Happy Birthday Great Grandma in the Mountains!

At the end of January the entire McMullen side of the family all planned a trip up to Deep Creek for Grandma's birthday. Maya has taken it upon herself to name her Great Grandma in the mountains, and every time she speaks of her - that is the full title she uses. Close to Grandma's birthday is also our cousin Jessie's birthday, so we made sure we celebrated both while we were there. We all had such a good time, even though we had to come up with creative sleeping arrangements since we had a total of 18 people in a 3 bedroom house. But it was really nice to be surrounded by family.

And we also had LOTS of snow to play in.

We went sledding & wrestled in the snow.

We had SO much fun!

Somehow we managed to slow down for a minute to get a family photo.

Not only did we play out in the snow, we had fun inside too.

Maya & Jessie goofing around

Playing Memory with her cousins.

Happy 72nd birthday to Grandma & 20th birthday to Jessie!

Here is the whole group. Great Grandma in the mountains has a nice large family that was more than happy to make the trip to celebrate with her.

Daddy & Maya

Mommy & Maya

Maya's 1st Haircut

Okay, so I kept saying for a couple months, after the wedding, Maya is getting her hair cut. It was getting so long that she could just about sit on it, and because she didn't want me to take care of it the way it really should be, it was time to really trim it and make it easier to deal with. So those baby curls at the very bottom are now gone, but I made sure to keep a little sample.

Now, I knew Maya was exactly what you would call excited to get her hair cut, in fact as soon as we pulled into the parking lot she started to panic a little. But she has met Kristen (my hair stylist) many times before, so I was hoping that would make her feel a little better about the process. So into the salon we went, if she was going to get her hair cut she was going to get the whole treatment along with it. She got her hair cut, washed, dried and styled.

The first snips of hair.

Daddy came with us. He was trying to make Maya laugh.

That was a lot of hair & knots that we no longer have to worry about!

By now, she was starting to like the whole salon treatment.

All finished! It wasn't so bad after all and Maya was a trooper, plus I think she likes the shorter hair & Mommy isn't going crazy trying to take care of it. It's much easier on both of us! :)

2010 has come and gone..

Unfortunately, I'm just getting around to updating the blog. As you all know we had a very busy fall and it just continues to carry over into the first few months of this year. Also it didn't help that I lost my camera while honeymooning and wasn't able to take any pictures until Donny bought me (somewhat) of a replacement. It's not nearly as nice as the one I had just bought myself in October, but at least I have something to take pictures with.

So here we are on Christmas, it was hard to get a family picture this year since Maya has a mind of her own and decided she did not want to cooperate.

However it was yet another good Christmas and we got to enjoy seeing our family & celebrating. Maya was really excited about her very own acoustic guitar & microphone with amp. She gave free concerts pretty much all night. I posted a video so you can see what I mean.

Hope that you all had and happy & healthy Christmas and holiday season.

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