Easter 2010

Happy Easter, 2010. We had a fantastic Easter!!

We hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday filled with good food, family and thoughts of our Savior. I am grateful for my Savior and the sacrifice he made for me. I hope we all took time to remember the reason that we celebrate Easter amid all the candy! :)

Finally an Update...

I'm so far behind. Please remember that I post chronologically, so be sure to scroll down and look at my latest posts.

We've been doing really well, staying busy.

Ryan - has GRADUATED!!!!!!!!!! We're so proud of him and SO excited that we'll be seeing him more. What an accomplishment!! Great job, honey!!! He continues to enjoy his job at Sorenson Communications and is doing well there. I'm sure he's not going to know what to do with all of his extra time now that he's done with school. We'll be having a HUGE celebration later in the month, so stay tuned for that.

I don't think anyone is more excited than Hailey about Ryan graduating. She is such a daddy's girl and LOVES her dad.

Aubrey - I'm so glad that Ryan is done with school. It has been really hard this last little while on all of us. I'm glad we'll be able to spend some more time together. We've been enjoying our yard this year, since we put in the fence its a lot more enjoyable to be outside. I've been busy planning two family reunions, the last of which is this coming weekend, so that has been keeping me busy.

Hailey - Hailey is a typical 3 year old girl. I talk to some of my friends who have 3 year old girls also, and am so relieved that I'm not the only one going through this. It seems to be something with the age. Sometimes she is as sweet as can be, and other times...I want to sell her to gypsies :). She is so fun though and comes up with some of the craziest things. The other night, she was outside playing with her cousin (another 3 year old girl) and I went out to see what they were doing. Hailey told me that they were "licking a hot dog tree that they planted for Cinderella." Wha??? She's very entertaining and we love her and wouldn't trade her for anything in the world.

Easter Weekend

We had such a great time Easter weekend! We had Ryan's brother's family come stay with us and had a BLAST with the family!!!

We had a family Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning - luckily the rain held out until after we were all done at the park. The kids had a blast playing on the playground, while us adults had a great time catching up! We don't get to see each other nearly often enough!!







Sunday morning, we found that the Easter bunny had come. I wish I had gotten a picture of our living room - it looked like our living room had exploded candy. There were jelly beans, candy kisses and other candy ALL over. Hailey, Brock and Aspen had such a great time running around trying to find the eggs and candy.

the kids waiting at the top of the stairs ready for the Easter egg/candy hunt.

Sunday, as per tradition, we had brunch as a family at the Alpine Country Club. We LOVE the food at the buffet there! Hailey's favorite was the cotton candy.

tired girl - this was near the end of our brunch at the club and the late nights were starting to catch up with her.

{Great} Grandma, tell me a story....

This picture is of Hailey and my cousin, Anya's little girl, Lily with my grandma. I thought it was so cute that they both climbed up and wanted Great Grandma to read them a story.



I showed my aunt the picture and she said she thought that she had a picture of me and Anya sitting on grandma's lap when we were about the same age. Well, we're just a little bit younger than our girls are now, but its still fun to see the pictures together...

Christmas!

On Christmas Eve, Hailey and I decorated a gingerbread house together. This was Hailey's first experience with something like this, and I have to say that I think she enjoyed eating the candy more than she did putting it on the house! :) Oh well, that's a two year old for you!




We had Ryan's parents over for dinner on Christmas Eve. It was so nice to be with them for the holiday. After dinner, we talked about the Nativity story, and then opened up our Christmas jammies. This is a tradition we started on Hailey's first Christmas.




Then we drove around for a couple of hours to see Christmas lights. This was a tradition that I grew up with. We would always have a Christmas Eve program/get together at my grandparents house, then we'd drive around Farmington and see all the lights. When I was younger, Farmington used to have a Christmas light contest that was sponsered by the city. I'm not sure if they have it anymore, but the lights are still fun to look at. Its fun to see all the people that get so into the Clark Griswold-like spirit of decorating!

Christmas morning was so much fun with Hailey this year. Since she's well over 2, she totally "got" it. She loved ripping open her presents and helping other people rip theirs open too. It was so much more satisfying to see her eyes light up when she unwrapped the toy that she'd been wanting.

The tree on Christmas morning!

Hailey's present from Santa

Daddy & Mommy's stockings

Hailey, very excited for Christmas morning...

Santa came!!

Hailey opening her stocking!

We were pretty spoiled this year. Hailey received a doll house (from Santa), an art easel, a hobby horse, a Cabbage Patch doll, a Mr. Potato Head, My Little Ponies, books, and clothes among other things. Her big gift this year though was a BIG GIRL BED and BEDDING. This was made possible by her wonderful grandparents!! My parents chipped in for the bed, and Ryan's parents bought her the bedding. She LOVES her new bed and the transition wasn't nearly as awful as I had feared. She has done very well, aside from the early mornings (earlier than I am used to), and shorter naps.

Ryan and I were spoiled as well! Ryan got me a WiiFit! I was so excited! I really didn't want to pay over retail for it, and I knew that Ryan, with as cheap as he is [ :) ] didn't want to either, so I just figured we would wait a while until the demand went down. I was SO surprised when I opened my present and there was a WiiFit sitting in my lap! Ryan got a new game for the Wii and a new MP3 player, which I'm pretty sure he likes. We also got tickets to the Jazz vs. the Cavs at the end of January and to WICKED!!! SOOOOOOOOO EXCITED for that show!!

WE had a wonderful Christmas and a fun New Year and hope you all did too!

Vacation - San Diego - Day Two

We spent Monday morning at the San Diego Zoo. We started out seeing the most gigantic goldfish I had ever seen:

Then we saw my favorite, the koalas. Unfortunately they were all asleep - since they are nocturnal. But as we were walking out of the exhibit, this guy posed for us:

We moved on to bigger:

and some of our favorites:

The Polar Bears

The Panda Bears

and the Giraffes.

We left the zoo - after about 5 hours - exhausted, but we had a great time. It was nice to see so many more animals than we'd ever seen at the Hogle Zoo, and to see them more active.

After naps on Monday, we met up with Ryan's parents - who had flown in that morning - in Old Towne. (Again, didn't take my camera...) We walked around the shops, and had dinner at an authentic Mexican restaurant. A grand time was had by all!

Vacation - San Diego - Day One

We arrived in San Diego early Saturday evening. We didn't do much that night except get dinner and groceries.

Sunday, our first full day, we decided to check out our surroundings. The place that we rented was literally a two minute walk from the beach. We stayed right on Mission Beach. It was beautiful. Hailey loved the beach. The moment we stepped foot on the sand this is all we saw of her:

Now, I promise you that there is no photoshopping of the following photos.
This is how blue the sky and the water really were.

So, we took a walk around Mission Bay. It was just beautiful and perfect weather. Hailey loved the beach, the playground (that we found along the way) and the water. When we got back from our walk, we took a LONG nap, and Ryan went to the San Diego Chargers game that night.