Christmas with the Hinckley's

We had a great Christmas this year. It was our first year that we had Christmas at our own house. We had always been at my parent's or Ira's previous years. It was so fun to have Santa come to our home this year. The kids had a great time and they even heard Santa's sleigh bells while they were in their beds on Christmas Eve! Ira took off the whole week in between Christmas and New Years so we have been loving having some good family time! We went to the Children's Museum up in Salt Lake and the kids thought that was about the coolest place ever. We went sledding yesterday with Ira's family. Taylor was a total daredevil as expected and flew down the hillside. Austin and Emma loved it too, but they preferred having mom or dad ride with them. It really has been a fabulous holiday season and hope it was for all of you too!

Little Emma is so Big!!

Wow!! Two years have gone by since little miss Emma joined our family. We are so grateful to have her feisty, stubborn, sweet, sassy, cute, funny, diva, personality in our family. She is 100% girl and so fun to be around. Happy Birthday Emma! We love you!!

Some things about Emma at age two:

• Her favorite phrase is No, No way!! to whatever we ask her to do.
• When she wakes up in the morning she loves to just talk to herself in her crib.
• She loves to read books and sing songs. One of her favorites is her potty book...although she not to keen on going on the potty (work in progress)
• She loves to color and knows most of her colors.
• She loves breakfast and makes her rounds eating off of everyone's breakfast.
• She can identify about 10-15 letters and tell you some of their sounds.
• She loves clothes and shoes and accessories.
• She love puppies but is afraid of them if they run up to her!
• She says please and thankyou and your welcome and excuse you and sorry, but not always in the right context.
• She is talking like crazy and says some funny things like one time when she told Taylor that he was rude.
• She has to have a million hugs and kisses from everyone in the family before she goes to bed at night and the hugs and kisses have to be given when she is tucked into bed or she thinks they don't count.
• She is full of attitude, cuteness, cuddliness, and we love her to pieces!!
  
  

Flag Football Season

Again, we finish another flag football season. This year was Taylor's 2nd year and we could see lots of improvement. Taylor played really hard and was really good at pulling flags on defense. He even had a couple long runs (one only yards short of a TD). We are really proud of him for working so hard this year.

Austin's Summer of Soccer

Well, we were really excited to start Austin in his first competitive sport this summer...good old soccer. He was so excited to start the season, he would talk about it all the time and practice in the house and in the yard. However, once we go him out in the field on game day, something would click, and he just didn't want to be out there. We got him to play a few minutes and he enjoyed being goalie, as long as Dad was right there behind him. I think he learned a lot, and there are still a few more games, so we'll see what happens.

Middle Child Syndrome...

I have always worried about the whole "middle child" thing. I've never wanted Austin to feel neglected or anything because he is the middle child, although assuming we have more kids, he won't always be. But I just realized I just posted one post about Taylor and one about Emma, so being the fair mom that I am, I figured I better post one about Austin. But WARNING...the pictures following are kind of gross!!! The other day I accidentally ran over Austin's toe with the shopping cart. OOOPPS!! He insists on climbing all over the cart...so it was bound to happen one of these days. Needless to say, we make quite the scene in Walmart. Anyway, thanks to that little accident, Austin is now in the process of losing a toenail and Ira thought it would be cool to take some pics....don't look if you think you'll be grossed out!!

Watch out...little diva is here!

So it's been a new experience for me being the mother of a little girl. It is crazy to me just how much being "girly" comes naturally. Emma has only brothers and yet she is ALL girl. Here is a picture of Emma modeling her little tutu I made her. She loves to twirl around in it. The next pictures of Emma wearing these little boots she found the other day at Old Navy. She is obsessed with shoes. She saw them and insisted that I put them on her. Once they were on her feet she just grinned and grinned. And let me tell you, when I took them off of her to put them back she threw a pretty good little tantrum. She could get a little expensive!!! She loves to shop and she's not even two! But look how cute the boots are....at least she has good taste ;

He's all grown up!!

So i always forget that the pictures are going to go up in the opposite order so they are always backwards from what i wanted...but oh well! Taylor turned 6 on Wednesday. I can hardly believe it...where did the time go? And even more than that, when did I possibly get old enough to have a six-year-old child?!?! The day after Taylor turned 6, he had his first day of first grade!! It is so weird to have him gone all day. I get him up and get him ready and then i don't see him until almost 4:00! But he is loving it already and doing so well. He is such a good boy and we love having him in our family. On Saturday we had a party for him with all his friends. It went really well except for the small fit Taylor threw when he was the first one to get out when we played "Hot Kryptonite" (our version of hot potato). He's still working on the being a good sport thing :) Gotta have a little drama right?!?! Oh yeah, my neighbor went to lunch with her little boy on the first day of school and she sent me a picture of Taylor having his first school lunch. I was so nervous that he would trip and spill his lunch everywhere and then be starving all day...but he did just perfectly!

Horseback Riding

A friend of ours took Tay, Austin, Emma and Daddy to a ranch to go horseback riding. The kids had a blast, and I couldn't believe how well they did riding by themselves.

Summer time....

So after I published my last post I decided I would add a few pictures from the summer. So things are out of order...but oh well...here they are!

Such a bad blogger...

Really...where does the time go? I can't believe I haven't blogged in over 2 months!! I know everyone has been desperately waiting for an update from the Hinckley family, right!?!?! So the summer has been kind of a crazy one for us. I know there is no hope of me getting caught up on everything we have done so I'm going to have to settle for an abbreviated version.
Here are some of the main events:

The boys had swimming lessons (they passed with flying colors!)
Emma started nursery (she hates it!! We are still working on that...)
Ira turned 30!!! I threw a big surprise party for him...he had no idea!!
Spent a week in Pagosa Springs, Colorado for the Hinckley family reunion
I went to girls camp for a week
Ira took the kids horseback riding. Emma loved it and giggled the whole time...she still does when she watches it on film!)
Taylor played on a t-ball team
Austin took a reading class
We had our entry way and kitchen tiled
Ira's brother Stu got married
Ira and I celebrated our 7 year anniversary!!
Sent my little brother, Brian,off on his mission to New Zealand
Went to Youth Conference
Took the boys to Raging Waters (Taylor went on everything he could. He had people cheering for him at the bottom of this one ride because they couldn't believe a kid his age was brave enough to go on it!)
Beyond these things...we spent lots of time outside playing, and swimming in the pool! We have had a really great and really exhausting summer! I can't believe school is starting up in two and a half weeks. Taylor will be in first grade! It will be so crazy for him to be gone all day! Austin is also starting preschool this year and will go three days a week. Emma is still our little princess and she rules the family...she is getting more and more personality everday!

Austin's birthday, St. George and more!

We took our annual trip down to St. George this last weekend for Memorial Day. It just so happend to fall over Austin's birthday so we got to celebrate it down there! We had such a good time...the kids love St. George...we went swimming and the kids had a blast jumping off the rocks!



We went on this really cool hike in Snow Canyon where you could hike up and see pioneer names that had been written on the rock walls with axle grease.



The boys never cease to amaze us with their fearless attitudes and excitement for life. They scaled up this mountainsides like they were nothing.




We also checked out the sand dunes at Snow Canyon. We tried out our skills catching air as we ran and jumped off the lip of the dunes!



The manly men!



Me trying to be cool




The way too cool goggle brothers!



We went and toured the tabernacle. This is a picture of Emma trying to get back inside after I spent the whole time outside with her because she wouldn't be quiet inside while they were giving the tour!



Ohhh..she's just sooooo cute!



Awww!



Emma loved the sand!



All the boys thinking they are pretty tough stuff



4 generations of women



Nothing better than the friendship of sisters!



OOHH...it was just so romantic!