Holidays with Hyram

The holidays are always fun, but usually stressful. Since we've been married, we've always ended our finals or teaching, and started a whirlwind travel adventure to get to our families in other states, and we arrive home just before the chaos of life starts up again. This year however, David's parents are on a mission, and we knew well ahead of time that I would be nearing the end of this pregnancy by now, so we opted to stick around instead of travelling. While we've missed seeing everyone like normal, it's been so fun to take things slowly and just enjoy some family time together! It's also been a relief to this crazy pregnant lady to be able to rest...a lot!

Dad and Hyram went to a winter celebration at Hemming Village in town.

Playing in the backyard

Meeting Santa: Hyram was really excited to go visit with Santa, but once we got there, he was extremely hesitant. He wasn't about to have any lap business. Luckily, Santa was patient enough to bribe him with some sugar, and held on to this blue candy cane while he engaged Hyram in questions. We were glad it turned out to be a happy experience for our little no-touching kiddo.

Telling Santa he wanted a red car.

Hanging out around town. We also went to see the new Peanuts movie this day. Hyram liked watching Snoopy fly.

Sledding for the first time

We were so surprised how brave Hyram was about sledding!  He went down the hill with Dad a few times, and then all on his own, ran back up the hill and went down by himself on this little red sled! We were sure he would crash and cry, but he did great and loved it!

Christmas Eve PJ time!

Playing piano for Christmas Eve

Santa came!

Santa and reindeer nibbled on their treats

All ready for Christmas breakfast

Pretty Christmas flowers from David. Love him!

Grandma and Grandpa Love sent Hyram these cute nativity blocks to play with all month. He loved setting them up.

We've started decorating Hyram's door on special occasions so he remembers it's a holiday when he wakes up.  It sure helps him wake up on the right side of the bed!

Santa brought Hyram a tent, a wooden cube toy, a Ferrari, and a stocking full of fruit snacks and Matchbox cars! What a lucky boy!

Santa Pancakes!

Dad and Hyram had fun putting together his new train tracks! It makes such a difference to have pieces that aren't broken and trains that work.

We drove down to Utah on the 26th for our Love Family Christmas Party. Thanks to Amy and Chris for hosting this year!

30 Weeks

  

Hyram and cousin Carson exchanged gifts. Carson got Hyram a really cool "Mack" (semi truck) full of cars to play with.  He LOVES it! He was also really excited about his new big yellow dump truck from Grandma and Grandpa Love.

Some of our other favorites were opening treats and gifts from Grandma and Grandpa T, getting new books and a babydoll with a stroller to help get ready for the new baby, a new scooter, and getting a new family van!

Merry Christmas!

Springtime

This past week, we had no piano lessons.  The silence was music to my ears! We ended the school year with an ice cream party on the 29th, and then took a week off before summer lessons begin tomorrow. Tomorrow, we will be holding our 3rd annual opening social.  We rented the rock climbing wall and a bounce house, and yesterday we went to Sam's Club and bought hundreds of hot dogs. We hope the weather cooperates.

Hyram loved chasing the kids around with a squirt bottle

Lots of soupy ice cream by the end! This is Jack, one of our awesome teachers.

Nikki, another of our fabulous teachers, helped run the slip n' slide. She didn't go home very dry.

Hyram kind of got the slide part...we'll work on that.

He pretty much thought this was the best day of his life.

Last Sunday we were able to go visit one of our piano students who was recently diagnosed with Leukemia and take her some gifts.  Hyram had a blast playing on their trampoline with her and her siblings.

Meg and Crystal, her piano teacher

We spent a lot of the week weeding, adding bark to our planters, setting up our garden, and planting two apple trees that a friend gave us for free! We're excited to see if we can keep anything alive.  In our garden, we just planted sugar snap peas, 6 kinds of pumpkins, and six kinds of squash/gourds. We also planted huge sunflowers.  I wonder if those will grow, because I don't think I've ever seen any here in Rexburg.  We'll see!  I had a garden when I was 14, and it all died within two weeks because I didn't take very good care of it.  Luckily, we have a sprinkler system here.  That should at least give it a chance of survival!

Hoeing the rows

One of the new apple trees

Bark in the planters

The other apple tree

All planted and ready to grow!

Pumpkins, squashes and gourds

We've never grown peas before!  Hopefully our bamboo and twine will do the trick for the vines? To the left of the sticks will be our big sunflowers.

Yesterday, we cleaned out the garage and organized a lot of stuff into the shed.  We went out for awhile, and when we got home, David said, "Oh! I forgot we cleaned!  I thought we were robbed!"

David played for a wedding a couple Fridays ago, and we decided to do something fun with that money instead of just letting it get lost in our bank account, or letting it go to bills.  So we took Hyram and let him get a little trampoline for the backyard. We are hoping it will help him burn up some of his two-year-old tantrum energy.  He's had a couple friends over to jump with him, and we've only had one injury so far; Hyram bit the inside of his cheek and got blood all over his shirt. 

The other night, we had been working all day long, interviewing and registering new families for lessons, and digging up weeds to get the garden plot ready.  We had a booth at a local kids' fair last Saturday and followed up with a handful of families this week.  So, at 10:00 PM, we decided to go on a family ice cream run. We ran into Walmart for a minute to pick up a new fixture for our kitchen sink because it sprays us in the face every time we turn it on.  We ended up coming home with a new pet fish.  We told Hyram he needed to name it, and he said he wanted to call it "Fish."  We tried to coach him on how to name something.  We suggested things like Bubbles or Jake, Goldie...and he finally said all on his own, "Nemo!  He was orange too!"  So, now we have a big goldfish named Nemo in a bowl on the island in our kitchen.  I think David likes him even more than Hyram.

Our booth at the kids' fair

Hyram surprises me everyday.  On Wednesday, I had 8 girls come over for my summer "Babysitters' Club."  Four of them are scheduled to come once a week while I am either teaching piano lessons or working on preparing for my class or grading papers.  The other 4 are our "backups."  They came over for three hours.  I had them clean the whole house, learn where everything goes, change Hyram's diaper, play in the backyard with him, make and eat lunch, help me wash the car, and take a walk to the park. I feel slightly guilty that I kind of used them as slave laborers, but I'm really glad I did! I had a beautiful kitchen when they left, and now they'll know what I expect them to do while Hyram is napping. :)  By the end of the time, Hyram had memorized all eight of their names.  He only knew one of the girls previously.  His memory is amazing.

Yay for springtime in Rexburg!