Christmas Cookies and Sunday Campouts

Earlier this week, Henry and I made Gingerbread men. They were supposed to be for hanging on our Christmas tree, but we were having so much fun, I forgot to poke a hole in the cookies so we could hang them up.

Last night we had fun building a tent in our family room. We discovered that we have the perfect tent chairs. They're nice and tall, so it was mansion tent for Henry.

He discovered the fun that can be had with a flashlight and making faces or shapes with your hands.

He also had to bring in his singing snowman.

If you can't tell, we have a lot of fun. I do realize, however, that we need to take pictures of things besides Henry Happenings. Maybe we should just rename our blog. Sorry. Honestly, this blog is largely for me and making sure I document somethings occasionally.

He is getting sick of me being on the computer again. See y'all later!

Thanksgiving 2010

We were able to go to Oregon for Thanksgiving. We left the Saturday before Thanksgiving and met Emily and Ian in Jerome, then drove all together to Eugene. We made it a straight shot and got there in the wee hours of the morning. It was a nice to spend a whole week with my everyone, including Grandmother! We even met up with Ian's whole family (minus the two smallest) to see the new Harry Potter. It was fun!

Before we make it to Christmas, here are some pictures from Thanksgiving. We didn't get many, but it was nice to be home for the week.

While we were home, Mama gave Henry his 1st haircut. It was just a trim, but here are some pictures.

We did it while he was asleep.

He continued on his nap while Grandmother watched. Isn't that sweet?

The table before the Turkey was brought over.

You have now seen every picture I took over Thanksgiving. We should have taken pictures of our drive home. It was awful. I think parts of the drive actually qualified as blizzard conditions, but most of it absolutely qualified as stressful. Thankfully, Emily and Ian were in the back seat with Henry. That made the whole drive a bazillion times less stressful. Thanks for entertaining him! It was sad to have to drop them off at their car at Grandma and Grandpas house. Luckily Henry did fine the rest of the drive. I-84 was closed in Idaho, so we decided to play it safe and stay in Pocatello Sunday night and not risk an icy pass + angry baby. It was a smart move. Monday morning we took it easy and left the hotel about 10:30. The sun was up, the roads weren't icy, and we made it home just fine.

Down sides of the trip:
- Driving home

(Some) Plus sides of the trip:
- Seeing my whole family, including grandparents (Grandma & Grandpa Dixon AND Grandmother).
- Spending the week relaxing and enjoying family.
- Going to see Harry Potter and it being an event. (We snuck in lots of candy. Mama even brought ice cream for the whole crowd. :D )
- Yummy Thanksgiving Dinner
- Carpooling with Emily and Ian.
- Making it home safely.

I know there are things I am forgetting, but Henry is sick of me being on the computer. I'm not even going to proofread. Sorry. More fun post-Thanksgiving pictures later. Happy Sunday!

Teddy the Horse Dog

Tonight Henry climbed into his wagon full of blocks, obviously wanting to be pulled around. After giving in to his wishes for a bit, I had a brilliant (or stupid) idea. It turned out to be an injury free activity and quite fun for all (except for maybe Teddy who tired out quickly). I tried to upload a video, but obviously it did not happen.

While I'm here, here's some house information I forgot. We are still in good ol' Payson, Utah. We're less than a mile from where they are going to build the new temple and might be able to see it from Henry's room. Hopefully! Wouldn't that be cool?! Our church building is right next door to the temple plot and I am rather excited to see the changes every week. Hopefully they can start on it soon!

Inside House Pictures

I don't really want to take and share pictures of our the inside of our house just yet. Things are mostly unpacked and rooms are settled, but I just don't want to share pictures yet. It's getting there.

BUT, I found that I did save the pictures from the posting online. They aren't the greatest, but they give you the general idea of the house and the boring-ness of the walls. (I really want to paint! Someday.) Now I just have to remember where they're at...






(Still looking)






Found them!

The living room.

The kitchen and living room.

Kitchen again.

The family room from the kitchen. You can see the stairs going up and the door in the family room goes to the laundry room, 1/2 bath, garage, and basement.

Before The Snow Comes

There were two things I really wanted/needed to do before it starts snowing. Since that could be as soon as tomorrow morning and as late as tomorrow night, I got them done today.

Task #1:
Move Grandmothers red rocking chair into the garage. Snow does not do good things for wood.

CHECK!


Task #2:
Take a picture or our house. I didn't want my first picture or the house to have include snow, so this was very important to me.

CHECK!

This is our house. It is no color that is very exciting, it's awfully close to the neighbors, the yard isn't huge, but we love it! When we were looking we saw all kinds of houses. We saw twin homes, old homes, one meth house, but nothing like this as far as bang for your buck. We weren't expecting anything nearly this size or young, so when we saw it, we just put in an offer. Two months later, it was ours.

It has 4 bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths, a living room, family room, mud room area, and it's on a cul-de-sac with a walking trail and field at the end. There really isn't anything special about the house itself besides the layout and the $$/sq ft, but we like it!

You can't really tell, but we have two trees in our front yard. Not in the picture is the maple and leafless, in front of the window, is mystery tree. I'm 99.9% sure it's not a Quaking Aspen. The trunk looks like one, but the leafs do not. If you know me, you know that trees are important, hence them earning blogging time. The back yard isn't huge, but it doesn't have another house in it (also important to me). There's some grass space, then a rock wall and a hill.

That is our house. We like it. There are lots of improvements I'd like to make over time (a long time), so I'll have to report as they happen. Any donations for Butterfield Home Improvement Fund would be greatly appreciated. We could even throw in a nights stay in our comfy "guest suite" as an appreciation gift.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is not my favorite holiday by any stretch of the imagination, but it was fun to dress Henry up. This year he was a monkey. We figured that was a fitting costume since he acts and sounds like a monkey. We even taught him to pound his chest like a monkey. We practiced and practiced, put on his costume and practiced some more, but yesterday he just wouldn't do it. He did enjoy wearing his costume. I think he wore it most of the day. Silly boy.

Monkey driving a car.

Notice the tail that got caught in the door?


Henry had fun watching for trick-or-treaters.


My little monkey.

Happy Birthday Henry!!

Thank you blogging world for reading my last LAME post. I tried to win a photo shoot but I did not win. No surprise there.

Because the last post was so lame and uninformative, I feel like I should actually write something informative. We really have been quite busy since my last post, so I'm going to try to catch up.

Henry turned 1 since my last real post! Happy Birthday Mr. Henry!! Emily, Ian, Emmett, Chelsie, and Janae all came down for General Conference. It was perfect timing! They were able to help us move into our house and be here for Henry's birthday party. We went to the city park here in Payson. We kept it low key, but it was fun. You might have noticed that the cake was a Costco one. Yumm! It was moving day and there was no way on Earth I was going to worry about making cake.

We love our 1 year old! He is fun, loves to be "helpful", cute, cuddly, energetic, easy going, and entertaining. We are so grateful to have him!

One Year Stats

Words: Mama, Dada, Teda (Teddy/any dog), whasat (what's that?)

Teeth: 7

Skills: Walking, manipulating objects, moving furniture, saying done with his hands (looks like "send it away"), blowing raspberries

Favorite things: Spatulas, stroller rides, Elmo, baths, Teddy

At first Henry wasn't sure about the cake thing,

but then he went to town.

The damage done.

Cleaning up in the park spicket.

Playing with some birthday presents.

In Need of Family Pictures!

I have been very much an absentee blogger lately, but there's been a lot going on. House buying, a few moves, Henry had a birthday, etc. More on all of that later.

I am here now for other reasons. I learned through Oregon people that there is an AMAZING photographer doing a photo session giveaway. I am here to let all of you know about it. Her name is Kristen Moss and you can check out her bog here. You really should check it out. She is amazing!

I feel like this post needs a picture, but I don't know that I even have any recent ones uploaded on my machine yet. See! I really need to win this photo giveaway!



P.S. Totally unrelated, but I don't like shows that require your undivided attention. They are very annoying and make me grumpy. Blog world: Thank you for that brief venting session.

11 Month Old Henry Baby

My little Henry baby is 11 months old (as of last Sunday)! Oh, how time flies. Besides being being all big and almost 1, he has also decided to take other steps to ditching the baby status. He's picked up walking! (Haha! He's taking "steps". I did not do that on purpose.) He took a few steps on his own early last month, but the decided he wasn't interested in walking and didn't try to walk anywhere with or without us holding his hands. Then he decided he was interested. Now he likes to try to walk everywhere. While exciting and extremely cute to watch, I'm kinda wishing he could have waited a little longer to learn this new skill. He was busy before, but now there is a whole new area of the world (kitchen) to explore. Really, it just motivated me to pack up everything but the bare essentials. He picks things up and brings them to me, sometimes (rarely) puts things back where he got them from, and regularly throws things in boxes for me. So, all things considered, I guess it's fun.

Notice the spatula in the bath tub? Don't worry. That one has been permanently assigned to the toy box.

The first of many facial falling injuries, I'm sure.

He has been very helpful lately. Teddy was at the back door letting us know it was time to let him in, so Henry went to let him in. Good effort.

He's been helping me pack,

make supper,

and empty my p.j. cupboard so I could box it up. I might not fill that back up for a while. It's just the right size for Henry to sit and play.

I have to admit. I love my baby boy. He's fun and I love spending my days with him. He's my best little bud.

P.S. Does it bug anyone else how Blogger takes the double spaces out between sentences? It sure bugs me!

It's August already?

So, like I said. I love summer and have obviously forgotten some things. Like how to take pictures. I was uploading the most recent and realized it's picture taking was not my strong suit in July. That's okay though. We've been having fun. Henry and I have been taking Mommy and Me swimming lessons. Obviously one cannot take pictures of that while your hands are full of baby and you're in the water, but I'm sure we'll get some of Henry demonstrating his new skills before the summer is over. Anyways, here are some of the few pictures I took in July.

4th of July corn on the cob for Henry!

Sparklers please?!

Emily, Ian, and Chelsie came down for Chelsie's birthday. While they were here we attended the Payson Scottish Festival, where we enjoyed Fish & Chips and root beer in cool bottles.

Later we went to Gardner Village, where Henry got to feed some ducks. The one on the left was kind of rude/aggressive and when we started to run out of Cheerios would jump up and dig them out from under Henry's leg. I thought this would frighten him, but Henry thought the duck was trying to play.

Henry (food) attracted quite the crowd.

After all of the company left, Henry was a helpful little boy and helped me roll up the air mattress. What a good helper!

Slacker Blogger

So, I've really stunk at blogging lately. I will eventually catch up. If I promise that I'll do it, I'm much more likely to. The truth is, I LOVE summer. I love being warm. I love that there are leaves on the trees. I love being able to drive and not have to worry about slipping across the road. I love slippers (flip-flops). I love shorts. I love not having to grab a jacket or two or three when I walk out of the house. I love trying to grow things (I'm not always successful). I love watering the things I'm trying to grow, even if they're almost dead. Summer is just the best! I can't let any of it slip by without enjoying it. Hence why I've been a worse than usual blogger. Of all the things I would rather be doing, blogging is not one of them. BUT I am way behind on Henry documenting and picture sharing, so I will get to it soon. I promise!

Oregon!

Here are some pictures from our trip to Oregon. We drove from Utah to Jerome to see Grandma and Grandpa Dixon, spent the night in Boise, then drove to Portland and down to Eugene. From there we went to Crater Lake and over to the coast. In a week and a half we had lots of fun and saw a good chunk of Oregon.

Caleb and Daddy at Crater Lake

It was bright up there with the sun and snow and all.

Pretty!

Henry got sick of all the driving.


After a couple switch backs I decided to take a picture. We hiked down to the lake.

Proof

On the way home we stopped to see the 2nd highest falls in Oregon. It was a pretty drive going there and back.


The coast! So pretty!
We decided that just when we convince ourselves that Utah is kinda green, we visit someplace that really is.


Heceta Head Lighthouse


See the cave(s)?



Hecta Head B&B. We didn't get a great picture of it, but it's pretty. Staying there is officially on our bucket list.

Tide Pools

Shark Tunnel at the Aquarium. Henry really liked watching the fish.

He wasn't so sure about his sea anemone hat.

Newport lighthouse

We got fish right off the boat! Yumm!

It was a type of pacific cod fish.
I love fishing boats.


Henry became a pro at crawling on his hand and knees while we were at my parents. Since we've been home, he's figured out how to climb the stairs. He's busy now!

Henry liked corn on the cob!

Sorry for all of the Henry pictures. Daddy was looking through my online album while we were there and like he said "You'd think you had a baby at home." It's true. We do.

It was a fun trip! Thanks Mama and Daddy for playing tour guide and showing us around! There was lots more we wanted to and could have done, people to see, etc, but time just flew. I'm sure we'll be back. Now that we're home, Henry is missing all of the attention, Nate and I are missing all of the help, but none of us are missing the car.