Early Christmas

Last weekend we celebrated Christmas early with our families. Saturday Joey's family all came. We had a great time chatting and snacking. Hayden got a lot of awesome gifts. He loved all of his new things. Aunt Jen got him a new trike. He loves it. He has been putting his treasures in the trunk all week. They even got him a license plate to go with it. Oh and how could I forget, a cool light up sword! Uncle Johnny got him a dump truck with mega blocks and a cool ball. We had yummy appetizers and lasagna for dinner! It was just a great day. And to top it off my FAVORITE aunt Barbara embroidered me some tea towels! I love them!!!! Oh yeah and my favorite in-laws got me 48 BOBS candy canes! I am going to take them on the plane and share.
Sunday my parents came down. We had a nice relaxing day.
I have been running around all week getting things organized for this trip. We were running around tonight until 8:00. I am packing now. This has truly been a huge undertaking packing and planing for everything and preparing for every possible situation. I am surprised we have kept the number of suitcases down to one a piece.
My parents are coming to pick take us to the airport tomorrow. It will be the last time we see them for a while. When we get back they will be at their place in Arizona until spring!
We are excited to go and are looking forward to this journey! I hope to check in if I have time. Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year!

What's been happening?

It's been a while since I have posted.

Hayden is officially walking- climbing. He started walking at 15 months. Now he can climb practically everything.

Joey and I celebrated our 8th anniversary! Our friend TeresaAnn volunteered to watch Hayden so we could go out and celebrate. It was the first time someone besides our family has watched Hayden at our home. He did well and they had a lot of fun! We are blessed to have such great friends!!!!

I have had 4 cookie exchanges this year. I have never participated in a cookie exchange before and love them!!! I love tasting all of the different cookies people make. I have baked 13 dozen cookies this year. I barely make cookies, and certainly not that many every year. It was a blast and a great reason to get together with friends!

I have been running around planing, shopping, and organizing for this trip! It is taking a lot more planing I think since we are taking Hayden! We need to be prepared and ready to face anything tat could happen with him. Hopefully we get to Germany without any flight delays, and Hayden makes it ok on the plane!. It is going to be a LONG flight. At least the leg from Atlanta to Germany will be at night, so I hope Hayden sleeps most of the way!

We leave a week from today! I can't believe it is almost here. We are looking forward to spending time with my sister and husband. Joey and I are going to leave Hayden with my sister and are going to go to Paris over New Years! WE are soooo excited to have a little get away and can't thank my sister and her husband enough for offering to keep Hayden so we can have some time to ourselves!

This weekend we are celebrating Christmas with our families, and cutting up all of the huge branches in our yard.

Santa came early this year for Hayden and brought him a kitchen! Daddy wasn't too sure about getting a kitchen, but after seeing how much Hayden loves it had changed his mind. I am sure Santa will bring Hayden something very "manly" next Christmas!

Last night I went with my mom to Orchard Hill Church for family night. It was awesome. It has been years since I have been to a family night at church and how it has changed. They totally promote family time now. You eat and do crafts all as a family, instead of the parents dropping the kids off for wed night activities. It was great to see a lot of old faces there. We ate baked potato bar and decorated sugar cookies. Hayden loved the live piano music and joined right in. He held his own with the high notes. :)

Fun in the Ice

It has been busy as usual here. Besides getting ready for our 17 day trip to Germany etc., baking 10 dozen cookies for our multiple cookie exchanges, and getting Christmas shopping done----- we lost power at our home. Tuesday Hayden and I were at the Dr. getting his shots before our trip. When we got done I had a few calls from neighbors telling me that a huge branch fell on our power line and it was sparking. Of course I couldn't get a hold of Joey.

Once we got home I finally got a hold of Joey and he came right home. It literally pulled the power line off our house and we had burn marks up the side of our house.

We packed up quick in case we needed to leave because the weather was getting worse. We decided to come to my parents house in case it was going to be days without power, even though we had multiple offers to stay with people in CR. Thanks!

It honestly was like a battle zone. When we were loading up the car branches were falling left and right. It was soooo loud because of all of the ice. Crazy!

It was a crazy drive and I know I would not have made it by myself. All of the streets were un driveable because the ice and all of the branches hanging down to the street because of the ice. It took us 2 hours to get to CF.

Joey went down yesterday to go to work and check out the house. He said the house was 42 degrees. He decided to stay there last night and camp out by the fire. We had to hire an electrician to build up the electrical stuff it ripped off our house. Joey just called at noon and we have power today!!!! Hayden and I will go back tomorrow. I am anxious to get back and get our fridge and freezer cleaned out.

We have Joey's family coming Saturday to celebrate Christmas and mine on Sunday. Luckily everyone is bringing most of the meal. I just need to get the house cleaned up and we will be good to go. I think I am not going to mess with restocking our fridge with anything until we get back. Just bread and milk and a few things until we leave!

It had been nice hanging out with my parents. They will be gone for the winter by the time we get back from our trip!

I am thankful we just had the damage we did! It could of been a lot worse and amazingly I am not that stressed! Luckily I am learning to go with the flow and relax the older I get!

We AreWalking...and Climbing....and falling...and

It is official Hayden is walking. Well it happened almost a month ago. 15 months is when he decided to go upright!

Happy Thanksgiving!

A little late but oh well. We have been very busy! We had a great Thanksgiving. I don't have any pics from Thanksgiving. I can't believe we didn't take any. We celebrated on Thursday with my parents and grandma. Then my step sister and family came for desert. We had a great meal with all of my favorites! It was nice hanging out. Hayden and I arrived Wednesday night to give Joey some quiet time to get his homework done. He is finishing calculus 2 now and renewing his Flight Instructor Rating. Hmmmm wonder why we never see him.
Hayden had a great time running laps around the house. I think it is a lot easier for him to walk when there is only one surface to maneuver. Except the kitchen which is wood but far less glossed up like ours! Our friends Sara and Phil stopped over before desert because they were celebrating Thanksgiving in the neighborhood. It was nice to see them and their girls. Sara and I decided to go early morning day after Thanksgiving shopping so we planed our attack!
Friday I got up at 4:30, got ready quick, and waited for Sara to pick me up. We headed to Wal-Mart first, then Target, Toys-R-Us, back to Wal-Mart, Farm and Fleet, back to Target, Younkers, and Von Maur. We had a blast! We got some really great deals on DVD's and a few toys. I have most all of my Christmas shopping done. We aren't getting to much this year because we are going to be gone and Aunt Ingrid has plenty waiting for Hayden in Germany! I am wanting to get Hayden a kitchen. I haven't quite convinced Daddy of that. He seems to think that Hayden needs a tool bench instead.
Friday we had thanksgiving with Joey's parents. We had a great time hanging out and eating Turkey Divan. Hayden had a great time playing with Grandma and Grandpa P. He played outside, played piggies, and played in the tub when grandma gave him a bath! Grandma and Grandpa watched Hayden and we went out to meet Sara and Phil. We had a fun time but Sara and I were tired! We met up with Joey's brother and his friend.
Saturday we lounged around for a bit. I went to the mall to look around while Joey did homework and Grandma played with Hayden. Then we packed up and headed home.
Monday we got most of the Christmas decorations up and yesterday we got the tree decorated.
Sunday night I mad an advent calendar activity thing with my MOPS group. I am sooo excited about it. The ladies had some great ideas and I am excited to start this fun tradition with my family! Yesterday at mops we had a cookie exchange. It was my first ever cookie exchange and it was so much fun! I have 2 more to do in December and am looking forward to them.
Now the countdown begins to our trip! We are getting some plans made and I have started to plan out the packing thing. Not sure how we are going to do it, but I know it will all work out.

Observation?

So... I walked into the bedroom last night and saw Hayden "blowing his nose". He just learned this new skill but we have not seen him doing it on his own yet. I wonder who he is copying here with the sound effects, Joey or me?!?!?!?

First Projects / Videos and Pics Galore

Look at my pettyyy



Here are Hayden's 2 projects from school. I also put on a few more videos.
In the first one you can hear Joey start clicking his tongue and then Hayden joining in. It is their special language.
The second one is just a funny one of Hayden jabbering for a second.
The third one is Hayden's official first meeting with Bud Saul (Joey's Cabbage Patch doll we found in a box this weekend). Joey said the meeting didn't go as he hoped. Bud fared well. He just suffered a kick in the groin, smack in the face and then a toss across some boxes. Hayden has no shirt on because he was drooling sooooo much this weekend I was in the process of getting him a new one. Notice how wet his pants are from a few minutes without a shirt on to catch the drool.
I also threw a picture of Hayden sitting on Monica's lap. I watched the neighbor kids last week for 2 hours and Hayden loved it. Monica says that Hayden is the perfect size for him and tries to pick him up and likes him to sit on her lap. Even though they weigh about the same. He usually goes along with it for a little while before he has had enough.
Oh and Hayden holding his new favorite toy pengy. He loves it. Uncle Johnny gave it to him when he was born and he just discovered it the other day. He calls it peetyy. For pengy. He also calls hid binky ptttteee and his toes pigggeeee. They all 3 sound pretty much the same but Joey and I can pick up on which one he is talking about.

Welcome Fall

Hayden's car aunt Ingrid customized for him

We have been enjoying the cool fall weather and taking advantage of it by getting work done outside. We have been busy raking the millions of pine needles in our backyard and Joey did some roof work out front. Today the weather feels a lot colder and the wind had picked up a lot. Just in time for my parents arrival back to Iowa!
We got a lot accomplished this weekend. We sorted and got rid of a lot of stuff in out basement. We each condensed our "memories" to one box and combined many other boxes to give us room. We also have a few more boxes to go to Goodwill and some things we can sell on ebay. Our neighbor gave us a couch so we have that set up in the basement and are getting a nice play space set up for Hayden down there. He did soooo good all weekend while we worked in the basement. He loved looking in all of the boxes and playing with all of the new "toys".
He started really walking a lot more this weekend. He loves to pick heavy things up and grunts and puffs and then stands and walks around. Now anytime he has something in his hands he walks around with it. I suppose it is easier for him to walk in the basement because it is one flat surface. Upstairs it is rug, to extremely slippery wood floor, to rug, to wood floor, to carpet. He gets hung up on the different floors upstairs but is getting a lot better. So I would say he is walking a little more than crawling. Unless he wants to get somewhere fast. Then he breaks out the speed crawl.
This week we are busy as usual. I just picked Hayden up from PDO and they said he had another great day. He even finger painted for the first time today. They sent us home with 2 of his Halloween projects. A ghost footprint and a bat hand print. We have music tomorrow and Wednesday. Thursday we have his 15 month Dr. appointment and then a friend is coming over for lunch. Friday we are going to walk the mall with another friend and then let the kids play in the play area.
Oh I keep forgetting to mention Hayden got his final molar last week so he officially has all of his teeth now. Right before his 15 month birthday. This last molar was a bear. We had a couple of rough weeks in the sleeping department but are hoping he will be back to sleeping well again soon! I honestly don't mind that much because I figure he won't ever be this small again and want to snuggle in the middle of the night with me for long. I am going to take it while I can.

Below is a video from this weekend. When Hayden looks back he is checking to make sure daddy is still good on the roof. The end was cut short because I had to hold the ladder for Joey.