Baby Animal Days

The American West Heritage center out in Wellsville has a Baby Animal Days in the spring with a bunch of activities and interactive displays for kids. Crystal and Tayla were in town so Mom took Nikki, Crystal and the kids out to the festivities. Hayden's favorite part was the baby turtles and he still remembers the name of the pony he rode: TinkerBell. You can see from the pictures that Hayden wanted to wear the tiger mask and the bike helmet, which I think would've looked awesome, but it didn't work out.

Love

Brikki

House Progress

We've been trying to take pictures of our house as it is being built. Right now we have all the rough plumbing, heating and air, and electrical done and waiting for the last few windows and doors to be delivered so they can be installed. It would be nice to have windows and doors soon so I don't have to shovel snow out of our kitchen anymore.

Love,

Brikki

Hayden's Birthday

Hayden had his 4th birthday a few weeks ago. We celebrated by going to eat pizza at Firehouse Pizza, which Hayden calls the "Hothouse". Here are some pictures of that.

Hayden also invited four of his friends over for a Pirate Birthday party. They decorated some treasure chests, played X marks the spot, had a treasure hunt and ate cake and ice cream. Here are some pictures of the Pirate Party.

Here are the boys showing off their pirate tatoos.

Love,

Brikki

Christmas Report

We haven't posted anything since before Christmas so there is plenty to cover here. We had a good holiday...got to see a lot of family. Nate, Crystal, and Tayla were here so that was fun. The day after Christmas we made a trip to Phoenix to see Nikki's family there. While we were in Phoenix we went to see the lights at night at the Mesa temple. Hayden tried to get a little too close to the reflection pool and accidentally jumped into knee-deep water. That caught him by surprise. We loved eating the oranges and grapefruit from Grandma B's backyard. The ride home was long, so long that when Cole offered to drive I had to take him up on it. I was too nervous to sleep though because he wouldn't keep his eyes on the road as you can see in the picture.

I've also got a picture here of Cole stretching...just getting the ham-strings loosened up for the day's activities.

We've had a few choice sound bytes from Hayden that are worthy of recording. The other day Nikki was combing Hayden's hair and he was arguing that he wanted it left messy. He said, "Mom, why can't you just leave me the way Heavenly Father made me?"

Here is a shot of Hayden ice skating for the first time.

Love,
Brikki

Christmas Shopping

The last few weeks Christmas shopping has been a frequent activity. Nikki and I even got up the day after Thanksgiving and battled fellow shoppers for the door-buster items. I think they should have a yearly reality-TV special covering Wal-Marts and Best-Buys around the country. It really is insane and everybody should see it at least once. Most people don't feel like getting up early on a day off and going out in the bitter cold (in our case) so that's why a TV special is in order. I mean that is what most reality TV is about, right? showing people in their worst form. For some reason, Black Friday brings out this competitive survival instinct. Yeah, everybody acts like your buddy when your standing in line. Some people are even forming alliances. "If you pick me up a GPS navigator I'll grab you a portable DVD player." But then the store opens and all respect and courtesy for other people is left at the door. At that point you are on your own...it's every man for himself. One year Nikki and I saw a lady with a walker go up to the front of the line just before the doors opened. It didn't bother the hundred people standing in line until the doors opened and she ditched the walker and ran for the sock bin. Surely, if that was caught on tape it would draw good TV ratings.

This week Nikki and Hayden were shopping for a gift for Grandpa. Nothing says "Merry Christmas Grandpa!" like some martial arts weapons. They went to the store to buy him a pair of Samurai swords. To Hayden's disappointment, all the swords were gone, but he didn't let it discourage him for long. "I guess we'll just have to get him a Karate suit." Grandpa in a Karate suit? Now that would get great TV ratings.

Love,
Brikki

Dinosaur Museum

We took a short trip this past week after we picked up Nikki from the airport. Nikki went back to Ridgecrest where we lived in CA to sell the Scensy candle warmers at a big Christmas fair with her friends. We picked her up from the airport on Tuesday and stayed a couple of nights in Park City. On Tuesday night we went to Temple Square to see the lights and the visitor center's. Wednesday we went to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi. That place was pretty cool. They had a lot of hands-on exhibits for kids.

Thursday we got to see Grandma and Grandpa Dyer who are serving a mission at the Family History Library. Then we headed for home.

It looked harmless...

...but then it attacked Nikki.

Mom and Hayden uncovering bones at the dig site.

Here's our little Chick Magnet:

Dad and Hayden making a dam to later create a flash flood and bury a family of dinosaurs:

Love,

Brikki

Super Powers

Kids say the darndest things. I think that is one of the main purposes of this blog is to document all the crazy things that come out of our kid's mouths. It is so easy to laugh and then forget a few days later (except for a few of the classics that I will post someday), but if these gems are written down as they are dropped on us, eventually we'll have a nice little collection of family humor. Of course, they probably won't be as amusing to you as they are to us so including them here is probably as much for us as anybody.


Hayden is into super heroes and their special powers. The other day he asked Nikki if he could go to the power store and get some powers. He wanted to pick up some shrinking powers and some flying powers. Can you imagine a store that sells super powers? You think Wal-Mart is crazy on Black Friday, what if on the morning after Thanksgiving they had "Buy Invisibility get X-Ray Vision Free!"


Last week in Sacrament meeting Hayden was getting a little rambunctious during the Sacrament so I told him this was a time to be quiet and think about Jesus. A few moments later I noticed he was sitting there doing a pretty good job and he looked up at me and said, "I'm thinking about Jesus coming over to my house to play games." I'm sure He'd love a round of Jenga, Guess-Who, or Candyland.


Love,
Brikki