My Birthday and kids outside

The kids lately have been playing "Traffic" on our driveway. So we drew some roads and sidewalks and Cory always has to be the cop. Right now he's giving Sophie a ticket for speeding.


Cory is the cop, and he's warning them of a stoplight they missed.

Sophie loves to ride her bike outside.

Hailey on her scooter.

This is what happened when I left the other night to go to the gym, and I left some cupcakes on the edge of the counter. Trent, who doesn't do the laundry, thought it was hilarious.

Last week we went with some of Cory's friends to the beach when it was really low tide to look at some tidepools after school. They had so much fun!

Cory found a really big crab in this little crevice, he hung out here for quite a while hoping he could catch him in his pail. (And then of course return it before we left.) I'm sure we could be sent to lifetime in prison in California for taking a creature of the wild out of it's natural habitat.

Cory did find this hermit crab.

A view of some of the tidepools.

Sophie just wanted me to take her picture one day while she was playing cars, so I did!

Me with my three kids, on my 32nd birthday!

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??