This-n-That

I just have to show off some of the pics I got while I was home.

Here's Grandpa Dan (my dad, whom Jaden Dan Haynes was named after...) and the two littlest grandkids. Those two little girls were so cute together!


We all went out to eat together at the Upper Crust, which I thought was awesome! Here we have Kent the freakazoid, who makes the same face in EVERY picture (you're welcome Micalla!). I'm in there, you just can't see me very well, it's better off that way anyway.


This is my Great-Uncle George who is 90 1/2 (I guess I'd be counting the halfs at that age too!). But don't ask him how it feels to be that old, because he's never been that old before...

George is probably one of the smartest people I know, even at 90 1/2!

My camera went missing for a while at Grandma's viewing and let's just say I had a few surprise pics. I deleted the one they took of my feet, which are WAY cuter than Laurie, Tanya, and Micalla's feet. Was that in the right order you guys? Tanya's in the middle? I know who "looks like the hooker".... ;o)



Speaking of the "GEM" who said Micalla looked like a hooker.... Nick...


Micalla and Tanya doing what they do best...


Laurie and BreAna. I wonder who was taking the pic that made Laurie feel the urge to give that cheesy one...


My favorite Mikka with my favorite princess...


After everything was said and done we were wiped out. Mikka is not a good faker over there on the chair though...


Maycee and KynnLee giving kisses bye. I bet I know what freakazoid taught Maycee how to use the tongue like that..... (HER DAD!)


This is KynnLee and cousin Avery. We were very excited to see Avery for the first time. I LOVE KynnLee's messy hair in the morning! It cracks me up!


KynnLee loved looking out the window on the flight home. It kept her entertained for a little bit while they were taking their sweet time before take-off.


THAT'S ALL FOLKS!

Grandma Myrtle Hellewell

November 14, 1923-November 3, 2008

We have many memories of Grandma Myrtle and will miss her dearly. Here's the memories of Grandma that I shared at her funeral...

"The morning after Grandma died, I came in the house with some mail and there was a letter from my mom and I said 'Jaden, look what came in the mail today...' and Jaden just lit up and said 'Is it a singing card from Grandma Myrtle?!?!'. We will miss her cards, love dollars, raspberry jam, and rolls. When I was a kid, grandma would make some dough and split it up between the grandkids and let us make cinnamon rolls. She always thought my cinnamon rolls were the best because I was her favorite 'turkin-goose'.

I also have to share a smidget of Tanya's...
"Just to tell you how good her raspberry jam is, I was getting the kids ready for school and got out a new jar of jam. After I took Rylee out to catch the bus and came back in and there was only a little left in the jar. I was asking Nikyla where all the jam spilled and she said 'it didn't spill, Rhody drank it!'"

We will miss the weekly cards and love dollars in the mail from grandma, in fact, we received a card from her the day she died and two days after. We always had to laugh when the spelling of the kids' names varied. She did, however, get KynnLee's name right on the last few cards. I just had to set her straight when she kept calling her Kylee. I guess when you're sending cards to all your grandkids and great-grandkids that often it might get a little confusing. She always included Phoebe in the cards too, she would cut a dog out of a magazine and paste it into our card. Grandma loved Phoebe, but for whatever reason, Phoebe would always sit and bark at her.

I was able to bring a singing card home for Jaden (since only me and KynnLee went)and he was so excited. He taped it up on the wall right outside his bedroom and said it was his doorbell. We had to open the card to "ring the doorbell" before we could go in his room....



All the girls got to have one of Grandma's neclaces and we all wore them to the funeral. KynnLee was the only one that didn't wear hers, but I let her play with it. I thought it was so sweet that little tiny Maycee wore hers the whole time too and loved it!


We love you and miss you grandma!!

Trick-or-Treat fun!

What a fun Halloween we had! Jaden was Mr. Incredible... actually he's been Mr. Incredible for the past 4 months (thanks to Micalla), and KynnLee was a ballerina. We were originally going to have KynnLee be Jack-Jack/ Kynn-Kynn to match Jaden. But I came across my old ballerina figurines when we moved here and I put them up on a shelf in her room and that girl absolutely loves them!! She will grin at them from across the room and just loves to touch them and look at them, so I couldn't help but have her be a ballerina for her first Halloween! And she was the cutest ballerina I have ever seen!!!

We had a little playdate/Halloween party on Wednesday and the kids had a lot of fun. This is KynnLee with her little friend Jaxon. They are so cute together! And of course we have Mr. Incredible showing off his muscles...

How cute is that?!?!?




Here's the actual finished ballerina costume. I can't tell you how fun it was to get my little princess all dressed up and do her hair all fancy. Maybe next year she'll be old enough to put makeup on too!! Click on the pictures to enlarge...



Whoever said ballerinas can't be chubby?? :)

I was so crushed that the ballerina's accessories didn't cooperate. The shoes were too big (but were on clearance so I had to get them anyway!) so I put some ribbon in them and around the ankle to look like pointe shoes and that girl kept kicking them off! The headpiece I made turned out so cute! Even I was impressed! But whilst we were in the car on the way to go trick-or-treating, Mr. Incredible thought he needed to take a look at the headpiece and BROKE IT!! I made sure to get pictures of the accessories. But she was still a gorgeous little ballerina, despite the costume malfunctions...


You gotta click on this one to get the whole effect...


Mr. Incredible thought he was pretty darn cool with his mask actually painted on...



And here's Jaden and his cute little girlie friends. It's funny because he had lots of boy buddies in Kentucky, and the kids his age here are all girls. But he doesn't care, he likes his friends all the same. And we're trying to teach him to be a gentleman to the little girlies. I must admit that he picks some pretty darn cute girls for his friends...




The ballerina gave up...

Making of the Haunted House

The kids and I had a good time making a gingerbread Haunted House a few weeks ago. This is how it all went down.....

I didn't get a pic of the finished product because this is when the camera broke. And by the time we got the new one, the Haunted House had been picked at something terrible (by Jaden). I don't know how he could stand to eat it... the candy was cute, but NOT good!

Jaden-boy

Ok, Tanya tagged me like forever ago. Since my camera is still broken, I have to use old pictures. So here's 6 random things about Jaden...

1) Jaden Dan Haynes (named after my dad) was born March 23 2004 at a whoppin 5lbs 8oz and spent 8 days in the NICU. I totally believe that the NICU experience has everything to do with his "strong-willed" and "determined" personality... because I certainly had nothing to do with that...

2) He was nick-named Jaden-boy when he was about 6 months old by his cousin, Myleigh, who was 2 at the time. It was so funny when she started calling him "Jadie-boy" or "Jada-boy" and everyone else started saying it and the name just stuck ever since.

Despite him being 110% total boy, he does love Myleigh and Nikyla and allows them to do his hair and nails once in a while... but ONLY them! He IS a well-groomed boy!

3) Every single morning Jaden comes in our room and snuggles with his dad (yes, his DAD! I get snuggles once in a while ONLY if dad is gone). He comes in the room and walks ALL THE WAY round the bed (usually in the dark) to climb in on his dad's side. This has been going on since he was born, he's the cuddliest child I've ever met. You HAVE to spoon him, if you turn over he will climb over you, and if you scoot back, he will scoot back. Things have to be done HIS way (hence the strong-willed personality).

4) Jaden loves to do anything manly. He used to get his motorcycle and tools out and "fix" his cycle. He has helped my dad change brakes on a car and loved every second of it (so did grandpa!). Anything to do with tools and he is there. He used to LOVE working on the basement with us when we lived in Kentucky. I even have pics of him hammering screws into the 2x4's, and they stuck!

5) Jaden is the master of mischief. Of his umpteen million sick days, I don't remember not-a-one of them being a day where he just took it easy on the couch. This picture was taken a few hours after he had tubes put in his ears... this face says "mischief managed, moving on to dumping out the ovaltine"...

6) Jaden is the best brother a little girl could ever have. He absolutely LOVES his sister and is VERY protective of her. A friend was holding her in primary one Sunday and he marched up to her and started saying "That's MY sissy!! You give her back to my mom!! Put her DOWN!! That's my sissy!". He was pretty upset about that. I guess we don't have to worry about anyone giving her any guff in school....

This is a pic of him kissing her bye on his first day of preschool.

I tag: Myleigh Vallace

Kendall Richins

Jenna Holloway

Shoe Shopping!

I just have to tell you all about my little KynnLee girl's love for shoes. I claim this part of her personality, it has nothing to do with her dad being a foot doctor ;). I'm sad I don't have pics or flicks but it's still good...

Saturday we went to Nordstrom Rack to find some slacks for Trev. While the boys were looking in the suit department, KynnLee and I went and checked out the shoes...

I had her strapped to me in the Baby Bjorn, and good thing too because those isles would have been a pain to get a stroller through and the place was packed.

The WOLE time she was kicking her feet, jabbering, smiling, and just absolutely lovin it! I couldn't believe how many people would come talk to her and laugh at how she was just having a good time, and some people would just smile at her from afar and comment to their friends at how cute she is.

At one point she had a little pair of red shoes in her hand and a few people said "My, you just love those red shoes don't you? You're going to be fun to take shopping". I just smiled and said, "Yep, I gotta start 'em young!!". I'm very excited that I have a happy little shopper.

I told Trevor that if I had a dollar for every person that smiled at her or talked to her I could buy him a new suit... really. I should have started charging people...

Sadly, we left Nordstrom Rack empty handed. One day (4yrs from now) we can go shopping for real, I assure you there will be many more shoe shopping experiences to come! But in the meantime, KynnLee and I sure had a good time just looking around! And she brightened many other peoples' day.

The big camping trip....

We went camping last weekend with 5 other student couples. As much as I am NOT a camper, we had a lot of fun.

This was KynnLee's bed, she was funny when I first put her in there.

Jaden always manages to become friends with the CUTEST little girls! I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from this handsome little booger... This is his friend, Sage, that he played with a lot on the trip. They were pretty funny to watch, a lot of people were laughing at how cute they were.

Jaden was so excited to go fishing that he could hardly contain himself. It was a little over an hour away to the campground and in the car he kept saying, "Gosh, this is taking FOREVER!".

A few months ago he had this burning desire to go fishing at Grandpa Dan's. I mean, he wanted to get in the car, go to the airport and go to Grandpa's house NOW! So I let him call my dad and ask him if he could go to Grandpa's RIGHT NOW and go fishing... of course my dad didn't catch the hint and told Jaden "Sure you can come over and go fishing!!" (way to add fuel to the fire, dad!).

So it's been a long awaited thing for him to go fishing. We walked from the campground to the fishing spot on Lake Erie. Trevor took him out on a rocky nook and I couldn't take KynnLee in the stroller, so I had to get the pic from far away. Trevor cast out the line and gave the pole to Jaden and told him to hold on, but he started reeling it in. He told him to wait a minute but Jaden just kept reeling it in... and he caught a fish the first cast!!! GO JADEN-BOY! He went back to camp and told everyone about it and they all thought it was so cute!

We stopped and checked out the Lighthouse on Lake Erie on our way out. It was pretty neat,

but I wish it wasn't so cold that day. The wind didn't help, but the lake water was actually really warm.

I have a few more pics to post later, but you all better savor these because our camera broke last night!!!! I don't know when we'll be able to take pictures again...