Weekend Excitement

This past weekend was a fun, but very busy one. We started off Saturday morning by going to the new Keller Fire Station Open House. Hayden (and Daddy) were absolutely thrilled with the cool trucks and all those gadgets. Hayden even got to 'drive' one of the fire trucks.

As an early Father's day present for Ray, Hayden and I got him a baby seat for his bike and Saturday afternoon we took it out for a test drive. Hayden was so cute, he was actually saying "Wheeee!" as they were riding :-)

Saturday, Hayden also decided to 'play' with the dog's - now I must say that he's been watching the BCs play ball WAY too often, so he now plays 'fetch' too - JUST like the dogs (much to the dismay of the dogs because he wants to play it with THEIR ball!)

Sunday our neighbors Pam and Sam had a BBQ and pool party that went to. Hayden had a great time, he was able to play water volleyball and he helped Mommy and Jana win the girls against boys bean bag toss (what a good Momma's Boy!)

I don't think Hayden has ever slept so well - he was one EXHAUSTED little boy!

Birthday Wish from Charlie

Last week was Ray's birthday and his Uncle Charlie sent Ray an awesome video wishing him a happy birthday. The video was too priceless not to share. Thanks Charlie!

In Hayden news, we've had an interesting couple of weeks. We survived what we think was a mild case of the chicken pox - not as bad as we had feared, just an extended weekend home from daycare.

One of the days Hayden was home, he fell asleep on the couch with Taboo and I couldn't resist taking the picture.

Later he fell asleep with Mini Mo the Border Collie.

Here he is sharing his couch with Tawine while they were watching a little TV. Tawnie is such a patient girlie!

And just because it's cute, here is Hayden eating his FAVORITE finger food - blueberries. When he was sick that is ALL he would eat! I think his fingers are permanently stained blue!

Then last weekend we went to a local brewary here in Ft. Worth called Rahr (http://rahrbrewery.com/). Let me tell you how crazy that place is! Every Saturday they have a brewery tour and beer tasting... I'll call it a tour because technically they DO have a tour, but that is NOT why people go there. For $5 you get a Rahr glass and you get to sample 3 of their beers (by sample, I mean these are full pints of beer), BBQ and live music. Plus they donate a portion of the proceeds to a local charity. Hayden had a great time dancing to the music and showing off for anyone who would watch :-)

Beach Vacation

Well, we are just back from our first big family vacation. I'm happy to report we all survived! Plus I have to brag on my super travel baby Hayden - he did better than I did in the travel department! All four flights (two out and two back) he pretty much went to sleep as soon as we were about to take off and woke up right as we pulled up to the gate. He takes after his Daddy on that one, sure wish I could sleep on a plane like that!

Anyway, we arrived at Tampa to some beautiful weather. Here are some pictures of Hayden's very first trip down to the beach.

Enthralled with all that water!

He's checking out all the sea shells and starting his first collection.

Even holding up his shorts so they didn't get wet! What a smart boy!

MeMe Karen threw Hayden a 2nd 1st Birthday party. Hayden was so cute with the GINORMOUS Spiderman balloons that MeMe got him.

Everyone singing Happy Birthday!

And of course the 'smash cake' part two!

He got some more great gifts from everyone, and was able to enjoy his new sand toys at the beach, here is is with his new dump truck.

Hayden and Daddy being silly in our room.

Uncle Charles, MeMe Karen, Hayd and I coming in from a trip down to the water, enjoying the beautiful sunset!

Thanks to Uncle Charles, the boys all had matching tropical shirts and dew rags - rock on!

Here we are enjoying another gorgeous sunset on the beach (did I say yet I want to sell everything and just live on the beach - ah, the life!)

And I think this picture says it all - a very tired boy after fun in the sand, surf and sun!

Funny side note; Hayden was SO relaxed in the water, everytime we would go down to play in the gulf he would fall asleep in my arms. We didn't get any pictures of it, but it was SO funny. We would get near the water and he would just drift peacefully off to sleep! What a rough life!

Happy Birthday Hayden!

On Friday April 24 Hayden turned 1! It's just hard to believe that an entire year has passed!
We all played hooky from work and school and went to the zoo on Friday. Hayden had such a great time! I think his favorite animals were the elephants. He just pointed and looked at us like "What are those?" The elephants were putting on a good show for him and were kicking some big balls around. We had a great time.

Here are his new friends the kangaroos and the parakeets.

Then on Saturday we had Hayden's First Birthday Party. What a great turn out! Many thanks to all of our friends who came out to celebrate with us.
I don't know why, but I decided to bake Hayden's cake, I'm not sure I'll be doing that again! But I do think it turned out pretty well.

Hayden seemed to enjoy his smash cake - he had blue frosting EVERYWHERE! Thank goodness for the dogs - they did a great job helping us clean up.

After the cake it was present time!
Here are Hayden and Kyle checking out the cool Tickle Me Elmo.

The cool new 'CD' player.

The vibrating cow was a big hit!

Back to the Tickle Me Elmo.

Our friends Alan and Susan - yes, Alan has on Hayden's hat!

AND.... at the end of the day, we had one VERY tired Hayden!

I'll try to get some video up later this week of Hayden playing with his awesome new basketball set - he's a slam dunker!

Hoppy Easter!

Two weekends ago, we took Hayden up for his first official Easter Egg 'Hunt'. (I'll call it a hunt because that is what you are supposed to call it, but the reality of things for an almost one year old is more like an Easter Egg Scramble - pun intended).

We get to the park where the event is taking place and there are about 1 million kids (ok, 1 million is an exaggeration, it was more like 300,000 kids).

We lined up and patiently waited for the starting whistle... us and the other 299,999 other kids.

We met and strategized as a family the best way to keep from getting trampled and it was decided that our best bet was to have Ray go down to the far end of the field with the camera and when the time came, Hayden and I would make our way down there as fast as we could, hopefully being able to avoid if only for a short time the masses.

Finally it was time! Nimbly, Hayden and I made our way down to the far end of the field by Daddy, and we proceeded to pick up eggs and candy - Hayden was more interested in chewing on the wrappers, but he was having fun - anyway....

Within seconds I would say approximately 200,000 of the 300,000 descended upon us, it was a sea of people - people of all ages, sizes and questionable hygiene practices (ok, maybe that was just me being overly sensitive?)

Thankfully Ray threw Hayden and I a life line and was able to pull us to safety! Whew! We survived (just barely) and had candy and eggs to show for it!

Easter weekend we stayed much more subdued than the public egg hunt...Our great friends Pam and Dean came over for dinner. Afterwords, we went over to our neighbors for a much more subdued (and less frightening) egg hunt for the kids.

Here Katie was showing Hayden how it's done.

Kyle was getting into the action! what a cutie!

Hayden hit the jack pot in the tree! Go baby go!

Hayden also had tons of fun opening the great Easter cards from Grammy and Grandpa Dude, MeMe Karen, GG-Ma and G-Papa Scally and Biz and Mo. Thanks everyone for the great cards! Hayden LOVES looking at the cool pictures!

I have a couple of videos I'll try to post later in the week!