Children's museum

When Ben's mom was here we took the kids to see the Houston children's museum. They had such a great time. Hailey spent lots of time playing in the mini grocery store. She loved getting to pick out all her own stuff. I spent most of my time in the "Tot Spot" with Hunter. They had so many fun things in there for little ones to explore. It was also cool because I met a lady in there from China and got to chat with her in chinese for over an hour.



This was getting frustrated when all the food turned out to be plastic. He really enjoyed looking at the chicks in the little hatchery though.

Picture time...

Have I used that as a title for one of my previous blogs??
I learned something valuable this weekend while attempting to have grandma help us take a few family pictures: it is just cruel and unusual punishment to take an explorative 14 month old and his equally curious three year old sister outside and ask them to sit still and smile for pictures. Silly me. Perhaps I will just give up and pay someone to take pictures in a studio where the children will have nowhere to run...(insert devious laughter here). Actually, it was a beautiful February day and it was fun to watch Hailey and Hunter enjoy themselves so much. We're glad Ben's mom can be here for a little bit to see it.

It's about time...

Well, I'd say it's about time for a new post here. Geez. I was waiting for something really cool to write about...don't get your hopes up, I didn't really think of one. Hmmm, well, last week we got a piano. It was actually really funny because I found it on the craigslist for the Houston area and as it turns out, the lady lives like 3 blocks away in my neighborhood. The piano is old and can use some work, of course, but the price was good and Ben has been really wanting one for years now (he plays very well). I don't. It's funny though, I've got a beginner's book for adults and I'm a practice-aholic. Ben says whereas you have to force a kid to practice the piano when they are taking lessons, I'm pretty much the opposite (I've spent probably 1-2 hrs at it each day so far). I can play "When the Saints go Marching In" now. Pretty cool. Here's a picture. Please take note of the bench. The day after we got the piano I got all domestic and reupholstered it (you don't even want to know how nasty the floral fabric that it came with was). I was so proud of my little project...
Well, now the kids and I are off to Utah for two weeks. I have a friend from my mission getting married and since we had already decided to spend the money we thought we might as well make a trip out of it. Until next time...

Jammies

Is my blog getting more boring, or what? Not much is going on, I guess. Add to that the junkiness of our camera, and you get fairly sporadic blogs. We had a nice Christmas and New Years. The kids really enjoyed having daddy home for a few days.
Hunter is a full on walker now...it is so cute. This picture is from Christmas morning. Santa wanted him to know which stocking/gift was for him, so he put a banana in front of it. Hunter was so excited he walked up and started eating through the peel. Funny kid.

Here they are in their new footed jammies that they got for Christmas. It's funny to see such a big girl in these kind of jammies, but it is also so cute. We have to check the weather report to make sure they can wear these and not get all sweaty at night. As an example of what I mean...it is 80 degrees out today (no cozy warm pj's tonight)!

Happy Holidays

It's 9:00 on Christmas morning and we're still waiting for Hunter to wake up so we can go downstairs. I think this may be our last year that we really get to sleep in. I couldn't resist posting just a few more pre-Christmas pictures before all the festivities begin.

Long time no see

What? It's not like we dropped off the face of the earth or anything....we just neglected our blog for a few months. My bad. I don't know what to write, too much has happened. Rather than try and post it all, perhaps I will just put my Christmas letter on here (since I'm so defunct that I won't actually be mailing it out either). So let's just explain some of these pictures.
This first one is from when I was trying to get the kiddos to be agreeable so I could take a picture for their birthday party invitations.


Ok, this is not the best picture, but here I am painting our powder room downstairs. The heart was a nice touch...right? I've learned that painting a bathroom is a lot more work than it looks like, but I really think it looks nice.


Hailey and Daddy playing outside in the "cold" December weather.


Here's our Hunter boy on his birthday. He had a pretty good time with his cake. It was very cute.


It was great to have my dad come to visit again. He was here for Hailey and Hunter's birthday party, and was such a huge help. We were sad that he had to go back home.

Here we are!

I guess it really is time for me to update this bad boy. If for no other reason than to post a couple of cute Halloween picts then so be it. Actually, I guess a lot has happened since last time I wrote on here. So where do I start? First of all, on Oct 19 I took Hailey and Hunter to San Diego where we met up with my dad, my brother Grant, my stepmom, and my stepsister. We were supposed to go scuba diving and to Sea World and all that but those darn wildfires just ruined all the fun. We ended up getting evacuated from my uncle's house where we were staying. Luckily I have several cousins who live nearby, so we got juggled around to their houses. It was a scary time for everyone and I felt bad trying to have a decent vacation while everyone's lives were in chaos. We did end up driving north to go to the beach one day and managed to go to the San Diego Zoo on another. Kinda crazy for a "vacation", but it was really nice to see family at least. But for the record, traveling alone with 2 kids...not particularly fun. I love them anyways though.
Here's Hailey enjoying the beautiful weather in San Diego-this was obviously before the fires...when it was still safe to breathe outside.

Hunter hanging out with some of his friends at the zoo.
Hailey and grandma Nette at the beach-we just kept driving north till the air was clean and ended up at Laguna beach for the day.


Now on to the Halloweeny goodness. If you can call it that. Part of the experience was not so pleasant because Hailey is going through this extremely opinionated/extremely contrary/extremely fond of throwing tantrums phase. I hear she'll grow out of it by the time she is 23. Long story short, she didn't want to wear any of the 6 costumes we provided. Finally we forced her in to something and plugged our ears while she screamed. Good times. She did however really enjoy getting up on the stage at our ward party for the costume contest, and nothing could be better than trick or treating with her cousins.Tell me this isn't the cutest lobster you have ever seen!

Whoa-who's that hottie?

Not the best picture, but if you can't tell, at the ward party Hailey was my twin Cinderella.