Monkey Gym

Hailey and Briggy

Erin and Briggy with Hailey and Michelle

I am always looking for fun things to do with the kids that don't cost very much, and got the best of both worlds by going to the open house for "My Gym". It is a franchise that is all over the country catered for kids to go to play and get a workout too. Their logo has a monkey on it and so today when I got on the internet to look up the address Hailey saw it and now calls it "Monkey Gym". They have several activites for the kids to do. Hailey loved the ball pit and even got over her "conservativeness" enough to take a leap into the balls. (The picture on the video turns the right way, I recorded sideways thinking it would flip it...she pumps and then jumps and as she is getting out says "again, again!") and she loved to just run to play on all the different apparatuses. It was so fun! My cousin Erin and her boy, Brigham, joined us. So fun! Here are some pics.

My Hailey Mei-lee moo

My little girl is so stinkin' cute! I know that every parent thinks that, but really she is adorable. Lately she has picked up the phrase "What happened??" EVERYTHING is a question now.

The other day she sat down on the couch with her dolly and put the boppy on her lap, telling me "nurse baby". She gave her baby the commmand "eat baby, eat!" Then she burped her doll (yes, my little angel knows and loves to make the burping noise!) Then she switches sides tells her baby to eat and then pulls her back "OUCH!" She exclaims. (the other day Preston clamped down and I said ouch.) She listens to everything!

My paretns have a laundry chute upstairs that now opens to our kitchen table. (The pic is her hanging her head over the edge and looking down into our kitchen.) Hailey loves to go up stairs open the chute door and yell down to us. But the other day while Dave and I were out on our date night, she found all of Papa's pocket things sitting on a low bedside table and proceeded to throw them all down the chute. Among them were his wallet, screwdriver, money, balloons, Grandmas earrings...pretty much anything on the nightstand that she could reach. There is now a child-proof lock on that door.
She is getting very smart. I was nursing the other day and I heard her go into the kitchen and open the fridge. SHe ususally gets her sippy or a snack out, so I thought nothing of it until she came out and told me "Papa tile, my toe, my toe" (She refers to the kitchen floor as "Papa tile" since he is the one that laid it.) So I go in the kitchen to find random things out of the fridge, the A1 is on Peston's saucer, with a whole peach shoved into his cup holder and the spray butter stragically placed on a perch that was going to fall if you looked at it wrong. But the icing on the cake was I bought a new egg carton and had 2 eggs left over so I just stacked them on top, they were cracked on the floor, so I made them clean it up! (She stepped in it and it got on her toes. )

Hailey's hair is getting longer and thanks to Andrea I stole hair ideas from her blog pics. This is the end result. It didn't stay very long, but looked so cute while it lasted. Her hair is too curly to stay put.

Garden Party Frock GIVEAWAY!!!!

Garden Party Frock GIVEAWAY!!!!

Oh the difference a day makes

I had a meeting this morning at the Health Department and so I had to wake up Hailey to get to my sister-in-laws house for her to sit for me. After my Safe Kids meeting I went to see Dave's Grandma Maxwell. She lives in an assisted living home about 4 blocks away from where my brother lives, so we stopped in to visit her. She is a recent widow and is having a hard time adjusting to "single life" again. When I arrived I asked her how she was doing and she told me; "Lonely, it's hard being alone these days." I thought of how I felt yesterday and how I am so far from being "alone"! It made me so grateful that I still have my husband to comfort me, to snuggle up to and cuddle with at night.To have a warm body sleeping next to me. Grandma Maxwell just wanted someone to talk to that could hear her and was coherent! It is amazing how when you see life through someone elses eyes, it makes you appreciate things more. So thanks to Grandma Maxwell, I am now looking at the little things and being grateful! I was grateful that I could be the one today for Grandma that was coherent and could hear what she was saying! Tonight it is date night with Dave, we get to go out with out kids! I cannot wait!

It's my life

Hailey loves her new toys from her birthday. We got her a princess tent and she loves to climb in and out of it. I tried to make a tent with our couch cushions and blankets, but they tip over, not that the tent doesn't tip over, but I don't worry about her suffocating now.
The aligator pool came from Uncle E. The water was so cold in the pool. We will have to connect the hose to the hot water heater and put it out the window next time, she was shaking from the cold and still didn't want to get out.



Preston is now 4 months old. He is so much more interactive and will smile to "blah,blah,blaah!" I love having a baby in the house now. His happy squeals and little baby noises always put me in a good mood.

Dave started into the MBA program this week and I am now feeling that pains of being alone. We are living in my parents basement and this ward is more "well established" and there are really no young couples, hardly any kids at all.In Sacrament Meeting when a kid screams, it is mine! I am dying to find a playgroup to take Hailey to or something to do. Any ideas of how I could find one?? I walked to the park this morning with the kids and there were all these moms in a group chatting while their kids played, I wanted to be in their group, it felt like the awkward junior high moments were playing all over again in my head! They were all deeply involved in their conversations to notice me and I couldn't get a word in edgewise, and then my phone rang, it was a friend from Pleasant Grove, just calling to say that she missed me. I wanted to cry. I now remember why I hate moving so much! So if any of you have any great ideas, please send them my way.

Snakes!

This weekend we went out to Evan and Robins (Dave's brother and his awesome wife). They are such a fun couple! Evan breeds snakes as a side business and therefore they have a lot at their house. (My hat is off to Robin for allowing all of this.) He just had a clutch hatch and we were able to see them. It is amazing to see this little things squirming around, once one of them starts tehy all go wild. He has a lot of really beautiful snakes and will let us hold them. Hailey was not so sure about them. She liked to look, but when they came close it made her nervous!

To top the night off, Robin highlighted my hair and if I do say so myself she did an amazing job! I like to think that I am still a blonde, I needed some dye to convince everyone else! Blondes really do have more fun!

Hailey's 2 year old pics

For her 2nd birthday we went and had her pics taken at Target, here are some of the cutest ones! Seeing these pics makes me realize jsut how big she has gotten and how blessed I am to have a hralthy, happy little girl! I love her curls!!

Catching up on blogging...

We have had a lot happening these last weeks and I haven't been blogging it at all. I am feeling so out of the loop. (Although Breaking Dawn has taken a lot of my spare time in the evening, but I am done with that now.) So take a deep breath and here we go...the happenings in our life.

Hailey's birthday at Lagoon

On Hailey's actual birthday we went to Lagoon with our good (soon to be wed!!) friends, John and Kate. My brother, Erick and his little friend Wyatt joined us too. Hailey is tall for her age and at exactly 36 inches she qualified to ride all of those "big kid rides". She liked the up and down one the best. I rode it with her and on the way down when it feels like your stomach is coming up your throat and yet it tickles, she would giggle. I love to view life through her angle, it is so much more fun! And thanks to John and Kate we were able to afford it and get a free lunch! It was a good day! Dave has these 2 weeks off before school starts and we are livin' it up before he has to start school.

We, the basement dwellers

On Saturday, August 2nd we moved out of our first home. :( It was a crazy day! Dave and I stayed up late packing, and then got up early to load the truck. I had the whole day all organized down to the hour, since our renters were going to move in that afternoon! We got everything out and then I still had to clean it. It felt like my college days all over again having to white glove clean it. Luckily I had already pre-cleaned a lot, but it still was exhausting. We had so much help from friends down there, we are so grateful to you all! Dave got us moved in, up in Bountiful. Our kitchen wasn't done yet, but done enough to live in it. The oven and sink were installed, but not connected. We are so grateful to my parents for all the hard work they did for us to make our transition to our temporary living situation more smooth and comfortable.
We needed the crib for Preston and so Hailey transitioned to a big girl bed and did better than I had anticipated. Every morning when I get her up she wants Preston to go nigh-night with her, so we put him in the bed with her. She really loves her brother and has got the best "bed-head-hair" in the morning!

Hailey's first party with friends!

For Hailey's second birthday I wanted to make sure we could have a party with her friends down in Pleasant Grove as one last hurrah! So on Friday August 1st (the day before the move) we had a party outside our house. We have a bounce house with balls, a kiddie pool and a blow up water slide. We ate pizza for lunch and completed it with pink princess cupcakes. We then broke a piñata, well we didn't break it, it had strings, you just pull and one of the strings is attatched to the trap door that lets all of the candy come spilling out. The kids had a blast and Hailey loved it. She did get a little whiny at the end, but it's her party and she can cry if she wants to, right? It was also a great excuse to get together with all our friends, we sure do miss all of them now! I am glad that I did the party, but in hindsight what the heck was I was thinking!?! There is already so much to do the day before a move. Oh well, we made it and survived.

Color Me Mine

We went to a pottery place in Provo our last week before moving with my mom and my cousins. If you are even close to the area I would highly reccommend it! It was a blast! You go and pick whatever piece you want and then you get to paint it, they fire it and then you pick it up. They turned out so cute. We painted a plate and put Prestons feet and Hailey's hand print on it. It is precious. Hailey blew bubbles by mixing soap and water in a cup with the paint and then blowing the bubbles to over flowing and when they pop they leave perfect little circles, it was such a creative idea. Preston fell asleep on Davis and was oblivious to what was going on.

American Idol Dave

I meant to post this last week, becuase on Tuesday Dave tired out for Idol. Well, to be technical it wasn't really a tryout...here is the story. American Idol came here to SLC, it is one of our favorite shows and Dave decided to try out. The first day you have to go to SLC to the Delta Center to register and get the all powerful red wristband and a ticket with an assigned seat. They also gave him a list of the rules and one of them was no weapons and that included midevial swords! (random, but I am sure that someone brought one so they have to put that on the list!) Also you have to literllay sign your life away with their disclosure, it talked about their right to defaming, embarassing and even mocking you on national television! Then the next day you go and sit in your seat to actually audition for the producers of the show. There were soo many people! Dave got there at 7AM. They did the crowd songs and taped with Ryan Seacrest and then started the auditioning process. After about 6 hours of waiting, Dave started to calculate about how long it would take...there were approximately 3,500 people ahead of him, they could try out about 75 people in 10 minutes. That would mean that it would take Dave until 8:30 or 9 at night to get his 10-20 second audition. If you leave they take your wristband and you cannot get back in. He said they were passing on most of the amazing ones and he figured that since I was at my parents working on our soon to be basement, he would just come home and help me. So he didn't get to audition, but we feel that we really got the "Amercian Idol Experience". Jot that one down in the text book of our lives. (And thank heavens he came home, we got so much done, it was great!)