Cousin Lilly

We took a short trip to Salt Lake to visit Amanda, Jeremy, and Lilly because they were being sealed in the Temple. Mike and Jeremy went to the Jazz game one of the nights, so the kids and Amanda and I hung out in the hotel room. Hayden and McKall had Lilly laughing so hard. The funny thing was they weren't really doing anything- just jumping around and being crazy- pretty much being their normal selves! While we were visiting Lilly got her first taste of meat. Amanda made us dinner and she left to get Jeremy from work, so we were waiting to eat. Lilly climbed up on a chair and started picking food off of the table... Meat. So, we decided to feed the kids before they got back. I gave Lilly a serving of meat. Amanda informed us after she returned that she doesn't eat meat because she is a vegetarian. Whoops. (P.S. Lillian- it was good huh!)

Family Pics

We finally had our family pictures done. We haven't had any since McKall was born. Hayden is impossible to take pictures of, at least for me, because he can't sit still for two seconds, so I was a little worried about him. It turned out being Mckall who was the cranky one. She is getting her back molars, and it was a little chilly, and she fell on some gravel right as we were starting, and some lady she didn't know wanted to take her picture - so she was just plain in a bad mood. We did have some moments where she was cooperative, so I was pretty happy with how the pics turned out considering the situation.

For Halloween this year Hayden was Spider Man and McKall was a Black Kitty. Hayden got to go to a Halloween party for preschool. This is his sugar cookie they decorated. Yummy!

We had a trunk or treat in beautiful Curtis Park (even I got excited about it and I usually don't like trunk or treats). And guess who wouldn't get out of the car... Hayden...surprise, surprise.

He was so excited to go and see his friends. When we got there none of his friends were there yet so he waited for them in the car. When they got there they started trick or treating and he wanted to go with just his friends and the moms and have none of the siblings go with them. We told him no, so he pouted the entire time and never left the car. Little Miss had fun! She didn't want to go car to car to go trick or treating because she didn't quite understand it, but she had fun.

Caitlyn came trick or treating through the neighborhood with us. The kids just love her and they had a fun time!

Pumpkin Patch

For one of our preschool field trips we took the kids to a pumpkin patch. I thought Hayden would be looking for the biggest pumpkin he could find, but he found this little one he loved.

Hayden and Mckall dancing in the dirt. They weren't the cleanest kids when we left!

The weather was perfect. I love the fall, so it was fun to be outside on a beautiful day.

Here are the boys again making funny faces! Rockwell is not mad... that is his funny face!

McKall loved the swing in the tree.

Soccer

Hayden played soccer this year again. He really loves it, but we did have a rough start to the season. This was due to the fact that Hayden's uniform color this year was blue, and not red like it was last year. Hayden can have a difficult time with change sometimes! He didn't play his first game because he refused to put the uniform on. We worked on it at home and had him wear it before his next game and he was eventually fine with it. On his team picture day he fell asleep in the car on the way to get the pics done. He was very cranky and refused to be in his team pictures in the process of getting them taken. Both of these things happened in matter of a week. It was one of those times as a mom I was saying "why am I doing this." Well, because he is my beans and I love him even when he is a little turkey embarrassing me.

Hayden loves to go and run with the kids! He just laughs and giggles and has the best time. When he is not playing he likes to cheer from the sidelines.

Turkey Bowl

Once again we attended the annual "Turkey Bowl" with Mike's friends. We had a lot of fun hanging out and this year while the boys played football and the kids played the girls did a snake wreath craft and some flower hair clips.

We ate at Buffalo Wild Wings and Hayden was loving the wings!

Preschool

This year for Hayden's preschool we are doing a co-op with his friends Jack, Rockwell, and Gavin. Hayden is loving it! Nearly every morning he wants to know what day it is to find out if he has preschool. This picture is the boys at our house on "D" day showing the Dinosaurs they made. I can't believe my little boy will be in kindergarten next year!

Washington DC- Just Mike and Maria

Mike and I had an amazing trip to the Washington DC area in September for the BSU vs.Virgina Tech football game. A huge thanks to all who helped us make this trip happen- Mom and Dad Barbour, Amanda, Mom and Dad Wyler, and Kurt and Rainey.

We arrived Wednesday night and stayed with Kurt and Rainey in Virgina and had a great time visiting with them. On Thursday we all drove to Colonial Williamsburg. We were there after hours so we were just walking around on our own looking at all of the neat historical sites. Here is the best part...Mike sees a cute little gate and a walk way into a back yard. Mike, myself and Noah head back there to take a look. Mike goes up to the back porch and discovers the back door of the house is open. He looks at me and says "should we go in?" Mind you, we think these are all "museum" like houses because of where we are at. Mike walks in slowly and I am still in the yard. Then I hear "can I help you?" I was a bad wife and I ran... laughing. Turns out it was a private residence! The guy wasn't mad, he says it happens a lot! It was really odd though because you would never think there would be private residences. It was basically a dirt road, no cars, no lights on in the houses, nothing really to indicate people lived there... until we learned that on the front of some of the houses there is a teeny-tiny plaque that says "private residence." You would think they would make it a little more obvious for Idaho tourists like us! One of my favorite parts of Colonial Williamsburg was walking through the church grounds. There were graves from the 1600's. Amazing. You could barely read the stones. Rainey and Kurt live in Fredericksburg, Va, which has amazing history too. Rainey took us to some civil war sites and showed us around Historical Fredericksburg.

The next day we were headed to Busch Gardens. We woke up to pouring rain, UGH. We still had to go though because we had already purchased the tickets and drove a couple of hours to be there, the night before. We headed to K-Mart for an umbrella to make it a little more bearable. There was no one there. We parked right up front at the amusement park - that never happens! We had a couple of things going for us- the weather, and it was a school and work day. It couldn't have turned out better! The rain cleared up after a few hours and we literally walked on to any ride we wanted all day long. It was so much fun!

Mike and I went to Mt. Vernon - the home of President George Washington. It was really interesting and beautiful. This pic is Mike at the bathrooms, which was a separate little building on the side of the house. We like to get pictures of Mike in front of bathrooms for some reason!

In DC we had to eat at Ben's Chili Bowl. Yummy!!

And of course BSU won! We had a great time at the game.

We took a tour of the Capitol Building. This picture of Mike is in the center of the building where all of the President's stand as they exit out to be sworn in as President.

We visited the Library of Congress, Arlington National Cemetery, The Supreme Court, The National Archives, and The Museum of Natural History. We packed a ton of stuff into this trip and were so exhausted - but we had a great time!

Were gone over a week and ready to be home- and then our flight gets delayed. That caused us to miss our connecting flight, so we were stuck in San Francisco for the night. That may have been fun, but we didn't get to our hotel until around midnight and had to be back at the airport at 5am. I missed my kids, but it was great to have a little break and spend some time with just Mike.

Better Late than Never

Yes, I am very behind in my blogging. But, here are some of our fun adventures this summer. We had a great, busy summer! My posts didn't publish is order, uggh, but at least they are there now!

Eating in Portland

Mike had to go to Portland for a business trip, so we all decided to go and have some fun! While visiting we had to go to "Voodoo Doughnuts!" It is a hole in the wall Doughnut shop that is amazing! The entire store is about 10x10 and there is always a line out of the door. We got the kids the signature voodoo doll doughnut. Mike got the maple bar with bacon on the top, and I was boring and just got a raspberry filled doughnut. I was being pressured to order and I couldn't make up my mind - so that is what I ended up with. It was so yummy!!

We also visited "Old Town Pizza." It is in a historic building which was built on top of underground tunnels. It is supposed to be haunted. Hayden says he saw a ghost!

Oregon Coast

We were so close that we had to go to the ocean, so we headed to Seaside. When we got there we naturally wanted to go to the beach and show the kids the ocean. Both Hayden and McKall hated the sand and didn't want to walk out to the water. We did have quite a walk on the sand, and it was deep, but we couldn't believe they were acting like that! This is McKall with a yucky face after touching the sand. We made it to the water and the kids finally started having fun, thank goodness, and Mike and Hayden headed out into the water. McKall didn't want to go into the water, so we played on the beach. Hayden got soaked, but he was loving it.

One day we headed out to Cannon Beach. It was chilly and windy, but beautiful. As we walked back to our car we took a path from the beach up to a main road. Well, Hayden, or should I say Mr. Independent 4 year old, decided it was ok to walk on the busy road. Obviously that was not going to fly. He would not listen and it was getting to be dangerous so it had to stop. Hayden did not want to stop. So, I attempted to grab him to pull him up to the sidewalk and keep a hold of him and he proceeded to run into the road, so I ran after him like a crazy lady. He threw a great big tantrum and it resulted in him being carried over Mike's shoulder to the car- kicking and screaming the entire way. We can laugh at it now, but Mike and I were not happy, to say the least as this was happening. I knew one day we would be able to laugh, so once mike has him secure, I couldn't help but take a picture of it! Our friends, the Rahl's, had recently moved to Seaside, so we were able to hang out with them and have a great time playing on the beach, eating ice cream and on the last night there we had a fire on the beach.