When Adam's family came up from DC to visit us, we went to the giant Carnegie Museum of Natural History to see the Dinosaurs (and modern art and architecture and gem show, etc)

 Adam's parents came to this museum on a business trip about 10 years ago and they remembered how huge the gem display is, so this pic is for them.

 They have an impressive kid dig. Naturally, Adam jumped right in.

We ended their visit by going to our favorite diner - Pamela's. Here is Brigham with his aunt that he loves!

Holidays!

We have had celebrated a smattering of holidays over the last few months. I was looking back through our photos and realized, again, how much we love any reason to celebrate.

Last December we bought a dozen mini-muffins and a dozen breakfast snacks to celebrate 12-12-12.

Also in December, we celebrated our own family tradition. It is my FAVORITE because we all get to act like a kid for an hour. We go on a Onesie Runsie! We put on our footie pjs and go get some hot chocolate at Starbucks. Yum!

Of course the highlight holiday of the year was Christmas since we got to go to AZ and be together with my whole family. However, I was majorly bad at taking pictures this Christmas so here are a few random ones.

Matching stuffed animal panda with Uncle Carson

My fam took us to Lolo's Chicken and Waffles and it was new/strange/great atmosphere and really really good

New Years was really fun. Stanton and Jenni gave us glasses made out of straws. It was silly and surprisingly fun. Here are Garret and Karli sporting them for us. Also, we strapped fireworks to remote helicopters and watched them explode in the air. It was a pyro-dream!

When we got back to Pittsburgh we celebrated our little Dyal family Christmas. It was wonderful. Brigham loved it and couldn't get enough of his toys from Aunt Chelon. Adam's parents made digital copies of his home videos and audio, so we spent the morning watching them. It was cool and fun to see Adam growing up.

Valentine's Day was simple but fun. We chocolate dipped marshmallows and strawberries.

More recently, Adam's sisters & co. came up to Pittsburgh to visit. They were all nice to let me throw a Mardi Gras party and cook a ton of cajun food. It was great!

(King Cakes below)

 (Chelon found the baby in her King Cake slice. Lucky her!)

We also celebrated Pi Day, Groundhog's Day (no we didn't get to go to Punxsutawny even though it is only 1.5 hours away because Adam had a group presentation and his group was super-lame-sauce and not flexible. Can you tell we were pretty bumbed by it?  Maybe another year), and St. Patty's Day. The only one we got a picture of our green breakfast.

We have to do better at taking pictures. Oh well, even though we don't document well, we sure do have fun!

In case you were wondering, YES, the Easter Bunny is ready and stoked to visit our apartment in a week.

Snow + Brigham

We thought he would LOVE playing in the snow because of moments like this:

 He was so happy with the falling snow.

So the next snow day we bundled up to take him outside and he reacted like this:

After some time and acclimation, the day ended like this: cute, fine, and not so scared.

Here is our little power house! He just never stops moving and learning.

Early this week Brigham started crawling. He is only 6 1/2 months. We have our hands full, but he is so adorable. He can't stand up by himself, but once he is up he just hangs onto furniture until he gets bored and wants to crawl again.

Now he just crawls over to the mirror to make faces and laugh at himself. 

Last Activities in DC

(really delayed post)

It was a fun, but unique first Halloween for Brigham. It was really fun for him to be around cousins, but it was unique because a lot of DC is apartments, so....trick or treating....isn't done in door to door neighborhoods. So, the local mall is set up as a trick or treating headquarters. All the shops can decorate and provide candy for the kids. It is really fun actually because you get to see hundreds of kids dressed up in a short amount of time. This is sleeping Brigham and his cousins trick or treating in the mall:

  Oh, I was also super glad to have family close by to celebrate with on Halloween because Adam had class until 10pm, so we just 'dressed up' with him later for a ward party.

Oops, I also forgot to mention that we didn't even have power on Halloween in our neighborhood because of Hurricane Sandy. ha. so it was a great thing we could go to the mall.

Speaking of, here are some pics of Brigham and I toughing out the storm and no power while Adam went up to NY with his brother-in-law and sister to help with relief. Really rewarding.

Turns out Brigham LOVES fire.

Anyway, some great food places we enjoyed trying were Good Stuff Eatery (amazing, but no pic), Ray's Hell Burgers (where Brigham tried his first shake),

and Ben's Chili Bowl (where Brigham sat in the same spot Obama sat at when he ate here. Also, Bill Cosby ate here so much they named the main dish after him).

and The Fish Market. One of our last nights in DC we just wanted to get out of the house and drive around. It was beautiful to see the city at night....but we took a couple accidental turns and found a hidden (but popular) fish market. Oh, so good! All the fish is caught in the tidal basin and Potomac right behind the wharf.

Our last outing in the National Mall was to the Natural History Museum and the Hirshhorn Modern Art Museum. The best picture we got at the Natural History Museum was us standing by a mummy, which I loved because it reminded me of seeing the tombs and mummies in Egypt, but it may be kinda gross for a blog. 

Now, the Modern Art Museum was super cool! I love modern art (and so does Adam) so we were really excited to go. They were featuring works of Ai Weiwei - the Chinese contemporary artist/political activist who openly criticizes the Chinese government through various art forms. Adam was really excited to see some of his artworks. You can see in this picture how he purchased 2,000+ yr old urns from the Han Dynasty and trivially painted over them and smashed them. 

Another one of his symbolic pieces:

This was just another one of our favorite pieces that shows the phases of the moon.

The last thing we did in DC was visit Adam's sister at her work downtown to get a tour and go to lunch. She works at the offices at the Williard Hotel. It is gorgeous and has a beautiful view of downtown.

 She works directly across the street from the White House. So, after lunch we took the time to go see the White House.

 And meet the famous White House neighbor. (if you want to know more you should look up the permanent protestor online).

AZ Trip/Brigham's Blessing

I know.
I know.
I'm way behind, but I have to at least post about the rest of our AZ trip last October because Brigham was blessed. It was so humbling to be able to bless him in my parents home with all my extended family there. They were so nice to wait an extra day before traveling home to be there for it.

  I have the best family!

 Seriously, it was so cool to have both of his great-grandparents there. Bunny sewed him this AMAZING white blanket. It is gorgeous. She said it took her 100+ hours.

Grandma Cookie gave him his blessing outfit. She even found it at the same boutique she bought my blessing dress from. Isn't she thoughtful?

Brigham was upset at one point so Didn started singing to him and he loved it. I'm so glad Amanda caught this on camera.

A major highlight was just to be with my cousins. 

Blake and Brigham finally got to meet.

We were also able to sneak away and celebrate Steph's bday at a family favorite restaurant.

 Oh, and the extended family visits ended with an oreo party. Amanda even showed us a new milk dipping technique. genius.

Luckily, Brigham and I were able to stay with in AZ for an extra week after everyone else went home. So, we were able to spend some real time with my fam. We were also there for Stanton and Jenni's wedding present opening gathering that Jenni's family has made a tradition. It was nice to get together again as families after all the wedding dust settled.

It was good to be with fam, but Adam was so happy when we flew home since he was by himself for an entire week.