My Budding Artist

Hayden is Mommy's budding artist. One day he brought me his watercolor set, so I decided to let him try it out. After showing him how to use the paint and put it on the paper, he did it by himself and had a lot of fun painting and making a mess for Mommy. He was so sad when it was time for Mommy to clean up his fun.

A Disney Christmas

This year for Christmas we went to Disney World with Chris' family. We all had so much fun and it was great to spend time with family. A couple days while we were there, it was bitterly cold, a lot like Idaho but without the snow, however we still thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Here are a few of the many many pictures we took:

The Disney Castle

Standing with my sweetheart in front of the Tree of Life that had carvings of animals all over its trunk.

Hayden and I played in the Honey I shrunk the Kids Playground. Hayden is sitting on a giant ant.

Riding the carousel in Magic Kingdom

Hayden loved the carousel. He giggled every time the horse came back down. It was so cute to watch.

A whole street was covered in Christmas lights. They played Christmas music and the lights would "dance" to the music. It was very fun to watch.

The Disney castle all lit up at night. It was so beautiful.

Meeting Disney Characters

One of the many things we did while at Disney was of course meeting some of the Disney characters. I was surprised by how exciting and fun it actually was to meet these characters. It was one of my favorite things. Hayden also loved meeting all the characters, which surprised me. We had a character breakfast one morning and a few of the characters would come visit us at our tables. Hayden loved touching their faces and whiskers and would watch them as they moved around the room. His reactions were so adorable. Here are a few of the characters we met:

Meeting Mickey Mouse

Meeting Daisy and playing with her beak

Meeting Pooh and Piglet. These were my favorite characters to meet, maybe because they were so fuzzy and cute!!

Meeting Jasmine and Aladdin

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Along with going to Disney. Chris and I were able to go to the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando Resort. We left Hayden with Chris' dad and family, while we spent a day living in Harry Potter's world. It was so exciting, my dream come true! The rides were spectacular so we rode them several times throughout the day. Our favorite one was the ride through Hogwarts. We also visited Olivander's wand shop. They take in a small group at a time and do a little show of the wand choosing the person just like in the movie. They only choose two people per group and we were the ones chosen! I couldn't have been happier. So we had to do "spells" with wands until we found the "right" one for us. We had a lot of fun and bought the wands that "chose" us. It was such a fun day and I'm happy that I was able to spend it with my best friend.

Standing in front of the Hogwarts castle

A view of Hogsmeade

The Hogwarts Express

One of the many storefront window displays. This one is of Quidditch.

We ate lunch at the Three Broomsticks. We had some Butterbeer which tasted like cream soda with a butter flavor and cream. It was absolutely delicious!!

The chocolate frogs display in one of the Honeydukes windows

A view of Hogwarts lit up at night

Fuzzy Socks

Hayden got to open a few Christmas presents early because we were not going to be around for Christmas. One of the presents he opened was from his Great Grandma Nebeker. She made us all some fuzzy socks. Hayden was so excited to see his. After grabbing them up, he meowed at them and loved them as if they were a stuffed animal. It was so cute to watch. Thank you Grandma Nebeker!!

Ready to play in the snow

Back in December I was so excited to take Hayden outside to play in the snow for his very first time. It took me about 5 minutes to bundle him all up in his snowsuit. He didn't seem too thrilled because he couldn't move. I figured he wouldn't care once we got outside, but to my great disappointment he didn't do any better outside. We were only outside for a total of probably 3 minutes before I brought him back inside and took off his snowsuit. Needless to say that was our only outing into the snow this winter. Hopefully next year he'll be more excited and we can build a snowman.

Halloween

This year for Halloween, we dressed Hayden up as a little puppy dog. I went as a princess thanks to my neighbor allowing me to wear her dress. And Chris went as Abraham Lincoln. We went to our ward's Trunk-or-Treat and had a great time seeing all the costumes. Hayden enjoyed reaching into all the candy bowls and grabbing a piece of candy. He was so cute. I was especially excited because Hayden couldn't possibly eat all of that candy so I took it off his hands and enjoyed myself very much. :P