Engagement News

Well 2009 is going to be quite a busy, eventful and exciting year! Along with 4 new babies (one niece, one nephew, and two second cousins), and 2 new cousin-in-laws being added to the family, now we get to add a new sister-in-law and nephew-in-law! :) My brother Scott and his girlfriend Justina got engaged during the Christmas holidays and are planning on a June 26th wedding at Los Patios. Not only do we get the blessing of having Justina join our family, we also get to add her son Drake to the family as well. Chris and I are so very excited about having Justina and Drake join the family. Justina is an incredibly smart, outgoing, intelligent and beautiful girl whom my brother loves very much and has been in love with for years! I know they are going to have many wonderful years of marriage and hopefully a couple more nieces and nephews for Chris and me! :) Please just keep the three of them in your prayers as they set out on this new journey in their lives. Hope your having a blessed beginning of 2009!

Scott and Justina

"Keep Your Eye on the Ball"

This week l learned a valuable lesson and in the process of learning that valuable lesson I laughed probably harder than I have ever laughed before. I know when you get done reading this you will probably think to yourselves "what an awkward sense of humor she has" but it is okay, I know you will not find it nearly as funny as I did, number one because you were not here to see it or hear it and number two it was not your child who did it...but I digress. The valuable lesson I learned was that children, no matter what you say, take EVERYTHING literally! Let me explain. My wonderful mother came over to our house on Thursday to help bake and decorate Christmas cookies. After we got done Hayden was so excited to finally be able to play with his "GaGa" (that is his nickname for Grammie) since he was having to play with Daddy all day while GaGa helped Mommy with the cookies. My mom and Hayden were in the computer/toy room playing and I was at the computer desk just watching and listening to the two of them. Well, Hayden was carrying around a little trophy looking Lego toy that he got as a gift and on top of it he was balancing a bouncy ball. He was walking around the room trying really hard not to let the ball fall off of the trophy toy. My mom, being the wonderful encourager and helper that she is thought it would be wise to use the old saying "Keep your eye on the ball" so that Hayden would have better luck keeping the ball on the trophy. So, she leans over to Hayden and looks at him and says, "Hayden, keep your eye on the ball!" Hayden then proceeds to keep walking forward with the ball on top of the trophy but at the same time he pulls the ball toward his face and places the ball right on the pupil of eye and continues walking. My mom and I both fell to the floor in laughter and had tears almost running down our faces. It was the funniest, most precious thing I have ever seen. Hayden did EXACTLY what my mom said, he kept his eye on the ball. Wow, children are truly amazing and I look forward to the many lessons Hayden is going to continue to teach me throughout the years.
I hope this story brought you little laughter, and if not that, maybe at least a little smile! Have a blessed day! :)

Christmas Portraits

We took Hayden to Portrait Innovations on Thursday and had some Christmas Portraits done. Chris and I always fear going to get pictures done because Hayden is not the most cooperative picture taking child. He usually just looks at the people like they are crazy and goes about his business. Much to our surprise Hayden did GREAT! He smiled more than we have EVER seen him smile (when getting his picture taken) and he seemed to love every minute of the portrait session. Needless to say that did not make picking a picture very easy for Chris and I. We usually struggle to find one picture where Hayden looks somewhat happy to be alive. This time there were way too many pictures to choose from and we were quite perplexed as to which one to choose. We finally decided on two that we liked best and I posted them below. Chris and I still can't believe how much he has grown and continues to grow. We looked at his picture from this time last year and were shocked and a little saddened by how quickly he has grown up. We are cherishing every moment of his life and thanking God for what a blessing he is to us! :)

Trick or Treat

Here are some pictures from Hayden's second Halloween BUT first time to go trick-or-treating! It was quite a new experience for him and he was a little hesitant at first but caught on and actually had a lot of fun as the night went on. The cutest thing was Hayden's way of saying trick or treat which was "tick teet" and just when we thought our little man could not say anything more cute than "tick teet", out came his lion roar. Words can't even describe how cute it sounded...maybe if I get motivated enough and daring enough I will post a sound clip of him roaring like a lion! Anyway, hope you enjoy the pictures!

Hayden's first stop was the neighbor's house!

Showing Mommy what he got!

Papa was delighted to do some trick-or-treating with Hayden!

Daddy was proud of his little lion!

Hayden didn't have time to pose with Mommy, he had more candy to go get!