2011 Hadley Happenings

OUR FAMILY CHRISTMAS LETTER...

No bragging, just the facts! 

* The Hubs changed church callings from Elder's Quorum Secretary to Young Men's Secretary.  The only real difference is that now he is officially working with boys and doesn't have to pretend to act his age.  He continues to try to maintain sanity while living with a very pregnant woman, an emotional 8 year-old, a flibbertigibbet 6-year old and the boy wonder.  He is tired of cleaning long hairs out of the shower drain and searching the house for missing toy parts.  For Christmas he wants a nap.

* Mama gave gestating another whirl with a surprise pregnancy that has taken up the majority of the year and is still going strong.  (Baby boy due Dec. 30th).  She doesn't feel nearly as guilty as she probably should about how much of that hair in the shower drain belongs to her.  She continues to work from home doing transcription, and is pretty sure it's redundant to tell people she "works" from home.  Someday she'd love to be able to say she "lounges" from home.  Also, bon bons sound yummy.

* Ms. Els is in 2nd grade, turned 8 in November, had the rock star birthday party of the century and was baptized.  Upon turning 8 she quickly became "Els of the flailing limbs" and there have been several glass items, donuts and Christmas decorations that have fallen victim to her spastic movements. Tears were shed over the donuts. She was also suddenly blessed with wisdom surpassing that of her parents.

* Cadie Lu is in kindergarten and will be turning 6 the first week of January at which time she expects to be lavished with the same amount of attention her sister received this past November.  She is doing a Chinese Immersion program at school and we're pretty sure she says mean things about us behind our backs, but we have no proof and refuse to invest in Rosetta Stone.  Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

* J-Bear is now 3 1/2 and his biggest complaint is that all the girls in his life won't stop talking to him. Every now and then he seeks out his Grandpa Ridges in the back bedroom where they will watch Moab jeeping videos to rebalance their testosterone levels.  He started preschool this past week and was slightly disappointed about the "schooling" part where he had to put toys away and learn something.  Life is hard.  We feel his pain.

With a baptism and a new baby this holiday season, we have enjoyed focusing on our Savior's love and plan for our happiness.  We hope that this coming year brings that happiness to you, along with many, many reasons to LAUGH!!

Love,

The Hadley Family

Ironic Parenting

Today my children are full of the exuberance of Christmas.  New cousin born yesterday, cousin and uncle birthday party tonight, grandfather's birthday next week, only THREE days of school before the holiday break and 9 days left on the Christmas countdown.  Don't even get them started on the tiny amount of days left until this baby is due to be forced into the world.  It's a glorious, twinkle-light time in their young lives.

I am full of heartburn and stretching ligaments.

The two are like water and oil.  Not mixing.

This afternoon, during another rousing dance fest to the Nutcracker music, which involved cartwheels and flying elbows, I couldn't go on.  Their happy faces were killing me.  Tchaikovsky was quickly becoming my new nemesis.

So, I grounded them. 

To their DS's. 

That's right.  I said, "Okay, that's enough.  I need a quiet moment.  I want you on your beds, playing your DS's and if you get bored of that then you'd better turn on the Wii" !! 

Ironic?  Yes. 

Successful....Heck yes!

Animal Lovers

People, people, people.  People.  I don't mean to be a Scrooge, or a Grinch, or just a plain old rude butt jerk, but seriously, this obsession with your furry pets has got to end. 

Now, I get that life can be lonely sometimes and that having a furry object to love and cuddle can be a great boon to people who would otherwise be sad.  But... they are not people.  You don't need to grocery shop with them, take them to the movie theater and subject the general public to them.

The other day I saw an extremely large parrot on the shoulder of a grocery shopper while I was out.  Seriously.  No one wants to buy the orange your parrot just turded on!  Let's not even start on the trail of feathers being left behind like bread crumbs so you can find your way back to your car.  And the squawking.  Good heavens, if I wanted to be in a poop filled, screeching noise, feather strewn situation I'd be sitting at home with my kids and the feather boas that looked fun at the time!

Yesterday, while I was innocently in yet another grocery store, some fur lovin' fool parked next to me in the parking lot, apparently forgetting that sometimes people need enough room to re-enter their cars after grocery shopping.  This can be particularly stressful for those of us who are carrying a little extra in their baby belly. 

As if that wasn't bad enough, he had a giant dog in the passenger seat and had left the passenger window completely rolled down.  Not cracked.  All the way down.  This put me and Killer on eye level as a staring contest began.  See, I couldn't get in my car while he had his head sticking out of the window.  The quarters were too close and I didn't want to get my face licked, or bitten off.  I didn't know the overall mood of this dog.  I've occasionally faced similar situations where the dog was feeling protective of his vehicle and lunged at the car window when I went to get into my car.

So, take your dog along, but roll up the bloody window a bit more, please.

Perhaps my favorite dog related incident was last spring when I saw a lady jogging down a main street in my fair city pushing a jogging stroller.  As I got closer I realized that she was not pushing a human in that stroller, but rather a dog.  And this was no poodle my friends.  It was a large dog, perhaps a boxer or some such animal.  Dog was casually lounging while human did all the work.  Honestly.

Next, rodents.  Rodents such as hamsters, guinea pigs and rats are not really supposed to be hanging out at the local department store ogling strangers from the handbags of their caregivers.  It's freaky, it's wrong and, just, yuck!

What I don't understand is why we have a No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service sign on the door, but just any old Buster, Snowball or Georgie can pad on in with their tails wagging or feathers flapping and no one stops them.  You will never convince me that a hamster or a parrot is being used as a service animal.

If we're being honest, in some ways my children are like pets.  They need to be fed, sheltered and add to my overall feelings of contentment.  But they can be yappy and snarly and a distraction to other shoppers.  This is why I do my best to leave them home.


And when I do leave them in the car to wait for me you can bet I don't leave the windows down {ha}.

The Name Game

Tonight, dear reader, I pose to a question that is running rampant through the Hadley household as we are three weeks away from welcoming baby number 4 into our family. 

What's in a name?

For the most part I tend to keep expectations low.  This, as has been noted regularly in this blog, has been a very lucrative attitude for me over the years.

But, all bets are off when it comes to naming my offspring.  See, each of my children has been given their name for a very specific and sentimental reason.

Eliana Mae - It took us several years to get her here.  Eliana means "God has answered", which he did after 3 years of struggles.  And Mae is the middle name of two of her great-grandmothers and one great-great-grandmother whom were amazing women.

Cadence Marie - Hubs is a drummer.  He specifically chose her name to remind him of his love for music and a good "cadence" when playing his beloved instrument.  Marie is my middle name and also my mother's middle name.  Another passing down of names.

Joel Steven - Joel was born father's day weekend and his name is a combo of my dad and my father-in-law's names.  Joseph and Lowell squished together = Joel.  Steven is Hubs's name.  Three great men who love him and will be great examples and friends to him throughout his life.  He carries a great name. 

And now, number four.  How is a girl supposed to come up with a name story for this little guy?  All year long he'll hear tales on birthdays of how we came up with names for his older siblings and then we'll get to him in the last month of the year and he'll get a big... well, huh.  We just drew a name out of a hat.  {sniffle}.  Poor little bugaboo.

He was a surprise, so should we name him Shocker or Whoopsie?  Perhaps we could name him for the birth control pill that failed - Loestrin Hadley has a nice ring.

How about Finito, Last or, my personal favorite, Gomer which means "completed". 

I've tossed around nature names to mimic my own:  Oakes, Brooks, Cypress, Ashton.  But no dice.  Nothing is sticking.

Then, we stumbled upon a fun idea.  While gazing at our stockings hanging by the fire - each stocking has the first letter of that person's name stitched on it - someone suggested we name the baby something comprised of the first letter of the names of our family members. 

S A E C J 

So, we've spent the past few days playing a version of scrabble with that idea in mind.  Who can come up with a name out of those five letters??

And, you know what, we've done it.  We have an idea. 

And most of you will probably hate the name.  And that's okay. 

Because we can tell him - if we do use it - that we wanted to let him know that from the day he was born he was loved by 5 people who will always be part of his life.  We'll give him our names, and our love, to carry with him always.

Sounds pretty cool to me.