"I love you Brother"

These two boys have become quite the buddies lately. I have to give 99% of the credit to Josh for the two of them even getting along at all. Ammon is such a tease and likes to hit, but Josh is so patient with him, most of the time. The first thing Ammon said the other morning when Dave got him out of his crib was, "Josh". And at night I always rock the boys in the rocking chair while we sing some songs to Ammon. Last night Ammon says, "Joshey hold me." And he snuggled up to Josh. When Ammon's elbow was dislocated a bit ago I took him the doctor and they gave him a little ball and he says, "Show Josh." Who knows how long it will last, but I'm enjoying every bit of it for now.


This has become a common sight around our house. Josh loves to read to Ammon and it is so cute when Ammon will run to Josh with a book that they can read together. I made myself stop taking pictures of the boys every time I see them doing this because they do it a lot and it would just be the same picture over and over but in different clothes.

This morning I wouldn't change Ammon's cereal for the third time and he broke down and started to bawl and went to Joshua for some comfort. Josh was quick to give a hug and ease his little brother's sadness.

As soon as I got home from Costco the other day Joshua immediately started attacking this diaper box with a butter knife to get it open. When Ammon walked in the door a second later Josh jumped up and said, "Ammon you can't have a knife, lets get you a fork." And they attacked the box together with my utensils. Wait a minute Josh, who ever said you could play with the knives?

Josh sharing his work book.

Every night I make them say to each other, "I love you Brother, good night." just because I think it is so cute. I love you little boys. Thank you Josh for being so sweet to your little brother.

Birthday Ammon

Goodnight little one year old baby. I don't know if there is anything cuter then a happy baby.

I don't think Ammon understood the whole birthday-blanket deal, maybe next year (Josh was excited).


I'm two and I'm cool. Check out my Thomas.

Birthday fun included presents in the AM, a trip to the dinosaur museum and of course Ice Cream, naps, and family at Chucke E. Cheese. That place is wild on a Friday night, I don't know why I didn't think about that. Dave is good at earning lots of tickets, he claims he knows where all the 'loose' slots are inside the Chucke E. Cheese arcade. His first rule is to not give many tokens to the kids, so that you have more to spend and can therefore earn more tickets. Ammon has been singing, 'Happy Birthday' all week ("Hop-ee Ber-day do you", really loud). It's hard to tell how much they realize that it is their birthday when they are so little. Hopefully he at least had a good day even if he didn't realize what all the spoiling was about. We love you so much Ammon. Happy Birthday

Batman Birthday

Josh has turned four, and I’m so proud of him. We had a great birthday weekend. I’ve admitted before that I was hoping to get out of throwing a party for Josh this year, but I’m so glad that we planned one anyway. It was a lot of fun to talk and plan with Josh and have him be so excited about his day. As we were planning I realized that can't be many more fun things to do in life then plan your little four year olds birthday party with him. I kept walking up the night before because I was excited for him, to have a little party, get some fun gifts, and have everyone pay special attention to him. The night before his party he slept with the magic, “Bragonje Birthday Quilt”. If you sleep with it the night before your birthday you’ll wake up with presents in the quilt’s pockets (thanks mom!). Josh was so excited about the quilt. Because of my excitement I had woken up too early and was getting ready and trying to listen for when Josh would wake up and find his little presents. Finally at about 7:00 I heard a little rustling of wrapping paper and went in to find him pulling presents out of the quilt pockets. He opened them up and we waited for Ammon, and Dad, to wake up so we could open the rest of his presents. The party was at 9:00am and everyone had birthday pancakes with ice cream, strawberries, sprinkles, etc. Played a few games, my favorite being the, “Mr. Freeze” dance to batman music, everyone was so cute dancing around in their capes and then…freeze. Unfortunately a ‘bad guy’ came (thanks Dad) and stole all of Joshua’s presents, but... Batman arrived just in time to catch our bad guy and save the day. Dave makes a great Batman, and was upset with me that I only rented the costume and didn’t buy it for him. The kids loved having Batman at the party. Of course I had intended to get pictures of each kid with Batman, and each boy with Josh as they were opening the present they gave him, and other candid shots, but I hardly got any, too crazy. The last half hour we just let the kids run around and play with the new birthday toys. Lots of fun. That afternoon the boys all took naps, I ran some errands and we had our first BBQ of the year at my sisters house. My tree-farming brother Jon and his wife Meggan were in town from Colorado for just a day or two delivering trees to Highland City and we had a lot of fun with them. It always feels like your on vacation when family comes into town, even though you haven’t traveled anywhere. Sunday was Josh’s actual birthday so he of course got the special treatment on that day too. He kept asking me all day if he was four yet or if he was still three. We played his favorite games that night, told him about when he was born, and then I laid in his bed with him for a long time while we giggled and laughed and snuggled and I thought about how my first born baby is already for years old. I still feel like he should still be my little newborn baby. As I hugged him to sleep I couldn’t help but be blown away that he is my own little boy that I helped create. I feel like my whole life I wondered what my little kids would look like and be like, and here he was in my arms, such a miracle. I’m glad he had a weekend that was all about him, all attention on him. I didn’t want to stop the special treatment when Monday came around so I didn’t make him take a nap, etc., and I paid for that one later in the afternoon. We are back to normal and now preparing for Ammon’s birthday in three days :) I love you Josh, you are my favorite four year old.

Josh delivering Batman invites around the neighborhood (outfit complete with bat-ring, and batman cape).


The Birthday Quilt and its loot.

Early morning presents.

Animal charades.

These balloons are much cooler then Animal charades.


"Where did you get an adult sized Batman costume?" Jon to Dave.


Some party guests. My scruffy brother( Farmer Jon), his cute pregnant wife, and 'baby batman' (because of the little cape). I bet you didn't think you were in this picture Meggan.


Ammon mistaking ranch dip for lotion, thanks for encouraging him Dad.

Happy Day :)

Josh is four. It blows my mind that I have a four year old, that my first born baby is not a little baby anymore. I was so excited for his birthday that I couldn't sleep the night before the party. At 6:30am I finally let myself get up and take a shower. I was listening for Josh to wake up because he had this on him:

The, "Bragonje Kids Birthday Quilt". A magic quit that fills up with little presents if you sleep with it the night before your birthday (thanks mom). It was so cute to hear the rustling of wrapping paper early in the morning and go into see this super sleepy but excited little boy.

New Job :)

First day on the new job. Dave is Far West Bank's newest credit analyst. He will be working in Payson, 45 minutes away, temporarily. Within the next year or so he will move into a loan officer position somewhere along the Wasatch front (probably close by). I think he will really like this job. I'm grateful that we've always been blessed with good employment, even the job that Dave is recently leaving has been great in a lot of ways. I know he's picked up a lot of good skills I'm just glad that we feel like we've finally 'landed' with a job that has good potential and is interesting to Dave. So onto a new schedule, new commute, new workplace wardrobe...let me talk about that one for a second. Dave is to wear dressier clothes, i.e. slacks, dress shirts, etc...a change from his khakis and button up shirts. We went shopping to find some more clothes for him and it was... not fun. He kind of has a hard size to find (being so tall), his shirts have to have buttons to keep the collar down, it has to be on sale (I agree), and he only wanted blue shirts and gray pants. He said that he only likes blue shirt and on the days that he doesn't wear blue he is not as happy (the funny thing is that I kind of know what he means). We just couldn't find much, and my patience was getting shorter with each new requirement and we gave up for the night. By the next day I was over the frustration and he admitted that he did want to wear other colors. I suggested we try the Nordstrom Rack, turned out to be a goldmine. He found a lot of pants and a shirt. I spent my time in the shoe area, I haven't had so much fun looking at shoes in a long time. Anyway, the boy is ready for his new job. Congrats Dave, you look great.

Good News!

Dave has a new job! He starts next week. He will be working at Far West Bank in Payson, Ut. No we are not going to move there. He will commute for maybe up to a year. They will be training him in Payson to be a loan officer and he will change branches when that position opens up. We are excited and grateful for the job he has had up until now. He has learned a lot in his current job and it has fit into his schedule great but I know that he is ready to move on. I know we've been blessed with good employment during our married lives but Dave has never been 100% satisfied with his jobs until now. I feel like we've finally 'landed' and that he will be in this industry for a long time. I'm especially happy for him because he is the poor guy who has to go to work for us each day and I want for him to enjoy it and be excited about what he gets to do. I'm the lucky one who gets to stay at home and only do a little bit of work. Just kidding (read my post about Ammon below).

Our other excitement is a change in cars. We finally let the truck go, it was a good one but we just didn't need it anymore. Dave got it when we moved here and he had a need to drive out into the mud and dirt on work sites but after awhile his projects were starting to get paved roads and he would just drive the civic to work. And that's when the truck became my car. It was great and roomy, but probably not my choice of cars to shuttle the kids around in. I've noticed that I've been eying all the mini-vans in the grocery store parking lots and how their side doors just slide open so easily and kids get in and out on their own. That's what I'm finally ready for sliding doors...but it will have to wait for a bit because we've been offered a free car to drive for awhile. My grandma's Buick that has been sitting in my parents driveway for almost a year. My poor little grandma can't drive at all and is living with my parents. They have offered it to us several times and it's just too hard to pass up a free car.

Nice try Mom

These pictures were taken of Ammon on a good day, i.e. not today. I love to take pictures of Ammon when he wakes up because he is so sweet and happy (these pictures were taken awhile ago). Today he had been taking a great nap and I was starting to miss him so I got this crazy idea that I should go upstairs and wake him up nicely so I could hold him. Wow, I think that was the dumbest idea I have ever had. I woke him up slowly and he starts make this snarly cries and when he finally gets up he is just angry. I try to rock him and sing to him, read to him, offer him a bottle...he doesn't want anything. I finally bring him downstairs and try to turn on a favorite show (this has always helped me in the past with cranky, waking up babies) and he is happy for a minute and then starts yelling, "No!", "No!", "No!", "No!"...at me. What did I do? Okay, I woke him up early but I had the good intentions of spending some quality time with my baby. Luckily he stopped after a show and some snacks but he never did quite recover until after dinner. Oh dinner, I decided to make his favorite, pancakes. He was so happy that he was frantically trying to get out everything for me (griddle, pancake turner...) as I was making them he started screaming and crying while he was holding his arm. I thought he had burned his arm, or something terrible had bitten him by the way he was screaming. I try to ask him what is wrong and he just screams, "PANCAKES!". His arm was fine, he just needed his pancakes. I have never seen a baby so mad at his mama.
He really is such a great baby, I just will never make the mistake of waking him up early so I can hold him unless I'm prepared for an afternoon of tantrums.

Josh

This little boy is almost four years old. I drove him around our neighborhood today while he brought party invitations to a few boys in his Sunbeams class. He ran up to each door in his little batman cape (thank you Missy he still loves it) and I don't know what he would say at the door but he would be at the door for awhile. If they weren't answering he would dance around on the porch and make Ammon and me smile in the car. He's been talking about having a Batman birthday party for months. I was really trying to get out of it but I just can't let the little guy down. I called a costume rental store and asked if they had any adult male batman costumes (i'm going to make Dave dress up and make a special appearance) , they said yes, and thought I should specify that the adult male is 6'5'' and the man on the phone said to me, "that's not an adult size, that's a GIANT size." Us poor tall people. I guess I can't feel too sorry for us when I just bought a pair of high, high heels at a 'shoe party' tonight. Hey Heather, what size is Shea's Batman costume, or better yet we can just have Shea do the Batman cameo, just teasin'. Now Shea is going to avoid me for the 2 weeks until after Josh's party. Happy Birthday Josh, stop growing up now.