Hoyt's 1st Birthday!!!

Hoyt is now 1 year old! Hard to believe it's been a year since my handsome little boy entered the world. He completely stole my heart and I love this little guy so much! He is such an easy going, loving little boy. He loves to give hugs and just cuddle which I just love because his big sister is the complete opposite. I love his big blue eyes, his infectious laugh, his easy temperament, and his amazing hugs! His birthday came at a pretty crazy time for us because we decided to move back to Cedar City by the end of May. The week of his birthday we took a load of our stuff from Sandy to Cedar City, and met with our renter to check the house and give him his deposit back. We decided to stay south for the weekend to celebrate with family.

The first order of business on his birthday was to have Great-Grandma Mickelson give Hoyt a haircut. Here are pictures with his long hair and sitting on the stool getting ready for the big event. He is so easy going that I thought he would be fine with the haircut. I didn't take into consideration that Hoyt is scared of noises, such as the vacuum, so the buzzing noise of the clippers, mixed with being held down on a stool was just too much for the poor little guy. He screamed the entire haircut and after didn't want anything to do with me. Luckily after a few minutes he was happy and ready to party!

Here is the finished product...so handsome! He really enjoyed eating pizza for his birthday dinner.

Pizza time!

The big gift we got Hoyt we wanted for both kids and since his birthday is first we gave it to him. It is an awesome wagon that the kids love and we will be able to have fun walks to the park and get good use out of it this summer!

Hoyt loved it so much he pretty much sat and played in the wagon his entire birthday. He kept pointing to the ceiling fan but we laughed and said he was saying #1 since he is now 1!

More presents...

For his cake I decided to do farm animals because according to Bryan, Hoyt's first word was E-I-E-I-O...not exactly a word, but he loves "Old MacDonald Had a Farm". I'm no professional, but it turned out cute.

He really wanted to tear into the cake! Thanks Great Grandpa and Great Grandma for coming to the party...and for the haircut. :)

Here is a video of Hoyt singing "Old MacDonald"; also all of us singing Happy Birthday and him eating his cupcake.

Yummy!

And here is our little family. I have a hard time getting both silly kids to smile for pictures. They always smile until we take pictures.

Me with my little birthday boy - then & now. People always joke about momma's boys, but even though I have a great bond with Lexie, it seems there is a different kind of bond a mom has with her son. I'm so happy to have both my kids and I love to watch them grow and learn new things every day. It makes me such a better person being a mother and I couldn't be any happier to say: Happy 1st Birthday Hoyt! Mommy loves you forever!!

Playing Together

I decided to do a shorter post since these pictures were on their own and didn't fit anywhere else. Hoyt's favorite thing to do is go and play in Lexie's room, especially with her kitchen. He started using the organization bins to stand on to make himself taller. He always wants to look out the window of the condo, but is only tall enough if he stands on the bin. He will stand for long periods of time just looking outside. He also needs something to stand on to be tall enough to reach things on the play kitchen. Another thing about Hoyt is that he has to have the door shut. If any door is open in the house he will go over and shut the door. He isn't walking yet, but he can climb on the couch, Lexie's bed (where he gets stuck then starts screaming), and to the top of the stroller (yet again gets stuck and starts screaming). He can crawl 90 miles and hour, stand alone for several seconds and take a few steps between furniture, but he really has had no desire to take off walking quite yet.

This day the kids were playing together in Lexie's room. I love those moments when they are both happily playing at the same time. It is more like side-by-side playing than interactive play, but they really enjoy being together, laughing, and having fun!

Lexie is really getting into imaginative play, and it is so much fun to listen and observe what she is doing. I need to start writing down specific examples of what she does so I can remember and share them. She is starting to play more with her baby and be the mommy. She will also treat her animals like babies too, like today when she prayed for her puppy who she was putting down for a nap. She wants to say all the prayers on the food and family prayers. With the new imagination has also come nightmares about monsters, etc. but we have told her she can pray not to get scared and some mornings she will get up and tell me Heavenly Father and Jesus helped her not be scared. That is such a great thing for a parent to hear! Even though she likes reading books, Lexie would rather have bedtime stories that are made up; I am not so creative so my stories aren't that great, but Bryan loves making up stories so I usually send him to put her to bed. She is currently obsessed with Clifford the Big Red Dog and still loves Super Why because she knows all of her ABCs, is now learning what sounds each letter makes, and is even interested in spelling words. She also enjoys singing and making up her own words to songs which can be super hilarious. Her favorite movie since Easter has been Tangled and she loves to sing the songs and make up stories about Rapunzel and Eugene. One day she was kissing her kitty and I asked what she was doing and she held up the kitty and said "This is Eugene and I'm Rapunzel"...so funny! These kids are just growing up so fast and I need to document small moments so I can always remember these fun years in our lives!

Easter 2011

This year our Easter was pretty low-key, but the kids had fun! Saturday morning we got a visit from the Easter Bunny who left us some fun treats in our baskets!

Not quite sure what they are looking at...

Lexie went straight for the candy...but she loved her baby kitty.

Hoyt also really liked his basket contents.

This is a cute video of him checking out his basket, then dancing while watching his new DVD. He was really getting down until I started recording, but I got a few seconds of the dancing.

Later in the afternoon we decorated eggs. Lexie loved it and for several days after kept asking to color more eggs.

Sunday morning I gave the kids some new church clothes to wear for Easter and they looked super cute in their spring outfits!

I love this picture of the kids and Bryan; and we got one with me.

We had a great Easter season and had FHE lessons about the atonement and resurrection so we could focus on the true reason for the Easter season. Lexie also enjoyed watching the Easter Veggie Tales during the month of April. Hopefully our kids will continue to learn about our Savior and fully appreciate all He has done for us in making it possible to live again someday with our families!

April Adventures

In March we waited and waited for good weather so we could go outside and have some fun. Finally, on April Fools Day it wasn't a joke that it was super nice outside! We decided to load up the kids and take them to a park. Hoyt enjoyed being in the stroller.

Lexie loves the park, especially slides! She enjoyed going down all of the different slides and running around with the other kids. She really likes to be outside so we are hoping for lots more nice weather!

After going to the park we decided to grab dinner at Firehouse Subs. Here are my two cute fire fighters.

Speaking of fire fighters, one day we decided to go get ice cream at Baskin Robins because they had .33 cent ice cream cones. The fire department was there and Lexie got to meet some real fire fighters, look at their cool firetruck, and even sit in the truck to get her picture taken. She was excited because she loves big trucks!

During the priesthood session of conference, my awesome friend Julie came to visit me! I haven't seen Julie for several years and hadn't ever seen her little girl except in pictures. It was so much fun to visit and catch up. She was one of my best college friends that I met when we both worked at the SUU Bookstore. I had so much fun not only working with her, but outside of work as well. I went home with her a few weekends, and she went home with me a few times too. I went to her mission farewell, visited her soon after she came home from her mission, went to her wedding, and she came to my wedding. She has a beautiful little girl Izze who had a fun time playing with Lexie. Here they are riding together on Lexie's car. Thanks for coming to visit Julie, you are an amazing friend! (I'm just sad I didn't get a picture of me and Julie...next time!)

This video of Lexie and Hoyt is hilarious (to me at least). The first part is Lexie trying to eat a Gogurt while she is falling asleep. The next part is Hoyt jabbering away which is super cute! You might notice he's wearing the same clothes as the previous video, but it is purely a coincidence that he was wearing the same thing both days. I love my silly kids!

Lexie went to her very first friend birthday party in April. It was for her friend James from nursery and my friend Elizabeth's son. They had the party at a place called "Bouncin' Off the Walls" and Lexie was in heaven! She loves blowup toys, especially the big slide! Daddy had fun taking the kids down the slide and playing with Lexie.

Hoyt mostly loved the bounce house. He could have spent hours in there. He would crawl around and just laugh even when bigger kids were bouncing and he would fall down. He loved it!

Lexie had such a great time at the party and some days she tells me to get ready so we can go to another party.

Lexie is such a silly girl sometimes. Whenever I get out the camera she wants me to take her picture even if she is in her jammies. The other picture was her being silly and putting her pullup over her head. She thought it was hilarious. She is now almost completely potty trained, except at night, but we have had several nights when she wakes up dry so we are making progress! When we got back from Christmas she insisted on wearing underwear. It has taken a lot of patience, but I'm hoping she'll be 100% trained before her birthday.

Hoyt turned 11 months in April. He was excited when we got out some of the toys Lexie played with at his age. This little chair was a big hit!

One evening when we were getting ready to eat dinner Lexie got out her witch hat from Halloween and put it on Hoyt. After we took his picture, she wanted a picture too. Ok, she seriously has the same clothes on in almost all the pictures in April. I promise my kids do have more than one outfit each, but between getting dirty and just wanting to change clothes several times a day you never know what they are going to end up wearing. If it were up to her, Lexie would just live in her swimsuit all the time. This summer she probably will.

This is just one of those things that makes me smile. They dumped the toys out of the bin and Lexie wanted to give Hoyt a little ride. He was grinning the entire time!