Hawes Home: 2013

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Candy Candy Candy

Ava had a blast making gingerbread houses. She LOVES candy and that's an understatement. :)

Tyler and Justin shared a house. Tyler enjoyed the marshmallows!

After Ava covered her entire house and all the foil, she decided my house needed more candy on it. So we put "snow" in the yard of my house and she filled it with candy.

Tyler and Justin's house.

The front of Ava's house.

The back of Ava's house.

My house after Ava fixed it.

I modeled my house after our new home. Complete with shutters, bushes and our red Hyundai in the driveway.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Our tree made it 10 days before it "fell" to it's death. The incident is still under investigation but rumors are that there were two small individuals at the scene.

I told Ava that Christmas was over. She sang a song about how Christmas was over and she and Tyler giggled.

**UPDATE Sadly, the tree stand is bent. We decided the tree could not handle any more tumbles (possibly multiple times if we left it up). I promise, I do discipline my kids, but when they are giggling when you tell them Christmas is over.....? We decided we will put it up Christmas eve. Hopefully they will be so distracted with the presents that they will leave the poor tree alone. :) Better luck next year!

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

All Natur-al

Ava told us it was time to put up the Christmas tree!

The kids had fun decorating it.

Ava insisted on using the step stool so she could reach higher branches.

Before I was able to fluff all the limbs, Tyler decorated this little nest of branches. :)

Even though this picture is blurry, I love it. Whenever I ask Tyler to "say cheese!" he comes up and puts his nose on the camera and says "EESE!!"

Tyler and Ava had fun playing under the tree. They told me the legos were presents.

My favorite present is that cute little guy hiding under there.

Ava helped me put lights on our bushes out front.

As you can see in the tree pictures above, all of the ornaments are missing from the bottom half of the tree. The kids played with the ornaments all day. They bit them, and I had metal hooks all over my carpet. So I decided we were going to have an all natural tree this year. :) You can think of it as a "pure" tree. :)

This solution, however, does not prevent Tyler from playing his favorite game with the tree: "Ring around the tree." He grabs a branch and runs around the tree making it spin on its stand! This causes the lights to pull out of the wall and the star on top is currently in the middle of the tree because it can't stay balanced during the spinning. I tried to move the tree close to the wall so he couldn't spin it, but he's a little guy and squeezes in there anyway. I sure hope our tree can make it until next year!

Our stockings "hung with care." Ava informed me that her stocking was the
"cookie stocking." Of course! Does that surprise anyone given her love of sugar!? Daddy is the Santa Clause, Mommy the snowman and Tyler the penguin.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Little Helper

Ava has been quite the littler helper lately!

I want to document this for later down the road when she may not be as enthusiastic about cleaning toilets. :)

Since our living space tripled when we moved, we have been doing a lot more cleaning. Ava loves to help. She is great! She cleans the mirrors and empties the trash in all of the bathrooms. She loves to carry the cleaning supplies from bathroom to bathroom. She also likes to help vacuum, dust, sweep, fold laundry and her favorite is probably washing windows.

Once, when Ava was interrupting Justin while he was working from home, I tried to entice her downstairs by saying, "Ava! Let's go play a game!" She looked at me, her eyes lit up, she smiled and excitedly said, "How about let's clean the windows!" :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are thankful for YOU!

I am particularly grateful that you read my blog! :)

We made our traditional "Thankful Turkey."

Ava insisted on cutting out feathers. She added the blue 'feather' on the bottom.

Ava and I made triple chocolate 'turkey' cupcakes for our neighbors.

We were grateful to be with family for the holiday.

We visited Justin's sister and brother-in-law,
Erika and Baxter, in Ohio.

Thanks for letting us visit!

While we were there, Ava asked Erika to straighten her hair. This is only the second time it has ever been straight.

Doesn't she look different!?

While in Ohio we took the kids to a bounce place.

Tyler, of course, had no fear and jumped right in with the older kids.

He climbed to the top of the slide all by himself.

It was a pretty fast slide. Both kids loved it.

Tyler tried so hard multiple times to make a basket. He only ever threw the ball about 1 inch above his head. Every time he would fall over on purpose.

How did we survive the 12 hour round trip you might ask? Who needs a fancy car dvd player when your iPhone fits in the sunglasses holder! :)

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Halloween

I'm a little behind on my pictures and posts!

Here's a Halloween recap.

We were able to go to several different Halloween activities. This was the best picture I could get of both of them together at a church Halloween party.

The first play date we had at our new house was a Halloween party with friends!

Ava could hardly wait for the signal to begin "trunk-or-treating" at the church.

It took Tyler a minute to figure out what was going on.

When he caught on he was all over it! I laughed when people lowered their big bowl of candy and told him to take "one piece." Yeah right, he grabbed a handful!

Each time he got a piece of candy it was in his mouth in a matter of seconds...wrapper and all. :)

We also went trick-or-treating in our neighborhood.

In her prayers Ava thanked Heavenly Father for Halloween and princesses.

THANK YOU!!

I want to say THANK YOU to everyone who has helped us in our move. The missionaries and friends in the ward helped physically move our stuff. Many friends watched our kids while we packed and moved.

I'm grateful my mom, brother and mother-in-law were able to come out to help! Not only was it great to see them, but I'm grateful for all they did for us!

My mom took care of the kids so my friend and I could unpack and decorate. Thank you to a wonderful friend who has almost decorated my entire house in less than a month!

My brother was a huge help! He fixed EVERYTHING from leaky faucets, to broken door handles, to assembling furniture and more. Not to mention he helped lift a lot of things too. :) Ava was very grateful that Uncle Ken assembled her bunk bed! Thanks Ken!

I don't have any pictures with Justin's mom, but a HUGE THANKS to her for also coming out to help! She helped unpack, paint our new home and clean our old apartment among other things!

We are so very grateful for our wonderful
family and friends!

Thank you guys!!

Ava and I went to the store to pick out sheets for her new bunk bed. She was shocked and thrilled when I allowed her to pick out these wild sheets. :)

Monday, November 11, 2013

Tour: The Inside Revealed!

The long awaited pictures of the inside of our home!

Obviously we are short on furniture. :)

Over the next year we hope to fill the empty spaces.

View from the front door.

The open door in the picture above is our half bath. There is a coat closet next to the half bath. Thanks to Justin's Mom for painting this bathroom for us!

Turn the corner from the front door and you will see our empty living room. One day there will be a sofa and a sofa table facing the armoire along with a few other pieces of furniture.

Next is the formal dinning room which we changed into the piano room. There is no way we are allowing our children to eat over carpet!! Justin changed the light fixture from a chandelier to the flush mount light.

Thanks to my friend for helping me decorate!!

Again, missing a few chairs to be purchased in the future.

The other side of the piano room. Standing at the back door. Hutch to be painted in the future.

One of my favorite rooms!!

There is so much cupboard and counter space!

This view is from the piano room.

Now on to the basement, our main living area.

This half of the basement is the play area. To the left is a wet bar.

The other half of the basement: the adult area.

The closed door is a full bathroom for guests. To the right of that is a guest bedroom (for all of you!!)
Come visit us!

That's it for the bottom two floors of the house. The upstairs isn't quite put together. We have a great master suite, his and her closets and a large bathroom. Justin's office is in a section of our master bedroom. There are two other rooms upstairs. Ava and Tyler share a room. They sleep on a bunk bed which they LOVE. Another favorite room of mine is the UPSTAIRS LAUNDRY room!

Although Ava loves the new house, she misses her friends tremendously. We are about 30 minutes away from all of her friends versus having them down the street.

That being said, she was bored one day and this is what she did.

This is what she decided to wear for pajamas one night.

Tyler is missing from this post, but this picture is for him. We were in the basement when Tyler wandered upstairs. I was going to follow him up there, but before I made it I heard a thud and then Tyler began to cry. I found him covered in milk with his head down. When he saw me he said, "Ut-Oh" and kept crying. He wasn't crying because he was hurt. He was crying because he spilled milk all over himself in his unsuccessful attempt to pour a glass of milk. He's only 20 months old!