Finally an update!

Hello all.

It has been a little crazy this last little while. We have not posted since Thanksgiving! So here are the highlights:

We had a ward Christmas party in which Santa attended. Benjamin had to work, but Laura was determined to get a picture of Haley on Santa's lap. One by one, the little kids would walk up to sit on his lap and immediately begin crying. Only one little girl did not freak out and told him she wanted a doll(it was absolutely adorable!). You could actually see Santa's blood pressure rising. Laura finally walked up and promised him that Haley would not cry. Santa said alright and Laura put Haley in his lap. Laura bent down to get the picture when she saw, to the horror of poor old Saint Nick, that Haley had a good handful of beard and was pulling hard. Santa was trying to keep it on while all the children were watching. So as it turns out, Haley wasn't much better than a screaming child!

Since then, we have discovered how funny she looks when she stands on the ground. She is so tiny! She looks like a little elf. She is SO happy when we let her be like all of the rest of the people around her!

Here is a picture of Cathy holding Haley. Isn't this a great picture? Cathy is so grateful to live close enough to see Haley so often. One day, all three of us were cleaning the house. All of the sudden, Laura could not find Benjamin. This is what she found. It was too precious not to take a couple of pictures! Then there was Christmas Eve. This year, we spent Christmas with the Thomases. Here are a bunch of pictures of little miss Haley all ready for Christmas... Her shirt says "mom and dad's best present ever"...

And here is Rufus, not as excited that Christmas rolled around. Side note: He would have been happier if he hadn't found his present early, unwrapped it, pulled it out of the package, and ate it! Laura was so mad...

After Christmas, we all spent a few days up at Benjamin's brother, Jake's, cabin. The one thing Benjamin wanted to accomplish while there was creating one of the biggest snowforts in history. No one joined in right away, but once they saw him out there shoveling snow by himself, they all got in the spirit and soon it became a family event. Even Haley was outside having a blast...

We didn't take many pictures this holiday season. It was kind of depressing to look back and realize all of the things that we forgot to document. But overall, it was an awesome Christmas and a great new year.

Now Laura is Student Teaching. She will be done April 3rd and then she will have her degree in Mathematics Education with a minor in Theater and Speech Education. She is working with 9th graders at Rigby Junior High School teaching Geometry and Algebra two as well as helping students get ready for their state tests and high school exit exams. Most of the semester she will have kids labeled "proficient". Whatever that means... Benjamin is staying at home and playing Mr. Mom while Laura is gone and then works evenings and nights. When the two overlap, Grandma Cathy or Aunt Danielle watch Haley.

Haley is as happy as ever. She was sick for a lot of the holidays(her first time...) but is doing better. Even while she was sick she was still a pretty smiley girl. We were just commenting yesterday on how her baby blessing is completely true. She was blessed with a happy disposition. That is our sweet girl. Happy. She has been rolling over from her tummy to her back a lot, and rolled over one time from her back to her tummy(Laura missed it while she was student teaching). Hopefully she will do it even more really soon. She is eating cereal and just started eating cereal with bananas in it. It is pretty funny to watch. She opens her mouth and makes a chomping noise. She is constantly grabbing her feet and Benjamin is convinced that he has taught her how to say "Mama". He does admit that she doesn't really know what she is doing, but it is really fun for us anyway.

We love you all and hope to hear from you soon! Today we will leave you with a picture that we found recently that we took on the side of the road last summer. It is a real, live, bald eagle sitting on a fence post. Pretty cool, huh?