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.

One Month Down

We survived the first month! Tanner is filling out nicely, Hailey is working on her sistering skills, Brandon has learned to sleep through crying in the middle of the night, and even I am getting a functional amount of sleep. Hailey and Tanner even nap at the same time frequently so Mama gets a nap too, which makes everyone happier in the end!

We had some great help from grandparents this month! What would we do without Grammas? It would have been fun to just have them come visit, but they did the cooking and cleaning for us too! (Thanks again!)

Grandpa and Gramma Tueller left the day before Hailey's 3rd birthday so we did cake and icecream that night. The next morning I told her that it was her birthday. She looked at me and asked, "It's my birthday again?"

In all, we had three days of birthday fun because I lost my head and threw Hailey a birthday party for her friends the day after that. She wanted a pink circle party. We kept it short and sweet, but the kids seemed to have plenty of fun just the same.

But this is our little guy at one month old. Our little girl is pulling out all the stops right now to get my attention so I'm going to end.

not just Hailey's House anymore

Hailey's House has a new arrival! Tanner was born one week ago on May 12th and so far he has been such a good baby! Haiey has been a good big sister too. She likes to hold him but gets bored of it quickly. "I'm tired of holding him now," she says. But she loves to "ooo" and "awww" over what a "pretty" baby he is.

We did a little home-made photoshoot when he was four days old. You may have already seen some of these.

And Princess Hailey is still the princess.

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.