Christmas

I can't believe Christmas (AND most of January AND most of this pregnancy!) has come and gone! We told many of you we wouldn't be going to Utah this year, but after Ben's parents got their mission call, well, we booked our tickets and to Utah we went. We spent most of the trip with our wonderful families and had such a great time.

Thank you all for the memories! We miss you all already!

After 2 weeks in Utah, Ben came back to start rotations in Syracuse, so rather than being fatherless and freezing in Buffalo, Dayton and I went to Denver where it was in the 50's and 60's- which is what we Buffalonians call WARM! Thank you Alisha and Jamon for the great trip!

Well, so, many pictures, so little room . . . this calls for a slide show!

Well, its getting cold here in good ol' Buffalo and when it gets cold, we tend to get bored. To relieve the boredom, here are some of the things we've resorted to:

#1- Torturing Dayton

First of all, this was not my idea (although I did take pictures while laughing hysterically); Ben thought it would be a good costume- as you can see, Dayton didn't (sorry it's sideways- another blogger battle I lost)

#2: BYU Football

(ok really, I wish it was just BYU football, but really it is ANY football)

Here are some of Buffalo's biggest cougar fans, decked out for the big Utah game. Fortuanely for our windows/doors/pride the cougars won this year- which was unfortunate for our Ute friend's windows/doors/pride (we love you Steinbliks!). Taylor (the little blondie) is Dayton's favorite person. Usually, when Dayton wakes up in the morning he calls, "Mama, Mama . . ."; well, the other morning it was "Taylor, Taylor . . . " and so on.

#3: Haircuts (aka another version of torturing Dayton)

As you can see, Dayton's hair had gotten quite long (particularly in the front and back- no mullet jokes, please). So, for Dayton's 18-month-birthday present, we cut his hair- REALLY cut it- for the first time.

We thought it would be a good idea to put him in his booster, turn on "Madagascar" and give him a sucker- 2 out of 3 of those ideas turned out to be good ones (imagine a hairy sucker). In the picture below (don't mind my day-dreamy look) you can kind of see Dayton's long curls in the back. This was the saddest part to cut.

Below is his after shot:

#4: Playing outside

Yes, even in Buffalo we try to make it outside when tolerable. On December 1st, we had our first snow for the year, which was belated and seemingly appropriate. Dayton just kept pointing to different parts of the ground saying "Snowman! Snowman! Snowman!". This picture also shows Dayton with his favorite toys- an old solftball and a wooden souveniour bat. He insists on bringing them everywhere and even sleeping with them all the time. Pretty adorable . . .

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Halloween

We love Halloween and it was especially fun watching Dayton this year. He loves frogs and after "practicing" wearing his frog costume for a few days, wanted to wear it all the time. He loved the costumes and got the hang of trick-or-treating pretty quick. He'd walk up to the door, hold out his bag, take the candy, then walk away saying "tank you". Oh, and he's really good at eating the candy too (although we help him as much as we can)

The Great Pumpkin Farm