A Year of Blessings with Briana Corinne!

Briana Corinne 

December 5th, 2011

9lbs 15.4oz

December 2011

January 2012

Briana at 1 month old!

February 2012

Briana is 2 months old!

March 2012

Briana at 3 months old with our cousin Justin

Happy St. Patrick's Day from 3 month old Briana (March)

April 2012

Briana with Mommy's lifetime friend Aunt Kari!

Sisters, sisters!

May 2012

At the zoo with Daddy (5 months old)

Memorial Day (also Papa Mark's Birthday)

Briana is 5 months old!

June 2012

Briana is 6 months old

Swimming with Mama Corinne

July 2012

Briana is 7 months old!

Briana with her cousin Vanessa!

Briana and her cousin Cora with Great Papa Bare!

(still 7 months old)

4th of July

August 2012

Briana is 8 Months old

Playing at Mama and Papa's house!

Still August!

At a school function!

September 2012 

Briana is 9 months old

October 2012

Briana is 10 months old

Halloween

November 2012

Briana is 11 months old

Playing with Daddy

December 2012

Briana is 1 year old!!!

This picture captures Briana's personality pretty well!

It has been one year since Briana graced us with her presence!  She is such a blessing!  She is always on the go and loves to explore and examine things!  She is our comedic relief, she loves to do things for a laugh!  She is constantly goofing off and keeping her big brother and sister (and mommy and daddy) entertained!

Some fun things about Briana, since birth she has loved to poke things with her pointy finger, she used to try to get herself with her hand, even though she really had no idea what she was doing.  The September picture captured the pointy finger in action, she is too funny!  She loves to take naps, in fact she loves sleep in general, if we are even 5 minutes off our game getting her down for her nap or for bedtime she lets us know by coming up to us or going and waiting by the stairs and saying "Nigh, nigh".  She curls right up in her crib and rarely fusses about sleeping!  What a blessing!  Now that she is finally weaned she may actually stop waking up at 11 pm to eat, but we are not holding our breath.  She sleeps through the night from 11 pm- 8:30 am and only occasionally (maybe once a week or so) wakes up at about 2 am or 3 am to have her diaper changed.

Briana loves to play and read.  She loves to interact with her big brother and sister, loves to play with mommy and daddy!  She gets VERY excited when Mama Corinne comes over, laughing and shrieking with delight!  She loves visiting Mama and Papa at their house too!

Briana chatters constantly, sometimes we can understand what she is saying, most of the time we cannot, but the house is always filled with the sweet music of Briana's voice, she sings, she dances, she loves to interact with others or play alone.  She is a very content little girl!

Briana, we can not even begin to express how perfect you are for us!  Your delightful personality is a blessing to us every day!

The day that you became ours, we became yours!

We sure love you baby!  It is so hard to believe it has been a full year since the Dr. placed you in our arms!

Our Love Tanks are FULL!!!!

Mama Corinne and Great Mama Donna

with Lex at our Thanksgiving Celebration

Alexia!  

Blake and one of the cousins!!!

Some of the crafts!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration with our family!  What a wonderful and delightful evening!  We ate, played games, talked and laughed!  With so much to be thankful for, one of the biggest things we are thankful for is a large group of wonderful people who surround us with love, they live near and far and we know we are loved by them and they know they are loved by us as well!  :)

Christmas time is here!!!!!

Blake with his First Christmas Ornament!
  

Finding the perfect spot!

Blake circa 2006

Lex with her First Christmas ornament!

Hanging it on the tree!

Lex circa 2009

Briana hanging her First Christmas ornament!

Briana circa 2011

Daddy and the big kids with our family ornament from 2011!!!!  :)  

Our tree so far, the kids decorated it so far, 

so all the ornaments are on the bottom half!  :)

Lex putting up her wall decals!

Blake putting up his wall decals

Mini-tree time!!!!

The tree in the kids' room!

Well, we were good and we curbed our enthusiasm until AFTER Thanksgiving!  By Saturday night we had all of our Christmas decorations up!!!!  :)  It IS the most wonderful time of the year after all!!!  The kids had a blast helping with the decorations, even little Briana pitched in!  As usual the kids want the light on and the tree rotating as much as possible!  We don't mind, we love Christmas!!!  Our decorations are up, our Christmas cards are ready to be sent, our hearts are full, our souls are soothed and we are very happy and content!

We have lots of exciting things planned in the coming month!  Briana turns 1, so of course there with be a PARTY!  Lots of gatherings with family and friends and a few outings with just us and the kiddos as well!  So very excited, hopefully at some point we will get some snow!!!  :)

Looking forward to nights of Christmas Carols and Hot Cocoa!

Until next time!

The Parracks

Family Photos!!!!

All of our hands, even little Briana's

Well, for the first time in 5 years we had family pictures done!  The last time we did family photos we were a family of 3, it was the Christmas of 2007.  Since then we have added 2 wonderful new members to our family and we are so happy to have proper documentation of it now!  ;)

We had such a great time during the photo shoot!  It was an amazing day, over 70 degrees in November, it was a little bit windy, but I think it worked out very well!  Our photographer is absolutely amazing, she took all of the pictures in under an hour, did a great job editing and got them back to us in less than 2 weeks!  We feel so blessed to have connected with her and used her as our photographer!  So many of our friends have horror stories of photographers not doing well, not returning phone calls and taking forever to get the images back to them, but our experience was 100% wonderful!

We took the pictures at two locations, the first location was a park, which happens to have a museum on site in a big old barn!  We got some great pictures by the barn, on the benches and in front of a brick wall!  Once we had enough pictures from the park, we headed to the train tracks and took the rest of the pictures there!

I also have to thank our photographer for her suggestion not to wear tight fitting clothes, but to wear something we were comfortable wearing, so we didn't have to worry about the fit of our clothes while we were taking pictures!  That and her other tips were so helpful in preparation for the shoot and helped everything go so well on the day of the shoot!

We are so excited to celebrate Thanksgiving this year with so much to be thankful for!  :)

Blake's November Check-up!

Getting height, weight and blood pressure

Waiting for counts to come back and for the Dr. to come talk to us!

After Blake was done at school we went to the Oncology clinic to have his counts done.  The cancer is still gone!!!  Praise the Lord!  His immune system is great and he has no other health problems going on.  Next week he will get his MMR, which he had to wait on before because he had to be done with Chemo for at least 6 months before he could get it.  

It is amazing to us that all of the things we thought would take forever to happen have happened and our family has gotten a fresh start.  There are five happy and healthy people in our family and we are so blessed!  

Thanks to everyone for the prayers and words of encouragement!  We are so thankful!

Home Safe and Sound!