Lots of "Firsts"

Might as well keep up the blogging while I'm on a roll! The past couple weeks have brought many "firsts" for the Hafen household...

• Benny Boy started kindergarten...woohoo!

He was so excited to go and is still loving it 2 weeks in. We'll see how long it lasts!

• A week later, Mr. Mo started preschool with Miss Janette...

He got a little taste of school over the summer with Miss Janette, but this was his first official day and he LOVES it there.

Of course, with Sadie, there are "firsts" happening all the time. She turned 4 months old yesterday (gasp!) and here's what she's been up to...

• She's more interested in toys and playing games

She's actually smiling at her goofy brothers here.



Had to share this one just to show off her scrumptious thighs :)

Pretty much every smile you get from her is a mouth-wide-open-tongue-sticking-out kind of smile. Love it!

• She had her first taste of rice cereal this morning (can't you just tell by looking at her that she must be starving...haha).

She's got the "open wide" part down!



Now we just need to work on getting more in our tummy than we do on our face/bib :)

I think she liked it though.  Her "firsts" seem like they're coming way too fast...slow down a little, baby girl!

End of Summer Catch Up: Part 4

I'm back with the final summer catch up post...yippee! The original plan was to spend our last weekend of vacation in Afton, Wyoming with my brother and his family and go to my new little nephew's baby blessing at church. Sadly, John had a work conflict come up at the last minute, so we had to settle for a shorter trip to visit them, but miss the baby blessing. It sure was a fun quick trip though, complete with...

A cook-out in the mountains...

More 4-wheeler rides...

A slumber party for the cousins...

A fairy-tale adventure with princess Whitney...

And some BIG news for my little sister brought to us by cute cousin, Mason...

We had so much fun on our summer road trip, even if we did put over 3,000 miles on the "swagger wagon"! The trip home was not nearly as fun, but we survived and it was good to be home in our own beds once we finally got there. Now it's back to real life and the normal routine of things. Until next summer...

End of Summer Catch Up: Part 3

We couldn't make a trip to Utah without having a family meal at Brick Oven. Good thing they gave us a private room because that many Hafen kids together gets C-R-A-Z-Y! The boys loved hanging out with their Utah cousins...pizza, free balloons, and lollipops! I didn't get any pictures of the craziness, except for one of Sadie and her cousin, Joseph, just a couple months older than her...

One of the coolest activities for the kids was the Gateway Discovery Museum in Salt Lake City. The boys seriously could have stayed there ALL day. They were mesmerized by balls flying through pipes, water tables, building blocks, dress up areas, and SO MUCH more! It was hard to get many pictures because I was tending to Sadie and the boys were constantly on the go, but we did get some video of Mo that pretty much sums up the way they felt about it all...

Another activity the whole family really enjoyed was checking out the Olympic Park in Park City. You can watch skiers/snowboarders practice their jumps into a huge pool. At the end of the day they have their "All-Stars" put on a pretty awesome show. Here's just a little taste...

And the grand finale...

And as if all this wasn't fun enough...I still have another catch up post coming soon about our time spent in Wyoming!

End of Summer Catch Up: Part 2

Our second destination was Midway, Utah. This is where John and I spent the first 6 months of our marriage and it still has a special place in our hearts. Our boys love it there too - so many fun adventures just outside your door. The beautiful scenery isn't too bad either...

John took the boys to this park every morning while Sadie and mom got ready for the day. They thought it was heaven.

Our first activity was the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point with some of our cousins. They loved seeing the huge dinosaur bones, but the big hit was the sand and water area...

(These are not the best pics...we took them on John's phone, but you get the idea.)

And then there was MORE sand at the end of the museum to dig for fossils...

On the way back for the night, the boys wanted to stop at Bridal Veil Falls...

Ben was seriously SO EXCITED about this. He even tried to climb up where the people are behind him in the picture, but we didn't let him get too far. Mo thought it was pretty cool too...

Another day, we decided to check out the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City. It was pretty hot out, but we still had fun...

More to come of our time in Utah: Gateway Discovery Museum, and Olympic Park!

End of Summer Catch Up: Part 1

Another month has flown by without a single blog post... a lot happened in the past month too, so I better catch up before I get too behind.

First of all, Benny boy had a birthday at the end of July...

He had been asking if it was his birthday yet for months (time is a hard concept to grasp still) because he wanted to get a "big" bike now that he can ride without training wheels...

I still can't believe he's 5 already! There was a time when I wasn't really sure either one of us would survive the "torturous 3's", but here we are and I can tell the 5's are gonna be "fabulous".

We had his birthday party a little early because his actual birthday was the day we left on our summer vacation road trip to Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. The first day was about a 12 hour drive to southern Colorado to visit my mom's family and go to the Manassa Pioneer Day Celebration. The boys loved going to the parade, on the carnival rides, and playing with their cousins in Granny and Papa's back yard. They seriously spent hours upon hours out there "building" stuff on Papa's work trailer. This was Sadie's first trip to Manassa and we just had to get a 4 generations picture of all the "Darlenes"...

Darlene Gay, Brenda Darlene, Brianne Darlene, and Sadie Darlene

Sadie especially enjoyed napping with GG and listening to the live music in the park while her brothers were at the carnival...

After a couple days of "Celebrating" in Colorado, we headed out on the road again (this time about 8-9 hours) to our next destination: Midway, Utah. 

To be continued...