Okay, I’m writing this in Word, I hope it goes smoothly. It’s fun to hear from everyone; hopefully I can do better at keeping up on the info of us! We spent an enjoyable Sunday out in our backyard loving the weather and eating BBQ hamburgers with some friends, it was great! I love just lounging in the backyard and we have a little slide and playhouse and stuff for Hayden. We have already spent countless hours playing baseball out there! We really have an awesome little apartment here and a killer deal so I’m grateful for the decision we made to stay here for the entire 4 years (especially since it looks like we don’t really know when we’ll need another bedroom anyway!) It would be nice to have more space when we have visitors but things have worked out okay so far so hopefully we’ll keep getting visitors!
The big news around here is the fact that Hayden is potty trained now. I hadn’t exactly planned to train him so young but he was really interested so I didn’t want to pass up my chance. Plus, let’s be honest, at this point in my life I actually have the time and energy to focus on the potty 24/7, I actually have the luxury (if you call it that) to literally not leave the house for 5 days straight! I figured Conference weekend was a good time since we would be home anyway and we were expecting bad weather. Plus, I wanted him to be a pro before our traveling and such this summer. It worked out great and he’s doing really well, he just runs up and says “potty mommy!” He’s been accident free for an entire week now! He thinks it’s great and now walks around saying “I’m a big boy!”
Hayden really is a big boy these days. He’s talking in small sentences (if you can understand him). He just came up to me and handed me a tissue and said “mommy, put it in the garbage.” I spend so much time with him I generally know exactly what he is saying but everyone else is always saying “what?” so I have to translate it. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is his favorite song and he can sing the whole thing, except that several of the words he says aren’t actually words at all- they’re just syllables similar to the real words. Same thing with Itsy Bitsy Spider, he loves the actions! He still says things like “Hayden wants one” or “Hayden’s turn” and when I try to tell him to say “My turn” he just gets mad and says “not mommy’s turn, Hayden’s turn!” We’re working on it!
He thinks he can count to 10 but he frequently skips a few numbers. I have finally talked him out of saying he is nine years old. He’ll say he is two but then he has to say that I’m two also. In fact, we have to (I mean get to) do everything together these days. I have to go down every slide at the park, swing on the swings, drink water when he does, etc. In fact, right now he is playing golf with Tom and he keeps running over and saying “Mommy, play golf too!” and handing me a club. It can get tiring but it’s also a lot of fun, he cracks me up. He’s mastered his colors and shapes and is working on letters but only knows W, O, S, A and H… I don’t know why he picked those but he did.

So enough about Hayden, Dave asked what I do with my time… for me typical day goes something like this… I get up a little before 7 and I go rollerblading or running, I come home just in time for Tom to leave for school. I shower, straighten the house, etc and then Sophie arrives. I feed Hayden and Sophie breakfast and get Hayden ready and they generally play nicely for a while so I can eat breakfast and read the Book of Mormon. Then we usually go somewhere around 10:00, like the Children’s Museum, the Library, the Park, the Zoo, play dates, or errands. During the winter I had the kids in a music class on Fridays (a co-op with other moms) and we’ve done a few different sessions of story times. Then we go home for lunch and naps. During their naps I like to do email, surf the internet, read, scrapbook, etc. Lately I have been into making different flashcards and file folder games and such for Hayden. And of course I spend a lot of time keeping the house clean, doing laundry, paying bills, etc. After the nap we just play for a while, Sophie goes home, Tom comes home and he plays with Hayden while I make dinner, we eat and then we just hang out, watch our favorite TV shows, or I go grocery shopping or run other errands.
For a while I was playing soccer which was great. I was also in a book club for a while and then got distracted with Harry Potter and Anita Shreeve but I’ll get back to it. I was also in a Bunko group (12 girls get together and play a game with dice) but after President Hinckley’s talk that is on hold because no one can decide if it is gambling…you have to pay $10 a month to play in the group which buys the treats and the prizes. Everyone goes home with a prize but the winner gets to pick their prize first, second place picks second, and so on. The prizes range in value from $5-$20 so clearly the winner has a chance to get a better prize if they that is what they pick. The last Bunko night the prizes were board games and some people got games like Cranium and other’s got Rook cards… oddly enough the two winners didn’t pick the most expensive prizes because that’s not what they wanted. Anyway, it seems to border too closely to gambling so we’re trying to decide what to do.

Hmmm… so I am sort of in limbo as to what I do for fun right now. I am throwing a baby shower for one of the sisters I visit teach so the plans for that will keep me busy for a while. Overall, even though I don’t have a lot of exciting things to write about I feel tremendously blessed in my life right now. I have made some good friends here, I couldn’t ask for a better extended family. Tom and Hayden are amazing. Who would have thought I could spend all my time with my two best friends? I just finished saying family prayers with them and Hayden said his first prayer from start to finish. You couldn’t always understand the things he was saying as he repeated me but he stuck with it all the way through to amen. It’s moments like that when I can’t help but realize how blessed I truly am. We’ve wanted to be pregnant for about 9 months now and we really hope that we are able to have another child soon but we can’t deny the hand of the Lord in our lives. We know that he is mindful of us and our desires. It’s hard to be sad when there are so many blessings bombarding us every day. Brooke I can only imagine how you felt all those years after Jane, and how you might feel now with your new realization. But as you once said to me (at Dave’s CWRU graduation) Its hard to be sad for those things we want and don’t have when we already have so many wonderful things!

We have tickets to three Indians games this week so that will be fun. Yesterday we went to the temple in Columbus. We went down Friday night and split a hotel room with another couple with a two year old and then took turns babysitting so we each did a session. Next weekend, Hayden and I are going to drive out to my brother’s house in Pennsylvania (about a 6 hour drive) to spend the weekend with them. They have a little boy who is 7 months old so it should be fun; Tom is going to stay here to study. As for my favorite Disneyland memory I am still waiting for a Stinchfield Disney memory. Hayden is so obsessed with Mickey Mouse and friends I think he would faint if we took him to Disneyland! However, my earliest childhood memory of anything is actually of Disneyland. It’s when I was two years old and we were riding on the It’s a Small World ride and some water splashed my eyes.
So there you have it, I think I hold the record for the longest blog ever, however, I do believe that if you added up all Dave’s blog for one week it would be much longer than this one. I suppose I just have to write more often so I don’t get these hugely long ones! Take care, I'll try to keep in touch!