The Lemon

All the Halladay's right now are having babies, so we decided that we should join in the fun. I am 14 weeks a long and our new baby is the size of a lemon. Nate and I are excited about our new addition to come. My due date is some time in the middle of May. So the burning question is: Will we have all girls or will there be a boy to finish off our family?

Katelyn's Birthday

We started off for Katelyn's birthday at story time. Then we headed over to the roller coaster place (aka Trafalga in Lehi) to take advantage of some nice weather. Katelyn and Sadie both love going here.

Katelyn really wanted a rainbow cake. I figured making a pull apart cupcake cake would make her party easier for me. I think it turned out really great with the cupcake shape looking like a cloud.

Katelyn wanted to go to the popcorn place (aka Winger's) for dinner. Made my meal making easy for the day.

She was so excited to finally get Sleeping Beauty. It was the only princess she was missing. This one even came with a horse and carriage and Prince Phillip.

Sadie gave her Tinker Belle, which she herself played with for the rest of the night.

"It's my Birthday!"


We had her party on Saturday with some of her friends from her church class. Note to self for future reference: Katelyn has a hard time understanding that you can have a party on a different day than your actual birthday.

We had a Princess Tea Party and everyone came dressed up as a princess.

They had fun making crowns, putting the crown on the princess, and making hand fans. I think the most fun they had was just playing in Katelyn's room together.

Having "tea" with finger peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and apples.

Sadie decided to be the entertainment and hop around like a frog. She was making everyone laugh.

All our princesses: BriceLynn, Jayelee, Kate, Alyssa, Sadie, and Katelyn

On Sunday Katelyn celebrated her birthday with Grandpa Steve and Grandma Gail. She was so excited when they gave her a bigger bike (I'm so happy I suggested it). I think Katelyn had a wonderful birthday and I don't think all the boxes around our house got in her way.

Thinking back...

I was thinking back this morning to the morning of the day Katelyn was born 5 years ago. My water broke at 6 in the morning and after getting ready Nate got me all settled into the hospital. He went off to school. No reason for him to sit around with me when he has classes and a test to take. I sat in bed watching TV and having to pee every 30 seconds. When he got back, they told him I was sent home. He headed off searching the streets from the hospital to our apartment looking for me. Poor Nate. I'm sure he was thinking he was about to get an ear full from a full term pregnant woman that had to walk home in the rain. When he got home and didn't find me, he called my hospital room and I answered. Again, poor Nate. So funny the things that tend to happen.

After many, many hours we welcomed our first baby girl to our family. We love you Katelyn.

Happy 5th Birthday!

Halloween

The kids had fun dressing up and going to story time last week.

They like singing all the Halloween songs and dancing around.

We had a wet Saturday night. Our trunk-r-treat was moved inside the church and we only went to a few houses to get the full trick-r-treating experience.

Sadie didn't like all the adults in costumes trying to hand candy to her.

Katelyn was Cinderella and Sadie was a Strawberry Fairy.

(Sadie says she was Strawberry Shortcake fairy)

I think Sadie liked door to door trick-r-treating better than at the church. She was getting really into it and was saying all sorts of funny things to people. She would say "Trick-r- treat, give me something good to eat." To one guy not dressed up she said, "Happy Halloween, Witch." I couldn't stop laughing. We had a good Halloween.

2 Weeks

We are excited that we found a house. It is in Centennial. We can't close on the house until Nate receives his first pay check, so we hope to be in the house some time in the first part of December. We move in exactly 2 weeks. We have so much to pack. Even though we have so much to do, I'm trying to make sure the kids have a good time for Halloween and Katelyn has a great birthday next week.

Life changes

We have had a very busy last few weeks. We do not anticipate it slowing down any time soon since we are preparing for some big changes in our lives. Nate will be starting a new job November 15 in Denver. It is the same job he has now, but for the State of Colorado instead of Utah. We are excited for the change. With every change comes stress and a lot of decisions. Sometimes we both look back at being a little kid with envy. The biggest decision was what to wear to school. I still have issues with what to wear and now we have to make decisions about if to sell or rent our condo, what house to buy, what city to live in, and how do we uproot our whole lives here and move it to another state. We'll do it one piece at a time and hope we make good decisions that we can live with.

We have had other fun.
Thank you Gail and Grandma Jean for taking us to see The Lion King. It was amazing to see and I know that Katelyn loved being the only little person among all the grownups.

We started potty training Sadie this last week. She has done amazing. She has only had 3 accidents all week. We are very proud of her. She has also discovered that without a diaper she has what she likes to call "squishy butt". I guess her butt feels plumper and softer without a diaper. Makes me laugh every time she says it and makes all of us feel it.

I hope this next week goes as good as this last one and wish us luck to find a great house this next weekend as we go to find one.

Katelyn's Art

Katelyn has become very creative with her coloring. One Sunday, she got the scissors, paper, and pencil out and went to work making this life size person. I'm so glad that I took a picture of it because just the other day I asked her where she put it and she informed me she didn't want it any more and she threw it in the trash.
Cinderella

I love how her creativity changes. She use to just draw one thing on every page and now she is doing whole scenes.

Paper Animals

She loves to make these scenes by cutting out each piece and then gluing them together. Castle with knights, dungeon, prisoners, swords, windmill, king, queen, and a fire breathing dragon.

I love seeing what she comes up with. She has quite the imagination and loves using it with colors, scissors, and paper.

Welcome Home Elder Brown!

We were all pretty excited to welcome Hunter home from his mission. Hunter is Nate's step brother and has been in the Florida Jacksonville Mission for 2 years.

The welcoming party who were all anxiously awaiting his arrival on Tuesday afternoon.

Finally here.
We all headed up to Steve and Gail's home after to talk and hang out. It was so nice to be able to sit in the long awaited new addition for the first time. It really does look amazing, although Steve will tell you otherwise.

On the way up to Park City, I saw my first Jelly Belly truck and I was excited enough to take some pics.

I loved to see Hunter talk about his mission and his experiences. We're glad he is home, not so sure if he is, but some good things must come to an end. I'm just so happy he had such a great mission and was a wonderful missionary. Those people there were really blessed to have him for a short time.

California Trip: Disneyland

While we were at Disneyland for our 5 day stay, we stayed at the Fairfield Inn. It was across the street and down. It was so nice that we could walk and not have to wait for shuttles. I'm doing the pictures according to places in Disneyland and not in order of when we visited them. Our 5 days gave us plenty of time to see everything and do everything we wanted. At the end we were even able to ride some we wanted to do again.

Fantasyland
Sleeping Beauty's Castle

Dumbo the Flying Elephant

The Carousel is probably Sadie's favorite ride. After each ride we would ask her if she liked it and she would always say "No, that ride scary." The carousel was one of them she would ask to do again.

Katelyn was very excited to meet the princesses. She got to meet Belle and Tiana.

Small World

Teacups

Sadie being a little bee while we waited in Pixie Hollow to meet Tinker Bell.

Tinker Bell taught Katelyn how to pose just like her.

Mickey's Toontown

Goofy

Mickey

Goofy's garden

Minnie

Having tea and cookies at Minnie's house.

Tommorowland

Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters

This was probably every ones favorite ride. You had your own guns and you shot targets throughout the ride. It kept your score and Nate was super into it. The second time we rode, Nate got over 300,000 points. I got 40,000 and was trying really hard to do good. That's my man, video game enthusiast.

Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage

This is Asimo the first ever Humanoid robot produced by Honda. It was really cool to see. I especially liked seeing it walk up and down stairs. It took over 20 years to produce this.

Adventureland

Jungle Cruise

Aladdin

Having a snack.

They were waiting for mommy to be done riding Indiana Jones. Then daddy got to go and they got to wait even more. Disneyland has a great idea for single riders. They give you a pass at the entrance and you get to go right into it without having to wait in lines. Really nice. Even though Nate and I didn't encounter very many lines, it was nice when we did so that we could ride almost right away. Indiana Jones was such a good ride. My advice, a must to sit in the front of the jeep and then ride again and sit on a different side anywhere. The experience is so different depending on where you are sitting.

New Orleans

Tom Sawyer Island

Critter Country

Splash Mountain. I got a bit wet. I also had to go alone, because whenever Sadie couldn't go, Katelyn always picked to go with Dad.

Got honey?

Winnie the Pooh.

Sadie wouldn't meet any of the characters if we weren't holding her. She like to see them, just not too close.

If you ask Katelyn what her favorite part of Disneyland was, she will say the roller coasters. She even went on the Matterhorn twice and on every single one that she was tall enough for. I'm not exactly sure if it was her favorite part or if that will make Daddy proud of her, which he is. He loved that she would go on them with him.

Next stop, Disney's California Adventure.