June Joys

June already feels like forever ago, but it was a good month filled with lots of joys.

We spent every Saturday at the soccer field watching this cute kid play soccer. He's becoming quite the little soccer player and loves the sport with a passion. Now he's on to rugby but I'll post about that next month.

His team picture:

This group of cuties came to stay with us for a week.


Bryson and Lilly both loved having four extra friends/cousins around to play and giggle with all day.

Bryson graduated from first grade and earned the "Leader in Me" award.

So proud of this boy.

Here is our reading list for the Summer. We've already read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and are just about finished with Hatchet. Reading together as a family each night is something we all look forward to.

We got to see this fine young man get baptized. Cole is Lilly's half-brother and is such an amazingl kid.

Lilly loved getting to spend time with her Mommy Amber.

Lilly is growing like a weed, but is still such a petite little thing.

If we don't take her pigtails out at night she wakes up with "antenna hair" as we call it. You'll also notice that her pajamas are on inside out in the picture below. That's because she learned how to unzip her jammies, which wasn't such a bad thing until she started taking off her diaper and pooping all over her crib (seriously DISGUSTING!). Fortunately inside out jammies have solved that gag-worthy problem.


We snapped this quick picture of us before heading to church. Even though it doesn't look like it in the picture, Lilly absolutely loves going to Nursery (it took a few weeks) and has some fabulous leaders.

Bryson got to babysit Mike sister's snake for a week, which he thought was pretty much the coolest thing ever. Me?...not so much.

My sister's and I took this handsome man out to dinner for Father's Day. I am seriously so beyond lucky to have been blessed with him as my dad. He's definitely the perfect dad for me.

We ended the month with a fun siblings dinner with all of my siblings & in-laws (minus Ike, Amy & Cali). We decided to start meeting together kid-free once a quarter and talk about business strategies, money management, investing, planning for the future, food storage, couponing, health, nutrition, etc. We rotate who hosts and who's in charge of planning the dinner and topics. We keep minutes and everything and it has really brought our family together and helped us stay more unified as a family.

Favorite quote this week (maybe I should start saying "month" because that's about how often I update this thing...haha):

"Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve a victory over other people, you will conquer yourself."

-Henri Amiel

Life rules.

18 Months Old

Lady Lilly is 18 months old! She is seriously such a joy to have in our family and we can't get enough of her. She absolutely adores her big brother and loves to play with him and follow him around like a little puppy. I'm pretty sure Bryson would say Lilly has mastered the art of being an annoying little sister, but boy does he love her and dotes over her like you wouldn't believe.

This girl is all over the place! Upstairs, downstairs, to the pantry, back upstairs, back downstairs, to the bathroom, back to the pantry and over and over again! Her eagerness to explore is endless and she usually leaves a trail of messes wherever she goes.

Now that the weather has warmed up a bit, she has been enjoying playing outside in our front yard with the neighbor girls and at the park.

Lilly LOVES when daddy comes home. When she hears the garage door open, she runs to the back door and starts babbling "dada" and pointing until he walks in. Then she darts into his arms and gives him the biggest love. Mike looks forward to it every day. It is seriously the most adorable thing so I had to capture it on video.


By golly this girl can eat! She is constantly eating! She will eat anything we give her, but some of her favorite foods are mandarin oranges, pickles, bread, cooked carrots, cheese, blueberry muffins, apples, minestrone soup, popcorn, yogurt and anything she can manage to steal from the pantry. She had her 18 month doctor's appointment the other day and is 31 inches tall (50%tile) and weighs 20 lbs. 3 oz (25%tile). She's still a tiny little thing but is growing and developing like a champ.

She loves when her Granny Goose and Grandpa Hink come to visit. She loves climbing up onto their laps and having them read her a story.

Lilly loves to sing songs, read books, color, and she still especially LOVES to dance!!! She's learned how to turn the radio on all by herself just so she has music to dance to. We have several killer dance sessions a day.

Here's another little clip of Lilly doing patty-cake. Apparently Bryson and I both need to learn the words a little better...ha!


Favorite quote this week:

"Be with someone that makes you happy."

We sure love you Lilly!

Life rules.

Hinckley Family Retreat

Last week was our annual Hinckley family retreat! It's something we look forward to every year and it's always such a great way to reunite as a family. Last year we went to Warm Springs (see video here) and this year we rented a beach house right on Bear Lake. Boy was it gorgeous! This year was extra special because it was the last family vacation before my parents head off on a mission for 18 months. My talented sister Taylor always puts together such fun videos so we can remember all of the fun. Here's a look at this years adventure:


Favorite quote this week:

"God doesn't give you the people you want; He gives you the people you NEED...to help you, to hurt you, to leave you, to love you and to make you into the person you were meant to be."

Life rules.

Girl Cousin Sleepover

Last weekend I invited all of my adorable nieces who live in the area over for a girl cousin sleepover! They all brought a princess dress to wear and then we made princess crowns. Don't they look so cute!?!

Then we painted nails

...and made homemade pretzels (recipe here), which were so stinkin' yummy!

Then our cute foreign exchange student Rina (I'll tell you all about her in future post--we love her to pieces!) taught us how to make origami cranes.

Zyan and Rina totally hit it off and were joined at the hip the entire night.

We played some night games and a few other games and then the girls snuggled up in our furniture-less basement to watch a movie before dozing off to sleep.

I love these girls so much and loved getting to spend some quality time with them. 

Thanks Heather and Rachel for staying to help. It was a great time!

Favorite quote this week:

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at will change.”  -Wayne Dyer

Life rules.

Boy Cousin Sleepover

Our new home has a little more space than our last home, which has been wonderful for entertaining, so we've been doing a lot of it! Last weekend Bryson invited all of his boy cousins over for a sleepover (we were sad Brock couldn't come because he was out of town). They made their own personal pizza's, which all ended up being quite the creations.

They slid down the stairs in their sleeping bags, I'd estimate approximately 50 times each. It was wild!

When Mike got home the boys had a blast playing crack the egg with him. We kept a tally of all of the injuries throughout the evening and if I remember right, this was the final tally: Bryson = 0, Tani = 3, Chazz = 3, Naish = 12. Grand total = 18! Thankfully they were only minor injuries, but we had fun keeping track and adding to the total.

They ended the night huddled around this little DVD player to watch Oz the Great and Powerful.

The boys had a blast and it was fun to spend time with each of them! We missed you Brock!

Favorite quote of the week:

"Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved."  

-Pres. Monson

December Recap

Wow, has it been a crazy month! We've had so much going on that it's been hard to find time to blog about anything, so I thought I'd sum everything up in one very long post. Good luck getting through all of it...haha.

BRYSON & LILLY

These two are bosom buddies and just adore each other. It has been so fun to watch Bryson embrace his new role as a big brother. He's learned how to carefully carry Lilly around the living room and is so gentle and kind with her. We feel so beyond blessed to have these two little ones in our family.


OUR LITTLE MONKEY


Bryson loves to put on performances for Lilly and she loves to watch them. Here's a short clip of one of his recent performances.



TENNIS LESSONS

For the past several months I've been taking tennis lessons with some friends at Liberty Park. It has been a blast and I actually feel like I kind of know what I'm doing now. We have a Monday night tradition where we meet up at the tennis courts and compete against our hubby's and I think us ladies finally have the skills to dominate. The men are going down!


SNOW CAVE

Bryson has been esctatic with all of the snow we've been getting and plays out in it all the time. He's lucky to have a dad that also loves the snow so they've spent endless hours out there together working on a cool snow cave.


KINDERGARTEN PROGRAM


Bryson's school had a Christmas sing-along and this is one of the cute songs he performed (sorry the filming isn't that great).


FARKLE

Bryson got the game Farkle for a white elephant gift and it has become one of our new favorite games to play as a family. Bryson especially loves it because so far he is undefeated and it's not because Mike and I let him win, but because he's stinkin' good!


LIGHTS AT TEMPLE SQUARE

We took Trax downtown to see the lights on Temple Square. The lights were beautiful as always.

Mike's work is within walking distance of Temple Square, so we headed there afterward to warm ourselves up and to enjoy some hot chocolate.


CHRISTMAS EVE

We spent Christmas Eve with my side of the family. The grandkids opened their Christmas jammies from Granny and looked so cute. This picture is of eight of the fourteen Hinckley grandkids.


CHRISTMAS DAY

Being a kid on Christmas morning was always amazing, but being a parent on Christmas morning is SOOO much better. The excitement in Bryson's eyes as he saw and started opening his presents was infectious. He was so cute to watch. He got a castle and a double-sided light saber and said it was the best Christmas ever! Lilly got a few little toys, books, and some clothes. We enjoyed Christmas day with Mike's family. We had a delicious lunch, played games and enjoyed watching Bryson play with his castle.


SLCC INSTITUTE BUILDING


The highlight of our Christmas was by far the day after. My side of the family rented the SLCC Institute building all day and had a blast. We mostly hung out in the gym playing different sports but they also have several pool tables, a ping pong table, and a foosball table, which made for some fun competition.

My niece got a RipStik for Christmas and brought it to practice. I about killed myself trying to ride it but Mike hopped right on it for the first time and rode it around the gym like a pro. He was crazy good at it.

We ordered pizza, had a gift exchange, played board games and just enjoyed ourselves all day. It was so much fun and I'm pretty sure it will become a new family tradition.

Merry Christmas!

The Treasure Hunt

Bryson has the coolest uncle. His name is Isaac, but we call him Ike. He came to visit the other day and made Bryson a cute pirate map that Bryson just loved.

Bryson loved it so much that Ike and his wife Amy decided to create a real treasure hunt complete with a very real looking pirate map, clues and a buried treasure for all the grand kids to do at Granny & Grandpa's house the next time we visited.

Here is the amazing map he created.

Here are the clues. Each contained a letter that spelled out the destination of the buried treasure.

The kids ran around crazy from clue to clue which ended them up in the sandbox digging for a treasure chest. When they opened the chest, it was filled with fun kid toys and candy that kept them entertained for the rest of the evening. 

Lilly stayed safe on Grandpa Hink's lap while her cousins ran wild all around her. 

Grandpa sure loves her!

Thank you Ike & Amy for being such a fun aunt and uncle and for planning such a great activity for the grand kids. They sure love you!