It's Great to be Eight

James turned eight this last week and we celebrated in style and all weekend long. James is a quiet boy who is still really shy, especially around pretty women. He is also a lego builder. He loves the complex lego sets and sits for hours putting them together. He also loves Minecraft and would play for hours if we let him.  He also dislikes pizza, the first kid I ever met that disliked pizza but loves all other Italian food. 

He chose a chocolate raspberry cake for his birthday. I loved making this one and it seemed to be enjoyed by everyone. 

Then he opened quite a few legos sets and books, his two most favorite things in the entire world. 

James got a birthday party this year and because of my rough pregnancy (and the thought of ten eight year old boys running around the house made me cringe just a tad) we decided to do a party at the local pool. James loves swimming and this was a perfect party for him and us.

 I loved that they provided everything, other than the cupcakes, and even did the clean up. I loved that and James seemed to have a good time too.

Saturday was James' baptism. He was so excited to have his family and so many neighbors present. He even smiled for a few pictures, which is like pulling teeth in most cases. 

So proud of James and what a great young man he is. He is a great little brother and a fabulous big brother. We are so grateful he is part of our family. 

It's a Girl

Christian here, posting for Natalie. Sincere apologies for the many months without a post. We've been pretty busy at the Bradley home. I probably ought to get the big news out of the way first up, we're pregnant, and it's a girl.

For those who haven't spent much time with us lately, Natalie has managed to be pregnant for 12 of the last 17 months (two back to back miscarriages, those sucked), and we still have three months to go. Natalie has magic pregnancy powers that make it morning all day long, and by that I mean that morning sickness is active around the clock. We had some real fun for a couple of months when she had to go on a daily IV drip to keep from dying of dehydration, just glad we were able to do it with the home hospice care service or we would have basically been living at the hospital. Baby Bellatrix as we've been calling her (no, that's not what we're naming her) has been about as much trouble as Matthew was in utero, but at least this one made it past the end of the first trimester so we're all pretty happy about it. We're due in July

That's probably enough baby stuff, what else has been going on around here? Lots.

Seeing the Christmas lights at the zoo.

Meeting stormtroopers at Comic-con.

Singing.

Cooking.

Snuggling cousins.

Growing mustaches.

Playing fetch.

Seeing American landmarks done in Legos.

Playing basketball.

Gardening.

And a whole bunch of other stuff, you know, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, work, play, school, all the usual. We'll keep you posted, just figured we should put something up in case you thought we just didn't want to blog anymore.

-Christian