This past Wednesday we went on an adventure to the Wild Animal Park in Escondido with Mama & Papa Hayden, Auntie Ashley & Jack-a-baby!



Just inside, there is a beautiful bronze statue of a Rhino ... on the way down to the park, Evan kept saying he was going to 'ride on a rhino' ... this was it! :)




Josh spent the ENTIRE time in the stroller - poor kid! But Evan was in & out!



Me & My little sis, Ash!




The gorillas were so interesting and 100% CREEPY!!! The one closest to the camera kept watching us! I wonder if he thought we were creepy, too!





All of the boys! They didn't last sitting here so nicely very long.





In the middle of the park, there was a nice grassy viewpoint where you could catch a glimpse of the bigger animals in the remote parts of the park. We came here to "rest", but the boys ended up wrestling! Thankfully, only 1 minor catastrophe ... a small bloody nose ... but didn't bleed too much and he was back up and running within 1 minute!





Lucky boys, Mama & Papa Hayden treated the boys to a ride on the carousel! Evan wanted to see the elephants (and kept reminding us for most of the day) so it was fitting that he chose an elephant to ride!







Poor Josh was beat by the end of the day! What a total cutie!

Christmas Planner

I love Christmas! Everything about the season. The carols, the cookies, the colder weather, the gifts, the pagents, the lights. I love EVERYTHING about Christmas and I never want to miss a thing!!!

So, this year, I have created a new Christmas Planner. Created especially to manage multiple projects/dates/etc. It is still a work in progress, but I think the skeleton of it is pretty good ... but there is always room to improve, so next year's will even be bigger and better!

My planner is in Microsoft Excel - consists of 10 linked worksheets. If you don't have a Christmas Planner that you like, let me know ... I don't mind sharing! Just email me at Teresa@TeresaHeaton.com. (unfortunately, i can't figure out how to post an excel file here!)

Happy Planning & Merry Christmas!
Teresa

I love Fall!

We don't have much of a fall here in Riverside. It still hasn't seemed to cool down. It is nothing like growing up in Oregon, where you definitely saw a distinct change in weather. The one change that has occurred - thank you to the lack of daylight savings time - it gets dark so much sooner than it used to. YAHOO! We are finally able to breakout the candles. (When we were first married John used to always say that the house looked like a Catholic church because of all of the candles. I must have picked this up in Denmark ... there are candles EVERYWHERE and it is beautiful!)

So, we have taken to having dinner every so often by candle light. The boys love it, I love it ... John thinks it's weird - but whatever! It is fun!

My how Halloween has changed ...

This Halloween we did things a little differently. We all went trick-or-treating as a family which was really nice. Usually, I am stuck at home passing out candy as the boys go out knocking on doors with Dad. It was so fun to see the boys excitement. Nick - was our sprinter - he would run up to the door before everyone else and lasted about 45 minutes. Tyson wasn't always fastest to the doors, but he was the last one ready to call it quits! Evan was so excited. He could hardly believe that if you knocked on someone's door and said "trick or treat" that they would really drop candy into your bag! It was amazing to him!





So here are my little "trick-or-treat"ers ... Tyson was a Jedi Padiwan. Joshy was Superman, Evan was a Pirate - the eye patch, earing and hook, didn't last very long ... we weren't far into the trick-or-treating before he just looked like a kid with a skull & crossbones bandana on his head ... side note, we lost that somewhere in the neighborhood, too. Nick was a zombie. This was a very last minute costume. I was in the middle of sewing a mummy costume for him the night before when Evan grabbed my rotary cutter and cut his finger. After two hours at urgent care - he is fine by the way and unstiched - we were late to the ward party and Nick had to wear his vampire cape from last year. Saturday was so full, that I never found time to finish it. The flip side ... at least we know what he will be next year!

It was a very interesting night, to say the least ... here are some of my observations of how Halloween has changed since I was a kid ...

1) Parents didn't have bags ... yep, I saw several parents coming up to the door with their kids asking for THEIR bags to be filled as well ... TOTALLY WEIRD!

2) Girls costumes covered more ... every time we passed a girl that wasn't dressed up as a disney princess, I would hear "I am so glad we don't have a girl" from John ... it seems the disney princesses were THE ONLY modest costumes for girls.

3) Some parents dressed up ... mostly mothers and please, refer to #2 ... horrible.

4) Parents didn't walk around with Beer in their hands ... these parents were always nice and happy to be out and about, but seriously now, they are walking down the middle of the street with children dressed up, the streets aren't well lit (but the parents sure were) and they didn't seem to think being impared is a bad idea? I actually passed a guy pulling a wagon full of ice and beer ... a walking misdemeaner?!?! Great examples for their kids - not to be too judgemental, but come on!

5) Not many people gave out candy ... maybe it was the recession or maybe I just grew up in a great neighborhood, but it seems only a fourth of the homes had their front porches lit.

6) Haunted Houses ... gotta tell you, this was great! Some people really went all out and it was a blast!

Even with the weird things, Halloween was still a blast and I was so happy that to hang out with the boys!