First Ball Game

We had fun at Hadley's first ball game. The A's lost, but it was a close game and was fun for everyone. Hadley loved touching the hair on our neighbor's arm, chewing on the baseball glove, and trying to grab our french fries and corn dog. Here are some pics:

The Sam Version of the Fire

I get a frantic call from Marielle saying "a house is on fire, our house is going to burn, call 911".

Speed home at approximately 120mph. A cop starts following me with lights, and I ignore him.

Show up at our street, and marielle is in the car with Hadley, so I run like the guy from Terminator 2 to my house.

Start grabbing the 1 thing I know isn't insured, all of my art! Fill up both cars with framed art and tubes.

Cops block the street at this point so I can't get in at all. About 100 firefighters are right below my house.

I sneak past the cops so I can grab my passports, birth certificates, change into comfortable clothes, and by request grab marielle's $40 gary fong lightsphere for her camera (i don't really get it, but whatever).

This is what I see from my window:




A firefighter is in my smoke filled living room telling me I need to chop down the tree behind my house. I try to have a conversation with him, but everything was happening too fast to say anything meaningful like "thanks for stomping mud through my living room to put out the deck that caught on fire." No really, I am glad he was there.

Back with Marielle a few blocks away, a fire starts a from an ember between two houses. I grab a hose in an effort to extinguish it and then I notice a helicopter above my head. It is too late and I get dumped on with dirty lake water.

About four hours later, everything is over and we go in to inspect the damage. Burnt Decks, broken windows, mud tracked throughout the house. This is the picture in the news (we are the light grey one with the huge flame on the right):

FIRE!!!!!

Here is the scariest story of my life thus far....

I was doing laundry and when I came upstairs, I smelled smoke. I went and looked out the back door and saw a fire that had started at the base of the hill behind our house. I quickly grabbed Hadley, Brody, our laptop and my camera gear and got the heck out of the house! After I loaded everything into the car, I ran back inside (I was in no way calm, collected or composed) and I looked out the deck and the whole hill behind our house was totally in a huge blaze. So I got the heck out, called Sam to tell him that our house was probably going to burn down and cried like a huge, big baby.

So we spent all day today stuck in our car down the street from our house, with ashes falling from the sky, watching the helecopters dump water on the fire, wondering what was happening. We weren't allowed to go down the street or into our houses so when it came time to feed Hadley, I had to drive to the store and buy all new food for her. We seriously sat in the car all day long waiting for them to finish fighting the fire. IT SUCKED!!!! There were probably about 20 fire trucks in our neighborhood for the day. We just sat in our cars and waited to hear what had happened.

This is the report...

Our house was the only one on the street that actually caught fire. Our deck caught fire and thankfully the firemen were able to put it out before the rest of the house caught on fire. You can actually check out the video of our deck on fire here. The white house on the right is ours.
Pretty scary stuff!

So, here is the damage:

* The firemen tromped through our house, leaving our white carpets completley black with soot, mud and whatever else was on their shoes. Did I mention that our carpet used to be white? They have to be replaced because of the firemen, and also because of the smokey smell stuck inside the carpet. No bueno!

* A few windows in our house crakced from the heat of the fire

* Our deck needs to be replaced. Our BBQ grill (with a propane tank) was on the deck during the fire. I am so grateful that it didn't catch fire because our house probably would have exploded.

* A smoke stench that is in all of our clothes, drapes, and throughout the whole house. We had to stay at a hotel the night of the fire because we couldn't stand to even be in our house.

I am so grateful that our whole house didn't burn to the ground. Let me tell you, that was the scariest time of my life, running through my house thinking that I might not have a home later that day.

We know that the Lord was really watching out for us. Having to replace a few windows and carpet and a deck really isn't a big deal. I am just grateful that we were watched over and that our house is still standing!

Sam took a bunch of photos with his phone, we will have to post them later for all to see.

Blah blah blah

Nothing really exciting to post. But I decided that something is better than nothing. So here is a kinda boring post...

I was just going through our pictures and found this one (taken with Sam's iPhone) from our flight home from Vegas. Hadley just fell right asleep on my lap and didn't wake up the whole flight!

We went camping last week with some friends (pictures to follow) and we are heading off to see Yosemite for a couple of days. Who knew I was such an outdoors woman? I'm really not at all but Sam bought some camping gear for really cheap at the REI sale so now we have to go camping a couple of times to make it worth it. We have done so much since Sam finished his MBA. It's really nice to have him around and I feel like we've done a ton of stuff since he's been done.

I don't know how many of you read my photography blog, but I am offering really cheap family sessions in September from September 8th-12th for only $60. So, spread the word and help a sister out! Seriously, if you know someone who needs some family pictures/baby pictures/just because pictures, send them my way!

This is the end of my semi-boring update. I hope everyone is doing well!

Fun Times

We just got back from spending a few days in St.George with Sam's parents. We had a great time and celebrated Sam's Birthday, visited Fish Lake, the Grand Canyon, Bryce National Park and Las Vegas. My favorite part was seeing the Cirque de Soleil show, LOVE. If you are ever in Vegas, you have to see it! It was the typical desert climate - 109 degrees in Vegas. We had a great time with Sam's parents and Hadley's first tooth started coming in while we were on our trip. She also said, "I love you" to Joan. It was pretty funny.
I spent some time taking some awesome pictures of the St. George Temple and some other sights around St. George. Check out my pictures HERE.
Anyway, here are pictures from our fabulous trip! Thanks, Phil and Joan for the wonderful time!


Bryce Canyon

The Grand Canyon is beautiful



We went on an awesome hike in the blazing heat.


Us at the fabulous Cafe Diablo in Torrey, Utah

Hadley putting out the vibe at the Fish Lake Cabin

It's been awhile..

I have been pretty busy lately with weddings, working, hanging out with Sam since he's now done with school, etc. so I've neglected the blog. We have been doing so much lately that it's hard to blog everything we've been doing!
Anyway, my parents and sister Morgan came to town last weekend and we had a great time with them. It is so fun to see them with Hadley- the all just love her so much! Here are some pictures of our fun times together. We had the greatest time hanging out, going on a hike and just being together.
I did a very quick shoot of my parents for their 25th Anniversary. It's so cute to see how much they still love each other. You can check out their pictures here.



Hadley loves her Grandpa!


Hadley and Morgan




My parents bought this insanely adorable dress for Hadley. So cute!




On a side note, if any of you guys have friends/family members getting married, please send them my way for their photography! If you have a friend who books their wedding through me, I'll give you $100 and if your friends book a family session through me, I'll buy you lunch (I'm not kidding!) I'm totally wiling to travel. Sorry for the shameless self-promotion, but hey, it's my blog and I hope to get my name out there more and because you guys are my friends, you can all help me! If you want to check out my most recent work, see my photo blog at http://mariellehayes.blogspot.com or my website at www.mariellehayes.com

Exciting!

A couple of quick, exciting things....

#1: Hadley said her first word on Saturday morning. She was laying in bed and she said, "Hi!" It was pretty cute. I can't wait until she starts talking all the time!

#2: This is long overdue, but Sam finished his MBA last month. I am seriously so proud of him. He has worked full time while going to school at nights. He is such a hard worker and I'm proud of this accomplishment of his. I'm really excited that now I can hang out with him when he is done with work!

That's all for now!

Summertime Weather

The weather was amazing over the weekend...blue skies, 83 degrees and gorgeous! I wanted to take Hadley swimming but because we don't have a pool, I opted for a photo shoot instead.
I've started making the HUGE flowers that go on her headbands. I'm basically addicted because I think they are so cute!

Funny

Hadley was in her crib laughing and I went in to find this. By the way, she looks like a boy in this picture because of her blue and green pajamas that Sam picked out for her.

Solid Foods

Last night we fed Hadley some rice cereal. She really liked it for the most part. A couple of times she got a look on her face like she was disgusted, but by the end, she was reaching for the spoon and holding on to it. Here are some funny pictures..

5 months old

Well, Hadley is a little over 5 months old now and it's hard to believe how fast she is growing up! She is so fun, so observant and so happy. We love her!
I took these pictures this morning. I was laughing so hard that it's amazing that I got such cute pictures!

Easter.

We had a really great time in Reno for Easter. We were able to spend time with my family, which was really great. It is so much fun to see my sisters play with Hadley, they all love her so much. Here are some pictures of our fun weekend! Warning...there are a lot of pictures!

My family


The McCombs grandparents


Wyatt was sooo excited!

The goods.

Morgan & Hadley

Annacy running to collect eggs

My cousin's baby, Maxxwell who is 8 days older than Hadley

My cousin's little boy, Simon


Janessa and Hadley

Hadley in all of her Easter glory...

Ruby vs Hadley

Cousins!

Hadley & Ruby like each other. Ruby is about 6 weeks older than Hadley. Ruby likes to stick her fingers in Hadley's eyes and mouth and Hadley lets her do it. Here are some cute pictures of the two of them. Just an FYI, Hadley's hair is that crazy and we don't do anything to make it that way. Can you say "White girl fro?"

Hang Gliding

So I came across a guy on Craigslist who was offering to certify a prosepective Hang Glider pilot if they built a simple website.  I emailed him and we have been talking now for a little bit about getting me certified to Hang Glide.  The name of the website is www.bahanggliding.com.  I haven't actually done anything yet, but told him I would try to finish by the end of the month.  Who knows if this will be me someday.... I will probably pee my pants on day #1 and call it quits.

Fish Tank

I can actually tell you the species of everything in this tank.  I have had salt water fish tanks for 1 - 2 years total now, and they are really fun.  Hadley is in love with "Rocky" the black onyx clown fish.  I really like the SPS corals, and zoanthids in this tank.

Aah!

I took Hadley to the doctor the other day because I thought she had an ear infection. She was pulling on her ears and SCREAMING! It turns out that she is just teething. Nothing has broken through the skin yet, but she sure was mad for a couple of days! Thank the Lord for Baby Tylenol! 

Here is a cute recent picture of her. She is so cute and loves her book, "sparky the dog."