spring fun

Hailey likes to pretend to be a turtle on the toilet. She leans forward and pulls the lid on her back like a turtle shell. Not that I like to encourage too much creative play involving the toilet seat, but I had to admit that was pretty creative.

I don't know which made Hailey happier this Easter: all the candy or her new dress. This girl is definitely into fashion. The Easter Bunny brought her a candy necklace and candy bracelets that she loved so much that she didn't want to eat them. Brandon was trying to convince her that the beads were candy by taking a bite out of one of her bracelets. She looked at him disapprovingly and said, "Heyyy, why did you do that?" She wore the nasty things for about a week and a half before I could sneek them into the garbage.

As you can see Haily is 8 1/2 months pregnant too! We're getting pretty excited about Baby Brother coming soon! We're down to a couple weeks until the due date so we'll see when he decides to show up.

Hailey and her best friend Bella having fun a Red Birds baseball game. Brandon's class at SCO organized a social there.

Tile! Tile! Tile!

So this is my first time posting anything. Celia gave me the commission to post the blog today. Seeing how we need to keep our fans happy, especially our # 1, fan Lexi, I accepted the job.

Not a whole lot has happened since out last post. We did tile our kitchen and fireplace. Here are some before and after photos. The "befores" are from before we bought the house so it makes the "afters" look that much better. : )

Kitchen before (pay special attention to the floor)...yuk!

and after...oooo...awe

Fireplace before...(pink, gross huh?)

After...

So that's our newly tiled house, we are really happy with how it all turned out. I did it with the help of a good friend from Salmon, Ben Sessions. OK...so Ben really did most of the work and I just helped out here and there.

We can't post a blog with out adding a little Hailey spice to it.

Here's Princes Hailey in her new princess dress that Celia made. Hailey's world revolves around reading princes books and watching princes movies. She is 100% princes and quick to remind us that she isn't Princes Aurora or Snow White, she is "Princess Hailey".

Poor Cinderella Hailey has to work, work, work.

Photographer in the making.

Snow Day!

Memphis got snow! But not very much and most of it melted by the afternoon. It sure was fun for Brandon to have the day off of school though! I don't know who was more excited -- Brandon or me! Our western roots sure make us laugh when the entire city shuts down because of a little white stuff, but hey -- we'll take it! Hailey was pretty exctied about the snow too. It was all we could do to get her to sit down and eat some breakfast before going out to play. Her favorite thing was trying to throw snow at Daddy, even though half of it ended up in her own face most of the time.

(sorry it's been so long)

It rained last night so everything was wet and soggy on the drive to church this morning. I asked Hailey why the ground was all wet. She said, "Because Jesus made a mess."

We've been working on being reverent during prayers lately. During the opening prayer at church today Hailey did well at keeping her eyes closed, but she was fake snoring too. At least we entertain the people around us as much as we disturb them.

I called Hailey a "young lady" yesterday. She said, "And you're a lady too. And Daddy is a . . . softly-man." It took some persuading to convince her that what she really ment was gentleman.

Hailey got sick last month with a stomach-bug that was pretty mild, but it gave her some gas that could about knock you out. (Sorry if some of you have already heard this story.) Brandon was reading books with her one evening and she let one go. He fanned the air with a book and told her it was stinky. We explained that her toots were stinky, but it's okay because toots help her tummy feel better. She thought for a minute and said, "Toots make . . . my bottom wet." It turned out to be a false alarm, but good to know.

Silly Stories

Hide and seek is a favorite game around here lately. It started by teaching the farm animals how to play, now it has moved on to us doing the playing. Hailey is still figuring out the concept though. Sometimes after counting to 10 and saying “Ready or not, here I come,” she comes racing out of her hiding spot saying, “Here I am!” When I’m hiding, sometimes after she finds me she waits for me to get out of the way so she can use my hiding spot while I go count. She’s hard to hide from though. She doesn’t really close her eyes until about 3 and opens them by 8 and the numbers in the middle are rattled off so quickly that I’m always proud of myself when I am able to hide without her seeing where. But my absolute favorite thing about playing hide and seek with Hailey is after I say, “Ready or not, here I come,” then I hear her little voice saying, “Getting closer. Getting closer . . .”

One morning Hailey saw the drawstrings of my pajama pants hanging down. She grabbed both of them with her little fist and started to sing, “Ohhh, ohhh, ohhh, Let’s go fly a kite . . .” She then proceeded to pull me around the room singing for the next couple of minutes.

Hailey holds a grudge. Brandon has been gone a lot lately due to school so when he is around she gives him a bit of a cold shoulder. If she didn’t get to see him the night before then she refuses to say goodbye to him in the morning when he goes back to school. There were a few nights last week, however, that Brandon was home for bedtime. But as we were saying our “Good night’s” and “I love you’s” Hailey made it a point to only say, “Good night Mommy. I love you Mommy.” We couldn’t help laughing once we were out of ear shot! Don’t get me wrong, Hailey still warms up to Daddy if she knows she’ll have time to play with him – he’s lots of fun!

Hailey was a purple dragon for Halloween this year. (Some of you may remember Jeremiah sporting the same costume last year – thanks Record fam!) Hailey does a mean dragon roar, complete with stomping and claws bared! This was her first year trick-or-treating and like most kids with candy, she caught on quick and loved it! Now we’re learning about all the different kinds of candy and how much mom and dad limit the intake of the wonderful creation. Some candy even helps us learn, like m&m’s have the letter “m” on them and skittles all have the letter “s” on them. It’s almost as good as Sesame Street.

Labor Day Fun!

The Records came to visit us over Labor Day weekend and we had fun! Jeremiah is so smart and Eliza is as sweet as can be! One of my favorite moments with Jeremiah was over breakfast one morning. I got out some cereal and Jeremaih asked me what it was. I told him, "Frosted Flakes." He replied, "I like frosting," and then looked to his dad hopefully. Maybe he will remember that he can come to Aunt Celia's house and get spoiled with sugary cereal!

One of our first outings was to go feed the ducks at a local park.























Hailey tried to swim with the ducks and I tried to dive in after . . . creating another memorable experience.























Luckily, we live very close by so we went home to clean up and met everybody back at the playground.

We also went to the Botanical Gardens. There were great big coy fish that swam on top of each other to get the fish food the kids were throwing to them. Hailey and Jeramiah really liked that. My favorite part was rose garden because it reminded me of Mom and Gramma Marge. We also did some interpretive tree dancing.

It was fun for the cousins to get together!

Cute Girl

Hailey cracks me up!

















I was trying to convince Hailey of my authority as her mother the other day. I said, "I kinda make the rules around here, don't I."

She thought for a minute and said, "You kinda make potatoes Mommy."

I guess we'll work on that one.


Nose-nuzzles from Hailey are one of my favorite things! I love seeing her little face come in while consentrating on carefully rubbing her nose against mine and saying, "nuzzle, nuzzle, nuzzle." Sometimes we turn it into a game. I ask her for a nose-nuzzle and she runs and hides her face up against the wall. It makes me laugh every time.






















We're big into making picture with our food lately. I'll cut cut her cheese into little rectangles and arrange them in a circle so it looks like a sun. Or some times it's just triangles or big rectangles; whatever she is in the mood for. One day I asked her what kind of cheese she wanted and she said, "Duck cheese."

I had to do some convincing that what I had arranged on her plate was a duck, but I aways enjoy the challenge of stretching my artistic abilities.