Happy Birthday Hailey!

Hailey celebrated the big 3 on December 5th! I can't believe how time flies! She is officially no longer a baby even though her nickname for us is "baby". I still am in awe that she is here and is ours. You know, I always thought that miracles happened to other people, not me.

Hailey is so much fun at this age. She totally tells me everything that's going on in her little head. These are currently Hailey's "favorites" (not in any particular order)......

1. Storytime at the library

2. Her "best" friends Abigail and Alex

3. Pretty dresses

4. Hawaii and the beach (she still talks about it almost daily)

5. Barbies with pretty dresses

6. Her new Easy Link for the computer

7. Reading books with mom on the rocking chair

8. Music (any kind, anywhere)

9. Dancing to music

10. Going to church, because she gets to wear a pretty dress AND play with toys and sing songs

Love you, Baby!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know this is a bit late, but I, myself haven't been on my own blog for over a week. Got a bit of catching up to do.

Todd's sister and her family came from Massachusetts for Thanksgiving weekend. This is everyone just sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner. It was a lot of fun to be with some family for the holiday. We actually take turns for Thanksgiving each year so we can be together. Thanks for coming Howard and Melanie, it was a blast!

Twilight

Opening Night for "Twilight"! There were 20 of us that went together for a "Girl's Night Out". It was so much fun to go together to the movie and out for dinner/dessert afterwards. Even though we all had some pretty high expectations of the movie, we all enjoyed it very much! I've got some of the best girlfriends around! Thanks you guys for a great evening! We need to do it again, soon!

Can you tell we are diehard fans? We were the only 3 in the building with t-shirts and all the teenagers were jealous!

We just got back from the kid's piano recital. We stopped them from dashing to their rooms to change out of their church clothes and had them record their presentations for you. They are all getting quite good.

Tyler

Emily

Michael

The kids really like their new teacher and we like not having to drive 20 miles to go the one we had before Mr. B.. We wish you could have all been here to see it, but this will have to do.

Trick-Or-Treat!!!!

Halloween is my favorite holiday! Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Christmas (everyone else's favorite). But there's just something about carving pumpkins, corn mazes, apple cider, costumes and of course trick-or-treating that just makes me giddy with excitement! Not to mention it's my dad's birthday,too. Happy Birthday Dad! I, myself don't dress up anymore, but love taking the kids out for Beggar's Night (that's what they call it here). The picture above (compliments of my photographer neighbor, Toni) is Hailey trying to keep up with big sister trick-or-treating. She absolutely loved it this year, and asked me for about a month when she would be going trick-or-treating. She is not yet 3 years old, and would not let me go with her to the porches. She made me stay out on the sidewalk while she went up herself, and told me to "stay right there". For those of you who know Hailey's personality, this is quite an accomplishment as she is painfully shy with those she doesn't know very well. The boys were too old to hang around the "little kids" and went off on their own, with the rule that they didn't leave the subdivision. Todd stayed at our house handing out goodies, a job he prefers to do which is fine with me because I like going with the kids. It was a cold one this year, but we still got the loot, hitting EVERY house with a light on in our neighborhood. Happy Halloween everybody!

Hawaii is no longer on my "Really don't care to see it list."

Anyone who knows me knows that I don't like big tourist spots. Disney--you can have it. Although, my family really enjoys the place, so I go, I really would rather be somewhere else like North Dakota, Maine, Oregon, etc. The only reason I wanted to go to Hawaii is because it was one of the places I had to visit on my 50 by 50 goal. So, when the opportunity was there, I had to do it. It was there, or Alaska because I've hit all the others.

On the October 14th, Amy, the kids and I went to Hawaii. We visited the island of Oahu for the seven days we were there and never ran out of things to do. This first picture was our first day there and we are at the world renouned Waikiki beach. It was beautiful and the water was so clear that you could see the bottom in 12 feet of water.


The only real negative item we encountered the whole trip was the jet-lag. These pictures were taken at 3am Hawaii time, with the kids wide awake because body time was 9am. We watched cartoons for 4 hours, until the sun came up (no daylight savings time in Hawaii). Even little Hailey was wide awake. She kept the early-bird thing going all week long. It didn't matter what time we put her to bed, she was up by 5am local time. Normally, since it was Amy's vacation too, that meant that Dad got to get up with her to watch cartoons.

Some of the fun things we did in Hawaii? We swam, we ate, we swam some more, we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center, BYU Hawaii, the Temple, swam some more, had shaved ice, swam, visted Pearl Harbor, swam, hiked a trail to Manoa Falls, fell down in the mud, swam some more, tried to drive the rental into the ocean, swam some more, snorkeled, visited Lanikai beach, swam some more, climbed a crater, visited some world war two sites and swam some more. It was one of the most fun vacations I have had and I have had some fun ones.

We ate Malasadas. If you don't know what those are, there is a place in Waikiki that is famous for them called Leonard's Bakery. I gained 10 pounds just eating those. You can find their recipe on the foodnetwork.com.

I really enjoyed myself there. I would not want to live in Hawaii, but a prolonged stay would definitely be nice. By the way, we grabbed the phone book to find a church building, almost like being in Idaho, or Colorado, there were four buildings right in Honalulu and 10 Stakes on the island we were visited.

So, would I go back? Yes!