February 2010

Daniel had to wear a costume to school one day and recite a nursery rhyme. He chose "Hey Diddle Diddle" and Mimi was nice enough to make him this great cow costume. When he came downstairs and saw it, you'd think it was Christmas! He was so proud to wear his costume to school. Thanks Mimi for your help!

Rachel has really envolved in the last month. She is so much happier and capable of doing things. She loves to play downstairs in the playroom with toys and this ball popper is probably her most favorite. It was a gift from Stephan and Carina and is getting lots of use now!

Rachel still is such a people person. She is easy to laugh and loves attention. It's been such a blessing to be able to sit her down on the floor to play with her, instead of carrying her all day long!

Lizzy has started to run this month and loves to be chased. Here she is trying to egg Ashley on to chase her!

The boys love to play computer games. The oven timer is often set so they can take turns using Ashley's computer.

After months of picky eating, Rachel has finally decided that she likes most food! She will now let us feed her something other than baby bananas! Maybe she'll start growing now that she eats!

Ashley was involved in a big Valentines Flowers fund raiser for Young Womens this month. We sold 68 bouquets to the men of the ward and had the Young Women assemble and deliver them.

Ashley was able to volunteer in Daniel's kndergarten classrooom for his Valentines Party. She manned the cookie decorating table and it was fun to watch Daniel interact with his friends.

Daniel took this picture because he thought Rachel and her doll looked like twins with their bald heads!

For Nathan's birthday we gave him a huge lot of Geotrax trains we bought on ebay. It has been the best inside toy we have ever bought our boys. Nathan especially has spend hours and hours building train villages all the way from his bedroom to the playroom. We're impressed at how skilled he is fitting tracks together all by himself!

Lizzy has started to get into a lot of mischeif at home and has entered the world of time outs. She is so sad when she gets one, Ashley just had to take a picture to remember her. Lizzy has an uncanny ability to unscrew bottle tops and contact cases.

Rachel just loves her dad. Whenever she sees him she wants him to hold her and won't give up until she gets her way!

Life in January 2010

This has really been a dry winter in Utah this year. We have hardly had any snow and haven't even been able to go sledding once! Daniel was able to make a cute snowman in the front yard, but this is almost the extent of our playing in the snow this year. Unfortunately, it's still been really cold and smoggy, just without the positive benefits of winter!

Rachel and Lizzy are starting to notice each other and are becomming cute little sisters. Lizzy is very nuturing and loves to put Rachel's pacifers in her mouth and feed her the bottle. Rachel just laughs at Lizzy and likes the things she does.

Rachel just LOVES Daniel and Dave. She is so excited when either of them around.

An attempt at a picture with all 4 kids. Luckily, Ashley had just taken them into Kiddie Kandids to get a real professional picture taken before they went out of business. (And got the pictures back in time!)

Rachel just loves to be entertained. It's not hard to get smiles from this little baby.

We had a big joint birthday party this year for Daniel and Nathan at Kids Universe Gymnastics, since they have many of the same friends. We had 22 kids come and let them run wild at the facility. It was a really fun place to have a birthday party!

Lizzy and her cousin Siena are just starting to notice each other and become little friends. Siena is Ashley's brother Stephan's daughter.

Daniel having a great time with his cousins Charlie Freedman and Barrett.

Lizzy loves her Papa. Everytime we get in the car she starts saying "Papa" hoping we are going to visit him.

Dave with his mom. She was a great help-- holding Rachel the whole time so that Ashley could get things organized for the party. Luckily she loves holding babies.

Ashley with her friend Emily, who came with her 2 boys: Logan & Gavin

The boys blowing out their cake together.

All of our neighborhood friends and cousins.

Ashley's sister-in-law Carina with baby Siena (1 yr.).

Since Nathan and Ashley's dad have birthdays one day apart, we had a family party for them too. Here Lizzy is at Mimi & Papa's running away from Rosie the dog who is trying to steal her cookie. Rosie knows an easy target when she sees one!

Lizzy with Mimi. Lizzy just loves baby dolls, stuffed toys, etc. Anything she can hold and feed a bottle to. After having 2 boys, it's fun to watch her be a little mommy.

Nathan 'spit out' his birthday cake.

Ashley's brother Dane is engaged and getting married in June in Boston. This is his fiance's sister who is studying at BYU and came to dinner that evening.

Mimi cooked a great dinner for us all. The kids were very excited about having a slice of cake!

Life in December

Life in December was VERY busy-- lots of ward Christmas parties, school things, gifts, shopping, but there were two highlights this year. One was that were able to take the boys to Disneyland and the other was that Ashley's youngest brother Dane got engaged to his fiance Brenna. They are getting married on June 3rd in Boston.

Ashley's mom and dad are the activities chairs in their ward in Provo, so they invited Ashley and the kids to their ward Christmas breakfast and it gave the kids their first opportunity to see Santa this year. Pictured above is Daniel trying to decide if he's been good or bad when asked by Santa. He looked to Ashley to an answer and she said "It's been a toss-up this year".

Lizzy was terrified of Santa the first time she saw him. She pleaded for Papa (ashley's dad) to take her into his arms and save her!

Ashley & the kids at the breakfast (Rachel was home w/ Dave)

Papa Heilner

Ashley was so busy and stressed this Christmas season, she just could not get the Christmas tree decorated. After the kids repeated begging, she finally let them decorate the tree mostly themselves. It was actually very interesting to see which ornaments they felt were the most important to put on the front of the tree-- preschool decor, named ornaments, etc. Ashley originally intended to rearrange the tree, but it was so special seeing what they chose, she just left it just they way they did it.

Nathan was SO excited about Christmas this year. At almost 4 yrs. it is really starting to make more sense to him!

Lizzy pictured with McKenna our favorite babysitter.

A week later we attended our ward Christmas party. It was kind of a let down this year, but it did have some highlights like the Bishop dressing up as a reindeer dancing while the Primary children sang....

A quick pose with Santa before all the chairs were put away!

Nathan absolutely in love with Santa. He just wanted to sit and talk to him all day!

Mimi (Ashley's mom) came along..

Ashley w/ the kids....

Months ago Daniel drew a picture of his dream birthday cake. Dave was so impressed he told him that he would make it. He hid the picture and baked it for Daniel's birthday. Daniel was THRILLED to see him dream come true.

Now that Daniel is in kinder garden he had an official holiday concert. He was dressed up as a reindeer and got to sing lots of fun Santa songs.

For months, Ashley had the dream to take the boys to Disneyland for Christmas. So, earned extra money to take them (selling stuff of KSL & ebay) and got some airline miles from her dad... It seems like every friend the boys have go to Disneyland regularly, so they desperately wants to go. Dave and Ashley kept it a total surprise until the 2 days before they left. When the boys unwrapped the gift that told them they were going, they were so excited. They couldn't believe it. Nathan asked at least 100 times in 48 hours if he was really going to Disneyland!

They were SO excited to ride on an airplane!

We had so much fun at Disneyland. They boys were fearless and Nathan was tall enough that he cleared all the rides. So, we went on lots and lots.

Nathan was so excited to see his "Disney friends" and gave Mickey a big kiss when we left!

Dave wanted to take the boys on the jungle river cruise.

Nathan was pretty ticked off he couldn't ride in Lightning McQueen. He thought posing for a picture was a low blow!

Christmas morning. Santa brought Lizzy a new doll....

It was actually a wonderful Christmas morning for a change. We actually started opening presents at 7:30 AM !!! And slowly took our time. It was just great.

Our Baby Rachel's first Christmas at 7 months.