Easter 2011

This past Easter we spent  in Burley at Grammie and Grandpa Grafs.  The kids were extra spoiled because the Easter bunny came to visit them there too!  In their Sunday best!

Brady 6 - Olivia 2

Our little family of 4 with "baby bump" just starting to show!

 Ben (Chelsae's boyfriend), Chels, Mom and Dad Graf

(The cute couple had just gone to prom the night before)

Memorial for Grandpa Hayford

My grandfather, Harrison Hayford passed away in his sleep on March 30, 2011.

 

All of the women in the family came together to create displays in the cultural hall depicting Grandpa's life.

My Uncle Mike and cousin Seth created this beautiful box to hold Grandpa's ashes in.  They made a similar one when my Grammie passed away several years ago.

This poster illustrates Grandpa's service in the military, his life's work as a craftsman and all things he loved. 

 This poster depicts his life as a husband and father. The bottom picture shows his life as a grandfather and great-grandfather.

This last poster was a special one that I helped my cousin Megan make.  She had some favorite pictures of Grandpa that she wanted to display.

This was the family that was able to make it to the services.  Many of us traveled from out of state to get there.  My cousin Glen, far right, came from connecticut with his girlfriend Carmella.  Isaac, Erin and their three children came from Oregon, as did my cousin Lorraine.  My mom came from Maine and Chris and I and our kids came from Idaho.  It was great to have so many of the family together again and even though the circumstances were sad we came together and enjoyed happy memories of Grandpa and Grammie.

The Memorial Service was held at the Bozeman LDS church.  Many family members took part in the program, giving talks, sharing memories, and singing.  I was able to sing with my cousin Megan and my cousin-in-law, Rachel the song, "Be Still My Soul," as well as presenting the obituary that I helped write with my mom, aunts and a couple of cousins.

Following the services we had a graveside Memorial Service presented by the military with full honors.  There was a soldier playing Taps and a 21-gun salute, 3 volley and presenting of the flag to my Uncle Steve (the oldest child).  It was very touching for everyone in our family to see our Grandpa honored like that.

Several of the men in the family.  Uncle Scott held Grandpa's box during the service.

All of the women got a rose to put on top of Grandpa's box. 

The Hayford Siblings:  Brenda, Linda, Steve, Scott, Sandra and Donna

A precious video of the children singing a song that Grammie taught us grandchildren and that we have sung to our children.  We closed the funeral by suprising everyone and having Isaiah, Alison, Brady and Olivia stand in front of Grammie and Grandpa's grave singing the song.  It's a little hard to hear but it was so sweet and the perfect way to say good bye to twe people who we loved and who touched all of our lives.

A few days before the funeral we had a showing at the funeral home.  The men in the family took part in dressing Grandpa and then we had a family circle around him and shared any thoughts.  It was very emotional for everyone in the family to surround our patriarch after he had passed on.  I am grateful that we were able to be a part of the week and share in these sacred experiences with my family.

The grandchildren and great-grandchildren

The siblings

After the showing we had a family potluck luncheon.  Everyone shared a favorite memory, we read memories that had been typed up from Grammie's funeral and my mom acted out "Farmer Brown" with the grandkids as Grandpa used to do with us! 

Isaiah, Alison, Natalia, Brady and Olivia (Brynlie not pictured)

bunny rabbits hopping to get away from Farmer Brown!

SAHM I am!

I am proud to announce that last Friday was my last day at work!  I'm finally a SAHM (stay at home mom) again and it feels GOOD!  I have struggled in the past with the idea of "just being a mom" or "just staying at home" but after the last year and a half of working and being away from my children I can now truly see the blessings of being at home myself and having a mother in the home.  My mom was a stay at home mom and I never really appreciated how wonderful of a blessing that was!  I took it for granted it every day and my hope is that I will never do that again!  For all of you who sacrifice and work hard TO stay at home...CONGRATULATIONS!  What a precious calling motherhood is!  I am grateful for the opportunity that I have to be at home with my children.  To take care of them, to love them, to protect them, to teach, play, go on adventures and BE THERE FOR THEM whenever they need ME!

To celebrate my first day of our new lives Olivia and I walked Brady to school and then went walking with some friends.  It was great to be out in the fresh morning air and be physically exercising my body again.  Then we came home, read books, had a snack, walked to school to pick up Brady, had lunch and headed out the door for our first adventure!  I took the kids to the canyon with their friend Annie and we went on some nature trails, saw 5 basejumpers from the bridge, swang and played on the playground.  We would have stayed much longer but we got rained out.

Then we picked up Nicole, Annie's mom and her baby sister Sofie and went to a fabric store and a neat little consignment vintage furniture store, both in Kimberly.  We rounded out the day with slushies from Sonic and a trip to Costo were we had hotdogs and lemonade...a pretty good first day off!

Scripture reading, books and songs and the kids were in bed by 7:30 all tuckered out!

The rest of this week we've gone to parks, gone shopping, picked books and a movie out at the library and played outside, blowing bubbles, riding bikes and enjoying precious sunshine and warm weather.

Now I have a LOT of catching up to do on this blog!!!

BIG BIG BIG changes in our family!

I am way too tired and have way too many things on my to-do list...so this will be brief with no pictures.  Our family has CHANGED in the last few months and even the last few days.  Here are our updates!  More info to come on all of these changes!

1. Baby #3 on their way!!!  Date of approximate arrival is October 24th (most likely will be closer to Halloween due to the fact that I am always a week overdue)  We are SO excited...and I can't wait to almost be done with constant nausea (fingers crossed!)

2. My Grandpa Hayford passed away on March 30th at 81 years old.  We were able to go up to Montana as a family to be part of the funeral.

3. WE ARE MOVING!  (What?!?!)  Yup, that is right...we knew this day would come but it came a lot sooner than we thought.  We are SO EXCITED, STRESSED and SAD TO LEAVE GOOD FRIENDS all at the same time.  Our house is only a year and a half old...we have to try and sell it....AND WHERE ARE WE MOVING????  IDAHO FALLS!

Chris got promoted yesterday as the new Branch Manager of the Idaho Falls Enterprise (which inclused main office, airport and satellite office in Rexburg).  This is a HUGE promotion for him career-wise and a huge promotion for us financially!  We feel very very blessed!

So, for any/all friends in IF please give us any tips on where to move, if you know of any NICE houses for rent etc. etc.  We will look forward to spending more time together!

South Hills Sledding Adventure

A few Saturdays ago we headed out to the South Hills with some good friends Jon and Charlotte for a morning of adventure!  We had a perfectly sunny day and fresh new snow to play in.  And even though I was excited to go out and have fun I'm also hoping that it's the last opportunity we'll have to play in the snow this year as I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of spring!

We followed Jon and sooner than later found a good little ravine perfect for the kiddos to sled on.  Brady and Sam had a blast!!!!

The two little girls didn't love it so much and when they both got taken down the hill for rides with parents and got powder sprayed all in their face THEY WERE DONE! 

This was the after effects of my first run...I'm going to blame the sled, not the driver!

2/21/11

Chris had been doing a few extra very nice things for me so I joked with him and said,
"Wow! What's with all of the extra nice things your're doing tonight?"

Chris: "Oh, I'm just trying to earn some brownie points!"

Olivia pipes up, "Mom!  Where's the brownies???"


At dinner:

Brady: "Mom, I don't like this chicken, it's yucky"  (Brady thinks most food is yucky)
Olivia:  "Brady, it's not yucky!  Poop is yucky!"

Bowling for Brady's birthday

Since we had Brady's birthday party a week after his real birthday we celebrated by taking him out to lunch and bowling with mom and dad Graf and Chelsae.  I asked him to pick anywhere that he wanted to go for lunch and I started to say, "Chinese...pizza buffet...cafe rio...." when he said, "Artic Circle!"  At first I tried to talk him out of it but he didn't skip a beat by saying, "Mom!  It's my birthday!  And you said that I could go wherever I wanted to!" Artic Circle it was!

He and Liv had a great time eating their respective burger and chicken nuggets and then playing on the indoor playground. 

Bowling- Brady helped to teach Olivia how to bowl...

Grammie with the kiddos!

A Day at Hogwarts...aka Brady's 6th Birthday Party!!!

Part I.  Invitations

Invitations read as follows:

You are hereby invited to attend the

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and

Wizardry to participate in classes, a

Quidditch tournament and a feast in

honor of the birthday of your friend,

Brady Graf.

Arrive at Platform 9 3/4

on February 12th, 2011

at the stroke of 11 o'clock a.m.

Please RSVP by owl post email or

muggle telephone:

We invited 18 friends and guess what...THEY ALL CAME!!!!

Part II.  Platform 9 3/4

This picture came out dark, but as the children arrived at the party they got to go through the brick wall at Platform 9 3/4 just like Harry did on his first trip to Hogwarts!  This took me HOURS to make but I think it set the scene for the party and was also an awesome backdrop to take pictures of our guests in front of!!!

Part III.  Welcome to Hogwarts!

Our livingroom as  the Gryffindor Common Room

Brady and I searched the internet for images that we were able to print and then fill picture frames with.  Again, many, many hours went into this "transformation" but I think it was awesome and Brady loved it!

As you entered the room the Fat Lady Painting greeted you on the left, as well as the Owl Post Headquarters (empyt birdcage, as Hedwig was on vacation from all of her invitation deliveries!)

 

To the right was a bookcase with various pictures of the common rooms' hero, Harry displayed, as well as a symbol of the Deathly Hallows, quills, textbooks and a few remaining wands from Ollivander's Wand Shop.

 This was present central:

All of the picture frames in the livingroom (ah hem, I mean common room)

were filled with Hogwarts themed people and events:

Birthday banners.  I had planned to have the mantle covered in bottles filled with maps

and all sorts of creepy concoctions, but alas, I ran out of time!

 I made these banners and pendants out of felt and thought that they gave the room great flair. 

I really loved how everything turned out!

 Guests Arriving:

As the guests arrived we played the Quidditch tournament from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Book I) so the kids who weren't as familiar with Harry Potter could get an idea of the game that they would be playing.  We also adorned each of the children (who elected to) a Harry Potter scar of their own on the forehead and they each chose a wand in either black, brown, red or silver.

Next they were instructed on proper wand care and use and they were split into two "teams" if you will. 

I tried to remain calm and use strategy to conquer this party and it's 18 attendees

(not including birthday boy, little sister and friend's little sister!)  21 kiddos in all!!!

Potions Class:

My AWESOME friend Charlotte stayed for the party and helped me run the potions class. I would have been in bad shape without her!!! The Potions class was a hit but it definately didn't go as I intended. At the last minute I decided to forgo mixing the kool-aid into water and having several jars of different colored liquids on the table. I thought that if I just mixed the sugar with the Kool-aid mix that it would be sweet enough and give good color, less messy and funner for the kids to mix into their potions cups. Well, I was wrong...many of the kids complained that their potions really didn't taste like very much but sweet water, so if we ever do this agin we'll have to go for the messier route!

All in all, the kids loved mixing the different colored sugars and creating gross looking concoctions. There were also many who tried the pop rocks in the water and it made a cool crackling sound, but once again, if I had to do over I wouldn't use the pop rocks and I would save myself some money!

Ingredients:

Red Crystals = Fizzing Whizbees

Red sugar = Hippogriff liver

Blue sugar = Unicorn blood

Orange sugar = Truth serum

Green sugar = Gillyweed

Purple sugar = Pollyjuice potion

I forgot to take pictures before the kids got in on the action, so these are the best we have...

Brady and two of his buddies, Aiden and Eric

While one "team" made their Potions the other team had a

Care of Magical Creatures Class

and a

Quidditch Tournament!

Chris was a trooper and kept order with all of "the crazies" outside! We hid many of Brady and Olivia's stuffed animals all around the back yard including 3 moose, 1 unicorn, 1 racoon, 3 frogs, 1 snake, 3 bears, 1 wolf, 1 owl, 1 lion and several others. Then when that team was done they re-hid the animals for the next team to find!

I am sad that I didn't get a picture of the Quidditch Hoops and Chris took them down before he knew I wanted one. I used 3 hula hoops, sprayed them gold and had Chris nail them onto some dowels that I bought at Lowe's. Then he put them into the ground at varying heights. We used a kick ball for the bludger and a yellow golf ball for the golden snitch. We kept it simple and the kids had a great time running around.

                           

Dad video taped and helped Chris keep order!

Meanwhile, in the kitchen my mom was filling chocolate covered ice cream cones with ice cream for me. 

I'm so lucky that she loves to be in the kitchen!

I didn't get a chance to take a picture of the desserts (or any of the food for that matter) so here is a picture from the hostessblog where I got inspired for the birthday "cakes" which were really circle shaped brownies instead of cupcakes.  The kids seemed to like them and loved every messy bit!

We also had a lunch with a cauldron full of Butterbeer (aka Cream Soda), dragon eggs (aka mini corn dog nuggets), skeleton bones (aka crinkle cut french fries), cheese cubes, mandarin oranges and grapes.  The lunch was a hit and we had no disasters!  Thank heavens for a beautifully warm day because we kept the kids outside as much as possible and even ate out on the patio!

Honeyduke's Candy Shoppe:

Before the kids left to go home they got to fill a mini cauldron filled

with Bertie Bott's Every flavor beans, Chocolate frogs and gummy worms.

Each of the kids got to take a mini cauldron home filled with candies from Honeyduke's.

And they each got their picture taken in front of Platform 9 3/4

(a few of our guests opted not to have their picture taken)

Birthday Boy!!!

...and little sister Livy!

Clara and Britney

Parker and Gage (brothers)

Cooper and Eric

Joshua and Logan (cousins)

Anna and William

Aiden and Allen

 

Annie and Collin

Sam and Alivia (siblings)

Presents:

Brady got some really awesome presents from his friends and family!  To name a few:  he got some Bakugans, Star Wars puzzle, kite and book, bubble set, Harry Potter coloring picture, a CD/radio alram clock, Where's Waldo book, $$$$$ and a Lego Harry Potter set!  Thanks everybody!

To end the evening we watched Sam and Alivia for a few hours and all went out to eat for Chinese!  Chris and I were a little nervous about taking four kiddos along but they all did great and we had a good time!  Perfect end to a busy day!