Falling forward..

I was looking over the last 3 years worth of pictures at our baby girl. And I came across all of her Halloween pictures. I am always amazed at how much she has grown and changed. I feel like I can't even remember her being so small, and the time keeps flying by. So happy we have lots of pictures and videos to look back at. Just thought I'd share some of the pictures of our last few Halloweens.

October 31, 2007

Maya's first official Halloween pumpkin. Just the right size for her. I wasn't sure she knew what to do with it.

Dressed as a teddy bear for her first Halloween. Though we didn't actually take her trick-or-treating, we still had to dress her up. And she was so cute, but hated having the costume on.

October 31, 2008

Dressed up as a butterfly. By the look on her face you could tell that she wasn't happy about wearing this. We went to Grandma's house that year and just stopped by a couple of neighbors houses. Maya was able to walk up to the doors say "trick-or-treat" and "Thank you."



October 31, 2009

Finally, Maya was excited about dressing up for Halloween! We took her to the Halloween store and let her pick out her own costume. She chose to be a Spider Princess. Which was great because I remember her not being able to decide if she wanted to be a spider or a princess.


I was excited because I got to dress up too! We went trick-or-treating for a couple hours and had so much candy we didn't know what to do with it!


I really can't wait until this Halloween, although Maya hasn't officially decided what she wants to be, although she has been leaning towards a butterfly.

In Maya's words:
" I want to be a sparkly purple butterfly. And butterflies don't walk, I have to fly. How are we going to do that Mommy?"

Now it seems that I have another problem to solve here. Never a dull moment. :)

Saying Goodbye..

On July 23rd, we said goodbye to Great Gram.

So I wanted to put a few pictures up of our trip.

Maya took this photo of Uncle Kristopher in the cemetery where we buried Great Gram.

Maya and Poppi at the funeral home.

Maya and Beatrix at the cemetery.

Maya wrote a song about Great Gram before we left for the funeral home for her visitation.

Oh, Great Gram I love you too

But you have gone and passed

Close your eyes and go to sleep

Cause you have died and we're here to weep

We're going to the funeral home to see your body

Dig you down in grass

I quickly wrote it down, so that I could keep it forever. We will really miss our Great Gram.

5 Generations

Dorothy Dean Zander November 1913- July 2010

On July 18th at 4:25 am we lost the oldest member of our family at the age of 96. A loving mother, grandmother, great grandmother, and great great grandmother. I think I can speak for the entire family when I say we were so incredibly blessed to have her with us for that long. She really left a lot of memories on my heart, that will never be forgotten. I was very lucky to have a close relationship with both my great gram and great grandpa. So many people never even meet their great grandparents. I spent so much time with them when I was younger.

The last time I got to see Great Gram was in November 2009. Our family drove out to Illinois for thanksgiving. Before that, I feel like I hadn't seen her in a couple years. With the distance between us, it makes it really hard to got back to Illinois to see my family. Donny and I had the job of picking up the ladies for Thanksgiving day. We picked up Aunt Martha and Great Gram.

When Great Gram got into my car she said, "You're old enough to drive?!?" She had kept me in her mind as only being a teenager. Then a little while later she said " Who's car is this, yours Lauren?" I told her yes, that I bought this car about 2 years back. "This is really nice." she said. She always made me smile, even with the little things she said.

5 Generations:

Dorothy Dean Zander, C. William Zander Jr.. Elizabeth Zander Hale, Lauren Hale, & Maya McMullen

We really had something special. We will miss her greatly and never forget the love and support she gave us.


Rest in Peace Great Gram.

Maya has turned into a fish!

Well she's back at it again. We can't keep this girl out of the water. After dinner we all went over to Sonja & Randy's house to hang out and go swimming. Although we didn't know we were going so Maya didn't have her swimsuit. So she just went swimming in her underwear.

It didn't take her long to get brave enough to start jumping into the pool from the side. And once she started that, she didn't stop. She really wore me out.

Mommy & Maya swimming

Catching a beetle bug

Dinner with MeeMee & GeeDad

It was one of those days when you just feel like you have NOTHING to do. No plans, you feel like doing something, but can't find anything worth getting up and doing. We were having that day on Saturday, and then GeeDad called and asked us to go out to dinner. We went to a great little Mexican place that we all love, El Toro Bravo. After dinner, we decided to take a walk around the block, the long way back to the car.

GeeDad, Maya & MeeMee

Maya is always entertaining. She was dancing & making up her own song on the steps of this business.

Taking a stroll on the historic streets of Annapolis.

I loved these flowers and asked Maya to pose next to them. But, she had to be the line leader and sometimes that involves running to make sure of that. So I snapped this picture and was still able to get the pretty flowers and Maya.

Lunch with Great Grandma

We had to drive right past Great Grandma's house on the way home from Ohio, so we decided to stop and have lunch with her. Also we thought it would be nice to stop and take a break from driving. Her house is about a 4 hour drive from our house, so it was a nice halfway point.

Great Grandma made cupcakes for dessert, and she saved the icing job for Maya to do. She did a pretty good job putting the chocolate icing on. And the cupcakes were delicious.

After lunch we took a walk down to the creek in the woods behind Grandma's house.

Then we were ready to take a ride on the 4 wheelers. Here is Maya posing in her helmet, she was ready to go.

Daddy & Maya with the 4 wheelers

We rode down to the pond, but we didn't catch anything but rocks in our net.

We broke out the sidewalk chalk and decorated Grandma's carport floor.

We spent about 3 hours at Grandma's house before hitting the road again. I think we wore Maya out with all the activity. Here she is on the last leg of our trip.

Happy Birthday Uncle Robert!

As I told you in the previous post, we took a road trip this weekend. It was Uncle Robert's 50th birthday bash on Saturday, and I'm so glad that we didn't miss it. It really was a Hale family reunion. I saw relatives that I hadn't seen in 17 years. Aunt T did a really nice job of putting everything together and it all turned out great!

We got up early on Friday morning and were on the road at 4 am. The trip is about an 8 hour drive, so we got to the house around 11:30 am. Uncle Ryan and his family were already there, so we got to spend some extra time with them on Friday. The house was FULL of people all weekend, as Aunt T's sister and her family were in town to help celebrate too. I think on Friday night there were about 18 people that slept at Uncle Robert & Aunt T's house.

Poppi & Maya

The party wasn't until Saturday, but we were anxiously awaiting the rest of the family to get there. Everyone came in on Friday night, so we didn't get to see them until Saturday. One of the people Maya was really waiting on was her Poppi.

Maya loved playing with all of her cousins, but she really loved the trampoline! Anytime she had a chance to get on, she took full advantage. I think we all ended up taking turns jumping with her. Now she thinks that she needs one in our yard. I guess we'll see what happens with that in the future.

Jumping with Poppi

Maya had to "teach" Poppi how to jump on a trampoline. So she kept him on that trampoline for hours. Then she told me "Poppi has to practice jumping so that he will get better, because if he does not practice, he'll forget how to jump." I'm pretty sure she wore him out by the end of the day.

She also wore herself out, and we're okay with that too. She didn't want to lay down inside while the party was going on, so she laid on the swing and passed out. Even with all of the noise of everyone being outside, she slept for a good 2 hours right through it all.

I really wish I would have gotten some family pictures with everyone together, but it got dark before we remembered. So I guess that will have to wait until November.

Sunday morning we got back on the road around 8:30 am and headed back to MD. On the way we decided to stop and have lunch with Donny's grandma in Deep Creek.