Merry Christmas!

Hello and Merry Christmas! We had a very eventful Christmas. We went up to Kevin's parents house in Lemoore. Claire had a great time with her Grandparents and Aunts and Uncle. But then the flu struck! It started on the 24th with Claire vomiting all over herself in our new car. (It's officially a mommy-mobile now!) By the way, we bought a new car! A 2006 Honda Pilot. We love it! Anyhow, the flu didn't stop at Claire. I was the next victim and it had me requesting we pull over on the side of the 99 and then trying to sanitarily vomit in a MacDonalds bathroom. Last night it hit Kevin and his sister Mikkele (who is staying with us until she moves to Amsterdam on the 29th) And I just heard via Facebook that Kevin's dad and brother are also sick! So, that was fun.

The day we left for Lemoore we also had to deal with the sad realization that I was miscarrying. All in all Christmas 2009 was a little rough for the Bringards. But we're healing, and looking ahead to where the Lord is taking us next year. The hope of Christ is powerful. "The Lord stands with me and gives me strength."

The Life and Times of Us... well, mostly Claire

Oh my gosh! I can't believe I haven't posted since Halloween! Terrible! I have been working part time, going to school at night, and trying to be wife and mommy all at the same time, so it has left little room for blogging. But now that Christmas break is here, I can reacquaint myself with the computer!

In Claire news: She is talking nonstop! She has right around 45-50 words at last count (wow!), and she is putting 2 words together like Nightnight Dada, Blessyou Mamma, Milk please. She's hilarious: she will look at you very earnestly and bust out with paragraph level commentary that only she can understand. She nods her head, raises her eyebrows, and gestures just like she's telling a really great story. The she'll wait expectantly for your response when she's finished. Cracks us up! I've got some new pictures, and when I'm not feeling so sleepy, I'll get them from my phone and uploaded.

In other news: We're expecting Squiddy II! Our next little one will be born sometime around August 20th, right before Claire's 2nd birthday. Fun times! More to come later on that!

Halloween

For Halloween Claire was r2d2. Very cute, very dorky costume! I was princess Leah, and Kevin was supposed to be Han Solo but we were too last minute on that one, so he ended up wearing an old pirate costume. We had a party at our place. It was a good time. I only took phone pictures, so they're not too good. Hopefully I'll get someone elses and post them here soon. For now, here's our little robot:







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The Misadventures of Claire Bringard

Driving:



Sliding:



Studying:



Breakdancing:



It's been a busy week :-)

More evidence of hair

Also, Claire is crazy!!

Happy Autumn!

It's been a long time since I did a proper post... so here we go! Claire talks all the time now! Most of the time it's intelligible only to her, but she does love to talk. New words she now has:

• bye bye (finally! after 6 months of constant "hi!" she now has a different conversation closer!)
• no (sad times!)
• book
• belly button
• elbow
• apart (although it sounds exactly like open, so who knows)
• nose (I may have already reported this one because she's been doing it for quite a while, but she LOVES to point out where your nose is. She's kind of obsessed.)
• pretty
• she goes "shhh" with her finger to her lips when she sees a baby, in addition to signing and saying baby.

I don't think that's all...I just can't remember any more new ones right now. She still stops traffic anytime we're in public. She really knows how to work a crowd...just like her father! Being expressive does have it's downsides, though. As in, she is very determined to exert her will. She can be very intense. Mellow is one thing she has never been! We're just lucky that most of the time she channels all her energy and expression into enthusiastic "hi!"s and not "no!"s. She has really been growing a lot lately! I'm hoping she'll hit the 20 pound mark (finally!) when I take her to the Dr. next so I can turn her car seat around. She gets bored staring backward all the time.

Yesterday we went out to apple orchard country and had a picnic with some friends. We went on a hay ride, which Claire enjoyed. Especially the part where she kept throwing the hay/dust into the wind and choking the other people in the wagon! Yikes! Too bad it was almost 90 degrees! Not exactly fall weather here in Southern California! I had planned to get some great shots of her in the pumpkin patch, but they were charging way too much to get in, so I tossed that idea! Here's a picture of her relaxing in a beach chair:

Saturday we took her to a shopping mall for her crowd fix, and we also took her into the pet shop. She went wild for the dogs!

Now this is what fall is supposed to look like! This was the first rain of the season a few weeks ago. I was so excited!

She DOES have hair!

Here she is enjoying the tricycle we got her. All smiles, as always!

Such a sweetie!

Ok, is she not the prettiest thing you have ever seen!!