We are alive, just busy :)

Hi friends and family! So sorry to drop off the face of blogland here. I've been so incredibly busy the last 8 months {yikes, has it really been that long since i posted on here!} I just simply haven't had time to write posts on here. Over the months, I've shared more on my personal FB page about what we're doing and day to day pictures via Instagram. So if you're interested in what's going on in our neck of woods {and if you aren't totally understand!!!}, make sure to friend me on Facebook!

But I will say, I've recently hired a couple people to help me with things, so I'm hoping {praying} this helps free up more of my time so I can do things like post on here more :) I sincerely hope you are doing well!! Gavin and Hayden are growing so fast and we just love them so much. They are two very mischievous boys that keep me on my toes constantly! Davis is still enjoying his job.

take care,
Linda

Gavin's 3rd birthday

Hey! Sorry for the long wait. Been really busy lately! But here's the pics from Gavin's 3rd birthday. He sure is growing up!

look how big he is! he's getting so tall. although in this picture, I'm pretty sure he is waring a pair of Hayden's pants. {love the high waters} Sadly, the waist in Hayden's 12 mo jeans totally fit Gavin.

 For Gavin's birthday, he requested "blue cupcakes".

Blowing out birthday candles only fed his obsession with fire.

 The cupcakes are blue, the frosting is blue, and the candles are blue. As you can guess, his fave color is Blue. If he had his way, everything in  his world would be blue. Especially fans. He keeps asking for a blue fan. {he is wearing his fave shirt. he'd wear it every day if i let him. i think 4 times a week is more than plenty!}

 He got a tower of 3 cupcakes for his third birthday.

I have to throw this in for kicks. Gavin is so helpful. Especially when it comes to Hayden, poop, and diapers. In this pic, I caught him stripping off Hayden's diaper to see if it is poopy. {sigh} Fortunately, Hayden was not poopy. this time.

Gavin loves:

• the color blue
• helicopters and airplanes. good thing we have like 5 of each fly over each day, thanks to living near a base.
• fans. any type, size...anything that resembles a fan...
• riding his bike to the park
• feeding the ducks
• chocolate and any type of candy he can get his fingers on
• making messes in mommy's craft room
• cutting ANYTHING in sight with scissors. including mommy's scarf, hair, and fabric
• playing "Sheet Monster" with his daddy
• doing anything with his daddy. he's davis's side kick. guess he finally learned that mommy is boring.
• loves to eat noodles, spaghetti O's {he ate a bowl of them for breakfast on his birthday}, cookies, cupcakes, carrots and ranch, hot dogs, hamburgers, stuffing, frosting
• Veggie Tales, Thomas the Train
• his blue and white striped short sleeve shirt
• bugs and spiders. and loves to squish them for mommy.
• running around naked. or half naked. or with just a hooded towel on his head.
• peeing outside.
• sleeping with about 10 stuffed animals and 4 blankets.
• reading the If you give a Mouse a Cookie books.
• Santa.

Gavin got to see Santa for the first time at our ward christmas party on Dec. 1 and he told Santa he wanted a present for christmas. He did really good about sitting on his lap and talking to him. I have pics on my phone I need to upload.

Funny Gavin quote: {talking to Davis while I was gone} "We need to buy mommy a weewee." oh dear.

Hayden's first birthday

my baby boy turned 1 on monday. ACK. he's growing up! honestly, he's been a tough baby. so although i am sad to see him turn 1, i am also a bit relieved to have that first year done. he is my little cutie!

sorry my blog's watermark is on these photos. {mom if you want to print them, i'll send you the file :) i can't believe he's 1 already. his personality is coming through. a lot. and he's so fun! he turned 1 yesterday and as of today, he refuses to eat baby food. seriously. i could not get him to eat baby food today. at all. so i guess its a 1 year old thing to not eat baby food! haha stinker.

this is the cake i made for him. a devil's food cake with blue butter frosting. 

and this is the cupcake that the little guy got to devour....which in reality turned into a poking session..... and finished with him {so kindly} letting his Davis lick his fingers clean for him! {it was really cute!}

 singing happy birthday to him. look at him stare at the candle!

 poking his cupcake

 what do i do know??

 such a helpful daddy he has!

 davis showing him how its done.

 giving him his first bite of cake. {and first taste of real sugar!}

 and he's hooked!

this was what was left of his cupcake. 

Hayden weighed 18 lbs 6 oz at 11 months. we will be going to his 12 month appt soon. {once we find a new pediatrician we like. the last one was a flop} 

Hayden loves to eat most fruits, cheerios, small shell noodles, corn flakes, cheezits, and spinach dip. He hates cheese. {is this my child??} 

He's a crawling machine. And pulls up on everything. 

He knows how to turn my iphone on from sleep mode. 

He sleeps through the night and just went down to 2 naps a day. He takes his first nap at 9:00 and his second nap from 1:00. 

He says mamama dadada bababa nanana and a few others.

His hair is blond and really starting to grow now. 

Eyes are sill very bright blue. 

He has 3 teeth, 2 on bottom, 1 on top. and another one that should be coming soon. 

A few weeks ago Hayden came down with the flu and had a temperature of 103.2 in the middle of the night. our home teacher and good friend came over and Davis and him gave Hayden a blessing. His fever slowly went down afterwards. we are so grateful for good friends who answer their phones in the middle of the night and are willing to get out of bed to help!

we are alive!

i have been so bad about blogging on here! its been like 2.5 months since i last posted on here. wow. but life has been crazy busy around here. we have finally moved into our new home and are finally starting to feel settled. still a lot of decorating to do, but its starting to feel more and more like home.

anyways, i'm going to catch everyone up with the gardners. let's see, we lived in the old Windsor house for 6 weeks. we had no stove, 1/2 a kitchen sink, no dishes, A/C barely worked, a mini fridge {not a full fridge}, spiders, squirrels, ants, dust, and dirt everywhere. it was gross and everything was broken in it. {the house is 70 years old and had been vacant for several years.} so it was in need of some serious TLC. we were so happy to move out of the place! but here's a couple pics from there.

i was cleaning up a mess Gavin had made when i turned around to find that he'd snuck into the mini fridge and had buttered up Hayden. at first i was mad {rough day}, but it was really funny! Gavin was so proud of himself. he is so mischievous.

Hayden at 8 months old sitting up pretty good. still fell over occasionally though.

Gavin playing in the rain puddles in windsor.

trying to catch rain with his mouth.

"washing his hair" this is when he became obsessed with washing his hair. or in other words, getting his hair wet and watching the water drip off.

love this picture of Gavin looking at me through the lattice at the windsor house.

we moved into our new to us house in Carrollton on July 9. we were able to move in before we closed on the house. since the home had been vacate for over a year, there was some small maintenance things that needed to be done like trim the trees, clean, change filters, etc.

Hayden at 9 months old {in Carrollton} he finally starting sleeping 8 straight hours around this time. yay! and started taking better naps- like 1.5 hrs instead of 45 mins. huge improvement. he also got his first tooth in around this time.

since we had a list of things to do on the house and we don't have any family close by, we flew my mom out for a week to help us. she was a great help! we got a lot done that first week. we completely unpacked everything but the decorations, cleaned the entire house from top to bottom, and davis and i got most of the shopping done that was needed at the hardware store.

we made sure to take breaks and have fun with Oma too! Gavin loves his trike that Oma gave him awhile back. he is getting really fast on it and can even ride it down steep hills and keep it under control. whenever we go for walks, he rides his bike and i push Hayden in a stroller.

Hayden and Gavin LOVE to swing! we go to the park by our house and most of the time, we spend our entire time on the swings.

we had to fix a few holes in one wall and paint when we moved in. one night we let Gavin help for a minute. he was in heaven!

he did manage to get some paint on the wall. {oh and for the record, we replaced the carpet pictured above. that's why you don't see a drop cloth. it was nice to paint and not have to worry about getting paint on the carpet.}

Davis's crazy acrobatics to paint the staircase.

bath pics! taken 7/17/11 notice Hayden's chubby cheeks :)

the boys love to bathe. we give them a bath every night even though we go swimming almost every day at the neighborhood pool. {which by the way, is awesome!! this neighborhood has a great kid pool and the lifeguards are awesome. i'm going to miss going to the pool everyday when it closes during the week starting the end of the month :( you'll notice how tan Hayden's legs are in this pic. he has the tannest legs i've ever seen!

we live in a branch. its pretty small. we have 3 sister missionaries in our branch. we have them over for dinner about every week. shown above is Sister Gopp {gavin does Jellyfish high 5's with her}, Sister Butterfield, and Sister Nash. Sister Butterfield was transferred but the other 2 are still here. they are the cutest gals! Gavin just adores them. one day we were coloring and i asked Gavin what he was coloring and he said, "Jellyfish."
He drew jellyfish for Sister Gopp! it was so cute!

Hayden at 10 months {love the shirt haha} he got his 2nd tooth in.

Hayden is finally sleeping 12 hours most nights. FINALLY!!!!!!! and is almost weaned. Hayden loves applesauce, peaches, sweet potatoes, carrots, and chicken with stars.

this was like 2 days ago. Gavin decided he wanted to be my model for one of my latest projects. lol

Davis and i upholstered our craig's list dining room chairs. this is gavin helping me take the seats off with his toy wrench, of course!

and that brings us to yesterday. yesterday, 8/27/11 was a big day. it was davis and i's 7 year anniversary. we had to share it with Hurricane Irene. she came through yesterday afternoon, but we had all kinds of stormy weather starting friday night. the power went out saturday morning and was out for 5 hours. then it came back on right as davis turned the generator on. {great timing huh?} oh and i have to add, davis drove 2.5 hours on friday to buy the generator, which was a floor model in Farmville. only generator we could find. anyways, power came back on and then went out again about 9pm saturday night and stayed out until about 8:00am this morning. but at 3:00am, davis got up to turn the generator on for the fridge and left the backdoor open. well, the fumes from the generator came in and set the CO detectors off. we couldn't get the blasted alarm to go off for over an hour.{fortunately the boys slept through all of it. HUGE BLESSING} we opened doors and turned off the gas to the house, but could not get the stupid thing to stop beeping. finally we called the fire department and they said it was probably linked to the home security system and that the only way to turn it off is to take out the battery. so we opened it up and couldn't find a battery. so davis pulled the red wire and it shut off. we put it back together after we woke up this  morning and it was fine. but that was a nightmare last night! as far as damage from the hurricane, half of one of our big trees in the back broke off {didn't hit the house}and 2 tall shrubs in front of our house bit the dust. oh and a couple windows leaked. but we feel so blessed!! things could have been so much worse! at one point the Hurricane Irene was rated a category 3 hurricane, but it was downgraded to a 2. we are all safe, have power, and had a gorgeous, sunny day today. oh and we're like the only ones on our street that had trees/shrubs down. which was kind of funny. but oh well. 

anyways, that brings us up to date. sorry for the huge post. hope everyone is well!!

Mother's Day, Moving, and More!

So its almost been 2 months since I posted on here. wow. So much has happened! We'll start with Mother's Day.....

For Mother's Day, Gavin and Davis washed my car. Gavin had a blast spraying mommy's car! He looked like a mini fireman.

Gavin took his job seriously. Davis had to wrangle the hose away from him when they were done.
Sorry my images are so blurry. I'm using Picasa to edit them and sometimes it doesn't mesh well with Blogger. I don't have the time right now to go back and fix them so they work better {its almost midnight}

This is Hayden hanging out in the car seat while I was outside taking pics for my craft blog in April.

Hayden started sitting up on his own mid May for a few seconds before falling over. This was taken May 22. {isn't his shark shirt cute?}

Hayden's7 month pics. He's got the prettiest blue eyes ever! He sits up on his own, eats cereal, peas, green beans, carrots, applesauce, bananas, and sweet potatoes. He likes the orange and yellow foods, but dislikes anything green. He says DaDaDa BaBaBa and makes an assortment of squeals, squawks, and giggles.

We moved June 4 to Windsor, VA...the smallest, quietest town in Virginia. We are staying in the Davis's boss's vacant house. {he got divorced a few years ago and they've been trying to sell it for 2 yrs. The home has plenty of problems, bugs, and nothing works. We will only be staying here until we can close on our next home in Carrollton.

This is a pic of Gavin a couple days ago. I had him help me with a project for Craftaholics Anonymous. I needed him to hold a piece of paper and take a picture of him, and well, that is so much easier said than done with a 2.5 yr old! I got lots of funny ones which I'll post on CA soon.

Funny things Gavin did today:
-I was busy cleaning and Hayden started fussing a little and Gavin stated matter of factly, "I'm in time out." Me: "You are? why?" "I made Hayden cry." I didn't see what happened and I'm not sure he really did make Hayden cry, but it was really funny he would put himself in time out!
-During one of Hayden's naps, I was sitting at the kitchen table with Gavin. He grabbed a pack of paper, announced he was going to work. He then proceeded to give me a kiss on my arm and left the room. {I found him playing on his trike in the hall!} silly boy! Now that he sees Davis leave in the mornings, he was mimicking him. So cute!

We had family portraits taken right before we left Richmond. We had them taken downtown and it was really fun. There were trains, airplanes, helicopter, buses, and trucks and Gavin was in heaven! Oh and the pics turned out super cute! I can't wait to show them off.

Sorry for being MIA on here for so long. Been extremely busy lately!! We are so happy to be closer to Davis's work. He comes home every day for lunch. Its so nice! We've both felt a load of stress literally lifted from our shoulders since we moved. The past year has been really tough for us and we are so happy to have it over! I feel like I'm on vacation having Davis around so much. I love it!

Easter 2011 and random pics

 Gavin loved Easter! The Egg Hunt was a hit with him! While Hayden took his morning nap and before church, we had fun doing a couple Egg hunts with Gavin. {notice he's still in his PJ's}

 We rationed his candy to 1 jelly bean per egg. The tiniest amount of sugar makes this 2 year old go crazy! He loved opening the eggs and eating the jelly bean...even if it fell on the ground! haha

 This was after church when we were hanging out outside. It was in the 90's here today. Gorgeous day!

Random Pics

 I made this shirt and posted about it on my craft blog. But I love the pics I took of Hayden! He was such a cute model!

 His expression in this one is priceless!

 He loves to giggle and is ticklish. So fun!

 Obsessed with his feet. He loves chewing on them.

 And fingers are good entertainment too.

This is Gavin after his much needed hair cut. He is definitely in his terrible twos. Hope it passes soon! He's a stinker.