Happy Festivus from the Rest of us!

Since I might forget a lot of people when mailing Christmas cards this Holiday season, here is a little preview. Pulling teeth to get everyone to put on church clothes and comb their hair on a Tuesday afternoon, but I'm glad we got at least three that turned out. Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!
Love, Tony, Lindsay, Hallie and Gunner

Fall

This fall has been so much fun. We have been able to have quite a few 'raking parties' at Great Grandpa Jensen's house, this was Gunner's first time playing in the leaves. He was not so sure about them at first, but after a little bit of playing around, he thought they were ok after all.

Here is my handsome little man on his 9 month birthday (which was almost a month ago, he's now almost 10 months!) He was ready to go get pictures taken, and no matter what we do with his hair, it just won't stay combed. I am trying very hard to wait until his first birthday to cut his pretty hair, but it might have to come off before January!

Here's Hal that same day ready for crazy sock day at school, what a cutie!

Hallie had a Halloween Costume Parade at her school, Woodruff Elementary on Friday the 29th. It was a little bit chilly that afternoon so they had it in the gym. It was really cute, each class marched around and the kids got to show off their costumes. Hallie just could not decide if she wanted to be a cowgirl again or an army girl, so she decided to be the cowgirl and school and the army girl for trick-or-treating. She looked so adorable, and of course loved every minute of the parade!


We had Grandma Cathy, Grandpa Doug and Steph over that night for pizza and pumpkin carving, which was really fun. Hal drew her face on hers all by herself, then dad cut it out for her. Gunner's little pumpkin with his one little tooth turned out so cute!

Halloween (or the Saturday before) was cold and rainy, so we spent the afternoon and evening visiting grandparents. We got them all! It was fun, but Hallie had a runny nose and cough and the rain just made it hard for everybody. We took Hallie around to a couple houses in the neighborhood, and she still got a huge haul of candy.

Army girl Hallie in her army greens.

The cutest little chicken you've ever seen!

We celebrated Veteran's day with our daddy, who has served 17 years total! That's a long time. Happy late Veteran's day to my grandpa and dad also, and everyone else who has served for our country!

Had to throw in this last picture of Gunner in his church clothes. He looks so grown up! Too cute, can't believe he's almost one.

Patricia and Polly

Polly

Patricia


Sissy's: Patricia and Polly

Meet the newest additions to our family: Hallie's new kittens, Patricia and Polly. Our neighbors cat had kittens earlier this summer and they told Hallie from the very beginning that she could have one. She went over and picked hers out as soon as they were old enough to tell what they would look like! Hallie fell in love with the black one with the white paws and decided early on that it would be named Patches, however when she found out it was a girl, she decided to change it to Patricia. When asked her reasoning for this, she simply stated "Because Patricia is a girls name." Ok. So Patricia it is. Tony decided Patricia would do better if she had a friend, so along came Polly (Steph named that one, it just goes good with Patricia? Hallie wanted to name it Patricia's Sister) At first the kitties were scared of how excited Hallie was over them and they would kind of shy away from her, but now they are used to us and they stick around and Hallie really likes them a lot. Gunner also loves them, he loves to grab at them and try to eat their furr. They live in the garage, not in the $60 cat house we bought them, but in a bucket.

5 Years Old!

Hallie has kind of a difficult birthday, August 25th, it's always gonna fall during the first week of school, which means for parties, we have to be tricky to fit everyone's schedule! Let me explain: her birthday fell on a Wednesday, which for her was the second day of school, and for the cousins (who at this point are most of the party attendees) that was the day before the first day of school. I had to go and move to Logan School District and they are all in Hyrum. We decided five is old enough to try a friend party as well, and she's got friends all around this town, too many first day of schools to even begin to work around! So we had her friend party the Saturday before, August 21 and she wanted a Uhaul party (Luau :) So she invited friends from the neighborhood, some from pre-school, some cousins and her bestie! She had a blast! We had a slip n slide, a pool, a Spongebob sprinkler and a sandbox so we felt like we were right there in Hawaii! It was simple and fun for the kids, but a lot of work! Thanks to my mom and Steph for helping out so much. We had a pinata, and pineapple cups for favors, we made necklaces and opened presents. Hallie has a lot of good friends and it turned out to be a really fun time!

Blowing out the candles!

Hallie and her friends

Opening presents

Slip n' Slide!

Cute Lexi and the sprinkler

Making necklaces!

So on to the next party, the family party, which we had the day before her birthday (August 24) at Grandma Cathy's house. We had pizza and put the sprinkler under the tramp for the kids to play. She got SPOILED rotten from her family! We did the pinata again and just had a fun time! Thanks for coming family and for all her fun presents!

New Tradition: Awesome Aunt Steph makes the coolest cakes ever!

Her two favorites: Adam and Rachy :)

And finally her real birthday :) It was a busy day and by the end of it, she was partied out! She has talked all year about going to Texas Roadhouse (she loves the peanuts) to sit on the saddle for her birthday. So for dinner on her birthday, the 25th, Hallie, me, Tony, Gunner, Grandma Cathy, Grandpa Doug and Steph all went to Texas Roadhouse. She had been to school, where she took her birthday treat and dancing AND had her big surprise from mom and dad that day, so she was such a little trooper.

Her friends wrote 5 things they like about Hallie on her birthday crown.

Her big birthday surprise from us! New swingset!

At dinner

Yee Haw!!

Hallie is such a fun, loving little girl and she has the cutest personality ever! This personality started when she was only tiny and I love that it has stuck around :) She is such a great big sister too. We love her so much and are so glad she is in our family!

Kindergarten's Coming....

All summer long we sang that song, oh what fun, and then it came and it was kind of sad! For me, anyway, she couldn't wait. I sent my FOUR YEAR OLD to her first day of kindergarten on August 24th and she turned five the next day. She loves school and was so excited she couldn't stand it. She picked the perfect apple to take to her teacher for the very first day (she must watch too much TV or something cause I didn't put that idea in her head).


Ready to go! We live right behind the school and there is a little walk way just two houses over that leads right into the school yard.

She looks so big here! I can't believe she is ready for kindergarten already! Having her at this age and then a baby makes me think a lot about how she was when she was Gunner's age, and I swear it was just yesterday!

Her teacher is Mrs. Kelly and she loves her. So far school has been nothing but wonderful. After a couple weeks she did have one little complaint: "I have to go EVERY SINGLE day??" She got too used to the comfort of Mon, Wed, Fri Pre-school! Just wait til next year, my dear then it's school all day, every day for the next 11 years! Growing up is so much fun!

Cache County Fair and Rodeo

We went to the Fair a couple times this year, once with family, once with friends, because let's face it, there isn't much to do in this valley come August when your five year old is bored out of her mind all day and your baby wants to crawl everywhere instead of being held. So we trapped him in the stroller and walked around the fair.

Hallie loved the pony rides and thought it was so cool to ride a 'real live horse!'


Finally found a way to keep his hair out of his eyes (or else we could just cut it, family??) When he actually left his hat on, he was so stinkin cute in it!



Auntie Steph and the kids at the rodeo.




Hallie entertaining Gunner. He LOVES his sissy.





Start them young! Gunny boy at the Rodeo. We had fun as a family at the rodeo, Steph, Grandpa Jensen, Ben and Lauren came too. I only got rage a couple of times, once when we had to practically park at our house and walk all the way there lugging all the stuff for the baby and once trying to feed kids in the arena stands. Other than that it was a good time. We learned to come a little earlier next year, although we did have a pretty good seat for showing up at the time we did this year.

Gunner's Surgery 8/6/10

Can't tell he had a surgery this morning can you? This might be a little TMI (too much info) but I had to get this down for journaling purposes. Gunner had to have his circumscion 'fixed' this August at six months old. Tony still flinches when you even mention it, so we had one brave little man. :) We got some good pictures on our phones of him in the hospital waiting for the surgery, but we forgot the camera when he went. He had to be there at 6 am and couldn't eat anything for eight hours before so considering all of this, he was absolutely wonderful. He waved bye bye at us as the doctor took him to the operating room and only cried when he woke up because he was starving. He acted like his happy old self all day long and only needed a tiny bit of his pain medication. What a brave boy! It was a lot harder on me than it was on him. We're glad that's behind us!

Preston Rodeo! July 2010

Ready for another year of that Famous Preston Night Rodeo with Great Grandpa Jensen! (seems when I send the camera with dad, not many pictures get taken :) Grandpa loves the rodeo, so we will go as long as he is still willing to take us! This year, Tony, Hallie, Ben, Lauren, Steph, Kaden, Emily and Rachael all went with Grandpa. It poured rain that night for the first time in 20 years, but they still had a lot of fun. I'm so glad Hallie is old enough to get to go to the rodeo with Grandpa Jensen and now she'll remember it. I have such good memories of going with my siblings with Grandma and Grandpa to the carnival and the rodeo. We looked forward to it all summer! Hallie still loves cowgirls and horses so she has a great time.

And me and my little cowboy got to stay home and clean the house that night! I hope Grandpa can keep up the tradition a few more years at least so Gunner can go too!