Elle's Baptism

Elle was baptized last night on October 13, 2012. She was so excited to get baptized and was so sweet. She was super excited to wear her pretty dress and have both of her grandparent sets here. Everything went well and the water was warm, luckily. Reese was feeling a little underappreciated, so she was a little crazy with all of the presents and cake and excitement surrounding Elle. Reese needs attention more than Elle, apparently!

The other little girl is Zoie, she was also baptized last night.

Grandma and Grandpa Henderson

Nana and Papa Haas

I actually halfway like this picture of me so I figured it was ok to post it.

Nana cross stitched this with the date and her name and a little saying on it

Grandma had this made for her to put a picture of her baptism day on the clip. Both of these were so cute!

We gave her a journal, new scriptures and a mini hymn book with her name engraved on them. She was really excited about that!

New School Year

I cannot believe summer is over! It is ridiculous! And what is even more ridiculous is that Reese is in Kindergarten. It was all I could do to not start crying when Ryan and I dropped her off this morning. And Miss Elle is in 3rd grade which is crazy also! Poor Elle kind of got thrown to the wolves this morning because she goes to a different side of the school now to go in and we wanted to watch Reese go in. But Linda took her in for us, so at least she was not completely on her own. She didn't seem to care though.

Reese waiting to go in with Miss Mecham

Skiers!

Reese also started skiing by herself this year without the harness. One day we were up there and Ryan had her in the harness and she said next time down I am going to do it all by myself and, lo and behold, she did it the very next time all by herself! So we went up quite a bit this year since all four of us can go together now. I had a little fight with a snowboarder on time, but other than that all went well. It was not really a fight, but a snow boarder plowed into me going full speed and twisted me all up and I have had a sore knee off and on since then.

Bike Riding

Reese learned to ride her bike without training wheels in January of this year. It is fun to have both kids riding their bikes without training wheels now, but Reese seems so little to be doing it. It is great when we want to go on a walk and the kids can ride their bikes though.

FOREVER!

Oh my gosh, it has been forever since I have done a post! I am so sorry to anyone who cares about our boring life :) I will just do a couple of quick updates from the months since Polar Express. December was fun. I took a trip to Houston to my friend Jamie's wedding, so Ryan and the kids hung out for the weekend. He took them to a parade in Golden because they love parades. Reese had her little preschool christmas program that was really cute. They sang Rudolph, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. One of the little girls in Elle's class gave everyone a bag of reindeer food for Christmas. So on Christmas Eve we had them go out and spread it all over the sidewalk. It had oats and sparkles in it so the reindeer could see it from the sky. Then we did our annual reading of the Christmas Story and opened our pajamas. We also went skiing that day together. Santa was good to them this year also. Elle got her Innotab and Reese got her DS, not to mention all the other things they got from us, their wonderfully nice parents and other family members :) They also got a lot of stuff for their American Girl dolls.

Polar Express

This is a lengthy post everyone, sorry! This past weekend after Thanksgiving, we took the kids, and Ryan's sister and her family came along, and made the very long 6 1/2 hour drive to Durango to ride the Polar Express. We got there Friday evening and stayed until Sunday morning. It was totally worth the time and the money to see the kids faces and eyes,especially when Elle turned around and said, "I can't believe we are really going to the North Pole!" They started us out by bringing everyone out of the train station to wait for the train to arrive. While we were waiting, they started playing the story over the loud speakers. Then when the Polar Express song started, the train comes rolling up just like on the movie.


This last one is a little hard to see, but they had the conductor come out and had a little boy act out the part where he doesn't want to get on the train and the conductor tells him to decide because he has a schedule to keep.


So then we all boarded and they gave us our golden tickets to have the conductor punch later. The seats could turn and face each other like they did on the movie and there was a tree and lights and ornaments decorating the train. The conductor came through after we left and punched the tickets and they passed out hot chocolate and cookies while the Hot Chocolate song was playing. Then they read the story and showed everyone the book while it was playing.








So after riding for about 30 minutes, it is short because it is a "magic train,"
we arrived at the North Pole and saw Santa's village all lit up and Santa and the reindeer and the elves were outside waving. The kids got to stick their heads outside the windows and wave. So then we stopped for a few minutes and backed up and stalled while Santa got on the train, then we began our return trip. As we were going back, Santa came through each car and handed out bells like he gave the boy in the movie and we sang Christmas carols. Before he came into our car the chefs had everyone start cheering "Santa, Santa, Santa!" We even stopped for a second to let "Billy" off (the shy little boy from the movie) and as we passed they had "him" standing outside the train with his striped red and white present jumping up and down next to a house. When we got back they passed out hot chocolate souvenir mugs and we unloaded the train to see the real reindeer and sit on Santa's lap inside the train station. It was seriously one of the vacations I will probably like best forever because it was so much like the movie and the kids were totally enthralled.

Gavin DeGraw and David Cook

I won tickets to the Gavin DeGraw and David Cook concert by answering the mindbender on 100.3 right! I feel like such a celebrity now!:) Just kidding, but I did actually call in and win the mindbender and my prize was a Melting Pot gift card and tickets to this concert, with a meet and greet ticket included. So we got to meet two real famous people! I am officially a Gavin DeGraw fan now, he is such a great performer! David Cook was good, but he doesn't really sing my style of music. It was pretty fun and we met a girl who was literally determined that she is going to marry David Cook so it was funny seeing her trying to get backstage to get invited to his afterparty. Ryan is not really a concert scene type of guy, so he decided he didn't want to go, plus he would have missed the BYU game, heaven forbid!