One Year Ago from Today...

Hayden came into our world

And made us a Family of Four!

(This was Christmas last year, I was able to leave Christmas Eve, but she had to stay in the NICU for a couple more days. Luckily, nothing was serious.)

We had our scary moments through her first year in the PICU,

but she endured them well.

I thought that I would post Hayden's journal entry for today on our blog to share with you what this little Miracle Baby means to me:

Dear Hayden Girl,

I write you this letter on your First Birthday with a full heart. My love for you is so strong and has been so present from the day you were born. I know without a doubt that you, exactly you, were the one who was supposed to come into our family and especially into my arms at the time that you came. Your tender, sweet personality was needed to soothe my heart and soul. To bring me such exquisite amount of joy and happiness that I never knew was possible from the first seconds after your quite amazing and unexpected delivery (you were three weeks early and came so fast that I didn’t have time to get medicine to dull the pain). But that is how your life continues to be. If I am ever sad or struggling with something all I need to do is turn to you and you bring warmth and peace to me as I squeeze you tight in my arms. You are also a symbol of strength and endurance. The start of your life was in the NICU and then twice afterwards you fought for your life as you spent weeks all together in the PICU. I was so scared of loosing you, but though you had such enormous amounts of pain in your eyes you were so strong and brave on the exterior. All the doctors and nurses loved being around you because of your resilience and happy demeanor. I know you were just an infant on the outside, but your soul on the inside knew you had so much more to live for.

Now at One you are turning into a fun loving, spunky little girl. You have a flirtatious, teasing, toothy grin that cracks me up and sends everyone into laughter. You love to be wherever your brother is and to play with his toys. He dotes on you, most of the time, and sweetly refers to you as “Honey.” Though you are a very tender soul and do not like your feelings to be hurt, you are still a tough cookie and enjoy a good challenge. Right now your favorite challenge is going up and down the stairs and you like to practice often. You also enjoy the challenge of trying to sneak into the bathroom before Mom catches you and closes the door. I don’t know what it is about the Bathroom, but that is the room you always gravitate to, you just want to climb that toilet. Maybe you will be an easy kid to potty train – here’s to hoping!

Right now you are crawling and can walk around as you hold on to things. You also enjoy walking behind the walker Grandma Bonnie gave to you for your Birthday. Like I said you enjoy climbing up things like the stairs. We have started working on baby sign language with you and you can sign “more,” “eat” and we are working on “all done.” You love to growl at things like dinosaurs, dogs, lions/tigers in books, etc. For such a little girl, you do have one ferocious growl. You love to eat food. Your favorite food is ice cream. We always have to be cautious of when we get the ice cream out because once we start feeding you ice cream we are in it for the long haul. You get quite a food grunt going on if we slow down and don’t get the next bite in at the precise second you are ready for it.

You said your first word a few months ago and it was “Mom.” You love your Mom!! “Mom” is a word that you use for just about anything that you want or that you are excited about. You love to snuggle up to me and I LOVE to snuggle up to you! When you wake up, you snuggle into my chest and just sit there for a couple minutes. This is such a precious time. If something scares you, you like to snuggle into whoever is holding you at that point as well. Also, whenever you get shy, you snuggle in and bury your face in my chest.

Hayden, you are also a very beautiful girl! I love to watch your blue eyes that you got from me sparkle and dance. Those eyes can light up a room. Your hair is so wild and crazy the only way it can be tamed now-a-days is by being pulled back into one or two pony tails which is always completed by a big bow of some sort. Who would have thought that I would be so much into accessorizing my little girl? You are so much fun to doll up and Daddy loves to show you off! He loves his little girl with all his heart.

Thanks Hayden Yvonne for coming into our lives and being our little “Angel” and “Honey”!

I love you with all my heart,
Mom

Carter's Four Yr Old Favorite Things

Carter at Four Years Old
12-18-10

Today my baby is turning four years old (I wrote this on Carter's Birthday) and I wanted to document what he says some of his favorite things are:

Favorite Color: Green

Favorite Food: Cheesy Scrambled Eggs

Favorite Shape: Circle

Favorite Candy: Chocolate – Kit Kat, M&Ms

Favorite Story: Mud Pie Annie & Go Away Big Green Monster

Favorite Show: Spiderman & Batman (though I think he’s watched only one Batman in his life) & Avengers (Ironman, Captain America, Incredible Hulk, Thor, etc)

Favorite Super Hero: Batman

Favorite Person: Mommy

Favorite thing to do: Play

Favorite Place: Chick Fil’ A

Favorite thing to play: With his Fire truck (though yesterday was the first time he’s played with his fire truck in months.

Favorite thing to Drink: Dog Soda (Mug root beer because it has a dog on it)

Favorite Song: Truck song “Trucks, Tractors and Forklifts, too” (from his truck story book my mom gave him)

As a four yr old Carter is quite the kid. We have our ups and downs. He is such a strong-willed fireball. Every day we go through our challenges, but overall we know he is a good, sweet child. He loves to be a big brother and is constantly helping out Hayden. He loves to share his food with her and make sure she doesn’t get to close to the stairs.

He also is a smart kid. He knows his whole alphabet and the sound each letter makes and is starting to sound out words and writes his own name. He loves to go to preschool to play. His favorite thing in this world is to play with buddies. Right now he is really into superheroes and watching superhero shows. It’s fun because a lot of the old school superhero shows are back on TV.

Carter and I love to snuggle up together and watch them. Silly enough, I think I enjoy them almost as much as he does (especially the snuggling up with my boy part).

Happy 4th Birthday Carter Buddy!!

For Carter's Birthday we did a Superhero Training Camp Birthday Party.

Carter wanted representation from just about every superhero. Here you see Batman.
Ironman is on top of the cupcakes and the cupcake paper liners are Spiderman. Also, the Carter wanted the frosting to be green because it's his favorite color.

Bonnie and I made these Superman capes. Here our little superhero's in training are practicing their target practice by squirting joker with water.

This was a big hit amongst all the trainees.

Then they strengthened their muscles by lifting this 100lb barbell.

They also decorated their superhero belts that will give them special powers.

Here's all of our superheros.

Look at their BIG muscles.

Watch out, you might get zapped by their superhero power.

Thanks buddies for all the super cool presents!

And here's to our super food.

And what would be a Superhero Birthday Party without Super Awesome cupcakes and ...

Super Awesome Cotton Candy ice cream (all chosen by the Birthday Boy).

These are the presents Grandpa Jay, Grandma Bonnie, and Aunt Whit gave Carter.

Mom and Dad's gifts.

And Grandpa Craig, Grandma Karen and Aunt Nic gave Carter these great books along with a Birthday check. We love the books Grandma picks out, she always finds the COOLEST books.

Happy Thanksgiving 2010

I hope that all of our Buddies and Family had a good Thanksgiving. Ours was pretty laid back and nice.

The guys did a great job in helping this year, and the women folk really appreciated it. Carter was scoping the scene to get a good idea of what will be expected of him in the future.

Our delicious table. We had LOTS of leftovers, but over the Holiday weekend we were able to finish up just about all of it.

Carter had this table all to himself. Not that he needed to be exiled, but he chose it (and our table in right in front of his). He can't wait till Cousin Dade can come hang with him at the cousin table.

And here's the rest of us (Matt's taking the picture).

Once we were done with the meal and cleaned up, we played games and...

watched a lot of football.

Hayden Beautiful

Back in November Hayden wore this adorable dress for the first time, so after church we did a little photo shoot. Hayden has such a sweet, endearing personality. She gives such cute smiles.



I like so many other people, think that the eyes are a window to someone's soul. I love that Hayden's eyes dance when she smiles. When she was so sick in the hospital her enormous amount of pain would scream through her eyes. What a blessing it is that I get the opportunity to still look into those beautiful blue eyes and see pure happiness.

She LOVES to climb up to these bars (climbing the stairs is her favorite form of entertainment) and peek through them with someone on the other side and laugh and laugh. There is a video of this at the end of the post.
Woo woo Hayden.

The best time to see Hayden's blue eyes are when the light is shining directly into them.

The 2010 Ugly Christmas Sweater Party

Last night Matt and I hosted an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party in Matt's parent's basement. We had a great turn out of 30 people (and their basement could have easily held more, it's crazy). We had lots of food, white elephants (which I can't believe I didn't take pictures of) and most importantly some majorly UGLY sweaters!! Way to step up to the plate everyone!

The female winner of the night is the lady on the right. She bought her Christmas tree sweater on Ebay. It was just a plain sweater with a Christmas tree on it and then Jen went to work. She added all the tinsel, presents, holly and berries all with a hot glue gun. It was a 3D masterpiece! For her job well done on her Cheesy sweater she received a cheesy romance novel.

The male winner is the guy on the left. He decked the halls from head to toe. He had a festive hat and scarf on along with some cozy green sweat pants. But what really took the cake was his Grandma Sweater and his amazing Grandma Blouse. Even the buttons were bright in their festive colors. To add to his Christmas wardrobe, he recieved a Santa tie as his prize.

Matt wore a sweatshirt with a bedazzled teddy bear. It really brought out the blush in his cheeks.

Andy here draped himself in lights and poked them through his sweater. He walked around hooked into an outlet. He did complain of feeling a little toasty through the night though.

Sadly, several of the pictures through out the night are blurred for some strange reason, perhaps it was the sugar shakes we were all receiving from the amounts of junk food we consumed. I completed my outfit with a big red bow in my hair.

And Matt's lovely parents showing off their stuff.

Since I didn't take pictures I thought I would just mention a few of my favorite white elephant gifts of the evening:

1. Matt and I found a 2 1/2 ft tall plastic reindeer from around the 70s that glows when you plug it in. (For my siblings, think Grandma Ione's plastic Santa.)

2. An evil looking Clown baby monitor called "The Little Listener."

3. Matt got a box of chocolates where each candy had a bite taken out of it. The sick thing is by the end of the night those chocolates were pretty much finished off by our party guests.

4. I received a North Beach Diet book that taught you how to go from ripped to adding hip and belly fat instantly with tips such as "how to lower your metabolism."

5. Someone made a bag from tidy widys.

6. Canned meats made from animal intestines.

7. Sardines

I Needed This Today

Thanks Becky for putting this on your blog. It's BEAUTIFUL!

See Ya on the Flip Side Elder Herzog

Missionaries go into the Missionary Training Center down in Provo, UT on Wednesdays. Tuesday night, Tim was set apart as a missionary by an Extraordinary Priesthood Blessing. The spirit was so strong and amazing. Afterward, he is officially Elder Herzog and will be a Missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for the next two years.

There was lots of hugs and tears knowing that we wouldn't see him in person for the next two years. But overall the feeling was joy, happiness and excitement that he was choosing this honorable path.

Carter and Tim have always had a special relationship.

Yes, that is a soccer ball in Timmy's hands. Anyone who knows him, knows that he wouldn't survive without his soccer ball.

Adios Elder Herzog!!


Now fast forward a couple weeks from those previous pictures. Tim just arrived in GA yesterday. His Mission President, President King, and his wife had all the new missionaries over for dinner and interviews and they took this picture to send to all the families. Elder Herzog is top left. And the fun begins!!