Colin Vs. the Yogurt

This video is from January, but I just had to share! So funny!

We love to read!

I just thought these pics were cute. Not too long ago we turned the loft area at the top of the stairs into a little reading/ play kitchen nook. Everyday they're either creating a masterpiece of waffles with broccoli in the play kitchen, or reading books to each  other. It's cute and I love to sit with them and play.

I've decided if you have claustrophobia, once you become a mother, you need to just get over it. Fast. Every time I read it becomes a game as to who can occupy the most space on Mom. Kids are climbing over me as I move the book all around so that I can see the pages. sometimes it becomes very annoying, but most of the time, I just deal with it and try to enjoy this time when they like being so close to me!

Speaking of reading, Thomas is doing fantastic! He's now reading Step 2 and Step 3 books, which are for kids in grades 1-4! the neatest thing of all is that now that he can read books himself, he reads so much more. Maybe it's because he can read by himself, alone in a quiet corner, without having to deal with Colin and Hailey climbing all over?! I'm jealous!

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything I said above. It's just Colin being Colin. He is such a funny kid! He loves to carry toys around in this basket. Empties it. Fills it. Then often times, climbs on in himself and just sits there a while. It's a good thing he's small or I'd have several episodes of Colin in the basket extractions on tape!

Brothers... Asleep

I just have to laugh. Hailey never did anything like this, so my two boys much have the "sleep anywhere" gene in common.

For those who don't know, Thomas was well known for falling asleep just about anywhere. In our arms, in the car, on the church pew, on his bedroom floor, even standing up!

Seems like Colin is following suit. In the past few weeks, we've found him just like this in his high chair twice. Now we're not just putting him there and leaving him forever either! We put him in and he eats while Adrian or I run around, getting everyone else's lunch. Then eventually, someone says, "Uh, Colin fell asleep!" And to which we reply by grabbing the camera.

A Colin Funny...

Colin just adores playing in the kitchen. I see him in there just about everyday cooking up some new concoction! I found him a couple weeks ago and thought to record it. Enjoy!

Day to Day Stuff

It seems like I only post about holidays lately, so I thought I'd take a second and post a few things that have been happening around here on a more day to day level!

One bit of exciting news- Thomas lost his first tooth! His front 4 have been loose for over a year now, but with a little encouragement, he wiggled it non-stop for about a week and eventually it came out. {With a little help from Adrian!} It's funny though- he still hasn't put it under his pillow for the tooth fairy! Money or not, it appears he'd rather have his tooth. I've even caught him brushing it a few times! LOL!

Colin started walking about 3 weeks ago, but now officially prefers it to crawling, which is so fun to watch! He's still so small, so it just doesn't look right having him walk all over the house. He's such a cute kid. I'm working on getting his 1 year scrapbook finished. the kids have enjoyed seeing my progress, I just wish I enjoyed the process more!

One really funny thing about Colin is that, ever since he started crawling several months ago, it's a fun hobby of his to make obstacle courses out of every day items. He'll crawl under beds and pillows, through kitchen chairs, up and over folding chairs, etc. He does it everywhere! At church he'll crawl through every one's chairs. Yep, he just wriggles his way in between your legs and crawls up and over both bars underneath. Funny kid!

Hailey turned 3 last week, but I'll save the details on that for a separate post. She is a funny girl. She's in that stage where she says things well beyond her years, only she doesn't get why Adrian and I are laughing so hard. the other day she was playing with a Barbie and a tiny army man and Barbie said to army man, "We're now going to get married, I hope that's OK with you!?" LOL!

For the most part these kids love hanging out with each other, so here are a few fun pics of them doing just that.

Christmas, 2009

We had a fun Christmas this year! Adrian's family in CA came out and visited and we all enjoyed hanging out with one another.

With each family growing, we didn't do a whole lot, aside from hanging out and playing with new toys. However, it seems like the kids enjoyed doing just that!

We did go to temple Square one night. It was COLD. We ate at the Nauvoo Cafe though, which was fantastic!

The folks from CA enjoyed all the snow we got while they were here. They created a hill in the back yard and the kids took turns sliding down it! Then Keoki got creative and hollowed it out to create a little igloo.

Thanksgiving, 2009

This year for Thanksgiving, we decided to do things a little differently. The stage in life we're at, I feel like we're constantly in family mode. I plan things to be easier to do with small children, whether it be a trip to the grocery store, or an outing to the park. However, the vast majority of our family members don't have small children and likewise, aren't in "little people" mode all the time! It's completely understandable, and I don't blame them at all for it!

This year we decided to stay home and plan the day around our schedule. It was wonderful! Raz and Kory came over with their kids, Elise and Cameron, so we had 4 adults and 5 kids ages 6 and under. We had dinner at noon, then took a break for naps and such, then reconvened at 5pm for leftovers and dessert. It was soooo nice. The kids were well behaved since they were eating at their normal times. We were all also able to take naps, which was heavenly! I think we might be on to a new tradition here!

Here are a few fun pics of the lovely holiday...

Adrian had this fun idea to trace every one's hands, then have us all write down what we were thankful for. It was fun going around the table, telling everyone what we wrote down. Thomas then had the distinguished job of attaching the hands to the paper tree Adrian constructed. And this is how it turned out!

Hailey didn't feel well that day. She took one bite of dinner and opted to go to bed. She got up later on, but fell asleep on Daddy shortly thereafter. He didn't seem to mind.

Halloween, 2009

Halloween was actually really fun this year. Thomas is old enough to really get excited about all the events and Hailey thinks she's just as big, so she follows right along!

We made Thomas' Wall-E costume! Although we're both pretty creative, neither Adrian or I score really high on the craftiness scale, so I was impressed we were able to pull it together. We made Wall-E, version 1 and 5 minutes after arriving to Thomas' school Halloween parade, Wall-E broke into 3 pieces! Sad. Thomas took it pretty well. When he got home, I scoured the house for anything that could help poor Wall-E survive and resurrected him! Thankfully he stayed together and we were able to Trick-or-Treat at Adrian's work and around the neighborhood. Yes, we have truck loads of candy.

Hailey was a "Pretty Pink Princess Fairy" this year. That's a direct quote out of her cute, little 2.5 year old mouth! She wouldn't come close to cleaning out the pumpkins with us, but she did her best to be involved with all the fun. She got pretty scared a few times while Trick-or-Treating. Thomas tried to help her be brave, but she went running and screaming from a few houses, despite his best efforts.

Colin was a dinosaur! He was napping while we carved pumpkins and stayed home with Dad while the rest of us were Trick-or-Treating, but I made up for it by letting him lick a Dum Dum a few times. He enjoyed it.

Hope everyone had a fun Halloween!

Happy First Birthday Colin!

Today is Colin's first birthday! Happy Birthday my sweet boy! Last night I was reflecting a lot on his birth. You can go read the short-version here. It was my first au-naturale delivery and in a nutshell, it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life!! It wasn't easy by any means, but it was very, very worth it! At any rate, he came and we were so glad to have him join our family.

He really is a sweet boy too. He started crawling a while ago but for what seems like a long time he army crawled! Boy was he fast though! I was super excited when he started to crawl normally because the front of his shirts were a lot less dirty! now he's standing up and cruising furniture. He's a climber- he can zoom up the stairs so fast! Makes me nervous. He's now got 3 teeth with two more on the way. He's still a little guy- his next appt isn't for another 2 weeks, but my scale says around 18 lbs. He's got those big brown eyes that just melt your heart. He's going to be a ladies man I can already tell. He certainly knows how to work a crowd and can be such a ham. His newest fascination is roaring like a dinosaur. Everytime he does it we all crack up- it's so cute!

As you can tell by the pics, he tore into his cake like no other! He had fun mashing it for a while, then I finally clued him in to how good it tastes, and well, that was fun too! Here's a video showing you the whole experience!

Overall it was a fun night. And now my baby is ONE!

Our cute Hailey

Sugar and spice and everything nice.....LOLOLOLOL! The individual who wrote that obviously never met my Hailey. She came home from the park today with about 2 lbs of sand in her onesie. The funny thing is, I didn't notice anything, so I sat her up to lunch and she ate without saying anything about it! Afterwards she said "something's itchy" so I started investigating and felt her bottom and swiftly got her outside before my living room became a beach! I unbuttoned it and out came TONS of sand. Crazy girl.

The real reason behind this post is to show you all these cute pictures of how Hailey decided to do her nails all by herself! What a treat, huh?! She came walking down the stairs yesterday morning saying, "Look at my nails, they're so pretty." I immediately knew what she had done and dashed upstairs to survey the damage. I was shocked to find NOTHING. She didn't spill a drop! She was so proud of herself and gladly posed for a few pictures. All the while Mommy was repeating to her, "We don't do our nails without Mommy's help- next time ask for Mommy!"

I even had a couple of nursery workers at church come tell me how Hailey showed them her pretty fingers!

My Sweet Colin!

I just wanted to do a quick update on Colin. What a little doll he is! He'll be 11 months old next week and is officially everywhere. He's been on the move for a while now, but lately it's stepped up a notch, literally. I walked into the family room this last week to find him on the 3rd stair up! Yikes! Up goes the baby gate. He still does a funny little combination of army-crawl/ real crawl, but don't worry, this doesn't seem to slow him down. Whenever he pulls himself up to something new or turbo-crawls over to a new place he's always so proud of himself! I love his little celebration grins! I absolutely can't believe he'll be a year old in a few weeks. Where does the time go?! In other areas, he's thriving. He babbles on and on and loves to play peek-a-boo. He is a mama's boy and 90% of the time I adore that. {The other 10% of the time I need a break!} He's often my little side-kick though and I love it. Good thing he enjoys grocery shopping! :)

Thomas Started Kindergarten!

I know, I've been a blogging slacker! I apologize! Really, not much has changed until very recently. This last week we had a BIG milestone in our family's life-- Thomas started Kindergarten! Here he is on his big day wearing his new favorite color. Yes, green is the new orange. I decided to have him in afternoon Kindergarten because it's just going to be easier on our schedule. Colin & Hailey nap while Thomas is at school...so maybe I'll actually get a couple hours to myself?! We'll see! His teacher, Mrs. Wells is fantastic and the school is incredible. It looks much different now that it's almost finished, but if you have some spare time, you can go see details on it here. We're excited to have hit this incredible milestone with Thomas! One funny thing. He had to take his assessment test and was beyond excited about it all week. Oh how I love that the word test doesn't have negative connotation...yet!

Our California Vacation!

We've been back for a few weeks now and I finally feel like I'm getting settled! We took a 9-day vacation to California at the end of June, early July. We drove out (sounds scary, but it really wasn't too bad!) to San Jose and spent several days with Adrian's parents, then drove 3 hours north to Auburn, CA for a few days with my family!

In San Jose we swam at the pool a lot, but also took day trips to San Francisco, the beach, and Gilroy Gardens, a really fun children's amusement park. The kids played hard each day but did really well with the added driving, etc. They slept in a tent at Grammie & Papa's house- how fun was that?!

In Auburn, my step-dad, Michael surprised us with a plane ride! Adrian, Thomas I went up and flew all around Auburn for a while. It was SO MUCH FUN! i was a little nervous as my stomach just isn't very tolerant of events like this, but it was so worth the minor queasiness! Thomas loved it. I tell ya, I had so much fun watching him enjoy the ride.

My mom & Michael live in this neat community called the Lake of the Pines. It's a moutain-esque development built around a man made lake. There are beaches everywhere with playgrounds and built-in cabanas. Talk about being spoiled! It was a lot of fun swimming and haning out with my family!

Here are several pics from the trip. If you have a lot of extra time on your hands and want to see more, go here: share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbtWLVkzZNWG8.