happy 7th birthday, charlie!

our special charlie had a birthday on the 27th last month!

he turned 7!

charlie asked for a sponge bob theme complete with a "krabby patty" cake. and because we love him more than anything in the whole world, we complied!

the morning started off with his favorite breakfast: 

waffles

gifts followed at 9:30 am because he was born at 9:30 am.

a few weeks ago he said to chris that if he could have an endless bag of cheddar and sour cream chips  he would be in heaven.

its not an endless bag, but two giant bags from sam's sure made him happy! and I'm pleased to report that he has done a very good job of sharing whenever siblings ask for some chips and he just opened the second bag, which shows love and control on his part.

having a birthday right after christmas could be a hard thing but charlie really loves it. all he wanted was a couple books. 

this picture is blurry but it is pure joy on his face while opening his gifts from grandma and grandpa:

after gifts we packed up and headed up north to fayetteville!

we went to the new IMAX theater to watch Star Wars the last jedi.

the theater was absolutely packed, but we managed to get there early and snag enough seats together in a great spot. we really enjoyed the movie (for the most part) and even little owen was able to sit through it without too many wiggles (for the most part). 

after the movie charlie asked if we could go to andy's, so of course we did.

it's good to the last drop!

 when we got home, charlie spent some time reading his new books and played operation with the kiddos while we worked up enough room for dinner (jimmy johns sammies) and then cake with rocky road ice cream, charlie's favorite.

charlie's krabby patty cake was a lot of fun to make and actually much easier than i had anticipated. i made 4 layers of dark chocolate cake for the buns and patty.

im grateful that charlie always requests chocolate frosting because it gave me an excuse not to attempt covering the buns in fondant, which tastes like "white" frosting to charlie. plus, buttercream is infinitely more tasty than fondant. but for the cheese tomatoes and lettuce, fondant needed to be used.

when i asked charlie today what he wanted to remember about his birthday in 2017 he said, "that some very special people gave me some very special gifts. my family."

My Movie 1 from Lisa Brower on Vimeo.

charlie is the ultimate jokester around our house. he loves all things potty talk, especially books based on all things toots and undies. he is super smart and enjoys learning. charlie is by far the pickiest eater in the family, but will surprise us every once in a while and eat something crazy, like the time he ate shrimp. charlie still loves to memorize numbers, talk about numbers, and even lines his books in numerical order. he can be very sensitive and loves anything soft and cozy, like his new robe from christmas that he wears "bare chested" everyday right when he gets home from school. he's the tallest in his class and is pretty much the coolest in our minds. 

we are so grateful for our charlie man and love him so, so, so, SO much!

christmas 2017

every year feels like its the very best and can't ever be topped. this year was no exception! the kids said multiple times, "this is the best christmas ever!"

the kids knew they weren't allowed to make any noise or wake us up until 7:30 and they did surprisingly well! usually they are coming in repeatedly to use our bathroom or tell us they love us or little things like that just so they can sneak a peak around the living room. but they stayed put until 7:30 this year. i guess they are growing up!

we searched for stockings, opened gifts, ate breakfast, got dinner cooking, played with toys, played games, ate dinner, watched despicable me 3, then the elders came over to play some games for an hour, followed by calls to the grandparents. it was a very calm day with smiles and hugs all around. it was perfect!

jack's wishlist was simple:

new rollerblades and soccer cleats because he'd outgrown both. 

ellie's was simple too:

new rollerblades because she outgrew hers and art supplies

charlie's was a little longer, but pretty easy like the others:

pokemon cards

a robe and slippers

a robot

ellie saved up some allowance money to buy gifts for everyone. she planned out what she wanted to buy for about a week and then we went shopping at target. she picked out a slither.io toy for chuck, the book A Wrinkle in Time for jackie (because he saw the movie preview and said he thought it looked interesting), a toy hamster for o-bo, a bag of lindt chocolate toffee bits for dad, and a framed picture she drew for me. it was so sweet to see her set a budget, plan, and then give her gifts. it meant a lot to everyone. maybe next year the big boys will set some allowance aside to do the same.

not pictured, but very special was a blown up picture of the kids given to me from chris and the kiddos. we've framed it and put it in my room. i love it.

charlie has basically worn his robe and slippers with nothing but undies for about 3 days solid now. he really likes his soft robe, especially against his bare skin. i found it and the slippers on a major sale at target, which makes me like them too :)

daddy finally broke down and bought a sous vide to be like his brothers :) those brower boys sure know how to cook!

poor ellie gets the driest skin in the winter. her hands get so bad that her teacher brings her lotion through out the day to keep her hands from cracking. now she's stocked up on lotions and has a bottle to take to school too.

owen loves to paint. about a month ago he started painting rocks and said they were for jack ellie and charlie. so each day he would add a little more to the rocks and then he gave them to the kids on christmas.

he even made and wrapped one for himself :)

while the kids either rollerbladed, shot mom and dad with a nerf gun, or luxuriated in their robe, chris and i got breakfast on the table:

brower family traditional sticky buns!

not sure if it was the new pan we tried them in or what, but these were the best we've ever had... and thats saying something.

after rounds of codenames and clue, chris got a tri tip cooking sous vide and i got some beans going in the crockpot. we decided to have a "feliz navidad fiesta" for our dinner.

holy guacamole it was delicious!

before we even sat down for dinner owen had probably eaten a whole avocado on his own. he sure loves guacamole! and he seems to be going through a growth spurt because starting on christmas eve he just can't seem to ever get full. he's typically a snacker rather than a sit down and eat a meal type of kid, but the past few days he's been both.

and just because its fun to see kids on christmas morning, here is a video with a couple highlights!

christmas day 2017 from Lisa Brower on Vimeo.

it's been super cold, but that hasn't kept the kids from going out to rollerblade and play soccer!

christmas eve!!!

christmas eve was a full, busy day for our little family!

one of our favorite traditions is going to get donuts the morning of christmas eve. 

we always take a picture in front of the tree with our sleepy bedhead and then go get donuts at our favorite donut place. this year, because christmas eve was on sunday (which i totally love!), we decided to make donuts at home before church. it was delicious and greasy and sweet and such a great memory... but it was a lot of work making the dough the night before, waking up early to roll out dough and cut out donuts, then frying and glazing them. not to mention that we smelled strongly of fried dough for sacrament meeting and the house still hasn't fully recovered. but it was fun!

i love this picture because it sums up owen pretty well. he always has to be helping in the kitchen even if it interrupts lego time :)

it took some trial and error to get the oil temp just right, but chris figured it out! turns out the pioneer woman (who's recipe we used) cooks hers at a temp much higher than we preferred it. we had chocolate, maple, and regular glazes... plus a few with sprinkles for the two little boys.

donuts + bacon + scrambled eggs = happy, full kiddos!

and our traditional picture... done up for church instead of in jammies this year.

we only had sacrament meeting on christmas eve. 

it was a beautiful meeting and i felt the spirit several times touch my heart and testify of the truths surrounding our savior's birth. i felt a deeper love and appreciation for mary and what she must have gone through emotionally and spiritually after the angel gabriel visited her. and joseph too. it was a special meeting to me and filled my heart with peace. 

anyways, due to our shortened meeting time, i asked the kids to put together a little christmas concert for the family. the big kids got flustered and upset if they messed up and kept asking to redo their songs. they better learn how to handle their mistakes because they have a real recital coming up in january!

and because i know grandparents will enjoy it, here is their concert on video, minus all the major mess ups :)

Christmas Eve recital from Lisa Brower on Vimeo.

after the recital, we put together some flowers and headed to the closest nursing home called Ashton Place. we walked in and asked if there was a resident that doesn't have many visitors this time of year.  chris spotted a resident slowly making her way down the hall with tears in her eyes. we introduced ourselves and asked if she would enjoy some flowers. she was very confused and rambled quite a bit as we walked with her back to her room to drop off the flowers. not sue if she had any idea what was going on, but she definitely stopped to point out her flowers to the other residents as we walked by :) even though it was short, we enjoyed our visit with jamie at ashton place.

that evening we had the missionaries over for our traditional spaghetti dinner complete with spicy sausages! i wish i had thought to take a picture because our table was quite pretty and it was fun to share our evening with the elders. after, we read from luke with them while the kids acted it out with our little toy nativity set. we watched the nativity video after that and then played a game and had dessert. i made a white chocolate raspberry truffle cheesecake that was extremely good!

we gave the elders some gifts to open christmas morning and chris also brought out all of his ties and let them each pick out a new tie. they seemed to think that was pretty cool!

 after they left, we brushed teeth, then snuggled up by the fireplace while we tried to recite the night before christmas while chris read it. then we opened a gift all together, got the kids in bed, wrapped a couple gifts and waited for Santa!

because opening a gift on christmas eve is so special, we decided to have the kids open our big family gift that will take place in march.

thanks to grandpa and grandma brower's christmas money, we are going to take the kids to sea world to celebrate getting our student loans paid off!!! we have tried to be very open with the kids about our whole loan process. we dont want them growing up thinking that we have a bunch of stuff just because thats how it is. we hope that through this they have learned that we have had to work hard, make sacrifices, budget, and plan in order to get to where we are and where we will be. they are just as excited as we are to make our last payment in january!

usually we save all of our gift wrapping for the night of christmas eve, even though we hate doing that. we turn on james bond movies and watch while we wrap, which means chris wraps one or two during each movie and i wrap the rest and miss most of the movies. BUT this year was different!!! we only had a couple gifts left to wrap. so we decided to rent the movie logan lucky on vidangel and then went to bed. it was so nice to enjoy the evening instead of the usual rush rush rush of wrapping.

Light the World and pre-christmas joy!

we really enjoyed our month of small services during december's Light the World initiative! nothing we did was big or life changing but it helped us feel a little bit of the love that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have for their children and helped us to focus more on others than ourselves this season. thinking that our small acts may have been an answer to someone elses prayers is kind of a fun thought. we wrote many cards, made phone calls, visited neighbors, delivered cases of water and gatorade to the boy's shelter, dropped off goodies, and a whole lot more. here are everyone's favorite activities:

owen- doorbell ditching ham dinners to two families (proven by his constant giggling on my shoulder as we ran away)

charlie- also doorbell ditching ham dinners

ellie- paying for the person behind us in the chick fil a drive thru

jack- going to the nursing home and visiting with a stranger

lisa- taking goodies to our neighbors and officially meeting rose

chris- doorbell ditching banana bread

one of our funnest activities was putting together these two ham dinners with the love and help of delayna and tony's family. they had our family for christmas this year and asked us if we wanted to do a service project together. since we have doorbell ditched hams in the past we decided to make it even better this year and we had sooo much fun deciding what to put in each package! layna and tony sent stuffing mix, tin nutcrackers filled with gingerbread cookies, and a cash donation. we then added a ham and a pecan pie. we dropped them off the friday night before christmas and of course it had to rain that night. but that didn't stop us from having a great time!

we feel so lucky to feel so much love from our friends and family during the holidays even when we aren't with them. grandpa and grandma browne sent a fun package with tasty treats, games, and some stuffed owls along with a sweet book to read together as a family about, you guessed it, owls! we are enjoying it so much.

and unfortunately i didn't get a photo, but grandpa and grandma brower sent us a fun little lamb that we were able to do service with around our family, along with the service quilt they sent us years ago. that is for sure one of our favorite christmas time traditions and now we get to add our little lamby too!

and chris was given probably one of his best gifts ever right before christmas... he finally caught the dang mole that has been terrorizing our yard for the past couple months. if thats not a victory stance i dont know what is!