Christmas Fun 2010!

For Christmas this year we spent over a week visiting my family. I will say that I wasn't a huge fan of packing all the presents and I think a shorter trip next time would be better for all of us, but we really did have a great Christmas!

We didn't have to get up until almost 9:00 which was very nice! Santa found us and brought Lexie "Super Letters" and candy. Hoyt got a monkey that sings songs when you push his hands and feet.

Hoyt also wanted to play with Lexie's super letters.

Lexie was most excited about her candy from Santa. She also liked her train.

She also got a trash truck from Toy Story 3 because she loves to watch the trash truck come dump the dumpster just below our condo every few days. And she LOVES Super Why so she got a Super Why talking action figure and an Alpha Pig because she loves his "amazing alphabet tools".

Hoyt woke up long enough to see his Santa gift and open his basketball toy. Bryan says I am getting him started early, but with a name like Hoyt he has to like basketball. :) He didn't want anything to do with presents after that and here he is snuggling with Uncle Pete which he did a lot all week. He went down for a nap and opened the rest of his presents later, but I didn't take more pictures.

Bryan was super excited to finally get a Wii! He has been wanting one since they came out and we could finally afford one this year! He also loved his hot chocolate and socks from Jodi.

I hate to include these lovely photos of myself, but Bryan was really good to me this year and got me an awesome new little camera and a cute, very-warm winter coat! We may have gone a bit overboard with the gifts this year (although we did stick to our budget), but we are way blessed and had a great time with old and new traditions and most importantly remembering our Savior's birth...the true reason for the season.

This is one of our many crazy games of "Apples to Apples". It's fun to play late at night when we are all a little silly and we laugh for hours. Fun family bonding time. (We were all skyping with Eric and Tracie during this game so that is where everyone is looking).

Here is cool-dude Hoyt with Grandpa Hoyt's work hat on backwards. He had a lot of fun with Grandpa, Grandma and all his aunts and uncles.

Lexie was dressed up the entire week also in Jen's princess dresses mostly. She also decided to try on Grandpa's work hat and sunglasses and I had to take a picture. She also decided to try the basketball basket on her head. She had so much fun playing and did not want to go home after a week of playing with all her aunts and uncles...especially Aunt Jennifer!

Sunday night at Great-Grandpa & Grandma Hoyt's house. I spent almost every Sunday night growing up at my grandparent's house just a few blocks from my house playing with my cousins and just visiting family. I have a lot of fun memories and now my kids get to make some memories there also.

A few other things we did during the week: Bryan and I ate lunch at the new restaurant down the street from my parent's house and the food was excellent! We were also able to go see "Dispicable Me" at a theater in Kanab for a customer appreciation from our awesome insurance agent (and cousin) Aaron. I did get really sick starting Christmas Day which was not fun (the kids and Bryan all had it the weeks leading up to Christmas), but other than that we had fun playing Mario Kart and eating lots of yummy food. Here's to the end of a crazy, but good year!

Christmas Concerts & Festivities

This year during the holidays there was a lot to do near where we live so we tried to take advantage of some of them. My favorite were all the Christmas concerts! FM100.3 always has mini-concerts during lunch in the mall so we went to a few and they were really good!

The first concert we went to was Jim Brickman...I am a big fan so I was super excited to see him perform in person!

And our family got to meet him after and get some things signed.

The next concert we went to was Wayne Burton and Voicemale. Some of you may not know that Bryan's brother James was one of the original members of Voicemale at Utah State. It was a great concert!

The last concert we went to was Jon Schmidt and Joshua Creek.

Jon Schmidt is such a great performer as you can see, with lots of energy and fun music! He even did an encore after the radio broadcast.

Joshua Creek was a fun group with some great songs!

The best concert of the season...and the most exciting for me was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert with David Archuleta. Everyone probably knows how lucky you had to be to get tickets, but we were able to get 2 tickets for Friday night. Annie and her friend Rob came down to tend the kids so Bryan and I could go on a much needed date to the concert. We rode TRAX to Temple Square and got to see some Christmas lights and I think that was one of the best concerts I've been to in my life. The Orchestra was amazing, the Choir was inspiring as always and David Archuleta sounded awesome! One of my favorite moments was when President Monson came in pushing his wife in her wheelchair and 20,000 people stood in complete silence. We also got to see President Uchdorf and his wife come in and it was just a very special evening for us. The only problem we had was on the way back down the TRAX train wouldn't let us off at our stop because the button was broken so we had to go to the next stop and wait for the train to go back up to where we were parked.

This year I didn't decorate too much for the holidays (we still don't even have anything on our walls yet), because the place is small and it is only a temporary spot. We did put up our little tree and Lexie and Hoyt wouldn't leave it alone. Hoyt started army crawling that month so he would crawl over and grab the lights and ornaments.

We also decided to go to Festival of Trees since it was so close to our house. We saw a lot of cool trees there that were a lot more fancy than ours. This one was cool for a sports fan like me. It had signed memorabilia from Steve Young, the Jazz, Real Salt Lake, U of U, and much more. They had people closely monitoring this tree for sure!

Lexie by the Winnie the Pooh tree while holding her Pooh Bear.

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This picture shows the sticker on her face that turned out to be traumatic. We went to the kids corner place and Lexie said she wanted her face painted. Well, they went to put the sticker on her face, but when they stuck the sponge on her face with a tiny bit of water she flipped out and started screaming and people thought she was being tortured or something. Ah, adventures of a 2-year-old!

The nativity tree was really cool. I took a picture for my mom because she loves to collect nativities so I thought she would like the tree.

Free Day at the Aquarium

In December The Living Planet Aquarium here in Sandy had a free fee day for Salt Lake county residents. We needed to get out of the house and Lexie was super excited to go see fish. When we got there in the afternoon there was a line clear around the building so we weren't sure if we wanted to wait it out, but we heard there were some buses that had to take kids back to school in time to go home so once a bunch of those kids left they would let a lot more into the building. The wait ended up only being 15 minutes and once we got inside it was pretty crowded but we still got to see everything. Hoyt slept in his stroller covered up the entire time and Lexie had fun looking around at everything. At first she wanted to touch the stingrays, but once we got up to the water she decided she really didn't want to stick her hand in with those things.

Here are a few pictures of our adventure. Lexie and Daddy had fun checking out all the different sea creatures!

I wish we could have gotten a closer view of the cute penguins during the feeding but the place was packed so we will have to go back when there are less people.

Looking at more kinds of fish.

Lexie liked the coral and tropical fish. You can see Nemo on the left. :)

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving week for us was determined a little by the weather. We left a day early because of the "blizzard" that ended up not being so bad, but it did give us an extra day to spend with my family. Lexie and Hoyt had a great time at Grandma & Grandpa's house! I didn't take many pictures that week for some reason, but we had a great time with extended family and also had some yummy food!

We stopped at Burger King on the way down and Lexie had to get a crown. All week she dressed up in Jen's princess clothes and wore her crown. She tried it on Hoyt so here is Princess Lexie and Prince Hoyt.

Here is Hoyt trying on another hat. Love that cute face with his big eyes and sweet smile!

Thanksgiving day we spent in Kanab with most of the Mickelson family. We had a great dinner with all my favorite traditional Thanksgiving dishes, and then we had a short Christmas party since we were all together. We had our festivities at the church, and after dinner the parents took many of us on a "Memory Tour" of the stake center in Kanab which was the first church built there, but they are tearing it down to build a new stake center in a few months. It was cool to hear memories from my Grandparents, and my Mom and her siblings. I also have memories there from growing up because it was also my stake center for my growing up years.

Lexie had a great time playing basketball with the big kids and playing on the stage (here she is peeking out the curtain).

The day after Thanksgiving my cousin Amanda opened up a salon for the day in my Grandma Mickelson's house so I was able to finally get a haircut! After the haircut my Aunt Merilee was kind enough to take some pictures with her nice camera for our Christmas card. It was a struggle to get Lexie to cooperate, but here are the pictures we chose for the card. I think they turned out cute.

Hoyt at 6 months old in his Christmas sweater vest.

The only way to get pictures of Lexie was to let her play on the slides at the park. It was freezing cold and she had her pretty new Christmas dress on, but I thought this picture was cute of her.

And here is the Bryan Lyman family 2010.

Hoyt's 6 Month Update

I can't believe my baby turned 6 months old in November. Time has flown and we can't imagine our home without this happy, content, super-cute little guy. Here are his 6 month stats:

Weight: 19.05 lbs. (76%)

Height: 27.75 in. (89%)

This kid is solid! Lexie was always long and skinny, but as you can see he is tall and heavy. I took some pictures soon after he turned 6 months and had so many cute ones, but here are just a few. I love his huge blue eyes and cute smile. I have never seen a more content baby in my life and can't complain at all because he really is such a good boy.

At 6 months Hoyt is rolling and scooting all over the floor and rocks on his hands and knees so I know he will be officially crawling very soon. He has been sitting self supported for several weeks, but he would rather dive forward so he can scoot around, and sometimes he just flippes back with no warning so we have to keep soft things behind him. He has been drooling and chewing like crazy for weeks but still hasn't cut his first tooth yet. He is now eating solids 3 or 4 times a day and is much more opinionated about food than Lexie was, but he does really love to eat! He also loves his sister and likes when she plays with him and makes him laugh. He likes to say "dadada", squeal, and make tasmanian devil sounds. We are grateful he is both healthy and happy.

He likes his exersaucer.

Now a little update on Hoyt at 5 months since I never posted that month. Here are a couple pictures I took of him at 5 months. He started rolling from back to stomach just before he turned 5 months so that definately made him a lot more mobile which he has really enjoyed. He also found his toes and constanty likes to grab them and chew on them. He also really found his voice and started to squeal and babble which has made it hard to sit through church.

We also tried starting solids at 5 months and as the pictures show he was not impressed with rice cereal...or any cereal for that matter. I stopped trying for a couple weeks then just started fruits and veggies. Now he will eat most kinds of cereal as long as there is fruit added. These pictures really crack me up.