THE DAYTON FAMILY

Today we caroled to lots of family and went to look at the beautiful Christmas lights on Temple Square in Salt Lake. On the way home, Taylor wanted to play with a banana that Grandma Cindy had packed for us to eat. He loves to play 'phone' with bananas. Here is our conversation: Tay: "I wanna call Santy Clause." Me: "Okay, call him!" Tay: "Hello? Oh, hi Santa!" PAUSE Tay: " mhmm, mhmm, mhmm" PAUSE Tay: "Yes, Reindeer - haha!" PAUSE Tay: "Yep! Buh-bye Santa!" Hilarious! He also managed to open the banana all by himself for the first time and ate the whole thing right after this conversation. He was SO proud of himself. :) Here is a cute picture of him today, he has his classic glare that he gives us when we want him to do something that he doesn't like...such as smile for a picture when he wants to keep walking with his cousins, haha! Speaking of cousins, everyone is officially here for our Dayton Family C...

This week we decorated our home for Christmas! We don't have many areas to decorate, but what we do have makes our home feel very warm and festive! Kyla's favorite Christmas item is this little beaded Santa Clause egg from Russia. It motivated her to pull herself up to sit and reach for it! Grandma Cindy was so sweet to provide us with the perfect tree. Taylor was VERY excited to help put it up. He just loves all of the ornaments. They are David's - his mom gave him one every Christmas growing up. :) I especially like our two German nativities. Aunt Bonnie mailed Taylor a chocolate advent calendar from Germany...the chocolate is AMAZING & each piece is huge! Tay loves it (and David & I do too-haha!)

My sister Bonnie,who lives in Germany, had her first baby in September. I, of course, have been dying to meet him, but figured that I would have to wait until January when they came to visit. Still, I kept checking if their were rewards-mile flights (I have been saving up my miles) that would work for our schedule. It seemed like there wasn't ever anything available that was feasible for us. In October, I got the feeling that I really should get Kyla her passport. Then 2 weeks ago, I had been e-mailing my sister a lot and she was sounding down and I was wishing so badly that I could go. On Friday the 19th at 2am I found a flight for Saturday the 20th and then a returning one for the 30th. After freaking out a little bit about if I could actually leave my cute little Taylor for that long (David was able to watch him since it was over Thanksgiving), I booked the flight. The next 36 hours were crazy and tiring, but Kyla and I made it to Germany and were able to spend a week and a half...

Taylor can't say Kyla's name correctly yet; he calls her 'Dyla'. Awhile back, David began calling her 'Kyla Sue'. Now, we often call our cute little baby girl Dyla Sue ...and we say it with a lazy southern drawl sometimes too. Our darling Dyla Sue is already 6 months old! Time FLIES!!! She is such a joy. She is scooting around, wearing shoes (and loving it!) , holding her own against her very loving brother, and smiling & giggling like crazy all the time. She also LOVES to eat real food. (But we have to be careful with that because too much = a tummy ache!) Oh how I love my sweet angel baby girl!

This evening David and Taylor watched the second half of the Jazz game (which was apparently really good and the Jazz made a huge comeback and won) and I took Kyla to Old Navy to get a coat. They were having a 50% off sale and I have checked back at Kid-to-Kid 3 times already with no luck. We found this adorable little coat & with rewards $ ended up getting it for around $4. :) What a deal! Anyway, it was SO much fun to go shopping with my cute little girl. I don't think we've ever gone without one or both of 'the boys'. Most babies hate having clothes taken on and off of them, but Kyla giggled and smiled through 4 or 5 coats as well as several pairs of boots and hats. She was so happy and excited about it. It was lots of fun and Kyla was just a doll the whole time.

This past weekend we went to Heber City to the Cowboy Poetry & Buckaroo Fair . It was awesome. We saw lots of neat cowboy art and handiwork and also heard some sweet cowboy poems & singin'! There were even some things there that I wished I could buy - like a handcarved pony rocker for Tay...maybe someday... :) Tay had a fun time ridin' a bronc with help from his dad and Uncle Benjy. We ran into cousin Charles Dayton. He had some of his paintings on display - beautiful! We also enjoyed delicious icecream!

Happy Halloween! I love how having little ones makes holidays so much more exciting! We had lots of Halloween fun this week. We had soup and made sugar cookies with 'Mama Cindy' on Tuesday: We went to the law school 'Trick or Treat' at the carrels on Thursday afternoon: We went to a Halloween dinner party with some of my high school friends and their families on Friday evening: I went to see a spoof on Harry Potter at the Desert Star Theater in SLC with my sister on Saturday afternoon : Taylor & Kyla hung out with Grandma (oops-didn't get a picture!) & Grandpa: He wouldn't let go of this creepy old doll for the picture, I guess it's befitting for Halloween - haha! And we got to spend time with and go Trunk-or-Treating with ALL 5 of the Dayton cousins on Saturday evening! We were so excited because the Thomas Family surprised us all and came for the weekend, so we got to spend time with all of David's siblings. It was a very fun Halloween!