Fall Is Here!!!

The first day of school August, 2011

I'm so glad it is fall.  I love the briskness of the mornings and the chill in the air at night.  Soon we will start having fires.  Happiness!  Today is my brother's birthday, and it is the first time in 17 years that we will get to spend it with him.  He is home from prison and we are happy.  He will be getting a Starbucks gift card and brownies ala Macie.  We are supposed to go the Ward Trunk or Treat tonight, but it being Matt's birthday we will not be going.  I haven't broken it to the gang yet. 
 Tom and I are living in the living room due to the fact that we are still remodeling our bedroom. I painted and Tom has been putting in a beautiful laminate floor. The room is looking very pretty, and I can't wait until I can lay in my bed without who ever walks through the front door looking in and saying "Hi". :) The kids love having our bed in the living room because they can play the wii while sitting or jumping on the bed.
Everyone is in school and studying hard. We are waiting anxiously for Halloween to come. We will have a bumble bee, sock man, blue witch, Darth Vader, and a cape wearing karate man. The caped karate man will be going to a birthday party today. He is so excited. :)
I wish I had more of my fall pictures loaded so I could post them, but at least I'm posting. Have a great Saturday and Trick or Treat!

Tom working hard on our bedroom floor.

Matthew is officially wanting 2 front teeth for Christmas!

Our Halloween decorations.  Thanks Auntie and Uncle!

One of our Friday night homemade pizzas.

Who gave Henry that sticker?

Red Ribbon Week and Thomas went all out.  :)

Halloween at Grandma and Pa's.

Before we went Trick or Treating.

Big Basin Redwood State Park

This year we went on our annual vacation to Big Basin Redwood State Park.  It was very fun and exciting seeing the places that Daddy grew up in.  We went on August 1 and came home on August 7.  One whole week of dirt, sun, raccoons, hiking, riding bikes, eating, making new friends, going to Jr. Rangers and Big Basin nature club, and swimming in the ocean.  We had camp visitors on Wed.  Mark and Mary Treuge from Santa Cruz came up and had dinner with us.  It was fun to reconnect with them and have a great meal together.  Buddy went to visit them on Thursday as we went to the Natural Bridges Beach in Santa Cruz.  The kids had a ball in the surf, in fact Thomas went body surfing and Henry  actually "surfed" ( picture to come later).  Every year at the end of vacation I always think to myself, no way am I doing this again next year, but after a few days at home I'm on board again.  :)  We think next year will be closer to water so we can swim most days and lounge by the water. 
Thomas made friends as usual with a little boy and spent time with him.  We got his address and I suspect Thomas will write him.  We also had a young family of a father and son camp next to us for 2 nights.  They were from Minnesota and didn't have much of the camping gear we had.  So we invited them for smore's 2 nights and they shared our campfire with us.  I let Thomas go for a walk on night before dinner and he still wasn't back at camp 45 mins. later.  I went into a bit of a panic.  I could just see us having to send out a search party for him.  I sent Mark and Tom out looking and they came back 30 mins. later with him.  He had hiked all the way up the mountain and saw the ocean.  I think he will have to really think about his scouting skills and remember that you need to go hiking with a buddy. At one point Macie counted Henry's mosquito bites and he had 62.  Yikes! I also had to use the self timer on my camera to make sure there was documentation that I was on the trip.  Here are some pictures of our trip.  :)

Matthew thought every tree needed to be climbed.

Henry "surfing"

I was on the trip.  :)

Macie and Thomas on their hike with Daddy.  The Pine Mountain Trail.

Just some of Henry's mosquito bites.

The Hay gang in camp 110 in Big Basing Redwood State Park.

It's Great To Be Eight!!!!

When you are eight in our house you get to make the choice to baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Julia turned eight in May and decided to get baptized.  Our stake has a new procedure for children of record baptisms.  We are instructed to have our children baptized on the first Saturday of the month at 9:00 am.  Well, Julia could get baptized on June 4th, but we had a swim meet so we chose to do it on July 2nd because there was a bye for our meets.  So she got baptized on July 2nd.  She was baptized and confirmed by her daddy.  We loved going to the church and celebrating her decision.  She had a moment of being afraid that everyone would be look at her, but she was able to step into the font.  We love her and everyone that was there love her very much.

The Gang before the baptism.  You can see the excitement of everyone.  :)

Julia before the baptism.  She is so excited.

Julia and Tom ready to go into the baptismal font.  I love the smiles on everyone's faces.

Everyone who was at the baptism.  We were all there to celebrate Julia.  Our Bishopric member, Brother Hall, took the picture.

....

 sorry about not posting latley i was busy like camping and i kind of forgot anyway sorry please stay in tune later



This post was posted by Macie, who was like indeed camping with her mother. We had fun at girl's camp. :)

Promotions

We have all sorts of promotions around here.  First of all Macie is now a 7th grader and will be going to Jr. High in August.  Of course, all the other children have been promoted to a higher grade.  Matthew will be a 1st grader, Julia a 3rd grader, and Thomas will be a big man on campus as a 6th grader.  Our lilttle Henry will be going to Sierra College State Preschool for his final year before he enters kindergarten.  He has also been promoted to that of someone who wears underwear.  He is potty trained.  I feel like I got a raise because I no longer have to buy diapers or pull ups for the day time.  Yay me.  :) 

The biggest news around here is this.  My brother who has been in prison for 16 and 1/2 years will be coming home.  He has been deemed suitable for parole and has been reviewed for coming home.  We are just waiting on the actual release date.  We are thinking it will be within 10 days.  Sometimes things move slower than we want in the prison system.  We are all so excited to have him home and be able to do family things with us.  :)

We went camping again with Antsy McClain and The Tralier Park Troubadours over Memorial Day weekend.  As always a fun time was had except for the extreme cold and rain.  The gang didn't seem to mind although I did.  We are flamingoheads through and through.  We played games, listened to music, laughed with new and old friends, rode scooters and bikes, ate terrific food, and created in the craft shack.  Whew I needed a vaca from the vaca.  :)

Now we start summer and all the fun activities that come with it.  Yahoo can't wait to get our summer on.  :)

It's Spring!!!

You would think that with Spring here we would be doing all the springy things you think about.  You know, putting in a garden, cleaning the yard, deep cleaning the house, enjoying all the baseball games, but no, we haven't been able to do much with all the rain and cold.  We celebrated opening day of baseball (we have 3 ball players), we've gone to the River cats to enjoy Macie and Thomas singing with their choir the National Anthem, celebrated Thomas' birthday, watched, Thomas perform in the band concert, watched Macie perfomr in the Parker Whitney talent show, 3 days away from Macie's 12th birthday, and lots of other fun family things. 
During Spring Break we went to the zoo and saw the movie Soul Surfer.  It was great.  Now  the kids are all back in school.  I hope all is going well for them.  Here are some pictures of the last couple of months.

February 2011 ( You know Valentine's Day )

I now have my camera back.  Yipppeeee!  I found just a few Christmas shots on it and then I took more.  I now have pictures of our new puppy, Buddy, Matthew's first lost tooth, Julia at basket-ball and many from our annual Valentine's dinner.  The gang was very loving yesterday.  I love when they know something is very special and they are almost reverant during the fun time.  It was a very plesant night.  Anyhow here are some shots of our Dec, Jan, and Feb.

The Gang and their new Christmas pajamas from Grandma and Pa.

The Hay House on Christmas morning.  Santa was good to us this year.

Our new puppy, Buddy.  He has grown so much since this first day we had him.

Matthew lost a tooth and there was already a tooth growing behind it.

The love dinner.

Take the shot!

I'm worth millions!

My brother in law Scott has stated that I am worth lots of money.  You see when I was younger (in my late teens) I was making popcorn I think and burnt down my mom's kitchen.  She got a new kitchen out of the deal and we laugh that if anyone wants a remodel I could come over and cook.  I was then hit by a car 2 1/2 years ago and received a small settlement to cover some of my suffering.  Well, on Christmas day, I tripped over the camcorder cord and hit the ground.  It is on video and Scott thinks it should go to America's Funniest Home Video.  I don't.  :)  After I hit the ground and got up, the Christmas morning festivities started.  I realized that my camera wasn't working well.  I fell with my great Nikon camera in my hands.  I broke the flash.  I thought I could fix it on my own.  I tried, it didn't work, so I took it to a camera repair place.  $220 dollars later it is waiting for me to pick it up.  Maybe I should send the video into AFV and get my repair money back.  :)  I have been out of sorts without my camera.  The kids have done great things and I wasn't able to record any of it.  I don't like blogging without a picture or two of what's been going on.  So hopefully within the next few days I can take some pictures and blog.  One can hope.  :)