Dear Friends and Family,
Hopefully, you enjoyed this year's (and last year's!) Christmas card! Feel free to just throw them both up on the refrigerator and pretend like you loved last year's soooo much that you've left it up all year long. Just pretend we weren't busy with a newborn and toddler and that I took the time to address and stamp the envelopes...
In attempts to save paper and to just be better at keeping the world up with the Downs family, I have started this blog to keep you all in the loop with our lives! If you subscribe to the blog, you can get emails when we post or, you can just check in every so often to get the scoop!
Now, onto the "good stuff"!
As 2015 comes to an end, I'm forced to admit how quickly it flew by...even though, most days, it seems as though bedtime can't come soon enough!
May marked the one year anniversary of living in our new house which, let me tell you, has been an adventure! We feel so blessed to have this home-in-the-making and wouldn't take back a day of un-airconditioned summer heat, bathroom renovations, or falling fences.
Addalyn began dance earlier this year and has redeemed her mother's gracelessness. While she loves to dance, her real passions are books, dinosaurs, Legos, and playing dress up... they totally go together, don't they? Something that I admire most about her, though, is her love for her little sister whom she has recently nicknamed "LuBerry". The two are inseparable and spend most of their days playing princesses, building towers, pretending to read to each other, and causing trouble! They are so excited to share a bedroom once their little sister arrives!
Lucille, my ever-grinning baby, is not such a baby anymore. Since her 1st birthday, she's perfected her walking, discovered her voice, and taken up interest in playing alongside her sister while quickly outgrowing any and all clothes that come her way. Her hair may not quite be a vibrant orange hue, but her humor and personality certainly live up to their namesake! This feisty and comical Lucy knows just how to keep us laughing. We sure love watching her turn into a little girl and the way that she looks up to her big sister. She is, after all, a big sister in training and takes plenty of notes!
We had the opportunity to travel home to North Dakota this summer and loved getting to spend time with family. Taking our time on the drive, we stopped at Bear World, Salem Sue and the side of I-90 in Montana as I was issued a warning for speeding...oops! We returned home just in time for Nic to pack up and ship out for a month long training in Ft. Irwin, California. While he was "living the dream", as he often says, the girls and I were up to projects around the house and kept ourselves busy with multi-weekly trips to the zoo, peanut butter "sandwicks", and lots of time at the playground! We enjoyed our girl time, but were definitely ready for daddy to get home at the end of July (even with his terrible mustache!)
If you somehow missed the extra little person in our card this year, or the hints in this letter, we are indeed expecting baby #3! And keeping with Braun tradition, ITS ANOTHER GIRL! We were quite surprised to learn this, as this pregnancy has been just about opposite from the other two! We had assumed that the absence of nausea meant "boy", but "boy" were we wrong!
We look forward to the coming year and the new life that it will bring as well as to continuing to post here with life updates!
Wishing you a very merry Christmas.
Love,
Nicolas, Ashelyn, Addalyn, Lucille, and Baby
