June 21st...the most amazing day of my life

This was taken on June 20th, with the assurance there wouldn't be any action anytime soon...

But on June 21, 2013 the most amazing miracle happened.

Life...and my little girl came into the world.

Lux Ann Brandenberger

born at 10:13 pm

6 lbs 10 oz

20 3/4 inches long

a bundle of perfection.

and our baby girl.

I can't wait to share her birth story with ya'll. 

But I'm gonna go snuggle with her instead right now.

 Will definitely update on this later though:)

Another one...

and of course, this one makes me crack up imagining if I went into labor out of the blue and my whole family runs around the house trying to get me to the hospital...

I envision this one quite often and end up laughing to myself...

imagining going into labor

While I'm waiting for my family to arrive today from South Carolina,

and waiting for little girl BB to show up,

this scene from Father of the Bride 2 keeps replaying in my head as what might happen when I go into labor...it never fails to make me laugh! Especially with my whole crazy family here when I go into labor:)

Daddies are the best...

Happy Father's Day to the best daddy in the world:)

My daddy showed my sisters and I what a godly man looks like.

He showed us what it means to put family first, to prioritize time with his wife and kids, and how to value each moment we have together.

He loves the Lord wholeheartedly...and has been used in so many different avenues of ministry...he has a heart for discipling men and showing them what it means to love the Lord.

Daddy,

 thanks for loving mom the way that you do. Thanks for how you put her first, and valued time with her, and then with us.

Thank you for your sacrifices for our family; how you provided for us and took such good care of us...from birth til graduation from college...you gave me my college education! 

Thank you for all the family nights we had together...the games we'd play, the movies we'd watch, and the fun things we'd do-Family Nights were the best.

Thanks for consistently leading our family spiritually...I love that every evening we had our family devotions and our weekly memory verses that we had to learn...my family will one day do the same things!

Daddy, I can't wait for you to meet the one to make you a Lolo...

My kid is so blessed that my daddy is going to be her Lolo. 

She'll get to see how much your daughters adore you...and she'll adore you too!

Cuz you're the best dad in the world...

 Now to my husband, who is going to be a first time daddy in hopefully the next week...

You're going to be an amazing daddy.

You are the first man in our little girl's life and she will adore you more than anyone else in this world.

All little girls want to be protected, loved, and cherished by a man, and you are the one that will do that in her life-and i know confidently what a great job you'll do to let her know she is protected, loved, and cherished.

Our little girl is going to love you, want to be with you and like you, and probably follow you around. (I know I did with my daddy!)

I can't wait to see you as a daddy and to see you fall in love with our little girl! 

I don't even mind that I'll have to share you;)

I love you, Ryan!

(and Alexio loves his daddy too...you're his best buddy ever!:))

(and to Ryan's daddy in heaven...Thank you for the man you taught your son to be. He's an incredible man and husband...and I'm so thankful he had a wonderful dad for 19 years to teach and love him.)

When I turned 26...

My birthday was a really really really great day with Ryan. 

I think knowing that our time with just the two of us is limited, so getting an entire day of me and him time was so special and fun.

I'm naturally up early in the mornings, but on my birthday, Ryan woke up early with me and we made a bakery run with Alexio! It was so fun to see my husband early in the morning awake and out and about with me and the lil guy:). I'd been wanting a glazed donut (too much Cake Boss on TLC and pics of national donut day), so Ryan thought we needed to make a run to the bakery:).

oh and here i am at 39 weeks. my feet don't fit in any other shoe except for my rainbow flip flops...they're so swollen.

for lunch, we went to a new place in Sioux City called Mr. Stirfry. It was great! all you can eat sushi and chinese food and a hibachi grill...we really enjoyed it. 

we then went shopping...it's always fun during special occasions and Ryan says, "you should buy it!" over and over again;) Lol. I wasn't exactly in the clothes shopping mood though, mainly because everything i'd want to try on doesn't fit, so it was pointless to buy clothes...buuuuut, i did find a bunch of stuff that I liked for Baby! and did most of my birthday shopping for stuff for her...it was fun:)

I think we had a theme of "pregnant woman craving" for my birthday...I really just wanted to eat the things that I had been thinking about during pregnancy...but couldn't get to in my town! I'd been thinking about the Mango Habanero wings for a while, and we loved sitting down and discussing the sports while chowing down on wings.

The day was really just a great day of spending time together. just the two of us...with no interruptions. I loved that. It was the best just getting to be with Ryan all day long from morning to evening and get to talk, hangout and eat. I think for me, I just really needed that time with him before our lives change and it won't be the two of us anymore. Oh, please don't get me wrong, we are sooooo pumped and excited to add on to our family our little girl! But it was such a gift to spend a full day away from everything with my husband. I was so blessed with the gift of time (and food and shopping;)) with him. 

So there ya go. 

It was my 26th birthday and I enjoyed it more than words could say.

So much, that the next day, I wished I could rewind and get that day again with Ryan:)

Now, on to waiting for our little girl's birthday!!!

Marathon to Marathon with Team Bridge

Today was the big day that all these people had been training for. The marathon to Marathon (a town almost exactly 26.2 miles away!) and we had a team of people running the marathon, half marathon, relay race, and 5K. It was an incredible morning of adrenaline and energy and fun...at least, speaking from a cheerleaders perspective;). Ryan trained to run the full marathon and after driving the course yesterday, I got nervous about how far the distance was-and I wasn't even running!

This team was raising money for the youth summer Bridge programs in Storm Lake (click here for more info: The Bridge of Storm Lake)It was both for an incredible cause, but also, these guys got into shape as they took the time and effort to train and get their bodies conditioned for their runs.

Here they are at 5:45 AM...look at all the smiles so early in the morning! Lol. 

Here's the ten mile checkpoint. This is the first place we kinda camped out at to cheer for the team. We had a great cheer team...we were all surprisingly wide awake and excited! this was around 7:30ish in the morning. we enjoyed a breakfast of donuts, fruit snacks, juice bags, and bananas while watching the runners go by.

(they were all trying to get to the last powdered donut...Abraham got it...if you could see close up, they all have white powdered lips:))

and here we are waiting at the 20 mile marker! Nellie knew the lady who was running the drink stand and even put up a sign for Renato to cheer him on!! 

Here's are some pics of the cheerleaders and all our yummy goodies:) It was so much fun cheering with these guys!

and here are the runners:) 

Jay...everytime he'd run up, his kids would yell and cheer, "Daddy!!! DaDA!!!! DAD!!!!" it was really motivating...even to us on the sidelines...lol...you can see Lily and Maggie jumping up and down yelling.

 Renato...he always ran by with a new friend that he'd made on the course!:) Each time we saw him, he was running and chatting with someone new! And Nellie and Abraham joined him as he drank his gatorade:). 

we definitely knew how to cheer these marathoners on! As they passed by, the stand beside us were offering gatorade, bananas, oranges, gu, grapes, and water...and we were all munching on hot cheetos, doritos, fruit snacks, and sour cream and onion chips...lol...we gained the calories that the runners burned:)

and of course, when ryan came by, I had to join him for some of the marathon action...do i look like i broke a sweat? :) It was so great to see him at the 20 mile point...i was so proud of him!

 here are our future marathon runners...we all liked to look like we ran in the race;)

 and the proud moments of finishing the race! 

Jay

Renato

Ryan

Here's me and my stud after he finished the marathon! I still can't believe he ran all that way...i'm so so so proud of him! He fought through some major cramping, but still finished and made it all the way! I'm so impressed;)

 this is a majority of the team...some left before we got a chance to take this pic...Nellie and I had tried to catch some pics of the half marathon and 5K runners at the checkpoints we were at, but we missed them by like twenty minutes...so here's a glimpse of some of them. We're missing some of the relay guys, and some half marathon girls.

 here are the marathon runners waddling to the cars afterwards. we got a huge kick out of the three of them stiffly waddling from side to side;)

Praising God for such a successful and fun day! The weather was perfect for the runners, and it didn't start to rain til they all finished. We didn't have any injuries and they all finished their races! God is so good! And for those of us that got to cheer and take pics (and eat:)), it was such a fun fun fun day of seeing our guys accomplishing a major goal, and seeing the whole team serving our Savior through this run! whoo! I'm so thankful and was so blessed by the day.

Way to go, Team Bridge!!!!!!