Hardy Highlights : Our Hardy Herald Contribution 2010

We aren't going to make it to the Hardy family reunion this summer since we are having a baby. But we still wrote a contribution to the Hardy family newsletter, the Hardy Herald. I thought I'd go ahead and post it to our blog as well, although it is much more abbreviated and repeats some of the things I've already talked about.

THE DAREN HARDY FAMILY:

What is a family reunion?
Natalee Hardy- 8 years old: A family reunion is when someone dies and you take and go to the reunion. Wait, no! A family reunion is when you hang out with your family for a day or more.
Haylee Hardy- 7 years old: It's when you go to a party to remember who died.
Mackenzie Hardy- 5 years old: I think they're to celebrate your families. (What do you do at a family reunion?) Have fun. They teach you good stuff.
For some reason, our kids seem to get funerals and reunions confused. Whenever Daren or I go to a funeral, they keep saying that we went to a reunion. Just an explanation of Natalee's and Haylee's answers. :)
The Daren Hardy family has been keeping busy just going about life as usual. Our biggest news is that we should have a new addition to the family sometime around the reunion. Our fifth child and our first boy is due July 21, 2010! We are very excited, but unfortunately this means we will not be attending this year's reunion.
News since the last reunion:

In March 2009, our family became goat people. Daren had been wanting goats for a long time, and he finally succeeded in talking Lisa into letting him get a few. We bought 3 miniature goats-Nigerian Dwarfs. Daren's long-term goal was to milk the goats, so we bought 2 females and one male. Then a month or two later, Daren bought a full-grown, pregnant female. Our first experience with goat birthing did not go well. The goat, Luna, was due June 21, but did not go into labor until almost a week after her due date. Daren tried to stay up with her but it was taking a long time so he left a monitor out with her and went to bed. We went out to check on her an hour later and the baby was born but was already dead. It was hard to have such a negative experience for our first goat birth. And we were so obsessed over when this goat was going to have her baby that we both forgot our anniversary on June 24! We probably wouldn't have remembered all day except Lisa's brother called to wish us a happy anniversary.

Well, things got better with the goats. We ended up breeding all 3 females in the fall, and this spring we had lots of baby goats at our house. The two first-time mothers each had one baby girl, and Luna had 4 boys! It was so much fun to watch the girls play with their babies. It almost makes me want to let them breed the goats again, but we have decided to retire from the goat farming business. It turns out that it is difficult to hold a full-time job and breed goats at the same time. Luna's babies were born on a day that Daren had lots of important meetings and it was a very difficult labor. There were so many babies and they were turned the wrong way. Thankfully our neighbor came over and delivered them for us. Daren realized that he really couldn't be there for the goats. Also Lisa is not a big fan of milking. It's very hard to go any distance from home when you have to milk morning and night every day. And it's a lot harder to find people to take care of your pets when one of the jobs is milking! So it was a great learning experience. We still have 4 pet goats that are incredibly affectionate and the girls love them dearly. But our goat-breeding days are over.

We had a very fun family vacation in March of this year. We took advantage of Disney's Give a Day, Get a Day program and we gave a day of service for free tickets to Disneyland. Mackenzie and Kelsey were the only ones too young to participate, but Kelsey was only 2 years old anyway so she gets in to Disneyland free. For our service project, we went to Bakersfield, CA to make blankets for Project Linus. We made our first ever no-tie fleece blankets. It was great and Natalee and Haylee really worked hard. Daren and I cut the blankets, then Natalee and Haylee tied them.

Because we live in Southern CA, we were able to upgrade our tickets to 2 day park hoppers for only $20 more. So we spent one day at each park. We went right in the middle of the week so the lines were fairly short and we were able to go on so many rides. We hadn't been to Disneyland for 5 years and the girls really didn't remember the last trip. It was so much fun to watch them have such a good time.

Here's what's going on with each member of our family-
Natalee Hardy:

Natalee turned 8 years old in August 2009. On September 5, Natalee got baptized. She's our oldest daughter so this was a first for us. It was such a sweet experience. Now she attends activity days and is working towards her Faith in God award. Natalee started taking gymnastics in August 2009. She enjoyed it but her real dream is to take riding lessons. This summer she is doing a riding camp for a week and she is in complete heaven. Hopefully someday we'll be able to make her dream of owning her own horse come true. Natalee also played basketball for the city league from January to March of this year.

Natalee did really well in 3rd grade this year. She was on the student council, she participated in Battle of the Books, and she worked in the library as a library helper. Our school participates in the accelerated reading program and Natalee met her accelerated reading goals all 3 trimesters, which earned her a trophy. She also won a writing contest at the end of the year and got a $20 Wal-mart gift card for a prize.
Haylee Hardy:

Haylee turned 7 in March. She was in 1st grade this year and was also a fantastic student. She earned her first reading trophy as well. After the reading awards assembly, the librarian told me that Haylee had earned more accelerated reading points than any other first grader. So she did a lot of reading this year!

Haylee also did gymanstics with Natalee from August 2009 to April 2010. I think she loved it the most. She got very good at cartwheels. She played basketball in the city league and really started to take off at the end of the season. She made her first basket in the second to last game and then made two more baskets in the last game. She decided that she wanted to do basketball camp for her summer camp.

Haylee has gotten really into cooking recently. She decided that she wanted cooking stuff for her birthday and has really enjoyed using her own tools in the kitchen. She likes to make us muffins for breakfast. We also like it when she makes us muffins for breakfast.
Mackenzie Hardy:

Mackenzie turned 5 in March. She is going to be starting kindergarten this fall. She also really enjoyed gymnastics class and decided that she would like to take an extra morning gymnastics class instead of doing preschool. Her favorite part of gymnastics was climbing the rope and ringing the bell at the top. Mackenzie is excited because she will finally be old enough to participate in city league basketball this winter. I'm not sure if she's more excited about playing basketball or the snacks that the players get after the games. But she also decided to do basketball camp this summer to get ready for the city league.
Kelsey Hardy:

Kelsey has changed the most since the last reunion. She's now a big 2 year old instead of a 4 month old baby. She LOVES to sing, and it is so fun to listen to her. I really enjoy it when she sings the songs she learns in nursery. She's just at that fun age where she is learning new things all the time. It is very fun to see the thrill her big sisters get when she does or says something new. They love to help her do things, sometimes more than Kelsey wants the help. Unfortunately they also fight about who gets to sit next to her for EVERYTHING! (every meal, prayers, car, etc.) It will be interesting to see how Kelsey takes to being a big sister herself. She loves baby dolls and always seems to be carrying one around. So hopefully she will love having a real baby to help take care of.
Daren Hardy:

Daren is still working as a school psychologist. We've been in Ridgecrest, CA for 4 years now and really like the small town, the conservative atmosphere, and the excellent schools. Daren has been serving on the high council for a little over 3 years. He is over seminary/institute and relief society. He just finished seminary graduation which is probably his biggest assignment each year. It also gives him opportunities not just to speak in the wards in our stake, but also to speak at the local nursing home every once in a while. When he speaks at the nursing home, he likes to bring the older girls with him and they help the elderly people find the right pages in the song book when singing hymns. Natalee and Haylee really enjoy going with him to do that.

Daren has really enjoyed being a goat man-and no, we have never seen the movie "Men Who Stare at Goats" although we probably would if it weren't rated R! He made goat cheese several times before Lisa cruelly forced him to stop milking before the baby is born. Sometimes it turned out pretty good. He made mozzarella, cheddar, and chevre. We actually had pizza with goat mozzarella cheese for dinner one night and it was quite tasty.

Daren also spent some time this past year volunteering at the local animal shelter. The problem with that was that every time he came home from volunteering, he would tell me about this great dog or super sweet cat that was there. It also eventually became too hard to keep up with all his goat things so he decided to stop for now.

A fun thing Daren got to do this morning (it's June 8, 2010) was help the missionaries teach a discussion in Chinese. He hasn't had very many opportunities to use Chinese since his mission, and he's been home for almost 18 years. He said it was a little stressful but a lot of fun. And they invited the investigator to be baptized and he accepted!
Lisa Hardy:

Lisa is busy, busy, busy staying at home with 4 little girls. She also works as primary president at church and helps with the PTO at the girls' school. In her free time, she complains about having goats, teaches Natalee and Haylee and a couple of their friends piano lessons, and has recently started blogging.
Well, that's the news from the Daren Hardy family. We are sad to miss this year's reunion but plan to be at the next one for sure! We hope this finds everyone well and we can't wait to hear everyone's news.

The following pictures are the ones I sent to Aunt Louise for the newsletter: