Hyde Happinesses

 Merry Christmas and a happy new year!! I hope your guy’s Christmas was magical and so fun. We had an absolute blast. Stetson was completely overwhelmed by the magic and it was awesome. 

I think the days and weeks leading up to Christmas might be more magical than the day itself. Now to recovering from the holidays. I got to make a Christmas cake for my neighbor which was absolutely delightful. Then we just hung out with Cams family for the days. It was very fun. Both the boys did so good with the changing schedules and lots and lots of driving to and from my in-laws. 

I don’t know why my in-laws have these mascot hat things, but Stetson has discovered them and loves them. 

Flake Fun

 I have to agree with Emma that Christmas is magical with kids.  They even make snow and cold weather magical!! 

Yesterday was a brutal day but, with the help of some wonderful neighbors and family who own a backhoe, we got the new culvert placed.  It is covered and compacted but we still need to reinforce it so we never have to do this again!  

In order to dig out for the culvert we had to drain most of the water out of the creek.  To the delight and dismay of the kids we discovered that there are fish in the creek.  And not just minnows!  Full on 6-12 inch carp.  Where were Henry and Stetson?  We needed some fearless fishermen!  They were floundering around in small puddles so we saved the ones that we could catch in a 5 gallon bucket and we took them to deeper water. 

That is about all that we have to report. A little kid logic and wisdom to get your week started right:

Robin:  Mom!  There's a spider in the tub!

Rand: it's a daddy-long-leg!

Robin:   No, it's a kid-long-leg. It's not very big. 

Hyde Happinesses

 GUYS. Christmas is so fun with kids!! It’s the most magical thing I’ve ever experienced. Stetson can comprehend Santa and presents and, for better or worse, the Naughty List. I think I mentioned it once (simply that Santa has a naughty list and if you’re naughty you get rocks for Christmas), and he brings it up daily. I forget he has a brilliant memory. How ironic. Anyway, it’s absolutely magical. We’ve got snow and have gone sledding and made snowmen and hot chocolate and Christmas cookies. We have a couple advent calendars to keep track of the days (Stetson is genuinely confused why we don’t just move Santa to the 25th and call it good and honestly it’s a great question).  We taught Stetson about the Star over Bethlehem and he talks about it all the time. It’s awesome. He has a nativity puzzle he does daily and it’s the best. I wish more of you lived closer because the holidays are so fun and I want to bake and sing and laugh with all of you!! 

Anyway. Life has been good. Still has its ups and downs and the days seem a bit long and not quite as magical as I make them out to be, but I mostly love it ;) 

Becoming good friends 

We still like going outside and Stetsons outfits have me dying 

Maple snow! 

I promise he liked sledding 😂😂

One of these days he’s going to pull the tree over 

We went and got sushi with some friends. It was absolutely delightful 

Flake Fun

 What a month it has been.  We enjoyed a fun Thanksgiving trip up to Utah and we're so happy to see all of you that we're able to stop by.  Everyone is growing up way too fast by the way.  It was cool but weird to talk about grownup stuff with several nephews and a niece!  

The biggest adventure of the month of November was my first foray into the world of stitches. But a little back detail: 

1. Our commuter car has been in the shop since June so if I don't have anything specific going on, Scott takes the van to work.  

2. My phone decided to stop working completely 4 days before the day of "the crash".

Knowing those details - James lost his balance jumping over a stool, hit his head on the corner of his bed and split his forehead (I'm pretty sure) to the bone.  Rand was the hero of the day and ran to Aunt Karen's house and brought her (with her phone) and Uncle Bruce (with his car).  We spent a couple of hours at the urgent care, and 4 stitches later, he was good to go. Mom removed the stitches before we left her house and the wound looks better every day.  

Things at the house are still stalled out but we should get our culvert installed this weekend which will be a step in the right direction.  

Hope that all of you are enjoying a wonderful Christmas season.  Love you all!! 

Hyde Happinesses

 Hello hello family. November was quite possibly the worst month of the year 😂 not to worry, we still had loads of fun and good times, but we were sick for the entire month. It was a blast. I also had an allergic reaction to who knows what, and am still trying to recover from that. 

We enjoyed a fun Halloween with our little pumpkin patch and also did family pictures. The bakery has been doing really well and I’ve quite enjoyed it. Cam is still working 10 hour days but he still seems to like it a bunch. Stetson is ever my parent but he’s adorable so it’s okay. Beckham is crawling all over the place and is now discovering he can get into things. His favorite right now is the bookshelf.  We enjoyed a good Thanksgiving with Cams family and are now gearing up for the Christmas season. I’ve been crafting lately which has been so fun, and have made a few advent calendars for Stetson to do this season. 

We had some absolutely massive leaves fall from our trees this year 

we decorated for Christmas early because we were all home bound and miserable. It’s been awesome 

A big buck in our backyard makes Cam awfully jealous 

Christmas tree sourdough! 

Flake Fun

 The weather is starting to turn cold but the days, for the most part have been in the 70s. The forecast says that those days are over though.

The house progress ground to a halt due to some flooding that made our culvert crossing...un-crossable.  So we are working through those details.

In the absence of house projects, we have moved on to property projects and got the fence done around the last pasture.  We hauled away nearly a ton of scrap metal, got a truck load of wood chips and a couple of van loads of leaves. 

We have had some nasty coughing and congestion the last couple of weeks but everyone seems on the mend now which is nice. 

Most of you know that we had a little skunk take up residence in our chicken coop for a couple of days.  It has since relocated... to our wood pile.  More adventures on that front will be coming I'm sure!

Hope that you all have a great week and beginning to your holiday season!!

Hyde Happinesses

 Hello all! Life has been good. I cannot believe that October is almost over! That should be illegal. Luckily we’re still hanging out in some pretty good weather. Definitely need a jacket or sweatshirt, but not cold enough for several layers. Both of my boys run warm, so they don’t need much to stay toasty. 

We got back from Destin Florida this week. It was so fun and mostly relaxing. The fun thing about having the only kids in the family is that you have almost unlimited babysitters (that will actually fight for a shot at babysitting), and all everyone loves to do is spoil them and talk about how wonderful they are. As everyone knows, it’s really fun to brag about your kiddos and be proud of them, but I literally have to race the in-laws to say good things about my kids! 😂 wherever we go we get comments about how sweet and cute the boys are and my sisters in law and mother in law (honestly the males in law too) all jump in and have to brag about them before I can 😂 I’m not complaining. It’s nice to have your kids adored. 

Florida beaches were lovely. The sand is pearly white and so soft it squeaks! The water was a little chilly this year because we went later in the season, but our vrbo had a nice warm pool and hot tub. Stetson probably spent 3 of the 6 days we were there submerged in water. He is a fish. He didn’t love the beach, and neither did Beckham, but they were good sports and made the best of it. Beck slept absolutely horribly but when we got home, he began pulling himself up on everything, so I think he was working through that while we were there and didn’t get much downtime to do it. 

We had our ward trunk or treat yesterday. Stetson has been saying he wants to be a pumpkin for the longest time. Apparently a Little Einsteins episode had one of the characters dressed as a pumpkin and that’s exactly what he wanted. Well I can’t sew by any means, but my mother in law can. I had tried to get a costume, but they were all jackolanterns and not what Stetson had in mind. So my sweet mother in law made him a costume in about 2 hours! I was so impressed! We also had a chili cook off yesterday, but a white chicken chili won 🙄 we should petition to disqualify those I think. 

Anyway, sure love you all. While the boys plan their boys trip, I think we girls should do our Prince Edward Island trip. That would be a dream. How about in the spring?…

Always watching airplanes

Excited to fly 

Superhero dad

The boys went on a deep sea fishing trip… let’s just say they’ll never do it ever again. Ever. Never.