Hinton Highlights

Becca's 6th birthday party was actually on the 8th of February, but we waited until the holiday to have her friend birthday party. The theme was Barbie as the Island Princess and "Ro" as the main character is known in the movie shared the stage at the party with Becca. The girls she invited (about 7 in all) came over and enjoyed a "Ro" cake and ice cream, as well as several games like "Dolphin" musical chairs, creating a flag that represents you and what you like, as well as everyone's favorite, "Pin the Feathers on a Peacock" (my idea actually).

In the end, the girls seemed to enjoy dancing to the music on the DVD as much as anything. We were excited to celebrate with her and appreciate other family members who celebrated earlier with us too.

We love our Becca Roo!

This weekend was our ward's annual Father & Son's campout. We went up to the Barney's Ranch. Nathan, Jared, and Brett went this year (we decided that Ben needed another year of seasoning before he could go on a outing like this). They went up Friday evening and came back Saturday in the early afternoon. As with any camping trip (and Fathers and Sons' campouts in particular), it was without incident. Friday night after dinner (it was still light out) Jared and Nathan were playing around with their ninja swords which they had won at Peter Piper Pizza with their Uncle Travis earlier in the week. I saw Jared running away from the dinner area which his sword stuck into his shorts like it was in some type of holster and yelling "Yah". At that point I turned away, but it wasn't more than 5 minutes later that I see another father carrying Jared to me with the left side of his face a bloody mess. Apparently one of the other young boys (around 3 years old) must have felt a bit threatened by Jared's actions and decided that he needed to defend himself. One swing from a long stick right above Jared's eye did the trick (I'm grateful it wasn't any lower or else it could have done some serious damage).

We got him cleaned up and there were enough opinions that it didn't need stitches that I decided to just clean him up and put some band-aids on it. Sure enough, that seemed to do the trick, and he even went swimming at his Grandma and Grandpa Hinton's house on Saturday after getting home.

After that start, things went much smoother for the rest of the outing. We all slept warm and played all morning in the forest and the nearby creek. Finally around noon we packed up and trekked back down to the valley. It was a wonderful, fun time to spend time together. Here's a small collection of photos from the trip.

Brett: Jared, stop running around with those knives!*

Brett: Do we ever run around with knives? NO!

Jared: Don't worry Dad, I was just pretending they were my jet packs.

Brett: Oh, of course.

*They were butter knifes and he had been putting away the silverware and I was supervising - guess I need to do a better job of that.

Well it has been a banner start to 2009 - full of just about everything thus far!

First, welcome to a 2009 project of mine called the Daily Photo Project. This journey consists of taking at least one picture of something each day of the year. I had heard about this project that others had done and really liked the idea. Every day is a gift and there are so many things that happen daily that are remarkable in their own way. This project is a way to help make us stop and remember that and to document it. I was inspired by Darcy Norman doing it and really like the explanation about the project you can find here. You can check out my 2009/365 project album as it evolves at http://www.picasaweb.com/bretthintons.

We welcomed in the New Year - Brett was the only one to actually welcome it in, but Nathan hung in there until 11pm playing Xbox 360 with his dad! We're looking forward to a great 2009!

Saturday was our busy, eventful day. Brett decided he "needed" to run a network connection between the cable modem and the Xbox 360 to enable the TV recording option with out computer/Xbox 360. What was a 45 minute project (according to Brett) went from 11am to 4:30pm, but was ultimately successful. Woohoo! He also went on a short Daddy-Son date with Jared in the morning which included a trip for ice cream at McDonalds at 9:45am in the morning (what some people must have thought, 50 degree early winter morning and he's giving the kid ice cream!)

While Amber and I were out enjoying dinner with the Hintons and Arringtons, Becca had her chair slid out from under her but one of our other children (who will remain unnamed) and hit her head on the fireplace. The babysitter called and said she had "scraped" her head, but, when we finally got home and were able to look at it, we realized it needed stitches. On to the Urgent Care! 2 stitches later Becca was back home and feeling much better!

We finished the week off with attending Grayson's baby blessing (Jana and Strider's son) and seeing our Ben crawl for the first time. Yea!

There were lots of other fun things like a Friday game night with the kids (playing Candyland and Flag) and making sure to set the rules for video game playing now that school is starting up again (we'll see how that goes :) ).

Happy New Year Everyone! (and for the person looking for pics of the new home - you can check out our photo gallery since it has a few).

From 2009-52 Weeks Project

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving at our house, even with a stomach bug that hit each one of the members of our family as the week progressed. At least we were all available to feel well enough to enjoy the Thanksgiving day food!

Amy and Tony Bates and their family, as well as Amber's parents Darris and Cindy, joined us for the holiday. We enjoyed celebrating it in our new home.

We had a great time going to Amazing Jakes and riding the rides, playing LaserTag (including Nathan and Isaiah), and just having a ball. We thought we'd share a couple of the pictures of our fun with you. Of course we forgot to take a picture of the Thanksgiving feast before we ate it, and after dinner there wasn't much left to take a picture of!

We remember at this special time of year how grateful we are for all of our blessings!

Okay, I’ll try my hand (since it has been a while) at writing this month’s newsletter. Where has September gone! Nathan continues to enjoy Kindergarten and has learned to count to 100 in several ways (by 1s, 10s, etc) and is starting to recognize some simple words in books. It’s exciting to see his mind growing in some many ways. His favorite thing lately is to “outthink you”. Something he learned from one of the stories he likes.

We're posting this a little late, but as the saying goes, "better late than......." (slideshow at the bottom)

Apparently there is some contest going on where some BYU department invited people to submit a 30-second video demonstrating Cougar spirit. This is our humble offering. It was a lot of fun to make - I'll have to post the outtakes later, they are just as funny.

A big shout-out to Kevin and Grandma Hinton, as well as Travis, (am I leaving anyone out?) for helping organize our filming session. Go Cougars!

You never know what your kids are going to say, but you can be sure that they are always listening and drawing conclusions, often with unexpected results:

An example of this was interchange between my wife and my daughter Becca:

"Mom, how do they make milk? Do they just squeeze it out into the buckets?"
My wife responded, "Yep, they just squeeze it out into the buckets."
Becca then asked, "And then they get the "stink" out before they put it into the jugs?"
My wife was perplexed and asked "What stink?"
Becca came back, "You know, the stink out of the milk."

It was then that my wife realized she was referring to the "stink" from the cow farms that we used to drive past often on our way out to our house. My daughter thought the "stink" she smelled passing the cow farms had to be removed from the milk somehow so that we would actually be able to drink it.

Not a bad conclusion for a 4-year old. Just makes you wonder how long that question had been percolating in her brain!

Photo courtesy of Skinnyde's Flickr album

Benjamin Darris Hinton has arrived! He was born at 2:24am on Sunday, April 20th. He weighed 7lbs 2 ounces and was 20.7 inches long. Both mom and baby are doing well.