Christmas Elves

Dave and I have been little Christmas elves over the past several days working on our Christmas gifts for Haylie. When I was a little girl my mom made my sister and I this dollhouse. She has kept it around and we brought it home from her house when we were there for Thanksgiving. I spent hours playing in front of it as a kid and now I will get to give it to Haylie for Christmas. Of course it needed some major work to bring it into this decade and that is what I have been working on every chance I get for the past 3 weeks. It has been really fun to redecorate, but I am glad that it is almost finished. I have a few curtains to make today, and finish up a few pieces of furniture but otherwise it is ready for Christmas Morning.

Here is what the house looked like when I got it. It brought back a lot of memories to see it. Thanks mom for making a great house, and for keeping it around for me.


And here is the newly remodeled house!

I got carpet samples from Nampa Floors and Interior, the wall paper I found at Lowes for super cheap. (I think they must be discontinuing wallpaper sales.) Dave helped by cutting the wood for the furniture. I will post some more pictures when I finish the curtains and the rest of the furniture.


While I have been out in the garage, Dave has been at the sewing machine creating his vision of a cape for our in-house superhero, Superfast! Haylie made up her own super hero name a few months back and now she will have a costume! She runs around saying, "I'm Superfast...I can do anything!!" She will love this. Now we have set the bar high with special homemade gifts. I don't know how long we can keep this up!
Merry Christmas!!!

8 months

Zander is 8 months old today. It doesn't seem possible! He should still be a newborn! I get sad sometimes thinking about how fast both him and Haylie are growing up. Dave always reminds me that our job is not to keep them little, but to teach them and and help them return to Heavenly Father. I will just have to try to enjoy this time to the fullest. Anyway, Zander is such a sweet little boy. He LOVES to jump in the jumparoo. We are a little worried that the springs will give out because he gets so crazy in that thing. He jumps clean out of the seat sometimes. He also loves Haylie and laughs at just about everything she does...including when she cries (she really loves that).
The silly boy still doesn't roll over and I think it is about to drive Dave crazy. It does make it easy to watch him because he doesn't go anywhere, but we are getting anxious for him to to something else. He is starting to get a little bored with his current tricks. He loves to eat baby food, and we are getting a little more adventurous with table food. The pictures here are just some random shots that were taken over Thanksgiving.

Haylie's 3rd Birthday

Haylie had her 3rd birthday on December 1st. She ended up having three different celebrations for it too. I guess one per year right? First she had a party with my family while we were at my parent's house for Thanksgiving. The thing about Haylie is that she LOVES the idea of a party. She loves invitations, balloons, party hats, and cake...although she usually doesn't eat the cake. We sent invitations to all her aunts, uncles and cousins, and of course to grandma and grandpa. We opened presents, then sang and ate cupcakes and ice cream. She definitely got spoiled with lots of nice gifts for her birthday.

Her next celebration was on her actual birthday when Dave and I took her and Zander for pizza at Primos and then she opened one more present from us...a doctor's kit which she promptly used to examine Zander and me.













Note the band aid...and ignore the disaster area that we call our family room!


Haylie wanted a princess party with her friends when she found out that they wouldn't be at the party with her relatives so we invited some friends over last Thursday for a little party complete with princess cake. This was much easier to make than I expected it to be. I took pictures during that process that I will have to post later.

Haylie and Daddy

Haylie and Dave have made up tons of different games that they play together. Usually they don't involve any toys, just our living room pillows and a Dad that can be a horse, a slide, a cave, or a wrestler. Here are some pictures I took after Dave started out being a slide and then Haylie decided to put him to bed. It is so fun to watch them play together!

Thanksgiving

We are preparing to leave tomorrow for Thanksgiving to visit my family in Perry, Utah. We all get together there ever other year so here goes another big family get together! It should be pretty fun. My brothers and sister are some of my best friends so it is good to get to see everyone. My parents moved there about 5 years ago from Wyoming to retire and be more centrally located to all of us so it makes trips to Grandma and Grandpa's house pretty easy at least on this side of the family.
I am grateful this year for happiness. There are frustrating and disappointing moments in my life but for the most part I feel happy being a mom to my two little cutie pies and a wife to a very resourceful and handy man. He is so handy, in fact, he recently did some computer upgrades and now it takes some maneuvering to upload pictures to my blog and I am too impatient right now to figure it out. Hopefully I can get some more up soon! Happy Thanksgiving!!

Halloween

Here is a rundown of our Halloween Festivities...

We found out that even though Zander has no interest in rolling over he does have quite a talent for pumpkin carving! Zander and Dave both went as cows and I went as a cowgirl, but Haylie went outside our little theme. She had her heart set on being a butterfly.


We went to our ward Trunk or Treat and Chili feed. I was hard pressed to get Haylie to turn around for a picture...she was too busy getting the candy. She was really excited to go trick or treating. Haylie has been coming up with all kinds of Halloween related games ever since we got the Halloween stuff out at the beginning of October. From ghost hunting to riding on broomsticks, to trick or treating for pretend candy...we have done it all. I packed up the Halloween stuff today. I have to say I am not sorry to see it go. Now it will be on to imaginary Christmas games.

Here is Zander showing off his sitting skills. He is pretty steady at this point although he thinks it is funny to tip over as long as he lands on his back. He doesn't like to be on his stomach at all. That's part of the reason he won't roll over I guess. He also has a tooth on his bottom left. The time has just flown by since he has been born. It is hard to believe that he is almost 7 months old. He is a happy baby and has made our lives even better.

Haircut

I took Haylie to Fantastic Sam's to get her first haircut not given by me. She didn't want to lean back to get her hair washed, but she didn't start crying until they took her back to the chair.

I had to bribe her with ice cream to stop crying. Amazing how she turned it off at the thought of a treat!


Here is the end result. I can't believe how much older she looks with it!! She still thought we should put some ponytails in this morning. I am excited because I don't have to do to much to it to make it look cute.

Pumpkin Patch

Last Monday we went to Linder Farms for Family Home Evening. We had never been before so we weren't sure what to expect. We ended up having a great time but we used all our tokens before we got to the petting zoo and stuff. We had fun anyway, but forgot our camera so these pictures were taken with Dave's phone. Haylie stayed on the top of the inflatable slide for about 10 minutes until some kid grabbed her around the waist and finally pulled her down. She has become such a chicken about slides!

Funny Kids

It is so great to be a mom to a hilarious almost 3 year old. She makes me laugh almost everyday with the funny things she says and the conclusions she makes about the world from her limited experience. On Thursday, I had Zander sitting up on the floor. He can pretty much sit there by himself but is still a little wobbly. So I was helping Haylie do a puzzle while he was sitting there playing with a toy and the he fell backwards and bonked his head on the floor. I picked him up and was comforting him. Haylie said, "It's okay mom, it will still work. His head will still work." It doesn't sound as funny when I tell it but it cracked me up! We are just glad that Zander is sitting up since he still thinks rolling over is overrated.

Summer of Fun

Dave suggested I post some of the fun things we got to do this past summer. His job at URS gives him every other Friday off so we got to do some fun things especially since he doesn't have to be on call anymore like he was when he worked at HP.

In June we went to Utah for my family's reunion. We spent one of the days at Lagoon, and the other at my mom and dad's house doing all kinds of things including a pirate treasure hunt. I realize that there are not any pictures of Zander during these events. He was in fact there but he was too busy eating, sleeping and pooping at this point of his life to ride the rides at Lagoon or be bothered with a treasure hunt!


Haylie flying her airplane. She kept pushing her little controller back and forth, making her plane go up and down about twice as fast as anyone else on the ride.
Haylie and I on the Dragon roller coaster. We are in the very back.
Uncle J.D. as the pirate for the Treasure Hunt at Grandma's house.
Pirate Haylie!!
Haylie modeling the pirate booty...fancy dress up shoes! Too bad her Fred Flintstone feet don't even begin to fit in those skinny little things!

Miracle

I found out today that a pregnant friend of mine had her water break only 23 weeks along. While I don't yet know what the outcome will be I am praying for her and her family. At the same time I am realizing how much I take for granted the miracle of giving birth to two healthy babies. I was blessed to have relatively easy pregnancies, easy deliveries, and healthy babies. I will try to remember when I don't think I have any patience left to hug those little guys and remember whose children they really are and how blessed I am to be their mother.

Zander David

Welcome to the World!

Zander in his first professional pictures. He was 4 months old.

Zander and his cousin Tayson. I think Zander was about 3 months in this pic and Tayson was 4 months.

Zander is 5 months old and is pretty laid back. He is happy almost all the time and has been sleeping through the night since he was about 2 months old. He doesn't roll over yet, he just seems content to lay on his back and watch the world go by. His favorite thing to watch is Haylie and her endless energy. When he has free time he like to squawk happily at the top of his lungs, suck his thumb, and grab his foot and suck his big toe or the thumb of the hand holding the foot.

Haylie Ann

I decided I would start out with a little bit about each of my cute little ones. Haylie will be 3 in December. She is super happy most of the time and has an extremely vivid imagination. This means that one of Zander's blue blankets is a waterfall down the stairs, every toy we own must be rescued from a cage on a regular basis, and we take trips to the beach almost every day. I think she must watch too much TV because she has only been to the beach once and she was only 6 months old at the time. Haylie knows lots of songs but her favorites are the ABC song and I Am A Child of God. As I am writing this she is singing the Wonder Pets theme song and saving her bath toys. Our latest challenge is potty training. I shouldn't say latest because we have been working on it since about 3 weeks before Zander was born. She decided to revolt after two weeks of underwear and now I am back to buying diapers! I guess it will all come in time, but frankly, I am tired of poop!! It will make good stories for her teenage years. Here are some pictures of our Sweet Haylie Ann.

Haylie loves popcorn! I bought this huge bag for our primary talent show and she loved to give it hugs.

Testing out daddy's motorcycle boots

Haylie's "safari hat" aka underwear! Too bad she doen't use them for the right purpose!

She is such a big girl!!

I joined the crowd!!

I have been a closet blog reader for the past couple of weeks so I figured I might as well join just about everyone I know and start my own blog. I can't believe that with Dave's love of technology we haven't started one before. Of course, Dave is always on his motorcycle forum Boiseriders.net that he created so he doesn't have time to blog I guess.