The beginnings of October and Lucy's Birthday (2014)

General Conference is always the first weekend in October Lucy's birthday is October 8 so we always get to start the month off with a celebration! We love watching conference and look forward to it every 6 months. We are blessed to have kids who still nap during at least one of the sessions so we can watch in peace, and then during the other sessions we do our best to keep the crowd quiet. We sure are grateful that they record them online to watch/listen/read later. I have had a great month of listening to the talks again when I go running in the morning. It just starts the day off so positively and I love all the inspired messages that were shared.

 

This is what Timmy spent most of conference doing. We are living in the Haglund house until Brother and Sister Haglund come home from their missions in the spring and both Timmy and Lucy have discovered that there is a built-in track basically around their house. They run circles and chase each other and just have a blast!

Grandma Sherrie and Papa Dwight sent Lucy a package of three books based of the Frozen movie for her birthday. She was in heaven!

The Saturday before Lucy's birthday we went out to breakfast for her birthday and then went to the Aviary for the free RAD day with my mom and dad. We took the kids to Eat N Park for the breakfast buffet which we all loved and afterwards the kids got a Smiley cookie as usual. Well, Timothy ate his cookie in the car and I looked back at it was ALL over him. I wish the picture showed it better, but it was like a picture of cookie monster demolishing a cookie. Crumbs EVERYWHERE. A perfect example of why I shouldn't let my kids eat in the car :( I spent a while vacuuming the van out after this month of craziness.

Timmy had a yogurt goatee one day. Super funny.

On the Sunday before Lucy's birthday we had dinner and dessert at Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Steve's house after church. Lucy got lots of cool gifts including this cute Frozen shirt and a skirt and some Sophia the first clothes. Aunt Rachel got her a super awesome Disney Princess placemat for the table which she of course LOVES.

Grandma Sharon made Lucy this AWESOME princess cupcake cake for her birthday. It is pink in honor of sleeping beauty at Lucy's request (although she has never seen the movie, only pictures of her) and it turned out beautiful AND delicious. Way to go grandma!

Mommy and Daddy got Lucy a new book and this tent for her birthday. The kids LOVE this thing and Jared convinces Lucy to take a nap almost every day now by offering her the chance to sleep in her tent :)

This is Sammy. When did he get so big!?!? He is 6 months old this month. That is crazy! I love this little guy. He is no longer my baby it seems like already, which is so heartbreaking, but he is so stinking cute and his personality is starting to show which is just so fun. We really do have great kids. We are so blessed.

Our first family pictures! (Nov 2013)

Aunt Cheryl and her daughter Chaelyne were gracious enough to take family pictures for us, and they turned out great! I only have access to one here at work, but I promise there are a lot more super awesome photos!

September 2014

September was a fun month. Jared has started coaching tennis for Carlynton High School, which he loves. Our schedule got a little more difficult to coordinate but we managed :)

 

We had the Stake softball tournament for church which was fun. Really only Jared played but we all watched for a bit and then headed over to the playground for a while. They had lunch for everyone as well and it was a lot of fun. Lucy made a new friend and learned how to climb a tree! I love seeing kids do something for the first time. She was so excited. Timmy wanted in on the fun, too, so he got to stand at the base of the tree with his new friends :)

Timmy, in an effort to do everything his sister does, has figured out how to take pictures with my phone. Here we are with Timmy's first selfie :)

 

Lucy got to go on a date with Grandpa Steve one Friday night to go watch her two cousins (Grace and Ellie) cheer at the Moon Football game. Ellie cheers for the JV team and Grace cheers for the little league (is that what they call it?) but for some reason that I can't remember they all got to cheer at this game (maybe it was homecoming?). She had a blast and it was so nice that she got to have a date night with grandpa steve.

Timmy got some new church clothes, and we all know how much I love how handsome he looks in dress clothes, so we took a picture.

This is the first year in a while that I didn't need to be in Salt Lake helping with the Women's Broadcast for church. I really loved being at the conference center helping out, but since I couldn't be there I decided to have a girls night for my mom and me and my sister and my nieces. There were some schedule conflicts so not everyone could come, but we still had lots of good food and lots of fun and got to watch the Women's Broadcast together. It was very uplifting and inspiring and it was nice to be with family for it. Lucy really wanted to come and I was worried she would get bored, but she made it half way through before she started asking to go home :) Next time if she comes we will make sure to have more coloring pages and crayons for her, but she did a lot better than I expected.

As you can see, we found a LOT of places with pony rides this year :) One of the Saturdays in September we went to Hartwood Acres Hay days. They had a bunch of fun kids stuff like crafts and bouncy slides and what not, and they had PONY RIDES! The kids loved it and it was a very sunny, beautiful day. We happened to run into the Tatlow family from church while we were there, too, which was a fun surprise!

We also went to the temple in Columbus, Ohio this month. It was great to be in the temple again after a long summer. It is about a 3 hour drive but the trip was easy, and we switched off with my parents so we could go together which was nice. They went to the temple first while we ate lunch and walked around, then we went to the temple and they just drove the kids home. It was so nice to be there and I am so grateful they are able to help out with the kids so we can go. Everything is just better when you go to the temple. It just gives you a renewed sense of purpose and really does give you strength to conquer whatever lies ahead. What a blessing to have so many temples that are easily accessible. We really are blessed.

August 2014

Our summer consisted of a lot of this: Lucy and Timmy playing in the little pool and with the water table that grandma sharon got Timmy for his birthday in June. It was such a nice summer, not too hot and not too cold, just lots of beautiful weather.

My mom and I went to a girls night out that my friend Tabitha set up for some ladies from church. We went to a place called Painting with a Twist where they walk you step by step through how to paint a picture. This one was based off a Monet painting (Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies) and I happen to love Monet's paintings so I was excited to try it out. Let the record show that I am not creative OR artistic, but this class was so fun and the painting actually turned out okay! It honestly was therapeutic to just sit there and relax and paint. It was a great stress reliever. I highly recommend it :)

 My mom planted lots of peppers this year in her garden and got a little behind on picking them, so one day I had Lucy help me pick a bunch. Well, within an hour she had eaten almost all of them. She is such a goob :)

Every Saturday we try to do something together as a family since we both work during the week. One week we went to Soergel's farm for their peach festival. Sadly, an early frost made their peach trees un productive (the guy said they found one peach in all ten acres of trees) but they have other orchards in central PA that they brought peaches over from. We actually didn't get any peaches, but we did get donuts from the Amish family who comes and cooks them fresh every Saturday morning (they were seriously amazing) and the kids got to go to a butterfly house, ride a pony, play on the playground, go to a petting zoo, and ride a tractor around the apple orchard. It was fun to be there and there was lots of good food to go around :)

Timmy is obsessed with carrots lately, and he especially loves the normal super big ones (not pre-cut baby carrots). He eats them all day, every day, and we often find little nubs around the house. We have been trying to explain to him to throw away the last bit that he doesn't eat, and we also have had to put the carrots on the top shelf of the fridge so he can't get them without asking. He ate like half a bag one day. It was crazy!

Sammy is getting so big! He is just a happy, healthy baby and he LOVES to wiggle on the floor and watch Lucy and Timmy play. What a cutie pie :)

Lucy and Timmy have become such good friends. I love to see them interacting together. They have started to pretend together which is super fun to watch. Lucy is usually the leader (the boss really) but Timmy just loves to pretend with her. They are kids, they fight about 50% of the time, but the other 50% of the time is just so fun to watch. I'm glad they have each other.

One last selfie for the road:

 

 

****Sarah came to visit for the second half of August and Johanna and John went on a cruise for their 10 year anniversary so we watched their kids for a week. I somehow have no pictures of that :( But we had a ton of fun with all the cousins and it was awesome to have Sarah and Lincoln come visit from Texas!!!! We love when they come to visit.

 

July 2014

July was another fun month with a lot of visits from family. Katie and Brad came out to visit for the week of July 4th, and Johanna and her family came to visit again for our niece, Sharon's, graduation party. It was fun to visit with everyone and the kids love to see their cousins.

 

This is a typical evening in our house. Jared searches the internet, some of us watch TV, and others "watch TV" :)

Lucy the photographer always leaves such gems on my phone. Her skills are improving. She even took the picture of the donkey at the zoo!

 

 Jared's aunt asked everyone to send a picture of themselves doing a "thumbs up" for her son Ethan who is serving a mission in Virginia (he was actually serving in Virginia Beach when we were there so we saw him at church!). So we took some pictures while we were at the park playing.  I am not sure exactly why she needed "thumbs up" but they are fun pictures either way :)

This kid is so stinking cute!

When the cousins were back in town for the graduation party the kids got to play with some sparklers we had laying around. I think this picture just looks so cool :)

The baptist church down the road from us always has a summer neighborhood party. They even had pony rides! Timothy was nervous, but wanted to ride the pony and successfully did NOT cry this time around :) Lucy was, as usual, the queen cowgirl. She just LOVES pony rides.

My dad took all of us bowling, with the help of me and Johanna, of course. Although it was crazy with two toddlers who kept wanting to run away and with Samuel needing held now and then, it was fun to go. Rachel came with her girls, too, and it was just fun that we all got to go do something together.

 

Timmy insisted on carrying the ball himself. He is so determined to be a big boy and do everything his sister does lately.

This is the picture I got at work the other day. Timothy got a toilet seat for his birthday with Cars on it (to encourage him to at least THINK about the potty). He really was excited to buy it, but I don't think he gets it quite yet :) He decided to put the pad on his head and then he got it stuck and couldn't get it off. I almost died laughing in the middle of work. What a gem :)