Friday Five

This post should probably be titled: "Random things from the past two weeks" because there are more than five things and they are all really random, but...

1-Target had a sale on baby things (Spend $100 get $25) and thanks to their RedCard Free shipping we got all these diapers/wipes delivered right to our door. 

2- Austin loves looking at the fish when we go shopping at Walmart.

3- My not-so-little brother Matthew and his sweet wife Brooklyn are spending the summer in Rhode Island for an Internship Brooklyn has with Hasbro (cool!). We had them over for dinner and gave them this little care package for their road trip out there. We are going to miss them!!

4-This little guy just keeps getting cuter and cuter. The kids just love him. 

5-We had Stake Conference at the Alpine Tabernacle for the last time. (tears!) I love this building so much and have loved being able to attend our Stake Conferences here. It's so beautiful and so full of rich history. One of the speakers said that every Prophet has spoken at this tabernacle since Brigham Young (whether as an apostle or a prophet). Wouldn't it be incredible to hear those words resonating throughout those walls? I wish that I could say that our last Stake Conference here has wonderful and uplifting, but I've honestly never felt so tempted to just call it a failure and leave halfway though. The kids were crazy.  Caleb, by far, was the best behaved. He slept in his carseat most of the time, but even so - we could barely contain Lydia and Austin. With about 20 minutes left in the meeting I took them down to the bathroom to let them go potty and then refused to let them go back to their seats. We sat in the hall (trying to hear the Stake President, without  much success) until the closing song started. *sigh* The kids weren't being bad, not on purpose. They just could. not. sit. still. They couldn't sit at all. *double sigh*. Regardless, I still love this building and wish we could have all of our Stake Conferences here. 

6- Lydia has been loving playing with all of the gifts she was given for her birthday. Every day she wants to play with something new and they've been welcome distractions and entertainments! 

7- We've had our super-awesome van for just over a year and think week I realized that you could copy your CDs to the Hard Drive of the van and then favorite different tracks to create your own playlist. So cool! Austin has his favorite songs on different CDs and frequently requests that I change the CD to listen to a particular song. Now I can have them all together and we can listen to them on repeat. Here's to 5 little monkeys, Shoo Fly, and Animal Fair! 

8-Lydia doesn't dress up in her princess dresses much, and it's almost always initiated by a friend who has come over to play, but look how darling these girls are. Sarah came over in her Rapunzel dress and Lydia wanted to match her. In even more exciting news, we're starting up our babysitting swap again and are so excited! This babysitting swap is the best thing to ever happen to our date nights and I can't recommend it enough. Yay! 

9-There's something special about watching your children while they sleep. When you walk into their room and hear them breathing deeply, safe and sprawled out in their beds. 

--David took the Friday before Lydias birthday off andwhile Lydia was at preschool we took Austin to Krispy Kreme to get a donut. Then David took Lydia out to lunch as a special birthday treat.

--Kevin Haderlie graduated with his Masters, so Jenna threw him a party. It was the last time all of us siblings will be together for a while (Matt & Brooklyn are headed to Rhode Island for the summer), we took a sibling picture of the 5 of us. I've been blessed with wonderful siblings and I love them so much. They truly are some of my best friends. Lydia loved playing with her new remote controlled car in the Haderlies basement.  And we all loved that Jenna and Kevin now live close enough to my mom and dad that we could just pop over there before we left so that we could see their new rocking horse! 

--Cal and Sue came down to visit for a minute one night. It was time for Austin to go to bed, so Cal took him upstairs, read him books, and put him to bed. We're lucky to have such a good grandpa for our children. 

 

--David took Lydia mother's day shopping. She really wanted to get me this skateboard. Cute.

Matthew and Brooklyn: Engaged!

My little brother is getting married!

You all know I love weddings. But I love them even more when the wedding is for two people that I love so much! Matthew and Brooklyn are perfect for each other are we are thrilled to be adding a new sister to the family! 

It's hard to be a student when it's hard to get married anytime other than on a semester break. So when you know you want to get married in November you either have to get married in six weeks or six months. This happy couple picked the former so we've got some wedding plans to work on over the next six weeks. 

A new sister for Christmas! 

Doctor Who?

So, here's the deal. Sometimes David and I can be a little nerdy. For the most part we are a fairly normal family who, although they might be a little awkward at times, does fairly normal things. However, a while back my family started really getting into Doctor Who. We'd occasionally walk in while they were watching an episode and we determined it was the lamest show in the world. It was weird, super British, low budget, and (did I mention) really really weird.  We swore we would never watch it and resisted all attempts of my siblings to get us to join in. As time passed, it got to the point that I could barely understand what my siblings were talking about because everything was riddled with references to "The Doctor", jokes about "blinking", and sonic screwdrivers. I finally gave in and told David that I was just going to watch it so that I could understand what was going on and become part of my family again. I wasn't terribly happy about it and had a sort of martyr-attitude going into it. By the time I hit the second season, I was hooked! Five netflix-seasons later - I felt like a whole new world had opened up with friends and adventures I could never have dreamed of! I told David that he needed to watch it with me, and after some hesitation on his part - he agreed. What I realized, and have since told all others that I've recommended the show to, is that you have to commit to watch the entire first season and the first episode of the second season before making any judgements. By then - you are in. Of course David loved it and we quickly became (arguably) the biggest Doctor Who fans in the family. (I should also mention that my dad grew up watching the old black and white Doctor Who series and he's really the one that instilled the love into his children. He's pretty awesome.)

Our love of The Doctor and his big blue box has spread, and we decided that for the Season Seven Premier - we were going to have a Doctor Who party and invite all of the people around us who love The Doctor as much as we do. That is how our front door ended up looking like this:  

And our kitchen ended up being filled with treats like this: 

Lydia was beyond excited for "the party". She'd been a big helper getting everything ready and she knew two things: 1-her "friends" were coming over to play, and 2-she got to eat a marshmallow treat at "the party". She could barely stand it and spent much of the beginning of the party running around and giggling out of sheer happiness.  Poor girl was devastated when we took her upstairs and put her to bed. So, so, so sad. 

We hadn't really planned to do much more than watch the new season-opener, but our nephews, Josh and Daniel, had found this awesome instructional sheet on how to write in Gallifrey-ian. So we decided to give everyone the opportunity to learn to write their names using The Doctor's native language. It was pretty awesome and it turned out to be really fun.  

We got our food and everyone got ready to meet the new Doctor. 

Did I mention that the show is about a man who travels through space and time and occasionally almost-dies and regenerates into an entirely new person who is completely different, but exactly the same? As crazy as it sounds - it's full of wonderful people who travel around doing as much good as possible while saving the world/universe. What's not to love? Plus, we certainly loved sharing it with these awesome people: 

From left to right: Josh and Daniel started watching in the "Matt Smith" seasons and it took much convincing to make them go back and watch from the beginning (starting with Christopher Eccleston). They were one of the main reasons for the party- mostly because we told them that they couldn't come unless they went back and started over. Matthew, my brother, has been a huge Who fan for years. Garret and Karli Shields got sucked in when we convinced them to start watching, and although Garret is more of a fan than Karli is - she was still a great sport. Melissa taught me that you can still be cool and love Doctor Who - and is slowly convincing Blake of the same thing. 

If you want to come to our next Doctor Who party - you can start watching on Netflix. Remember though, the whole first season and the first episode of the second season. Commit to it before you start. Also, don't ever tell me that you like Matt Smith more than David Tennant. Not that I'm worried that you would - no one makes a better Doctor than David Tennant. (Also, I should mention that they've introduced a few new characters that we don't love. We kept hoping that it was just a short-term thing, but they were in the newest episode and if they don't phase out soon our love for Doctor Who will be seriously diminished - or at least limited to certain seasons.) 

Happy time-traveling, friends. Allons-y!