California: Capell Reunion

The first 10 days we were in California were set aside for a "Capell Family Reunion". It was really fun to spend time with family and have Hayden get to know his cousins. He absolutely loved having a pool in the backyard and has had quite the obsession with basketballs ever since we have gotten back.

Hopefully it won't be too long before we can all get together again...

One BIG highlight for Darren was going to a Giants game with his dad, and all of his brothers. Definitely a great memory.

California: Capell Reunion - Family Photos

The day after we arrived in California we kicked the Capell Reunion into high gear and had family photos. We went down to a park in Riverbank, and a friend of my sister-in-law did them for us. We were definitely still jet lagged, as evidenced by Hayden's exhausted appearance, but I'm really happy with how they turned out.

California: The flight out

This summer we decided to make a big trip out to California, to visit Darren's family. My dad's family had a reunion in Colorado in July (coming later...), so we decided to leave a few weeks before and just hit the reunion on the way back across the country. Boy, was it one long month....

We flew out bright and early on the 25th, and I was pleasantly surprised how well Hayden did on the plane.

We had two flights, one from DC to Long Beach, and then one from Long Beach to Oakland. I thought for sure he'd fall asleep for part of the first flight, but he didn't. We kept him entertained with dental floss, stickers, coloring, and ultimately dvds.

He fell asleep during take off of our second flight and slept the whole flight. 

I'm SO glad we bought him a seat. It was so easy and he had his own space to sit and play around in. Definitely recommending it if you can afford it!

June

June seemed to fly by. It started off with my birthday, Darren was done with work for the summer on the 17th, we spent a few days at my parents, had dentist appointments on the 23rd, and then we were off to California on the 25th. 

Early in the month a bunch of us got together at a park in town and had a play date. Hayden loves being outside and had a blast.

While we were down at my parents, Hayden found time to play with the dogs. Scratch that, he found time to play with their water bowl...

The weekend we were down my siblings had a swim meet just up the street. We decided to stop by for a little bit and show our Lancer pride!

Rockin' a tattoo and aviators

When we got back home, Darren decided to make sure the quiet book was suitable for Hayden.....

And we found various ways to entertain Hayden while we packed for our month long trip...

The Quiet Book

Before Hayden was born I decided I wanted to make him a quiet book at some point. I didn't even start thinking about it until January of this year. Hayden is such an active little kid, I was hoping that having something to entertain him during church might help to make it more productive and not such a fight. 

I scoured Pinterest and the internet for every idea imaginable and narrowed it down to the ones I liked the best. I made list after list of everything I would need and headed to the craft store in late January - February. Since we were pretty much buried in snow until the end of March, I had plenty of time to get to work on it. 

I pretty much worked like crazy almost every day of February, and then got burnt out. I only had 6 pages left to finish, but I didn't touch the thing until just a few weeks ago. I figured it might be a good thing to have on our flight to California this coming week, so I had the motivation to do it. 

It definitely took way more time and energy than I ever could have anticipated, but I am in love with what I ended up with. Lets just hope that if we have another kid, it will be a boy. Then I won't have to do another one!

 

After it was all done I realized how darn HUGE the thing is. It took up our whole diaper bag. So, I decided to make a cute little bag to carry all of Hayden's church stuff in. So easy, and cheap. (The bag was less than $2 at Hobby Lobby). And I had the polka dot fabric leftover from another project!