January Phone Pictures

January started out with a snowstorm on New Year's Day, and Hudson was very excited to help shovel, haha:

And he loved playing with all the snow gear inside:

One of the boys' last days of winter break we decided to go up to visit Curt at work:

And he let them play foosball with him on the infamous foosball table where he and his coworkers have intense tournaments every day--they boys were very excited ;)

There was hardly anyone in the office, so we got to hang out at his desk too:

On January 12, 2020 Tucker received the priesthood and was ordained to the office of a Deacon. He had been looking forward to this and preparing for a long time, so it was a really neat experience.

Unfortunately, Curt's parents were out of town, and Chad & Lisa weren't able to come, but my family was so kind to come support him.

Two days later, Curt & I were able to take Tucker to the temple for the first time. He was REALLY excited about this and insisted we go as soon as we possibly could after he got his temple recommend. It was such a crazy and amazing experience to take him with us--I can't believe he (and we!) are so old! How grateful I am for temples nearby. Tucker made the goal to attend the temple twice a month--once with Curt, and once with the ward. Up until COVID-19 hit, he was able to do that. I'm so grateful Curt was willing and able to take him, since Hallie was born soon after this and I wasn't available...

Hudson has an obsession with the kitchen and getting out all the pans and spatulas whenever I make dinner--it is adorable and also SO annoying, haha! Every single night looked like this (thankfully he's lost interest lately), and if/when I put anything away, he would freak out and get it back out. (face palm)

Hiding in the ottoman:

And then he entered a whole new level where he started climbing INTO the cupboards to get everything out...!

Tucker's STEM fair experiment--testing different sodas with mentos to see which one would cause the tallest reaction. These things cause me so much stress and anxiety because: 1.) it reminds me of my school days, and my perfectionist tendencies take over and the whole thing just feels so overwhelming; and 2.) Tucker and I are the same person--we are both have our own ideas of how things should go, and we tend to get a little stubborn haha. We waited way too long to get started, so we had to do it all in one day. Thankfully, Curt is amazing, and things like this don't stress him out nearly as much, so he helped set everything up and helped with the actual testing, and then I helped Tucker with the poster. Our only goal was to get it done--it was a requirement to participate, so Tucker tried to choose a simple project that would be easy to do and easy to report on. Little did we know that he would end up placing in the top 8 in his school and would move on to the district level...and then to the regional level. Sheesh! What started out as something we just wanted to get done as quickly as possible, turned into a never-ending thing that kept dragging on...! (Made even more tricky because the district competition ended up being only a few days after Hallie was born, and I ended up having to take her and Hudson by myself because Curt was stuck at work..!) But we were so proud of Tucker, and it was pretty neat that he moved on so far. The regional competition was supposed to be at the end of March, but because of COVID-19 it got delayed and then moved to an online judging system, so we still don't have the results from it yet.

He hypothesized that Root Beer would shoot the highest, and it did!

All the different sodas he tested:

Pictures of how high each soda went:

His board turned out so well! I gave him a few pointers (and stood by him to help him), but he wrote everything and made the board by himself--I'm so proud.

The principal of his elementary school called me one Friday morning to tell me that Tucker had placed in the top 8 at the school and would be recognized at an assembly later that morning, and Curt was already planning on working from home that morning since we were leaving for our babymoon that afternoon, so he and I (and Hudson) were able to go to the assembly and surprise Tucker. :)

Painting. For whatever reason, we thought it was a good idea to paint the entire first floor and part of the upstairs, just two weeks before Hallie was born. (It was crazy, but I'm SO glad we did it! It looks SO good!!) And we would have been able to finish completely if she had waited another week to be born like we were planning on...but instead we just have a few things left (another coat on the walls and finish the ceilings).

Picking the color was so stressful for me!! But we ended up going with "Repose Gray" (the middle one) and we LOVE it!

There were SO many holes everywhere that Curt had to fill beforehand:

Edging:

Rolling:

Doing our entryway was super sketchy...!

Ceilings:

It's like a whole new house, and we are LOVING it!!



Hudson shenanagins. He loves messing with our watches, and as he was playing with Curt's watch during scripture study one night, this is what it picked up, hahahahaha:

"Daddy daddy daddy Nephi was still willing to potty" :)

He loves to cross his legs like me when we read stories, and it makes me laugh every time:

Bronco held Hudson's hand to help him come home from church, and it was the most adorable thing ever!

Trying out Hallie's bed for her before she was born:

(it's a mini crib, so he looks giant!)

This was hilarious and adorable: Hudson was looking at this picture of himself as a baby, and he kept saying, "Baby, pray. Baby pray." It took me a little bit to figure out he thought he (the baby) was praying because it looked like he was folding his arms, hahahaha:

Wrestling. I'm so glad they have a dad to rough-house with!

Too cool for words.

Acting out the tree of life with the iron rod--Hudson for course wanted to participate. (The beanie was supposed to cover their eyes and represent the mists of darkness, so they had to hold tight to the iron rod.)

Watching AFV with popcorn--our favorite:

This was our attempt at a Babymoon that turned out very differently than we had planned, haha. One of my Christmas gifts to Curt was a prearranged mini Babymoon to Park City. My dad was kind enough to gift us a one-night hotel stay, and my mom was going to stay with the boys so that we could get away for a night before the baby was born. However, my mom ended up having to have last-second emergency surgery on her infected foot the day we were going to go, so she couldn't watch the boys. So we thought we were going to have to cancel, but Allie swooped in and saved the day and volunteered to stay overnight with the boys BY HERSELF at the last second--bless her! So we headed out late Friday afternoon and realized Park City probably wasn't the best choice on a holiday weekend (it was President's Day weekend), because it was swarming with people. Not Curt's favorite thing. We checked in to the hotel and found a fun car/mechanic-themed Mexican restaurant to go to for dinner. After dinner, we tried to come back to our hotel and found that the power was out on the entire block. It was completely dark, and there were fire trucks and all kinds of emergency vehicles in front of our hotel. So we went back out and tried to find something to occupy our time...and we found ourselves at a TJMaxx. We were pretty much the only ones in the entire store, so we browsed around for almost two hours--and it was actually a lot of fun! We found some cheap little things for the boys, a nice bassinet thing we had been wanting for the baby (for super cheap!), and a few little thank you gifts for Allie. We finally headed back to the hotel after the store closed, and the power was back on, thank goodness, so we watched a movie on TV. Then we were not-so-happily awakened at about 5:00 am by all the hotel guests stomping down the hallway past our room to go early-morning skiing--super annoying. But it was good we were already somewhat awake, because then we got a call from Allie at about 6:30 am saying that Bronco was throwing up back at home...!! We felt TERRIBLE for Allie having to deal with that (she seriously wins Aunt/SIL of the year award for first: stepping in at the last second to watch the boys, and then second: for cleaning up puke in the early morning hours!), so we got up and got ready as fast as we could, grabbed some quick breakfast at the hotel, and were on the road back home by 8:00. And then we spent the rest of the day cleaning the puke-stained carpets, haha. Not quite the babymoon we envisioned, but at least we got away for a little bit! And it's a good thing we did it when we did, because Hallie ended up being born less than a week later!

Hotel selfie before checking out:

Cleaning carpets with a sick Bronco on the couch:

The day after President's Day was a teacher work day in our school district, and the boys didn't have school, so I tried to be a fun mom and took them to Krispy Kreme to get free doughnuts for their good grades on their report cards. It was a hit, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it:

Hudson especially had fun and made a giant mess haha:

Later that night (Tuesday, Jan 21) Hudson took a bad spill off a pipeworks thing the boys had built, and he wrecked his mouth really bad. He landed flat on his face, and we think his bottom teeth somehow went up into his top gums or something because his tooth was loose and his gums were completely destroyed. It was really, really bad--lots and lots of blood, and he was hard to console before he kind of went into shock. We called our emergency dental line and urgent care to see if there was anything we should do, and they all told us just to give him pain medicine and watch him. We ended up taking him into the dentist a few days later (two days after Hallie came home from the hospital--since she was born just two days after this happened...and he ended up falling on his mouth again while we were at the hospital...!), and the dentist took some x-rays and did two more follow up visits, but it appears everything will be okay. His baby tooth is slightly grayed, but there doesn't appear to be any damage to the permanent tooth, and his gums are slowly starting to grow back. Sheesh! What a traumatic thing! And the timing was crazy--happening right when Hallie was born and needing to have follow up appts right when things were stressful with her!

A week or so later, this is what his smile looked like--his tooth was slightly poking out, but doing so much better!

Hudson's traumatic fall was Tuesday night, and then this was Wednesday night--Tucker had stayed home from school that day with an upset stomach (though he never threw up), and then Calvin complained his stomach hurt when he was going to bed...and he ended up throwing up ALL.NIGHT.LONG. Curt and I were up all night with him, sleeping in about 45 minute segments between his throwing up sessions (since we had him sleeping in our room on the floor). It was miserable. 

Apparently Bronco's stomach bug from the weekend before was super contagious because it started hitting me Wednesday night, and I was super nauseous all night while Calvin was throwing up, and all day the next day (Thursday)--though I never threw up. And then Curt ended up getting it really bad and threw up all Thursday night...and that was the night Hallie was born. The timing of everything was so ironic and so not ideal, and looking back on it makes me just laugh and kind of want to cry, haha. It was CRAZY!! (Thankfully, I felt totally fine after having Hallie, and Curt started feeling better on Friday afternoon and felt back to normal by Saturday afternoon when we came home from the hospital.)



So then we had a baby:

And I meant to post this picture back in my post where I talked about Hallie coming home from the hospital, but Bronco was so sweet and wanted to color a picture for Hallie right when she came home. He asked what girls like, and the first thing I thought of was unicorns haha, so he asked me to print off a picture of a unicorn, and he colored it for Hallie. So cute and sweet!

And I found this video on my phone recently--I had no idea Bronco had taken it haha. He took it right after we got home from the hospital, and he said, "We have a baby girl...it's actually cute." hahahaha

The first night we were home from the hospital, Curt had fun staging all kinds of pictures to show how small Hallie was. Here she was as small/big as a burrito he could eat haha:

And then she was the same size as his new crocs:

And then only a little bigger than a 2-liter of Diet Coke, hahaha:

Cute picture of Bronco holding Hallie:

The Sunday after Hallie was born (2 days later), Tucker gave his first talk in sacrament meeting. The bishopric actually asked him on Thursday evening (the night Hallie ended up being born), and he stayed up writing the talk that very night. So when the bishopric found out we had the baby and asked if Tucker wanted to postpone, he decided he wanted to still do it since he already had it prepared. I was SO sad to miss it, but Curt was so nice to (slyly) take a video of it for me to see. And Mike & Chris came to support him since I couldn't be there--so sweet. Tucker did SO well!! And I can't believe he wrote it all on his own! What a good kid.




I still can't believe Tucker is officially in the "youth" program at church. Here he is at one of their mutual activities--cleaning up trash at one of the condo complexes in our ward.

Hudson and his upside-down sunglasses--and facing forward in his car seat! (we finally changed it around when Hallie was born)

Chad & Lisa had two extra tickets to a BYU Men's volleyball game one night (Lisa's parents have season tickets that they use with Chad & Lisa), so Curt & Tucker were able to go with. Two of their seats are court-side, so Tucker & Karli got to side right on the floor! (Curt sent me this picture to show where they were)

And while Mike & Chris were watching the game on TV, they saw Tucker & Karli, haha!

Sweet Hallie. My friend/our neighbor Rebecca brought over a package of headbands one night, and they were so cute that I had to try one on right away!! (bows/headbands are one of my favorite parts about having a girl, haha!) The timing was perfect, because we had pictures with Rachel the next morning, and I didn't have a bow that I loved for Hallie to wear, so I was able to use two of the ones that Rebecca gave--tender mercy.

My front entry table decor for January:

And finally, Hudson learned how to smile on command, and it is pretty much the cutest thing ever! :)