Once there was a snowman.

Hurray for snow days . . . or just day. It all melted the next day, but that's the way I like it. Unfortunately it didn't come until late Friday afternoon, so Brandon didn't get to miss school. Shucks. He and Hailey enjoyed it while it lasted; something about that Idaho blood I guess.










































Hailey's first snowman.









Needless to say, Hailey really loved her snowman!

She was a little concerned about him the next day. It continued to snow during the night and the snowman got snowed on. We did our best to reasure her that snowmen prefer that kind of weather.

In the end she may not have cared about him that much because she pushed him over after playing outside for a while. Too bad I didn't get a picture of that!

Unrelated thought: While we were getting ready for church today, Hailey wanted to find some jewelry to wear. She couldn't find anything that satisfied her so she turned to one of her dress-up crowns. Our conversation went something like this:

"Can I wear my crown to church?"

"No, I'm sorry honey."

"But its so beautiful."

"I know, but we don't wear crowns to church."

"Please? It will be so beautiful?"

Princesses and pink are still at the top of her list these days.



Tanner loves to wave now. He flaps his hand while scrunching his nose in a grin and grunts something that sounds similar to "ha-ee". He does a lot of grunting. I've been trying to do baby sign with him, but he hasn't taken to it much. I get the feeling that he knows what the signs mean, but he would rather grunt, yell, or screech at me to tell me what he wants. We run into problems when he yells the exact some way for "more" as well as for "all done". You can imagine the frustration for both of us.

Tanner crawls all over the place with great speed now. He crawls with his right foot rather than his right knee, but it seems to work for him. One of his favorite games is grabbing a small ball and letting it go infront of him so he can chase after it. He quickly learned this game works best in the kitchen. Plus there's the added bonus of eating the cheerios that he previously dropped from the high chair.

This picture was taken while Hailey was banging on the xylophone and singing at the top of her lungs. Tanner isn't afraid to share his opinion with us.

Back on the Wagon

Hope your Christmas vacation was as good as ours -- we took a two month break!




Tanner has a mouth full of teeth. The poor kid was teething over Christmas and now has six chompers that he loves to use. You should see this kid pound a graham cracker!

Hailey wants to role play everything she sees lately. She’s big into “Super Why” on pbskids and one morning after watching it she asked me if I could make her a super mask and cape. Everything had to be light pink, of course. So naturally, when I asked her what her super-hero name was she replied, “Light-Pink-Super-Hailey!”

These two adore each other! Hailey always tells me, "Tanner and I are a team!"

The world through the eyes of a three-year-old.

Bam-bam-bam-bam! Lately I feel a little hand pounding on my mattress to wake me in the morning and then I hear a tiny whisper, "Don't worry Mommy, it's not a monster -- it's just Hailey."

She barged into the bathroom this morning while Brandon was getting out of the shower. He closed the shower curtain to finish drying off and Hailey asked him why.
"Because I need my privacy," he said.
"You should probably lock the door, Dad."
"You're right. I thought that Mommy might need to come in though."
"Well, people might want to talk to you."
"People like Hailey?"
"Yep."

She continues to astound us with profound insights like, "Sometimes people need to talk to each other." I wish I could remember the world as a three year old. They know just enough about what is going on to have a simplified perspective. Hailey likes to utilize what she does know and then fill in the gaps with whatever she feels like. It makes for some funny conversations. Like last night at dinner she informed us, "Scenes and beans come on Fridays."
"Oh really?" I commented.
"Yes, and sometimes Wednesdays forever."
"Hmph. Interesting."

I just laught listening to kids conversations sometimes. I over heard Hailey chatting with her friend Scotty the other day. He asked her, "Can you make a boy voice?"
"No," she answered, "I only have a girl voice." Sometimes I find myself envying their uncomplicated world.

She seems to be getting a grasp for how meetings work as well. Brandon was leaving for an Elder's quorum meeting tonight and she said, "Bye, you'll be back in a month!" Spoken like a true Latter-Day Saint!

Well, I had my turn with Tanner calling my name, now it's Dad's turn. All day long (and the past few) he's been saying, "ada da da da." It's pretty cute to see how pleased he is with himself when he realizes how affective calling for "Da-da" or "Ma-ma" can be. He has become quite chatty and he's cut two teeth. One on top and one on bottom -- way to go Tanner!

funny talk

Hailey has a couple of princess dolls that have seen better days. One is missing both her arms and the smaller of the two is missing both her legs (lucky for her she has a long, stiff dress so she can sort of get away with it). I want to make them "disappear" but she still likes to play with them. Yesterday I heard her playing with them in this way:

Smaller legless doll: "Mommy, will you hold me? I don't have any legs to stand on."
Larger armless doll: "No, I'm sorry honey. I don't have any arms to hold you with."
Smaller legless doll: "oooohwa."

Don't worry. Christmas is coming and those dolls will soon have a happy place in toy heaven.


Hailey makes us laugh on a regular basis. Here are some some recent quotes:

"Don't worry horsies. It will rain in a couple minutes and you can have a nice shower!"

"Don't leave me while I'm sleeping, Mom, because that would make me especially sad."

"Do you want to listen to my tummy? It's saying 'FEED ME! FEED ME!'"

Believe it or not, Tanner has been saying something that brings a smile to my face too! Just before his 6 month mark he started saying, "mmom" when he was ready to be picked up. He did it consistently for a couple weeks then stopped just in time to go see family for Thanksgiving. Well, now almost 7 months old, he's picked it up again. We were sitting in chruch today and Brandon was holding Tanner. Tanner took a look at me, said, "Mmom," and leaned over for me. Dada is a little bummed, but it melts my heart every time! Here is an old video to prove it:

I told Hailey we were going to do a photo shoot. She picked all her poses. She just kept moving and I kept clicking.

Happy Happy Halloween

Halloween is great here because you don’t have to wear a coat over your costume (or under it). Hailey has been requesting to be a “light pink” ballerina for months now. On Halloween night it was warm enought that that's what she got to be, not a light pink marshmallow-puff instead.
Tanner is so easy going that we could have dressed him up in anything; lucky for him it was this manly green dinosaur costume.

We went trick-or-treating with some friends in the ward and it looked like this! This is four families worth of kids; enough to make a grandma give up all her candy! We sure had lots of fun!

Lately Hailey has been trying to get Mom or Dad to leave the room when she wants to do something she is not supposed to. Her standard request is “Mom will you please go away?” as she eye’s the thing she is not supposed to get into. At least she’s saying please.

One night Mommy was losing her patience with Hailey while getting ready for bed. As Mommy was helping her say her prayers she broke off from repeating what mom was saying and said “…and please help Mommy to be patient, and kind, and loving to me”.
It was hard for us to be reverent for the rest of the prayer.

Since birth Tanner has loved to chew on his hands, which makes them kind of slobbery. On occasion he touches Hailey with those slobbery hands, which causes her to pull back repulsively and say, “EEWW! He touched me with his suck-hands!”




Brandon has been missing the kids lately and they've been missing him. So we have plenty of fun when he's around!

September already?

August was quite a month for us, full of the good, the bad and the ugly. Good to celebrate Brandon's birthday, bad for him to take national boards on his birthday and the day after. Good to have the Hansen family come visit, bad that Brandon was studying for finals that week. Good that he finally got a break after finals, but it was ugly, sticky, hot the whole month. August is possitively the worst month to be in Memphis. We're convinced that people must have settled here in the winter.

And as luck would have it, the hottest week was the one that the Hansen's came to play. We had a great time though! We got water guns and a sprinkler toy and the cousins were just so excited to play together that we had fun anyway.

Hailey and Tanner are getting to be good buddies. Just Hailey laughing makes Tanner laugh too. Hailey went to a birthday party where she got to pick out a tatoo. Notice the lovely rose she's sportin' on her arm. It was still there a week later and a little girl tried to bite it clean off her arm. I was sure to scrub it off with baby oil the next day.

Tanner found his toes; an exciting discovery.

We celebrated our 4 year anniversary the beginning of September. I made some bread in our bread maker the day before so we could use it for French toast in the morning. The bread fell in on top so when it was sliced it ended up looking like this:

Aaaaawww, look! It's temple toast for our anniversary -- for cute!

We went bowling that day. Hailey's first time! She liked it, but . . .


She liked the merry-go-round better. Go figure.

Isn't he cute! Tanner just brightens my day! When I feel fed up he just smiles at me and I remember why we had kids.

Our biggest kid got to go to a BYU game with some friends last weekend. Their seats were on the first row right beind BYU's bench. Pretty cool! The Cougars lost unfortunatly (Brandon keeps reminding himself that it is a rebuilding year) but it was a good game and worth the trip to see his team. And I got to buy some decorations, so in a way, everybody wins.


We finally learned how to post videos. Here are two of our favorites. Enjoy!

Sprinklers

Not much to report. Ten weeks old and Tanner is smiling plenty -- he's such a sweet boy. We've determined that he does have a bit of reflux, but the medicine helps a lot. I got away with eating chocolate when he was first born, but lately it seems to bother him. :( Bye-bye Oreos.

We've got a great sprinkler park here that we like to go play at. Brandon had never been able to come with us before, so we went as a family on the 4th of July. We were suprised to find it almost empty. Hailey loves to just run the whole time, but with her bright orange suit and white body she's pretty easy to keep an eye on.

Tanner even had fun.

When we can't go to the sprinkler park, there's alway the good old fashioned sprinkler in the backyard.

Clearly lots of fun as well.