Happy Kings Day!

We wanted to go mini-golfing, but there were no balls.  So, Aly took control and got us some.

For Martin Luther King Day we got together with my mom, sister Aly, brother Blake, sister-in-law Nicole and kiddos.  All day long Hailey kept saying, Happy Kings Day.  We went to Hollywood Connection, and it was the first time my kids had gone.  It was super crowded, but we got to do everything!  They loved the rides and golfing and lunch.  We had so much fun.  As we left, Hailey asked if we could come every Happy Kings Day.  (Mike was working, so he missed out on the fun this time. Bummer.)

2011!!

We had a fun get-together with family.  I love Hailey's face in this picture!

Ben's first loose tooth!

Notice the 2 cute teeth on the bottom

I had lost Eliza for a few minutes.  When I found her, she had found our church bag and got into a bag of fishy crackers.  She was so proud of herself!

Hailey has had a lot of haircuts in her 3 years of life, she even had two cuts before she was 1.  This haircut was her most dramatic!  We cut off about 7 or 8 inches and donated her hair for wigs for cancer patients.  I wanted to see what she would look like with really short hair, and I love it!  She is such a cutie!  She loves it too, and tells everyone how she looks like a princess.

Eliza loves being like her older brother and sister.  She loves coloring and drawing.  I don't remember my other kids doing that at 1.

Eliza learned how to use this, just backwards.  She loved pushing it around backwards, occasionally we would get her to push it the right way.  She started walking right around her 1st birthday, just like her brother. 

January 2011

Christmas Outfits and New Year's



My cute kids and their cute cousins!  The rocking chair that Eliza is sitting in was actually made by my Great Grandpa (small Grandpa), my dad fixed it up a few years ago.  

Ben and Nathan
These 2 cute cousins love playing together!  Love it!

These two are just too cute!  This is Ben's best friend and future wife Isabelle.  We had her over for a fun sleepover, and here they are cuddled up watching a movie!

My kids love sledding!  Off for another sledding/snowboarding adventure.

Happy New Year!  We had my family all come over to celebrate New Years at our house.  We played games and ate great food and had so much fun.  Amazingly the kids all stayed awake for the party.

Christmas Day with the Marsh's

Ben got a crystal bakugan from Santa and Hailey got a Tinkerbell set.  This is the after everything was unwrapped pile. 

I got a surprise with a new beach cruiser bike!



The cousins sledding in Mormor's house

I love this picture, because all around the cute newlyweds (Jake and Bri)  there is mass chaos and they are just snuggling.

My kids can't get enough of sledding, especially with Mike!

Eliza decided that eating snow was the best thing about sledding!

Eliza playing with her huge chunk of snow!



Okay, so we all got these awesome monkey pj's that have footie's and everything.  Here is a picture of me riding my sweet new beach cruiser bike wearing my pj's.  Our neighbors got a good laugh!

We had such a fun Christmas Day.  The kids were so excited to see that Santa had come and unwrap their presents.  We went over to my mom's for a delicious breakfast and opened more presents there.  We have a new tradition of sledding with Santa on Christmas Day.  We did this last year and the kids loved it!  This year we had to go up to the canyons to find enough snow.  Unfortunately, Santa had a really bad sledding run and hit 2 major bumps going down.  Bump 1 he lost his hat, bump 2 he lost his glasses and beard.  Surprise to our kids that Santa was grandpa Buddy!  We quickly explained that Santa was tired from delivering presents and Buddy was his helper.  Our kids understood, but I'm sure we traumatized all the other kids sledding on the hill with us!



Christmas Eve with the Wootton's

Mike's mom playing Christmas carols and Hailey singing with Grandma Margaret and Grandpa Bert

Ben after the fun candy cane hunt!

These 2 pictures are my favorites.  All the kids got zhu-zhu pets from Santa.  Eliza made this cute and crazy face every time she caught the zhu-zhu.  We just kept sending it her way because it was so funny!

We had such a fun Christmas Eve with Mike's family.  Their family has great traditions.  The favorite is Christmas Bingo, complete with Bingo cards made by Mike's Grandma Margaret.  The kids and adults love the prize bucket for bingo.  We also added a candy cane hunt this year, and the kids loved it!  Eliza was so cute and excited about everything.  I love Christmas with kids, it is so fun seeing their excitement over everything.

December Fun

This picture was taken at night, so it looks a little crazy.  But, this is Ben and Mike's snow bunny

Ben wanted me to take a picture of his cool transformer block guy.  I was impressed with his block building skills



Ben playing on his snow fort



If Ben watches almost any commercial he thinks he needs what is advertised.  Ben has been asking for a shoes under for along time!  I was going to give him one just for fun for his birthday, but he got spoiled with his snowboarding gear.  So, I decided to buy both kids a shoes under and we had the 12 days of shoes under!  We put wrapped little toys in each of the shoe slots & the kids got to open one a day until Christmas.  They loved it!  We had that countdown, countdown blocks for the month of December, and chocolate advent calendars.  Ben and Hailey are at the perfect age, Christmas was so fun & exciting this year!



Where's Hailey?  We had a fun but very cold adventure in the Draper Park.  We went on a candy cane hunt!  The kids loved it and got fun toys afterward.  Eliza only lasted a few minutes.  It was snowing the whole time. 



After the candy cane hunt we surprised our kids with a trip to Incredible Pizza.  This was our first trip here and will definitely not be the last!  All 3 kids had a great time, this is a Ben getting ready to race!  Eliza was so cute and loved going on all the car rides and watching the kids play.

 12/4/2010-12/20/2010

November Randomness

Mike is a great project builder. We decided we wanted to do a deck. Here is a picture of the beginning of the deck. 11/6/2010
Hailey loves to be daddy's helper! Here is a picture of the 2 of them working hard. 11/20/2010

Mike and I taught Ben's church class in 2010. They were such a fun class! It was great getting to know all of the kids Ben's age. We believe in bribing children, so this is a picture of our class during their pizza party. They earned points every week in church if they were reverent and it took them about 10 weeks to earn enough points for a pizza party! It was a fun afternoon!

I love when Eliza does her tepee stand! She thinks she is so funny every time she does this. She looks through her legs and just laughs and laughs. Silly girl!

Well, the snow stopped the deck building fun. But, it brought on the sledding fun. This is Mike, Ben, Ben's friend Isabelle, and Hailey getting ready for some sledding fun just down the street. Ben, Isabelle, and Mike lasted about 3 hours and had so much fun!

Thanksgiving was a bit crazy for us this year. We go over to Mike's families for breakfast every year. We went to his Grandma Margaret's this year. We had been there a couple hours and had a lot of fun when Eliza got grumpy and tired. So, I decided to leave Mike & the kids there and bring her home. On the ride home she threw up all over! Poor little thing was such a mess. Then Mike hitched a ride home not to long after and he was sick too! We were supposed to go to my Mom's for Thanksgiving dinner, but Mike couldn't even get out of bed to watch Eliza. Eliza took a late nap, so I grabbed Ben and Hailey and went to my mom's. We actually made it through dinner then Mike called me when Eliza woke up and I went home to take care of the sick ones. It was quite the crazy day, and one we won't forget!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

For the two of you that read my blog...it has been a while since I have blogged. The main reason being that Mike got a new job!!! This is a great thing, he doesn't have to travel anymore! Maybe once a year instead of once a month! The only downside is that he no longer has his work laptop and that's where we kept all of our pictures. Now all we have is old bertha pc that we bought in 2002 and it takes way too long to download pictures and stuff. So I will just record some of my favorite kid things over the past few months.

Eliza always had hiccups when I was pregnant with her. One Dr. visit she was hiccuping when he was checking her heartbeat. When she came out she still got the hiccups all the time. But, a few months ago the hiccups stopped, I kinda miss them they were so cute.

8/5/10 Ben was reading a book and came to the word pal and asked what a pal was. I said that a pal is like a friend. Ben said ,"a pal is kinda like me and grandpa Buddy cause we really like each other". (Grandpa Buddy is my dad)

Hailey says mustard munsterd, and Ben still says aminal for animal

8/20/10 We went on a Daybreak amazing race where we followed clues through Daybreak and got prizes and ice cream and treats. At the end we watched Tarzan in the park. When Tarzan grew up in the movie, Ben said "he's a daddy now but he's wearing a diaper, weird huh?"

9/1/10 Eliza learned to super roll! So much for crawling, super rolling gets her across the room and wherever she wants to go. She can even change directions and go sideways

9/8/10 Eliza loves to eat her toes yum!

9/12/10 Ben was being crazy so Mike told him to go outside. Ben's feelings were hurt, so he went up to his room and was crying "mama mia, mama mia, mama mia"

9/25/10 We were at my families house and Eliza said Aly, it was so crazy

9/29/10 Eliza said mama without crying it

10/5/10 We were leaving to go somewhere and I was in the house getting Eliza ready. Mike and Hailey were in the garage. Mike opened the garage and then heard a scream from Hailey. He looked over and saw Hailey being pulled up by the garage. He ran over and was worried that her fingers were stuck because she was screaming, he didn't know what to do to lower the garage or try to get her. He went under her and she let go and fell into his arms safe with no harm. She told him she wanted a ride so held onto the bottom of the garage door as it went up. Luckily Mike caught her because our garage is higher than normal, she was hanging 10 feet in the air! She is a strong little thing!

10/19/10 Ben's 6th Birthday! On his big day poor little guy had to have his tonsils out. He was such a good sport, and had a really fun time at the hospital before the surgery. The nurses made him a happy birthday card and rounded up a truck and motorcycle for him. The surgical team even sang him Happy Birthday in the OR. When he was coming out of anesthesia the Dr.'s were really worried because he had his bear with him and they kept trying to give it to him to comfort him. Ben would hold it but then say it wasn't his bear. They let me come back and said he was hallucinating because he didn't know the bear was his. I laughed, he had brought the kinderbear to surgery, because it was his week to take care of the kindergarten bear. He was just trying to tell them it wasn't his bear but he was just taking care of it.

Eliza also learned to crawl backwards and clap

10/20/10 Eliza first tooth! (bottom middle right)

10/21/10 Eliza's second tooth! (bottom middle left) This explains why she was a crazy sleeper for a week!

10/24/10 Eliza is scooting crawling a lot more. She looks like a caterpillar when she crawls, she puts her head down then scoots, then looks up to see where she is, then keeps going. My favorite thing she does is to turn into a little tent. She puts her head and hands and feet down on the ground and pushes her bum up so she looks like a tent and looks between her legs at whatever is behind her.

October was the month of Eliza saying mama all the time, so cute!

11/3/10 Eliza said dada! Mike was very happy about this! Now when he comes home she says, dadadadada! Eliza also has learned to wave with her cute little right hand and she claps a lot.

Ben says "of course" all the time.

Happy Surgery Birthday to Ben

So, my cute Ben had his tonsils taken out on his 6th Birthday! I know this sounds crazy! It all started when we went to Heber. We were all sleeping in the same room & I listened all night while Ben would snore, hold his breath, then gasp for breath. He did this all night long! Ben has always snored, but I had never noticed the holding breath thing. So into an ENT we went, and sure enough his tonsils were as large as they can be & he needed them removed. We were originally going to have the surgery after Halloween because Ben loves Halloween, but then Mike got a new job. Mikes new job at American Express as an Auditing Manager is great, but the deductibles for his new insurance were not so great. So, we wanted to get his surgery done before his old insurance expired. So that left us with having his surgery on his birthday so he could still do Halloween.

We tried to make the hospital as fun as possible, and it worked! Ben had a great time before surgery; posing, talking with the doctors, and playing. The hospital staff was great when they found it it was his birthday. They rounded up toys (the motorcycle was his favorite) and made a cute birthday card for him. This was also the week that he got the Kinderbear from school. It is a bear that the kids get to take home for a week and dress up and take care of. Kinderbear got a hospital tag and got to go into surgery with Ben. We weren't in the OR, but the Dr's & nurses all sang him Happy Birthday before the surgery.

Post-op was not any fun! They came & grabbed me and brought me back as soon as he was coming to, and were worried telling me he was hallucinating and not understanding what they were saying. Of course this worried me a lot, I went back there and found my cute Ben. The nurses kept handing Ben his Kinderbear & saying here's your bear that should make you feel better, and Ben just responded by saying hoarsely "that's not my bear". So they were all freaking out because he didn't recognize his bear. I explained that it wasn't his, he was just taking care of it and everyone calmed down. Cute Ben! We ended up being in post-op for a few hours because Ben kept getting sick, poor little guy. Luckily he loves watching cartoons, so that kept his mind of his being so sick. They used every anti-nausea medicine out there and we were able to take him home. His recovery went really well. We kept him drugged up around the clock & he ate lots of boxes of push pops (those were the favorite of the 4 kinds of popsicles we bought). It was a perfect week to take care of Kinderbear! Ben and Kinderbear watched lots of movies & played his new Wii game Wii party. He was able to enjoy Halloween the next week and he no longer has sleep apnea! I'm sure his future wife will thank me that he doesn't snore anymore. A few months after the surgery he thanked me for letting him have surgery on his birthday! He is just the greatest kid ever! I don't know how I lucked out and got my cute Ben.

Future Dr???
On his way into the operating room

He did great recovering, this is 4 days after the surgery

Okay this is a silly picture, but I added it to show how much Eliza likes taking pictures. I couldn't get her to hold still so I could clip her fingernails, so I had Mike take pictures of her & she held still and did awesome! Yes she is a poser.

10/19/2010