Halloween 2011

Ward Trunk-or-Treat

I'm quite pleased with how our costumes turned out this year. I got the idea off of a friend's blog, who got it off pinterest, who got it off of familyfun.com. You've got to love the internet! :) I improvised a little bit from the FamilyFun instructions so it wouldn't cost as much and everything worked great.

Our S'more Family

Lydia the Sweet Chocolate Bar

Mary the Marshmallow

Brandon, Hannah, and Naomi Seegmiller as Coraline and her other-parents

Fred and Cara Slack with their Pooh Bear John and Pumpkin Mary

Our camping themed trunk to go along with our S'more costumes. The candy was in the dutch oven. I thought it was clever ;)

The marshmallow and chocolate bar roasting in the campfire :)

Halloween Night

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Mary at Two Months Old

Is she not the cutest thing you've ever seen?!?!? 

Weight: 11lbs 5oz (44th percentile) 

Height: 23.5 inches (74th percentile)

Head Circumference: 15.5 inches (50th percentile)

She is such a great baby. She's still rarely fussy. She smiles all of the time. She's not quite laughing yet, but she makes lots of cute noises. She's not as mobile and active as Lydia was. She's content to just sit and look around most of the time. Until recently, when we would do tummy time, she would just fall right asleep. She's finally started to not like it and squirm, so she'll probably be trying to roll over and what not soon. We couldn't have asked for a sweeter addition to our family.

Lydia loves her sister and loves to sit with and hold her.

Sometimes she loves her a little too much. :)

Can life get better?

I submit that it cannot!

First Temple and San Fran Trip

We finally made it up to Oakland for our first temple trip. I ran a few errands and then waited outside with the girls while Robert did a session and next time we'll switch. I love this temple! It's beautiful and it's built at one of the highest points in Oakland, so it has a gorgeous view. I had a blast outside with my girlies, taking pictures, and teaching Lydia that this building was called a temple. Trying to teach the important things while they're young. :)

The view. I would love to see it at night sometime.

Once Robert got out, we headed across the bay to San Francisco for lunch. We ate at one of the restaurants on Pier 39, Sea Lion Cafe, and then just browsed, people watched, and took some pictures.

Golden Gate

Alcatraz

Street Performers

We were stopped by a group of Asian tourists because they wanted to take pictures of our girls in the double stroller. You know your kids are cute when... Robert and I have actually been too Pier 39 once before at the same time. It was back in high school for Chorale tour. Robert hated me at that time, so we had fun recalling our memories from that trip since they were so separate from each other. :) We hope to eventually be perfect tour guides of the Bay area as well as Santa Cruz. We both have sisters that are seniors in high school and will be coming on the same San Francisco Chorale Tour in March. We hope to have a favorite restaurant to take them to when they come. Such a fun area!

Big, Big, Big, Big Water

(Darn! Now that song is going to be stuck in my head. It's from one of the zillion Land Before Time movies)

I never would have guessed how much I would LOVE living so close to the beach!! It's a little too cold now too take our little kiddos, but we squeezed in several trips before it got too cold. I can't wait until it warms back up enough that we can go all of the time again. Don't mistake that for complaining about the weather. "Cold" here is in the 60s. That's BEAUTIFUL compared to the Utah fall and winters I've gotten used to. Anyway, here's some fun pictures from an outing we had on Natural Bridges Beach, and also when we went  to watch the sunset at West Cliff which overlooks Lighthouse State Beach.

Robert gets a kick out of running away from the water. He's the third kid in our house. :)

All my children ;)

We're so lucky to live in paradise :)

Mary at One Month

I'll hopefully be posting Mary's Two Month post soon, so I won't say too much right now. I will say she is the PERFECT baby. Until lately, she's always been a 100% happy baby as long as she's not hungry. She is so sweet, so cute, and we are blessed to have her in our lives. Here's some pictures from her first month. Like I've said before, I've been seriously lacking in the picture department, so this is basically every picture I took of her in her first month. I'm trying to do better, I promise!

Four days old. Yay for being able to bring out old favorite outfits from when Lydia was a baby :)

Two weeks old. Our first Sunday in Santa Cruz Ward.

Bath time in the sink :)

Traditional monthly photo shoot. My Aunt Pam gave us the outfit she's wearing. It says "I love you cherry much." So cute.

Being Bashful :)

4th Annual Hall Family Reunion

Thursday night September 15th, 8 days after we had just finished the big move drive, I turned to Robert and said, "Robert, I want to go to my family reunion this weekend." As if our lives hadn't been crazy enough, right?? After a couple minutes of discussion and clarifying that I was being serious, Robert said we could go and 12 hours later we started the 12 hour drive to Mesa, AZ.

A few hours into the drive, Robert woke me up and said, "Heidi, it feels like the car is throwing up!" Confused and still half asleep, I said, "What do you mean 'throwing up?'" Robert clarified, "Like it's heaving." I asked, "How much gas do we have?" Right after I asked, the engine choked and we coasted to a stop, completely out of gas, surrounded by nothing but peach farms.

Robert started to walk to the closest gas station, but when he got enough service on his phone to look up how far away the closest gas station was he called and said the closest one was 1 and 1/2 hours walking distance away. I said, "Well, I saw someone drive by on a tractor on that peach farm right there. Maybe they'll help." So Robert hopped the fence and found a worker that knew at least a handful of words of English. They ended up letting us use some gas from their motorcycle, gave us a fresh bag of peaches off the farm, and we were on our way. The whole adventure took just over an hour. I'm glad we weren't stranded for too long. Now, it's a funny memory to look back on instead of a horrible experience :)

Finally, we got to my parents' house that evening. We only told 2 of my sisters we were coming, so it was a complete surprise to everyone else. Here's my dad holding Mary for the first time, and baby Bryson. His 25th and 23rd grandchildren.

Lydia and Alena were so excited to see and play with each other. You'd think it had been ages since they saw each other instead of just over a week and a half

After a fun night of surprising both of our families, the next day we headed up to Camp LoMia for the Hall Reunion. It was a fabulous time, as always. Aunt Pam and family did a wonderful job in charge this year. Here's the mommies and 3 new Wilcken grandbabies - Katie with Bryson, Becky with Annie, and me with Mary. They were all born within 3 weeks and 2 days of each other.

Aubrie and Cami loving Mary while Sasha loves Bryson.

It's no secret that Lydia loves being the center of attention. During the Sunday program she kept going up to the stage and trying to lead a song or say a prayer. It was too cute if I say so myself.

Me snuggling my baby. She's too precious!

We got a couple more days of visiting in, then headed back to Santa Cruz before Robert started school. It was a whirlwind of a trip, but totally worth it! If for nothing else, my parents got to meet Mary while she was still in her newborn stage. I love my family!!