Hayden's Baptism!

Our Hayden was baptized February 5th. What a special day! Hayden has been waiting to be baptized practically his whole life! Every day for weeks before he would talk about how much he wished today was the day he could get baptized. Hayden is such a special, special boy. He has a deeply spiritual nature and I can't imagine a child being more prepared to take this important step.

Daddy and Hayden in their whites.

All of the cousins who were able to make it. (and half of his siblings...)

Grandma and Grandpa Flinders

My Handsome guys. This day was almost as special for Tory as it was for Hayden.

Our Family

The Sweet Man of the Hour

Hayden's Aunt Rachel and his cousins came down from Boise, My mom and Tory's parents drove over from Colorado and Uncle Craig, Aunt Andrea and Max came from Sandy to attend. We had a full and happy house!

The day after his baptism, Hayden and his cousin Beau were teasing Benson. After a few minutes, Hayden came upstairs and apologized to Benson. Then he said, "YES! I'm free from sin again!" We love our Hayden so much, and are so pleased with his decision to be baptized!

Eight is Great!

January 7th, Hayden turned EIGHT! We celebrated all week long!

First, Hayden chose to go out to dinner to Chuck-O-Rama (after our urgings to choose Spaghetti Factory, or Hires, or just about anyplace else. But we had a lot of fun and it was pretty good!)

Then he got to open his presents. His favorite presents were a pocket knife (he's been asking for one for two years and we promised when he was eight, he would be old enough to have one), and hex bugs with a habitat. He also started Scouts last week and received all his stuff for that.

Then Sunday, Uncle Craig, Aunt Andrea and Max came over for dinner and cupcakes.

The following Saturday, Hayden had his friend party. We loaded up 10 kids and headed out to Monkey Island. Hayden refers to it as "the best day of my life"! You'll have to excuse the quality of the pictures. It's not easy to catch a ton of little boys (and one girl...Isabella) who are having too much fun to slow down for a picture, so most are blurry action shots! Tory and I had a ton of fun playing with the kiddos, too!

Opening presents. I love how sweaty all the little boys are. They played so hard!

Racing through the obstacle course.

So fun!

My Sweet Eight year old. How we adore this boy! I also love his attire lately. Camo pants, polo shirt with skulls on it and a silky orange dragon shirt to finish off the ensemble. So darn cute!

Family Pictures

We decided to skip the professional family pictures this year. So with our point and shoot in hand we headed to the park to take our own. Trying to get everyone smiling with their eyes open at the same time? No easy task. At least we got some cute candid ones. Here are a few for your viewing pleasure.

Karate...Flinders Style

Hayden and I both competed in a tournament earlier this month. We had a great time and managed to bring home some medals.

Hayden's Performance Team performed. Here is the intro to their routine.

Hayden waiting to compete in Forms.

Hayden doing his form, Tae Guk Il Jong.


Hayden Sparring.

And for Posterity, here I am sparring. I sparred my good friend Karen. She is my Master instructor's wife and a Brown Belt. She kicked my can, but I managed to come away with the Silver.

Our school had professional photos done. Cute Hayden.

Hayden's roundhouse kick.

And me demonstrating a hip throw on my instructor, Mr. Barnard.

I am loving Karate. Hayden is loving Karate. Isabella is dying to start Karate. Benson says he will start when he is 7, because he's still too shy right now. It's definately becoming a family passion!

Do I Laugh or Cry?

Gavin is almost always doing something naughty. It's just a way of life around here. He spends most of his days trying to conquer and destroy our house. But today he must have sensed my need to get a lot done, because he kicked his trouble-making into overdrive. Here is a list of his activities...BEFORE noon.

1. Lost (and later found) a video camera I borrowed from my friend.
2. Got a hold of Isabella's hot chocolate, called my name, said "See?", and then dumped it on the floor.
3. Took off his own diaper and ran around naked. The diaper was later found in the toy box.
4. Got into the Q-tips and vaseline in the bathroom.
5. Unrolled a whole roll of toilet paper and shoved half of it into the toilet.
6. Got into the fridge, and took out everything withing reach, including the onions which he thought were balls. I now have onion skins everywhere.
7. He got on the counter and demolished the roses my sweet husband gave to me. He then came and got me, took me by the hand, led me to the mess, and proudly said, "See?"
8. He got on the counter again, stirred the wax in my scentsy burner with a fork, and then poured the melted wax into Isabella's cup. 1/4 of it ended up spilled on my counter the other 1/4 is on his clothes, which are now in the trash along with the unsalvagable cup. And I had to take a knife to my counter tops. Amazingly enough, he didn't seem to burn himself.
9. He got into Hayden's markers and colored all over his window.

You're probably wondering where I was when all of this is happening. Putting a load of laundry in, helping Bella make her bed. And then, he usually moves on to his next disaster when he knows I am occupied cleaning up his previous mess.

And like I said, this all happened before noon. Lucky for him, he's just so cute, I usually end up laughing. Lucky for me, it's naptime. One thing is for sure, he definately keeps things interesting around here!

Another reason to laugh...Gavin has decided he must wear Hayden's sparring head gear every day, for hours at a time. It totally cracks me up!

Hayden...

Hayden is about the greatest kid in the world. I could fill blog after blog about how incredible this boy is, but for now I'm just going to highlight a couple of things that recently happened to Hayden.

First of all, Hayden was chosen to be the Student of the Month. They had a little assembly for those chosen where he was presented with his award. This is his second year in a row to be chosen and he was just as shy and embarassed as he was last year, which makes him all the more endearing. His teacher chose him because he is such a hard worker and never complains, but mostly because he is always happy and always smiling and he "has the cutest little giggle". For those who know Hayden know this is true. He is always happy and giggling! He also is such a hard worker. He struggles with learning but because of his hard work he is beginning to excel in his class. As an example, normally we do homework right after school but yesterday I spent the afternoon in the ER with Bella (another blog topic) and didn't get home until it was almost time for Hayden's karate, which was immediately followed by mine, so we didn't have time. He brought his homework to Karate and worked on it during my Karate. Turns out his pencil led broke, but instead of using that as an excuse, he did 90% of his homework using that tiny piece of broken led. And never complained, or even told me what he had done until I asked him. Such a good kid! We are so proud of our Student of the Month! (Above is Hayden being presented with his award, and below is all the kids with their teachers and principal. Isn't Hayden's teacher adorable?)

The second event is that our almost-eight-year-old finally lost his first tooth last week! All of his friends lost their first (and second...and sixth) teeth eons ago and have their big teeth already grown in, but Hayden's teeth decided to wait for a few years! He felt so left out, so needless to say he was very excited! And to add to the joy, his second bottom tooth came out yesterday! I'm going to miss those perfect little baby teeth, but it really was about time!

Halloween!

We love Halloween! We did so many fun things to celebrate, but it seems the more kids I have the less pictures I remember to take. Strange how that happens. Here's a few I did remember to take.

We made our annual pilgrimage to Gardener Village to fight the crowds, hunt for witches and visit the candy shop. Above, are all the children enjoying their candy by the pond.

We went to a corn maze and had a ton of fun picking out pumpkins and playing on all the fun things. That's the back of Isabella (in the solid black) and Benson up in the distance next to my friend Mandy. And this is the only picture I took of the whole day.

We carved pumpkins. It took the kids an hour just to select their images, but I think they turned out pretty cool. They lasted two days before they found their way to the trash. We simply could not endure the faster than normal decay and the resulting swarming flies. But they were fun while they lasted.

I managed to not get any good pictures of the kids in their costumes. These are it. Benson was Batman...for the fourth year running. Since his previous batman costume looked more like shorts, we invested in a new one. Hayden was a wizard, without a beard since his mom couldn't find one ANYWHERE. Gavin was Tarzan. My mom made that costume for my oldest brother, Chris, when he was a baby. He's now 44. Then My next oldest brother, Stefan, wore it, followed by Hayden on his Second Halloween. I love tradition. Bella, after our urgings to be a witch, or princess, or fairy, or anything feminine, latched on to this SpongeBob costume at the store. As much as I dislike the idea of her wearing SpongeBob, I sorta love it because that's exactly how I was when I was little. I'm not sure if they're trying to give the peace sign, or flashing gang symbols, but they are stinkin' cute.

Other things we did, not photographed: Trunk or Treating (in the pouring rain), Trick or Treating (in the drizzling rain), Chili, hotdogs and cider with good friends, school parties and parades, and a little party at our house with a few of the kids friends. That was the kids favorite. I'm glad I went to the effort to plan and execute it for their sakes...and manage to not even take one picture of it. I love Halloween, almost as much as my kids, and I can't wait for next year!