A Beautiful Blessing Day!

Brighton's Blessing Day was as perfect as could be!  

What a little princess!  Controlling the massiveness of her dress reminded me of wearing the larger version.  So much fluff!

We got our first family picture taken of all five (!) of us.

We had just the right amount of family in town with my dad, Marc & Diana, and Braden visiting for an MIT trip.

How I love my little girl!

Tuck!

The big news lately is that Jason has been accepted to both Cornell and Dartmouth for Business School!  We'll most likely choose Tuck (Dartmouth), and we're thrilled and excited!  Most of all, its nice to have a plan for the next two years.  I've been frantically looking up housing, schools, and the closest Joann Fabrics, as well as hitting up all the clearance racks for discounted winter gear.  Goodness knows we're in for some cooooold weather!

Miss B is charming us all with her cute smiles!!  I'll keep trying to catch it on camera...

My Dad came to visit for a weekend for Brighton's baby blessing!  The boys really love their Grandpa!

I'm really enjoying getting my evenings back for projects and sewing.  I had some pink eyelet scraps from this baby blanket that my mom put together, so I made a dress to go with it, though I don't think it will fit for a year or two.

Speaking of matching, these three love wearing their matching vests to church together.  Such handsome men I have.

And I took my daughter to our first princess movie together!  Cinderella, along with the dozen of my friends we went with.

I'm really going to miss my Boston friends!!

Lobster Bisque

In celebration of the new little lady in J's life, he set out to make us Lobster Bisque (cue the Studio C remarks) and found it was cheapest to buy the live lobsters so we had two cute little pets in our fridge for a day before they became soup.  It was absolutely delicious, by the way.

Brightly showing off her cute new red ruffled bloomers:

My cousin Carrie also had two boys first and then a girl, and she said that she wouldn't have had it any other way, and now that I'm in her same shoes, I completely agree.  Having a girl now has made this new baby 10x more exciting as the first.  I love having two big brothers to lead the family by example, and I'm so glad they have each other.  They may know just how to tease the other, but they would really be sad without their other half. 

And here's a fun Chocolate Surprise Easter Eggs tutorial:

Making Boston History

Surely you've heard how Boston reached a new all-time record for winter snowfall this year.  Its been beastly and ridiculous.  Its snowing pretty heavily even now as I write this.  Jason would spend hours on the car and then come out in the morning to find ourselves plowed in again.

However, the boys have had a lot of fun helping Dad unshovel the car again and again and again.

While waiting very impatiently for this baby, I kept myself busy indoors making hair bows and doing hair tutorials.

You can read the full pin curls tutorial HERE.

Brighton got some Easter pictures taken about 2 months early...

...and the boys and I had a donut making party!

Blueberries

I partnered with the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council to come up with a blueberry recipe and the Kid-Approved No Sugar Added Blueberry Muffins came to be.  You can read about our enthusiasm for blueberries and see the full recipe HERE.

Here, Jason

Jason just threatened to start writing about economics and finance if I didn't update the family blog, so I'm getting my act back in order and posting what we've been up to the last month, which 95% has to do with Brighton!

My  mom came out for a week, and though of course, she was a HUGE help to me by playing with the boys and holding the baby, I also forget how much I need a cheerleader those first few weeks when the task of successfully mothering another child feels so insurmountable.

I also really needed my mom to help me take all these pictures!  I had a handful of outfits and accessories I needed reviewed so we just kept taking more and more glamour shots of this doll.

The boys are cutest older brothers!  They just dote on their little sister and love to pet her hair, find her binky, and make sure that all of the baby equipment is in proper working order.  Lincoln had a few meltdowns in the first few days after we brought B home, however.  A series of attention-seeking acts like the baby powder episode below helped us see that he needed a little more one-on-one time.  He's great now, and quite the responsible man of the house when Dad's away.