Better Late than Never

Well we survived Art and Science night!!! WooHoo! (Yes I realize that I'm late posting this but OH WELL) The girls did such a great job on their projects. Shelby got Honorable Mention for her grade. Morgan didn't place at all, but we're still very proud of her for putting forth the effort. She was the ONLY kid in her class that did a project this year!!

Here is Morgan's Art project for "Arts Night"

Here is Shelby's art project.

Shelby's project was on what kinds of salt or salt combination would dehydrate a body the best in preparation for mummification. Pretty clever. (She's my morbid one)

Morgan's was on Capillary Action using celery and food coloring.

Also that night, I became the official PTA President Elect for the 2010-2011 school year. The Executive Board (President, Treasurer, and Secretary) only had 3 people oppose us and we just so happened to each be married to one of the people opposing. JERKS! hahaha It was actually really funny!!! I'm a little nervous for the upcoming year, but really excited at the same time!

Best Preston Quote EVER!

For those of you that don't go to our church, our Primary (kids church) has a saying "CTR" it stands for "Choose The Right" The focus of the younger Primary classes is making choices that are pleasing unto Jesus and Heavenly Father or "Choosing The Right".
Well the other day Preston says to Chris: "You know dad, da "CTR" fing to do would be to put da old VCR (it's the old satellite receiver cause we switched to cable) and da wittle TV in my room."
Then he went on to tell Chris that all he had to do was hook it up and it would work just fine.
HAHA that's the CTR thing to do huh? I'd love to know how that is somehow pleasing unto Christ in his little mind. Although I have to believe that he probably got a little chuckle out of that! LOVE IT!!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!!

Dr. Seuss' birthday is HUGE within our school district!! All the kids get to wear their PJ's for the festivities! My girls were so excited to wear their new jammies today. (Ok, bad mom story: my kids have cute jammies. They were just all dirty. Sooo...rather than getting off my lazy butt and washing them some to wear to school. I went and bought them new ones. OH YES, I am that lazy!!)

You should have seen Chris' face when he read what Morgan's said. Oh his worst nightmare HA!Morgan's day started off with her teacher cooking the entire class pancakes for breakfast. My goodness, you would have thought Morgan had never had pancakes before. She has talked about it non-stop since the note came home!! Here is Morgan with her friends Sasha (you all know her by now) and Tatum (my friend Jana's daughter)Morgan's 1st grade class. Shelby had the same teacher last year and we just LOVE her! She's so fun! Preston and I decided to eat lunch with the girls. (Preston really just wanted a piece of Dr. Seuss' B-day cake!) As Morgan's class was leaving, Shelby's class came into the lunchroom, so we decided to hang out with them. Here is Shelby with her friends. Chloe, Izzy, Kaylee, and Maddy. They are quite the group. You've never seen a more giggly group of girls in your life. After lunch, we went to recess with Shelby's class and then hung out with them for the rest of the afternoon. We made "OOBLECK" to go along with "Bartholomew and the Oobleck". Then they made cute little "Cat in the Hat" snacks. They used Ritz crackers for the base then stacked Gummy Lifesavers for the hat part. They "glued" everything together with icing. (Ya'll know that's cute!) Shelby's class with their Dr. Seuss hats. (Notice that Preston is in each of the class photos. I love both of their teachers so much! I try not to have to take him when I'm in the classroooms, but both teachers are SO good about including him in whatever activity they're doing.)Next was the Dr. Seuss reading assembly. (And NO that is not me!!!! I did my time last year as the reading chair! and the pics of the Rodeo clown costume will NEVER see the light of day! ha!)The day ended with a read-a-thon in the hallway. Who says it takes 2 to tango? HA! These girls are so silly! (Chloe, Shelby and Izzy)

Random

Well, we braved the Dentist this week!!! It actually went really well in the "fit throwing" department. They ALL let them work without any screaming! NICE!!! I tried to get a picture of Preston, but he wasn't having any of that so I decided not to press my luck. Shelby had 0 cavities, Preston-1, and Morgan had a number that I'm embarrassed to put on here! HA! Oh well, she's going to have to learn the hard way the importance of taking care of her teeth!
I've had most of this week off, so I've really enjoyed hanging out with the kids every afternoon. The other day, the girls got a hold of the camera and went through 3 sets of batteries just taking random pictures. (Thank goodness for rechargeable batteries) Here are a couple: Oh on the diet front, Chris is down 46 lbs now and I'm at 40. Not bad for a month and a half!

Well, tomorrow is Dr. Seuss day at the school, so I'll post more pics tomorrow!!

More Pics.

My friend Jana was able to get a few better pictures at the dance the other night. Here is Preston with his little friend Zac (Jana's son) . So CUTE!!!

Family Dance

Tonight, the PTA hosted a Family Dance. Of course every student was invited to come along with at least one parent and all siblings. There was such a great turnout. I think we had well over 100 people there. The kids had a blast. And I decided that it's not smart to wear jeans that are too big to a dance lol I didn't think that Preston would really enjoy himself, but he had SO much fun. He rocked out. He was break dancing, head banging, line dancing, doing the YMCA and gyratin' like crazy. It was HILARIOUS!! Believe me, he doesn't get his love for dancing from his daddy!! Chris did go though and was so precious dancing with Shelby during the Daddy/ Daughter dance. SO CUTE!!! I tried and tried to get them on video, but it was too dark in there so none of the videos turned out. These were the only 2 pics that I could get to work. (even they aren't good though)

Morgan with a couple of her friends. They were rockin' out!!!!

More Valentines Day

Here are a few pics from Shelby's Valentines party. I work in Morgan's classroom every week, without fail. So, since their parties were at the same time, I chose to go to Shelby's. It was really cute and they had fun!

This little boy is one of the most "boyish" boys I've ever met in my life. I just love his box!! lol

Playing musical chairs.

Anniversary

This Valentines Day was our 10 year anniversary. It's crazy to me that it's been that long!! With both of our hectic schedules, it's easy to get caught up in the routine of everyday life and often times we forget to just take time for "us". So, Chris' mom came over and stayed with the kids so that we could go to Vegas for the weekend. We had so much fun!!! We hung out, went to a show, shopped and shopped and shopped, went to dinner and laughed ourselves silly! We didn't gamble though...we both work too hard to just throw our money away like that!! (Ya, I know, I'm cheap!)

I just have to brag on Chris for a minute. He's lost almost 40 lbs in the last month or so and I think he looks so awesome! So here's a picture. If you compare him to what he looked like in December at Shelby's baptism, there's a huge difference.

DECEMBERNOW

He's soooo going to kill me for posting these pictures lol Ok, enough about us. (everybody reads this to hear about the kids anyway)

The kids had a great time celebrating Valentines day in their classrooms. They each had parties and got loaded up on sugary sweets. Not that Preston needed anymore since I found a pile of candy wrappers behind my couch where he had eaten an ENTIRE bag and a half of chocolate!! UGH.. BOYS! They had a blast playing with Grandma for most of the weekend. Yesterday we went to see a movie and then played together. Today, they started back to school. (I love my children, but I have to admit that I really like it when it's time for them to go back to school!) The next couple of weeks will be crazy. They have dance performances coming up, SEP's, science fair, and a whole slew of other activities. I'll post pics as we go!

Valentines Day

Now you all (I'm trying to break the "Ya'll" habit) know that I LOVE Valentines Day! I better since it's my anniversary too. (more on that later) Here are a few of the V-day projects I've been working on.
For starters, I totally stole this from my blog friend Annie. (I went to school with her hubby, Devin, but I only know her through the blogosphere) Annie either has the cutest ideas on the planet or she steals her ideas from someone that has the cutest ideas on the planet. Either way, I like copying her. Obviously, since I'm talking about her, this is one that I got from Annie. I made these for the girls' teachers and since I like them so well, I think I'll make one for myself too. Here's how you do it:

Start with a plain ole' styrofoam wreathThen cut a bunch of strips of valentine material. Choices are slim here and I could only handle so much of the fabric department today (Celeste, someone assured me today that not all fabric counter ladies are mean! Apparently we're just shopping at all the wrong places! HA!)Then hot glue the strips to the wreath as you wrap them around. Tie a ribbon on it.Now hot glue a bunch of vintage Valentines card onto it. Annie was even nice enough to email me the ones that she used. So if anyone wants them, let me know and I'll email them to you.
AND WALLAH:

My other project for the night was Shelby's Valentines bucket. No, cereal boxes are not good enough for her so we had to go all out lol. Here's the finished product:Morgan will be making hers in class. Speaking of class and Valentines Day. How in the heck did my little baby boy ever get big enough to fill out his own cards for his class? He's getting so big, but he's so much fun!

Morgan!

As most of you know, Morgan is my little tomboy. I joke that "she's all boy with a ponytail." This little girl is athletic, witty, smart, fun, LOVES animals (especially horses) and is as beautiful as she could possibly be. She's also destructive, messy, short tempered (I have no idea where she gets that from HA!), fearless, tough as nails, and flat out does not care what she looks like or how she's dressed! I vote that this is the PERFECT combination!! She's been dying for a pair of cowgirl boots for a while now (so has Shelby but Shelby only wanted a pair cause the ones she wanted were pink) Well the other day I mentioned to Chris that she wanted a pair and he told me to go get them for her. Heaven help me, I never thought I'd see the day that I bought my daughter a pair of shoes at the farm supply store!!! Oh well, she love them and will not take them off. She even slept in them and had to wear them to church. Did they match her dress? NO, but oh well she was happy as could be. These were the most feminine pair that I could talk her into, but I think they're cute.

UPDATE

In the interest of stopping all the emails, let me assure all of you that we have not fallen off the face of the earth. We just haven't had anything really "blog worthy" going on for the past couple of weeks. The last couple of weeks have been filled with school, dance, work, PTA, sleepovers,and church. That's about it. I did manage to get the house decorated for Valentines Day. I'll post pictures later. Promise to try to do better!

And for our family that gets a kick out of the funny kid quotes:
Shelby: "Well at least my face doesn't look like a horror movie!"
Shelby: "...and then there was this Japapanian guy..."

In Shelby's class they do "High/Low" every Monday. They have to tell the high point of the weekend and also the low point. Well Shelby's High last week was that she got to go to her grandma's. Her low was "We can't go to Cafe Rio anymore cause my Mom and Dad are on a diet." HA!!

I've listened to the girls sing: "Pants on the ground. Pants on the ground. Lookin' like a fool with your pants on the ground." until I could scream! lol

Not really a quote but the other night the girls had a sleepover. They all decided to tell "scary stories". Well, one of the little girls staying over has really bad nightmares so I decided to eavesdrop and make sure they weren't saying anything that would scare her. Well, their "scary stories" consisted of telling about various boys from school trying to kiss them. I was cracking up!! I killed me to listen to these 6 and 8 year olds already talking about the boys. SHEESH!!

Christmas Video 2009

Ok, I can't get the Christmas video to upload properly for some reason, so here's the link. I started taking all of the pictures throughout the year and making a video out of them for Grandparent gifts. It's kind of long but it's cute.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlzbNUWAeGo

Christmas 2009

We had a great Christmas this year. The past few years we've gone to Escalante for Christmas, but this year we opted to stay here since it was our 1st year in our new house. Ya'll have no idea how excited I was to celebrate Christmas the way that my family does it. Chris got off work early, so we thought we'd go see a movie (he really just wanted to try to keep me occupied for a couple of hours HA!) but that didn't happen. We got there all excited to see Avatar (well I wasn't but the kids, Chris included, were ecstatic!), got the kids all settled in and the dang projector broke. So we went home and Chris made the kids pick the house up a little, cause Santa doesn't come to a dirty house lol.
Once the house was picked up, we decorated our Christmas stockings. I started this tradition when Shelby was a baby. Every year I get the cheap Christmas stocking and we decorate them as a family. I LOVE Preston's this year! Ha!
After decorating Christmas stockings, the girls and I started dinner. While it was cooking, we went to look at lights. This is, by far, one of my favorite traditions. I remember doing this with my mom and sisters for HOURS. We "Ooo and Awe" at every single house with lights and we alternate. One house gets an "ooo" and the next gets an "awe". It cracks my kids up!!!
By the time we got back, dinner was ready so we ate and then opened presents. Yes, we open our presents on Christmas Eve. The reasoning behind this is that Santa usually brings the big presents that the kids want the most, so the family gifts get ignored. This way, they have a chance to play with and enjoy the family gifts as well. I love this picture. They're all making the same face as they open their presents.
Once family gifts were opened, they played for about an hour and then it was off to bed. Poor Morgan fell asleep on the living room floor before she got to hear the bed time stories. Chris reads Luke 2 and The Night Before Christmas to them every year.
These are the Santa gifts. This year the kids had to share their present!
I have to admit, I'm far worse than the kids on Christmas. I was up half the night waiting for them to wake up! They finally woke up about 6:15. After they got their Santa presents (and Chris spent much of the morning "showing" the kids how the Wii worked HAHA!), we went to Escalante. It took us a few tries to actually get out of town, but we finally made it. We had a great time over there and the kids LOVED getting to spend time with Grandma!!! We were able to spend Christmas night over there before having to come home so I could work.
One of the gifts that the girls were most excited about were their new boots. It's funny how excited little girls get when they get stuff like their mom's. HA! Today, we all wore our boots to church and of course had to have a pic.
I'm trying to upload our family Christmas video right now. I'll post it when it's finished!
p.s. Andrea, all the single HA!'s were for you! lol

Neighbor Gifts

This year, our ward (our church congregation) decided to forgo neighbor gifts and have everyone donate the money that we would normally spend on them to the church and then the bishop would use that money to help needy families. Made my life much easier!! However, I made these little gifts for our friends that either aren't members of our church or wouldn't be in our ward.
I did 2 different gifts this year. One was a simple roll of wrapping paper with a little ribbon and a gift tag.
The gift tag for the wrapping paper says: WRAP yourself in the season. Merry Christmas, The Haycock Family
The other was a simple brownie mix. The gift tag on this one says: Christmas is jolly, Christmas is sweet. I'm stressed out, so make your own dang treat! Merry Christmas, The Haycock Family
The kids HAD A BALL helping me put these together and then delivering them!!! Simple, cheap and fun little family activity. Love It!

Planter Shelf

Well.... when I got home this morning, I walked in to find my Christmas tree laying on the ground. Yep...it fell over and squished all of out present under it... NICE!! So... i got to RE-decorate it today lol. On the bright side, Chris put my stuff up on my planter shelf today. Here are the promised pics.

Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

We finally have a Christmas Tree!!! This year we went with a real tree. I've only had a real tree once in my life and that was when I was about 6 years old. Chris always had real trees growing up and according to him, getting the tree was a horrendous experience lol. So anyway, this year we gave the real tree a try. The kids were so excited about it and I had a lot of fun decorating it (go figure). Chris took them with him to run a few errands while I decorated. When they got back, I had finished the tree AND had the presents under it (well the ones I have wrapped so far anyway) I would give anything to have had the video camera when they walked in the door. PRICELESS!!! I'm thinking this is going to be the last year that Shelby really believes in Santa and that's breaking my heart. So it was really fun to see her get all excited about the Christmas decorations.

I think that everyone that knows me, knows that I collect Willow Tree figurines. (LOVE THEM) Well, over the past few years, my in laws have gotten me the new Willow Tree Nativity. This is the first time I've actually gotten to put it up and I LOVE IT!!!! It's by far my favorite decoration this year!!

I'll post pictures of the planter shelf when Chris gets it done. Um...ya.... Jana doesn't do ladders so it's going to have to wait until he gets around to it.

My Three White Dresses

My mom bought me a white dress,

Not red or pink or blue.
She said it was a special dress
Like very other few,
There has been just one before,
A dress now put away,
That I wore some time ago
Upon my blessing day.
As a little baby clothed In my first white dress,
My dad held me in his arms,
There to name and bless.
So pure and clean was I just then,
With time to grow and learn
About the Father's plan for me.
My glory I must earn.
Now I've reached the age to judge
The wrong road from the right,
And I am here to be baptized
In this dress of white.
So once again I'm free from sin.
The path is clear to me.
I'll grasp the rod and hold on tight, I vow with certainty.
Just as mud would stain my dress,
Sin would stain my soul.
The key is to repent or bleach,
For whiteness is my goal.
And if I try my very best,
Then richly blessed I'll be,
Wearing inside God's holy house
White dress number three,
So today I make this pledge:
I'll strive to choose the right,
Through this sacred baptism ordinance
In my second dress of white. (Linda Gay Perry Nelson, 1993)