This NEVER happens!

I can count 3 times in the past 2 1/2 years that Hayden has fallen asleep in a spot other than her bed:

1) Found her on the kitchen floor asleep, she was burning hot with a fever after having a bad reaction to a vaccine
2) Found her asleep on the couch after her adenoid surgery
3) We now have 12:30 church so she skips her nap every Sunday.  Well she was exhausted, she was watching Kung Fu Panda and this is how we found her:

This may seem silly for some people to take a picture of their child sleeping like this, but this NEVER happens with Hayden.  We were completely shocked and had to take a picture as proof that she fell asleep!

What We've Been Up To

Getting a new job has brought Paul back to life and he is so much more motivated to start on projects.  He is running a marathon in March and has thus far ran 20 miles at one time!  This is amazing to me as I am clearly no runner.  We also started the monstrous task of cleaning out our backyard.  Paul and I still can't figure out what we were thinking when we looked at a "wooded" backyard and said, "great, we won't have to take care of a yard!"  Maybe it's because Hayden was barely walking and we didn't think how great a backyard is for a child.  Anyway, now we are stuck cleaning up this ridiculously huge backyard filled with messy trees and weeds.  Last Saturday Paul and 2 friends came with chainsaws and took down about 14 trees!

They only did the smaller ones close to our house and the bigger ones farther away. So there are still more to go, but at least we made a dent.  The following Monday Paul had off, so we hired some young men from our ward and they helped us clean up a bunch of the debris into the dumpster.  They also got to demolition the old hot tub fenced in area which they really seemed to enjoy!

So after all that work, we still have this to clean up.  We ran out of room in the dumpster, so we are thinking of building a fire pit and burning the rest...

We found piles and piles of bricks hidden under leaves, it was crazy!

We still want to take down about 6 more trees, the ones in the middle behind the pile of branches.  That would make a pretty big open area to put down sod and have a nice backyard.  This project is really hard for me.  I'm the type of person that wants to start and end a project within a few days.  Get in and get it done.  This is going to take awhile and it is so hard for me to look out my back windows and see this mess!  I am having a professional tree company come look at the other trees close to our house to get an estimate of how much it will be to take them down.  One step at a time I guess.  Hopefully by summer I'll have some awesome pictures of our new backyard!

Valentine's Day

I don't care how some people think Valentine's Day is too commercialized, I still love it.  I express my love for my family each day, but it's fun having a day to really celebrate it!  Hayden has been gearing up for several weeks. She loves seeing all the heart balloons, heart cookies, heart everything when we run errands.  She loves pointing them out wherever we go.  So I told her the night before that it was "heart day" tomorrow and that it was called Valentines.  Sure enough that morning she said, "heart day, happy valentine's!"  She couldn't wait to get downstairs and start her day!

Here is Hayden checking out her Valentine's Mailbox (I made all 3 of us these this year, I loved it and it is a cute home decoration!)  She had a card from Dad, Mom, and a Reece's Peanut Butter heart that I let her eat during breakfast!

Then at 10:30 am we had a Valentine's Day party with all her friends at Ali Mendenhall's house.  We ate lunch, made Valentine bags, exchanged cards, decorated cookies, made crafts, it was a very fun event!  Plus the moms got yummy food too!

We decided to eat at home this year (first year since we have been married that we have done this, we are getting old I guess).  I made a meal that all of us love:  Chicken Asparagus Crepes and they were delicious.  I also made a Memphis Mud Pie which was tasty.

Then we let Hayden open some gifts from Grandma Anne and Grandma Kathy.  My mom got her a Mickey Mouse Club House movie, which Hayden loved and watched about 3 times yesterday!  Grandma Anne got her all kinds of fun jewelry (which Hayden insisted on wearing to bed that night) and Valentine's candy.

We got her a heart-shaped chalk board, new purse, and I made her some quiet activity folders for church.  Hayden loved Valentine's and all the excitement it brought to her day!

Silly Hayden

Hayden is developing quite a personality and she always keeps us laughing.  Hayden HATES winter clothes.  Every morning she begs to wear a dress with short sleeves or anything sleeveless.  When I do manage to get a long sleeve shirt on her, she immediately has to have the sleeves rolled up!  And I mean immediately!  As soon as the shirt is on she says, "uh oh, uh, oh" until we get the sleeves in place.  I can forget about coats and jackets.  She gets hot so fast, it's a good thing we live in Georgia since it doesn't usually get to cold.

This is how I find Hayden every morning:

I have no idea why, but this is how she likes to sleep!  Sometimes she'll do this with her shirts too and if it is lose enough she'll make her shirt into a tube top.

Hayden's love for music continues to grow.  She knows the lyrics to songs by The Band, James Taylor, The Killers, Regina Spektor, Mumford & Sons, better than I do half the time!  When she hears a song she really likes she says, "again" and "one more time" over and over again.  She is also really good at memorizing words in her favorite books.  So as I read I omit words and she fills them in with the right words.

Hayden is good at repeating everything I say, but is just now starting to independently make up her own phrases.  Right now she likes to ask and answer her own questions.  For example, "Where's daddy...At work."  It's really cute.

Hayden is also so observant.  Anytime I wear anything new or do something different to my hair she immediately notices and comments on it!

Something Hayden is doing that drives me crazy is that when she doesn't get her way, or someone looks at her that she does not know, she slaps herself across the face.  Seriously, this makes me feel like a terrible parent every time it happens.  Should I just be grateful she is hitting herself and not others???  She is also turning into a super picky eater.  We sat at the dinner table for about an hour a couple of nights ago while I tried to bargain with her to eat her dinner.  She is stubborn to say the least.  After the horrible event I could hear her saying to herself, "Hayden, just try it..."  yep that's what I kept telling her.

Here are a few pictures of her playing in the monstrous bag my birthday pie came in.  She had so much fun until it broke!