I love my cousins!

Wow, what a wonderful week we had last week as we were able to let Hailey play with her cousins Danny and Mia who visited us from the Netherlands. The kids played so well together and every morning when we would wake up Hailey wanted to go to the door and see her cousins. She loved being able to go to the zoo, the children's museum and just play every day at Papa and Mimi's house. During the visit, Danny (who is almost five) told us that he wished Hailey didn't have to go home and that Hailey was there's...it was so cute and just melted your heart. It was so neat to watch them share their toys, and do pretty much everything together.

John and I were able to get some time to be with his sister Carrie and her husband Jason during the week as well. We enjoyed dinners out and LOTS of shopping as we helped Carrie get a lot of things checked off her list. It was so nice to see them and just enjoy time together. We are so thankful that they were willing to come and be with us....

All in all it was a long week as we all are pretty much exhausted, but it was one of those week where each day was a new blessing and a moment to remember. We are so thankful to have such wonderful family and we love them all so much!

Enjoy the many pictures we have posted of the kids playing!

Hailey and Owen

Here are some pictures of Hailey playing with one of her best friends Owen Stout....they had a great time playing in the pool outside, even if Owen wasn't so sure about getting in at first. After a while, he started to really like the water and he even started splashing Hailey (which she had no problem with it)! But then Hailey wanted to escape and climb out of the pool so she could walk. They also had a great time playing with some of Hailey's toys inside and we called it a day when they both were exhausted. It was a great time for the kids to play together and for Rebecca and I to have some time together as well.

walking all by myself!

We finally were able to take some pictures of Hailey walking and so I hope you will enjoy these. She is always so proud when she walks all by herself and then will turn around and see that we are not right behind her. She is growing up so fastly and we are loving all the new phase she is going through. We thought she was fast with crawling, you should check her out when she walks!

A Total Mess

Okay, I promise this is my last post of the day, but I really needed to get all the pictures and activities up on the blog...so for all of those out there that give me a hard time about not posting, I think I have fulfilled my quota.

After we went to the zoo and then went to John's work to let Hailey spend some time with him, we came home and had some dinner. Well, Hailey is really into doing everything herself, even if it means a huge mess and everything going straight into the wash and taking her straight to the bath. She didn't want to eat her mac and cheese unless she did it herself and so that lead into her taking her plate and trying to lick it and then dumping it all out. Needless to say you can see from the pictures she was a mess, but she really did enjoy the time she made a mess. For those doubters out there, she really did eat a fair amount of mac and cheese. John and I were laughing hysterically as she was just kept getting more and more in her hair and on her....it was pretty funny! And it kept her from crying through the whole dinner....the things you do to make them happy especially as she keeps trying to do everything on her own.

We hope you have enjoyed our new post and they have made you laugh.

Love,
The Andersons<><

Indianapolis Zoo

We are extremly blessed that John's parents have purchased the grandparents pass so they can spend time with their grandchildren and allow us the opportunity to go to the zoo and the Children's Museum. We took Hailey to the zoo yesterday and she loved it. We were able to see a lot of the animals and we even enjoyed out first train ride around the zoo. Even though we had to do a lot of getting her in and out of the stroller to show her the animals, she still really liked it. I was a little nervous as she started to cry when we were looking at the bear and trying to take a picture, but she recovered and had a wonderful time. She even cried when the rooster crowed, but all in all she had a wonderful time getting to see all the animals and play on the playground....it was so neat to be able to be together and do special things with her and make her days filled with special things.

Children's Museum

We had such a wonderful time taking Hailey to the Children's Museum and she just loved it. The nice thing about it is there is a place called Play Scape for children under the age of 5 and there are so many neat things for them to play with. She just loved it and we didn't even do all the things that were in there. She loved being able to play with her favorite things....water and sand. She also really enjoyed going down the slide which she has just started to like doing that. It was nice cause we went early in the morning and so there were not a lot of kids in there and so she was able to run and play. We all had a wonderful time going together and enjoying her first experience with the museum. We ever took her on her first carousel ride and she enjoyed it, only if she was clinching her mother! We wore her out so much that by the time we went down to eat lunch she was sound a sleep in her stroller, she was exhausted! It was a wonderful time together as a family and we are excited to go back again soon!

I am so cool!

This was the first time Hailey let us put sunglasses on her and after we clapped and cheered for her, she kept them on for a little while. She also thought it was pretty cool to do it herself, even if she didn't always put them on right. She also thought it would be pretty funny to jump in her pool after we were done taking a walk outside to cool....that is the reason she still has her clothes on and not her bathing suit! She is getting so big and truly loves the little things we do during the day.