodies.  We decided to make a lot of Halloween/Fall treats and had fun experimenting with new things.  Taya's cake was 3 big flowers, made up of 8 different cupcakes each.

Her party started at the Pumpkin Patch a few miles north of our house.  The kids played around in the hay bales, then one group went on a hayride, while others went inside the 11 acre corn maze.  We had a group of 5 working together and it took us 20 minutes to get out.  Then we watched pumpkins being launched a couple miles out and picked some pumpkins for carving.  Then the party moved to our house where we enjoyed hot cider, chili, Halloween snackage and of course the birthday cake.  Taya got a couple of new dolls, which she loves right now, some stuffed animals, a new book, and a stacking toy.  A good time was had by all.

Taya is a joy and her verbal skills are exploding.  I just finished reading Brown Bear Brown Bear to her, and she sang much of it right along with me.  She loves books, playing with dolls, and playing with pretend food.  Speaking of food, she can eat more than I can, especially while I'm on this diet for gestational diabetes.  She likes to spin and dance, and is already starting to ask "why?" (isn't that supposed to start around age 3?).  She is starting to enjoy talking on the phone and is becoming more social like her brother.  She enjoys Sunday School and Wednesday morning playgroup when I go to my study.  We're hoping she's not too jealous when her new sibling comes along, but that she will love him or her and be a big help to mommy and daddy.

by: Katrina

WOW stands for Women on Wednesdays and is a study group I've had the pleasure of being involved with for the past few weeks.  I've been looking forward to joining a group like this for years, and I finally can now.  Logan is in preschool during the morning, and Taya goes to childcare at the church while I get to spend time with just the ladies.  It's a varied group ranging from single gals, to moms, to grandmas.  We're going through a book called "Calm My Anxious Heart" by Linda Dillow, which I highly recommend.

We sit at round tables together, and each week a different table brings a spread of yummy snacks to share with the whole room.  I'm looking forward to being able to eat the sweeter things on the table in a month or so after gestational diabetes is behind me!  Besides eating yummy snacks and sipping tea or coffee, we listen to a speaker, spend some time in worship, have small group discussion, and a time of prayer.  It's been really, really good.  It only runs for 9 weeks, and then I'll join again in the spring. 

by: Katrina

We have approximately 5 weeks until baby #3 arrives!  We're very excited to meet this new little one.  It appears that we are both suffering a bit from the "nesting" syndrome, although Andy would call it something else of course, as we are now attempting to conquer all possible projects all at once.  Our biggest challenge is our garage.  It started out with a nice thought to get rid of some things (which we did) and then organize it better so that we could hopefully fit both of our vehicles in for winter. 

This weekend I bought some nice shelving units for the garage at a garage sale, as well as a new dresser, desk and chair - all for $45!  And then somehow our innocent project turned into more.  We need to sand down and oil the desk, refurbish the chair with new fabric, clear out sections of the garage at a time as Andy now wants to paint the whole thing (!), and then organize it.  We can do it!  Oh and on top of our massive garage and furniture redo, I am also trying to tackle our guest room, which is supposed to be the new baby's room, but has become an explosive mess as I try to organize boxes of miscellaneous junk.  Good times!  We'll keep you posted on how much of these projects actually get accomplished before the new baby comes!

by: Katrina

So it looks like we've only been updating our blog once a month.  Oops.  We should try to do better on that I suppose.  I have friends that blog almost daily and that is just way, way, way too much for me, but twice a month is perhaps doable. 

Yesterday was Logan's first day of preschool.  Yikes!  I'm still wavering on whether or not it is the right decision or not, even though I've been told that Andy and I should pray about it and then be thoroughly convinced of what we are to do.  Many of my friends and family think we should keep him home and enjoy him while we can.  They argue that the day will come quickly enough where we have to rush our kids off to school, so why start now if we don't have to.  And some even say that boys aren't ready for school as young as Logan is.  My heartstrings are definitely pulling on my desire to keep him home with me - I love my son!  He's so smart, funny, cute, and helpful.

On the other hand, we got into a program where Logan can go for free, he loves learning (of course I can teach him at home just as well), and socially it may benefit him to be in a classroom environment a bit before kindergarten.  He has done Vacation Bible School, and does Sunday school every Sunday, so those also prepare him I suppose.  Logan is trying to understand why this new school won't be like VBS or Sunday school.  If only we could afford to send him to a Christian school, I would love that.  The first day was a little hard for him, but today he was pretty excited.

So, we will be sending him for a little while at least.  Then maybe we'll pull him out when it gets closer to November and grandma's are coming, and the new baby will make it harder to get everyone out the door in the morning.  We shall see...

by: Katrina

We've safely made it back from our 2 week + road trip to Iowa and Michigan.  We saw a lot of family and friends in a little amount of time.  We surprised our family by showing up with a baby bump!  I am 5 1/2 months pregnant now, and the family was very happy for us.  We won't find out the gender again until the birthday, because we like it that way, and as always we keep the names under wraps too, although they're not yet determined.  We're excited to have a 3rd, since we think our first 2 are pretty darn adorable.  Our Chinese friends might wonder why in the world we would have more children since we've been told we already have the perfect family with one boy and one girl, but we think our kids are a blessing and are eager to add one more.

Roadtripping while pregnant isn't super fun, but we did stop a lot - for my sake and the kid's.  Iowa was a good half-way point to Michigan.  We used our smaller car since it will be the last roadtrip we'll be able to do with the whole family for awhile until some kids are out of their carseats.  We were in Iowa for 3 days and got to see my old church switch to a new building, play croquet, walk a bit, and play games with the family.  We stayed with my parents, and my sister was back on break from Russia.  We also saw my aunt, cousins, cousin's kids, and some good friends. 

Then we drove to Michigan to have a reunion of sorts with the Brennan side.  We scheduled the whole trip in time to see Andy's brother and sister-in-law one more time before they move to Ecuador for 5 years!!  Check out their blogspot at www.brennanblogs.blogspot.com.  They'll be coming back at some point, so hopefully we won't go 5 years without seeing them, but it's going to be a long time anyway.  They're trying to recruit us to move there with them, so who know's what the future holds...  Andy's mom also flew in from Phoenix, and we stayed with Andy's grandma who had never met Taya or our little nephew Phinehas.  We also saw aunts, uncles, cousins, grandpas, parent's cousins, and other extended family members.  We played croquet and Settlers of Catan a few times, and tried our best to shoot the woodchucks in the backyard.  We never really got a clean hit as far as we know and Logan said "maybe the woodchuck doesn't want to be shooted."  :)

Then we headed back to Iowa for a few more days and on the way saw some old Phoenix friends from our newly married class, who now live in Michigan.  They have 2 beautiful children and it was great to reconnect with them after 4 years of not seeing them.  The rest of our time in Iowa was nice and relaxing.  I of course visited my old DQ where I used to work, and we played frisbee golf with family.  We had a great time and are so glad we had the chance to do a fun roadtrip with our kids.  They might not have thought it was fun while strapped to their carseats for hours on end, but I think they enjoyed the rest of it.

by: Katrina

We've finished most of the indoor projects we had planned for now, and since the weather has warmed we've recently moved our attention to our back yard.  It is a scary sight.  We usually describe it as "swampy."  The birds like to gather near our pond.  We aren't supposed to have swamps or ponds in our backyard of course - we just have really bad drainage.  No one in our neighborhood has basements because the water level is so high, but our backyard must have the highest water level of all, though our neighbors yards are just fine.  The already high water level, combined with our lack of good drainage and a couple of broken sprinkler heads produce the swampiness. 

Thankfully, one of Andy's awesome coworkers is coming this weekend to help work on the sprinkler issue.  Then the following weekend our forever friends the Kellars (who hosted us for our 2 months of homelessness) are coming to help with the drainage issue.  So, hopefully we will soon have a lot less swamp in our backyard, making it possible for Logan to run and play in our backyard without galoshes!

In addition, now that we have a house, I am pretending I know a good deal about gardening (though in fact I know nothing), and have planted blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, squash, tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers!  I hope that at least some of it grows.  The veggies are actually not in the ground yet, but in plastic planters, as the area of the yard where they were to be planted is too muddy and any holes dug instantly begin to fill with water...

by: Katrina Brennan

Recently, we've watched the season finale of 2 of our favorite shows - Lost and Heroes which we will dearly miss.  We've also completed our spring season of visitors.  We have nobody on the list to hurry up and wash the bed sheets for (don't worry, we still washed them), no menus to plan, and virtually nothing on our June schedules.  It will be a nice time to slow down and enjoy some of our own family time, and check some more things off of the endless homeowner's to-do list. 

We did love having people here though.  We explored several new hiking/walking areas, and took trips to Colorado Springs and Boulder.  Andy surprised me with an overnight stay in Boulder to celebrate our anniversary while my family watched the kid's back at our house. 

We're liking Fort Collins more now that the weather is warm and we can spend more time outdoors.  I'm getting some help with attempts at gardening.  This past week we planted strawberries and blueberries, as well as attacked some vicious weeds that are thriving 10x more than our real grass.  Who's idea was it to actually buy a house anyway?