Hallie

Hallie has had the best month celebrating HER all month long! She is such a special and sweet and cute little girl and we are so lucky she is in our lives and apart of our family. We would not be the same without her!

Chuckarama dinner with some of her soccer teammates
Addison Reading (Hallie's current BFF), Hallie, Addison's little sister, Nova's little sister, Nova and the mom, Sammie.

Her artwork depicting everyone in the family as a flower. Even Rosie was including. The sun says "We are family" with everyone's year of birth surrounding it. She is so creative and I loved this unique picture of our family. 

She got this water bottle at her birthday party. She put all of our names on the bottle. She sometimes spells her name as "Hallielujar." This all started when the song "Hallelujah" was playing on the Alexa one day and she said, "Hey! Mom! This song says part of my name." I agreed and ever since she has occasionally put her name as "Hallielujar" on some school papers and now her water bottle. Haha!

Brooks

Brooks has started UpStart online school. Hallie did this as well and I was so impressed with the growth she made during that program. I mean the program taught her how to read! So, I'm excited to watch Brooks' growth this coming year. In fact, I have already seen a lot of growth in him this past month. He is loving school and starting to find friends in his class. I am proud of him being so brave. He still loves his cars, his dad and his hats. You will almost always see him wearing a hat. 

Getting ready for church is always hectic with Russ being in the bishopric. I told the kids to pack their own snacks one week. Brooks packed his and Hallie packed hers. I couldn't help but laugh when Brooks pulled out his FOUR Mike and Ike's. Go big or go home buddy. Haha!

One of my absolute favorite things Brooks does is his wave. It is like this mechanical/robotic wave that he does and I just love it. He waves to me pretty much every time I pick him up from school. It makes me smile every time!

He is learning how to write his name. We've gotta work on his S's but I think he is off to a great start!

Last year Russ made Olympic medals for the "Ahlberg Family Olympics" in Bear Lake. One of the medals was a "Poopy Lukey" medal. This medal was made for the Log Dump event. Brooks decided he wanted to wear it to church and we all thought it was pretty funny!

Brooks is terrified of the sound of toilets flushing (outside of our home that is). So, despite us telling him we will give him time to cover his ears after he pees and flush the toilet for him, he still covers his ears while he pees. Haha!

The other day he created an "outfit" out of grocery bags. Silly boy!

McDonalds

It is no secret that Brooks LOVES McDonalds, and trucks and dirt roads ("dirt woads"). Today, Joe called up asking to take Brooks out for a ride in his truck and to McDonalds. Brooks was beyond excited. This was the highlight of his week. They went on a "bumpy road," got lunch and went to the park to eat and play. He was all smiles and loved spending one-on-one time with Grandma Becky and Grandpa Joe!

Volleyball

My volleyball team went to a BYU volleyball game together. Although I wish it would have been a U of U volleyball game it was still fun. My dislike for all things BYU runs deep and so being in Provo and having their mascot, Cosmo, be right next to me taking pictures was awkward and made me wanna die (haha. Very dramatic, I know). I mean out of all the places people could have lined up to take a picture with Cosmo they decide to take pictures right next to me, with me being in all the pictures unless I purposefully moved my head. What are the chances?! Haha!

Unfortunately, volleyball for me hasn't happened since Covid shut everything down in 2020. The league we normally played in hasn't picked back up and any other league is too far away or on a night that some of my teammates can't play on. It's really too bad. I enjoy volleyball SO much. 

Alyssa, Taisa, Me, Amy, Angie

My team was getting quite the laugh out of this moment.

Date Night

Scott and Brielle Naylor are one of our best friends. We love hanging out with them! It is always a good time when we are with them. For Brielle's birthday she wanted to get sushi at Takashi and ride scooters around SLC. I've never rode an electric scooter before. To be honest, it isn't as easy as it looks. Breaking without putting your feet down was a struggle for me. I also was hesitant to go very fast. I was sure I was going to biff it and break something on my body. It turns out the electric bike was easier for me to adjust to. But I still screamed pretty much the entire ride around town. I'm sure people passing by thought I was either ridiculous or scared that I would run into them. Both were likely. Anywho, it was really fun riding around downtown with some of our favorite people!

Cornbellies

We have never been to Cornbellies before. Mainly because it is expensive and I've heard it is very crowded. But, tonight, our niece (Allie) was dancing at Cornbellies and so we got half off tickets. So, we figured we'd take advantage of the half off price and go support our niece at the same time. The kids had a blast and I couldn't believe all the things you could do there. Unfortunately, you had to pay extra for most of the stuff but we enjoyed doing all the "free" things. The slides were a bit hit! We ran into Alex and Katrina and their kids there and since Breanne and Justin work there we got to see them too! It was super fun!

Rosie

Oh my Rosie girl! It's no secret that I am her favorite. She is wherever I am always. And I love that! She is the BEST snuggler and such a lover. She is amazing with our kids and never has accidents in the house and never barks. She's about 8 lbs now and is the cutest little thing! She still sleeps in her kennel at night but around 7 AM I'll get her out and snuggle her in bed for a little longer. We hope to get a doggie door soon so she can go in and out of the house as she pleases. But man those doors are expensive!

RSL Game

Copper Mountain Soccer offered discounted tickets to one RSL soccer game. Russ, Hallie and Brooks all went! The game was a little too late in the evening for Stocko to go. So me and him stayed home. Brooks got bored fairly quickly and just wanted "treats" the whole time but they still had fun nonetheless. 

I love this picture so much!

Alex and his son, Xander, who also plays for Copper Mountain, got to be on the field and carry out the RSL flag at the beginning of the game. 

Stockton

Our little Stocko boy is just the cutest little thing! He is now 18 months and I can't believe it. 18 month olds are so much fun. He is incredibly busy and into everything. He wants to be very independent and do everything himself. He still doesn't say any words but boy does he let you know what he wants by the noises he makes. 

We had his 18 month doctor's appointment. He is healthy and well. I love every time hearing that his lungs and heart sound strong given all we struggled with when he was a baby. He is physically very active; climbing on everything and running everywhere. Developmentally, as far as his language skills go, he is about where he should have been at 15 months. We are hoping that with just a little help in therapy that we can catch him back up. 

18 Month Stats:
Weight: 24 lbs. 5 ounces (51st percentile)
Height: 33" (67th percentile)
Head Circumference: 19.25" (87th percentile)

We finally got in for a speech evaluation. He, of course, qualified. He was in the 2nd percentile for receptive language and 5th percentile for expressive language. Which I find is odd because he can't say a single word so I'm not sure how he is 5%. Regardless he qualifies for services through the school district. It's not free but it is highly discounted so that is nice. The therapist will come to our house twice a month. It doesn't seem like very much but hopefully we will start to see some improvement. Hopefully I am more impressed with his speech therapist then I was with Brooks' speech therapist. 

Swinging like a big boy!

He managed to climb in our ball bag and then couldn't get out. Haha!

Cutest little fingers holding onto the swing!