Christmas Picture

This is our Christmas picture for the year. We were just too crazy doing practices for the musical on the weekends and Scott gets home after dark so we never got a chance to take a real family picture. We will soon though! I decided to just have our cute boys pose for our Christmas card. Here they are...

Just for fun, here are some outtakes...




We wish all our friends and family a VERY Merry Christmas!

Setting up for Christmas!

I'm trying to get caught up on our blog and this happened almost a month ago but we did set up our house for Christmas. We had fun building our tree and stringing lights and hanging ornaments. Connor was very helpful this year with the tree and lights. Haydn was sure it was Christmas the next day and has been impatiently waiting ever since. Tristan is just in awe of everything this year. Santa visited our ward Christmas party and brought all the kids popcorn balls. So if you ask Tristan what he wants Santa to bring him the answer is popcorn. So cute. I love the holidays with little ones!

Dentist Visit

I took the boys to the dentist recently. Most of them had never been before. It was a superb experience. They explained everything they were doing, showed them videos of what would happen and how and why you need to keep your teeth clean and even let the boys help with the instruments (the water shooter and spit sucker). It really fun for them! In the end they got new toothbrushes and timers and got to choose a prize from their treasure chest.




Tristan got a little boredwaiting for his turn and by the end he was done being confined to a small area. The funny thing is we found a magazine that kept him riveted...Motor Trends. He looked through that thing for a good half hour! That boy LOVES cars!

You might be wondering where we are since we've been crazy busy the past few weeks! We made it to Cali and we are pretty settled in our new place! We had to do a Home Depot run and we got a nice picture of the kids with a great view...check out the word in the background.

So far we are just loving it here. The weather has been wonderful, Tristan won't go outside without sunglasses because it's to bright for his little eyes. We made it here just in time for our new ward's trunk-or-treat and that was a fun way to introduce ourselves and let the kids play games. We had a fun Halloween with a little monkey, and 2 Harry Potters! Haydn was actually superman at the trunk-or-treat but Nana sent him a Harry Potter costume too which arrived on Halloween so he switched costumes. Here's some fun pics of the kids trick or treating. I think this is the first year they were really into it and didn't want to stop. Connor did have a run in at a house that had a haunted house display in part of the yard. He decided to go in, without asking and without a grown-up. I was getting nervous because I couldn't find him in the chaos of this overly decorated house and finally he came out but he was a little shaken up (must have gotten a good scare!) and was ready to head home. Poor kid! I felt bad for him but I was just so happy that I'd found him that we had a hard time not laughing at how shaken up he was.




Anyways, we are doing great in Cali. Connor is in school and already has some good friends. We have friends in the ward just 2 houses down so that is fun to be so close to them. I can walk to everything I need-the school, my doctor, even the hospital (no wonder we hear ambulances way too often, I'm just realizing this). I've even started potty training Tristan and we are having a little success here and there. I'll definitely post more soon now that we are more settled.

Pumpkins and Packing

The boys didn't have school Monday so, despite the BIG packing project going on at home, I decided that we needed to get out of the house and do a fun Fall New England activity. We went to our favorite farm and went pumpkin picking! We had a wonderful time and I even managed not to lose anyone despite my lack of extra hands. The boys got their face painted, played croquet, played at the playground, went on hayride, ran through a corn maze and picked a pumpkin.











When we got home I got a text from one of my friends that she and another friend were coming to help me pack. They swept through my kitchen and packed most of it. YEAH! I'm that much closer to being done. Thanks for your help ladies!

California Here We Come...

I've been playing single mom for about 3 weeks now. Scott started a job out in CA about 2 weeks ago and is loving it. Today we finalized plans to move into a townhouse in Beverly Hills. I'm here in CT still hoping to find someone to rent or buy our house before we leave. Crazy huh! We are all so excited to go and it makes it even more real to actually have a place to move into. YEAH! The funniest part is Bolton, CT and Beverly Hills, CA are about as polar opposites and you can get! We are so excited to have a winter without piles of snow. Haydn wasn't so sure about that idea. I had to reassure him that Santa will know it's Christmas there even if it doesn't snow.

Here's a little catch-up of what we've been up to in these past crazy weeks...

We went at the end of summer to a celebration at the library for the summer reading challenge. The kids got their face painted and snacks. It was really fun.



While the big boys are in school Tristan and I like to play outside. He LOVES to be outdoors. He pushes his little car around everywhere. He also likes to ride on the back of my bike He even tells me which direction to go and if I turn toward home he starts saying, "NO, NO, NO! That way!" This is one morning when he found a caterpillar.

Connor started playing soccer this fall. He loves it. His favorite position is to be goalie or defense.


Tristan likes to bring a ball and kick it around while we watch practice.

First Day of School!

Today was the first day of school! I had some VERY excited boys in my house. Here we are taking some quick pics before driving them to school...


It's a little tradition of ours that I make them a BIG cookie for a back to school celebration! I started this last year and the boys had totally forgotten about it but I hadn't! It was fun to surprise them and totally make their day, after-all there's nothing better than cookies with frosting and milk to win over your kids right?!

Here they are with their pieces of cookie! They were amazed I let them have such big pieces yet still asked for more, what's that all about?!



Anyways, the boys had good days! Haydn has a half day of preschool so he came home for lunch and told me all about Preschool. He got to play with potato heads that had "openings on their butts" (he thought that was amusing apparently), write his name with shaving cream, and sang songs. He made some new friends too. He said there is another Hayden and an Aiden in his class and one of his teachers is named Mrs. Connors so he'll always remember them.

Connor came home on the bus happy but so excited about school that he forgot to bring home his backpack, oops! He got to choose your own desk and set up his supplies inside it. He's sitting by one old friend and one new one. He said he got to start off his day in art and then they played some get-to-know-you games like a scavenger hunt about people. They got to bring in 5 things from home and tell about themselves. They also did word searches and talked a lot about their class and each other. They had indoor recess and he got to play on the computer right in his classroom (he thinks that's awesome)! He also got to play with legos.

I'm so glad they had an awesome day! It was so strange just having one little 2 year old in the house for the morning but Tristan and I enjoyed our alone time! He brought me lots of books to read and we watched a baby einstein movie. We also played with cars and I tickled him a lot and just about anything else I could do to make him laugh hysterically because he has the cutest laugh EVER!

Soccer Camp

I heard about a fun soccer camp I just had to get my boys involved in. They loved it! Even Tristan, that wasn't technically part of the group, enjoyed playing with the coaches a bit.





Here's a fun video of a song one of the counselors did with the kids, my kids LOVED it!

Nana and a BIG ADVENTURE!

Scott's Mom came into town and so we got some amazing time with Nana! We went on an amazing trip to upstate NY together. We got to go to the Hill Cumorah Pageant and see some other LDS church historical sites. We got to see the printing press that printed the first Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith's childhood homes and the Sacred Grove where he saw the first vision. It was so fun! We also took an amazing trip to Niagara Falls!

Here's some poses with the cast members of the Hill Cumorah Pageant...


An amazing view of the printing press where the Book of Mormon was first printed...

This inside Joseph Smith's cabin...

This is Connor by the fireplace of Joseph Smith's frame home where we learned that he actually hid the golden plates under the bricks in the fireplace for a time.

This is our family after walking through the sacred grove...

Amazingly we ran into some old friends we hadn't seen in years, the Velingas, while on our trip! That was a great surprise!

Here's the photos from our Niagara Falls adventure...


We rode on the Maid of the Mist boat...




We stayed until late so we could see the lights on the falls and an amazing fireworks show as well.