Latest Happenings and TWO Birthdays

This is Sophie on her 2nd Birthday. She was helping do dishes.

The picture below is Hailey at the San Diego Botanical Gardens. We went there for a Preschool fieldtrip in February.


This is Hailey, a preschool friend, and Sophie at the San Diego Botanical Gardens. They're in front of the bamboo forest.

Hailey and Sophie at the Botanical Gardens. It was so beautiful!

Sophie's 2nd Birthday. She LOVES Elmo, so an Elmo cake we did.

Sophie is TWO!

Our chuch time was changed to 1:00-4:00, so poor Sophie misses her naps each Sunday. She comes home extremely cranky and tired and usually thrashes and runs around the house screaming until we can get her to calm down and go to sleep. This is when Trent nearly fell asleep from dealing with her for a while in Cory's bedroom. luckily, SHE fell asleep!

Our little Sophie and a crazy hairdo! We love her curls!

She thought her hair was pretty funny, too!

This is Adam, Hailey's cousin. They came to visit us in mid-January, and we went to the beach in Del Mar. So much fun!

Hailey and Adam are so much alike, it's more like their siblings than cousins.

Caleb (cousin) with Cory at Del Mar Beach.

Hailey showing her hair after she wanted me to put curlers in it overnight. The curls lasted almost the entire day--which for her hair, is a long time!

Hailey showing me some of her gifts from her friends' birthday party in early January.

Hailey's birthday party.

Hailey's tiara pinata for her 4th birthday.

Hailey with her Disney Princess cake for her 4th Birthday. She sure loved it!

We went to Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego (Point Loma) in January. Such beautiful views of the city on one side of the peninsual and the ocean on the other side.

Cory posing for me over the Pacific Ocean.

Trent at Cabrillo National Monument overlooking the ocean.

We were pretty close to the ledge overlooking the ocean. But it wasn't a huge dropoff like it seems. I wanted it to look like we were standing over the water.

Sophie in a cute dress after church one Sunday.

Hailey after her family birthday party on New Years Eve.

Sophie with her new shopping cart from Santa for Christmas.

Hailey with her Christmas presents.

The kids on Christmas morning 2010.

Hailey kissing Sophie.

Grrrr! Computers!!

This is almost all the Halterman Grandchildren (minus Mason). Seven kids under the age of 7. It's amazing they all held still.

This is Jacob and Joseph Shaw (cousins) with Sophie, Rebecca Shaw, and Hailey playing in the snow at Thanksgiving in Utah.

This is Hailey with a vest and Indian hat she made for Preschool. She dressed herself that day--can you tell? There are just some battles I don't have the strength for.

This is us standing in front of the San Diego temple on our date last week. Gorgeous!

Cory got a new bike for his 7th birthday. Don't you love his FAKE smile?

This is our cute 22-month-old Sophie. I can't believe my baby is almost two!!

So, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving vacation to visit Trent's family in Sandy, UT. We drove up to Utah and froze our tails off and got our fill of snow for the season. The longer we're here in San Diego, the harder it is to bear 18 degree weather and driveways covered in ice.

Anyway, the reason I am hating computers right now is because just before Thanksgiving our My Documents file on our hard drive basically disappeared. The screen just said it was unable to link to the file or something. So since we got our computer just 2 years ago and paid about $1800 for it at PC Laptops, we thought it was the perfect chance to take it up to Utah with us and take advantage of their free lifetime repair and service on any computer you buy there. Well, we picked it up a week later, headed home, the drive appeared for two days, then it disappeared again. So we paid $75 to ship it to the nearest PC Laptops (in Las Vegas) to have them fix it. Well, they told us to today they can't recover the My Documents folder or anything else on that drive. Okay, that means, all my PICTURES from the last 6 years, my VIDEOS from the last 4 years, and my family letters I send out each month via email that I save on that file are all GONE from the computer. Well, THANK HEAVENS I have downloanded pictures through July 2010 onto a website called Winkflash.com, so I haven't really lost all my pictures--just Aug-Nov. of this year. And I still had my videos on the camcorders hard drive since Jan of 2009, but that means ALL my videos from 2007 and 2008 are GONE. I even spent about 30 hours awhile ago making a really cute, edited movie of all our video clips from 2007 (including captions and music soundtracks), I just hadn't saved it to a DVD yet!! That was Hailey's first two very adorable years of life. My family letters, I luckily just printed them all out over the last couple months and put them in 3-ring binders, so thankfully I did that!!!

Honestly, I can't believe how upset I am about losing two years worth of videos when my kids were so small and cute and that time is gone forever. So, to anyone reading this: BACK UP your photos and videos to spare discs or CD's. You don't want to lose them, trust me! In fact, I'm glad I have all those pictures on Winkflash (we have a lot of Picasa Web, too) because I guess if our house burned down, we'd lose all our CDs, too. I've heard of companies that back up your entire computer on their website or something and so you don't eve have to worry about losing anything. We'll have to look into that.

Halloween and Fall Stuff

Well, I guess I'm done adding pictures--blogger won't let me add anymore.
These are from our ward trunk-or-treat on Sat, Oct. 30. I had bought a new storm trooper costume for Cory this year, and last minute he decided to wear his ninja costume from last year. Okay..... I told him I was NOT going to buy him a new costume next year. Hailey was a cheerleader, and Sophie was a hula girl.




This is Spencer, Cory's best friend, and Cory after a soccer game from this season.


This is Hailey with Brooke (Spencer's sister). They kind of like each other....just a tad.
So cute!




This is Hailey with two of her Joy School buddies. She's the only girl in our Joy School with 3 other boys. We went to a pumpkin patch for a fieldtrip right before Halloween. It was in the low 80's that day--we were hot!

Sophie eating our lunch at the pumpkin patch.

In early October, three of my sisters came out to San Diego for a sisters weekend. We stayed in a hotel for 3 nights in Pacific Beach. We went to Los Angeles one day and did Universal Studios Theme Park. After that, we went to the Chinese Mann Theater (pictured here), and saw lots of stars' handprints.

Some of the cast from Harry Potter.

The next day for our sisters weekend, we hiked Torrey Pines Preserve (the picture below this one), we played on boogie boards at the beach, then we went on a pretty intense bike ride along the hilly coast of La Jolla, California (just north of the city of San Diego.) So fun! It was an awesome three days away from our kids. (Between the 4 of us, we have 15 kids!!) I'd say it was a much-needed break. Here, Christy is pulling me on a boogie board. We also rode them coming in on the waves--the way you're supposed to!

Meditating in a rock cavity on our hike of Torrey Pines Preserve.

I'm actually not in this picture (below). That's Annette in the middle. I was taking the picture. Everywhere we went, people asked if we were sisters. 'Ya Think??

End of Summer

This is Sophie in our front yard. We had a few days this summer where it got up into the low 90's, and considering we don't have A/C, that felt pretty hot! Luckily, we had this little pool to cool off in, if we were too lazy to drive to the big pool.



Hailey on the first day of Preschool. I am doing Joy School with her and 3 other moms. (We take turns every 4th week to teach two days a week. She loves it so much! She's the only girl, and the other three boys are very "boy", but she's holding her own!

Cory on the first day of 1st Grade!! He looks pretty tired because we have to leave the house at 7:15 AM to get to school on time. (No buses in CA) His school starts at 7:45.

When we visitied my parents in Gilbert, AZ the end of August. This is Hailey hugging her cousin, Emma. She sure loves babies!

This is Sophie hugging her cousin, Emma. Sohpie loves babies even more than Hailey! (Poor Emma.)

Hailey playing dress-up in some dress- up clothes at my parent's house. I used to play dress-up in these clothes 20 years ago!!

This is Sophie with Laura Roe's little boy, Landon. They are about 7 months apart. I visited Laura while she was staying at her in-laws house in AZ, when I was there visiting my parents!

Me with Laura Roe at her in-laws house in AZ. Good times!

Weston, Cory's first best friend from the Univ. of Utah married student housing (The Village), Hailey, and Cory.

Hailey playing more dress-up at my parent's house. Good thing my mom saved all those ancient clothes, right mom?

One of our last trips to the beach before school started. This was at Del Mar Beach. It was one of the few very sunny, very warm days we have ever been to the beach. Of course Trent missed it--he was at work. But most of the time when we've gone to the beach it's either a little cloudy, all the way cloudy, and it's just breaking 65 degrees. But this day, it was actually in the upper 70's!

Cory had so much fun jumping in the waves with all his friends. (It was finally hot enough to want to jump waves!)

Hailey and Sophie with some friends at the beach.

This is the position our kids assume when we say "family prayer time". It all started with Sophie diving under Trent's frame to "kneel" underneath him and then all the kids had to start copying her, until now, it's turned into this. We do make Cory and Hailey at least kneel down under daddy. Sophie is still allowed to just sprawl about wherever.

Eating S'mores at our ward campout.

The view of Escondido from our campsite. Hailey is just a few feet from where our tent was set up.

The view from the other side of the hill at the ward campout. This campground was just a 30 minute drive from our house.

Trent grilling up some mean steaks and modeling his new apron I got him for Father's Day. (It says Real Men Don't Use Recipes.) Those were some of the best steaks he's ever done. They fed all 5 of us for 2 nights. (I think we made steak fajitas on the second night.

Play time with daddy on the floor.

After our many trips to Sea World this spring and summer, the kids collected everything they've gotten from Sea World over the last year. (We usually don't buy them souvenirs, a lot of this stuff was when we went to Sea World in April of 2009 before we had any idea we were moving to San Diego.) They put on the dolphin show for us using their stuffed animals and the Sea World Barbie that Hailey's holding. I was trying to sing the song that you hear during the show. It was pretty funny! (My attempt at singing a song I've heard just 5 or 6 times, not the show.)

The Cirque de la Mer set at Sea World.

The kids with a giant Shamu that someone didn't want and offered it to us. We took lots of pictures with it, and then left it on the grass and told some people no one wanted it. (Maybe if we had a giant, empty basement we would've taken it home with us!)

Cory lost BOTH of his front teeth within 4 days of each other, and then a couple weeks later, school started. What a great way to start out first grade!

This was one day when Hailey gave Trent very explicit instructions on how she wanted him to do her hair. He thought it looked pretty silly, but Hailey was so proud of her creation, and Trent wanted to document this hairdo, so he took a picture.