Latest Project...

We bought a wooden highchair and what good is a wooden highchair without a cute little vintage cushion? This is my latest project, and honestly it took a bit for it to get into the blogger world. But I am super happy it's finished. I am in love with these vintage florals :)

Potty Training at Church?

Today was the first day of chuch that Adelle has been "potty trained". I guess I should give an udpate, potty training is going really really well. At home she initiates pottying all by herself. But when we go out.....thats a much wetter story. She's still scared of big pottys so I usually have to bribe her with chocolate and than sit her on my lap on the toilet. Oh yes, it can be done, NO pictures to follow.

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The first time in the bathroom at church she didn't want to sit on my lap on the toilet. I had to coax her with my kind and reasuring words for all in the bathroom to hear:

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Me: OK Adelle, come sit on my lap.

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Adelle sits on lap willingly

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Me: GOOD job Adelle! Now can you go pee pee?

Push, come on, try! Come on Adelle go pee pee, go pee pee go pee pee go pee pee

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Adelle: pushing and grunting souds

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PAUSE

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tinkle tinkle

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How can you not scream from the mountain tops for that? She MUST be praised! And then, because I wanted her to do it again and feel that wonderful PRIDE I felt I HAD to sing the "Pee Pee in the Potty" song which we usually do. Of course she sang back.

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It's funny because I am sure everyone in the bathroom heard this wonderful process from babe to girl hood. If I been that someone in the bathroom listening to all of this I would have been grinning from ear to ear.

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So why do I never get so lucky?

Potty Training DAY 1

Today was Adelle's first potty training day! This was the method I used, my mother used it on me/us and it worked. I ordered it off of ebay and although I was very excited for it to come in the lady who sold it to me I imagine smoked and blew it all over the doll all day long for laughs and giggles. After complaining she gave me a $10 refund. Who's laughing now???

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The set came with the necessary pee pee Patty Dolly. She pees, you start the training by training the doll and the child watches and learns from the doll, than the child, undertsanding the process finds her own potty success.

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The majority of the cost for this kit was for the doll. It's a real bummer too because.....it didn't work. I got the smoke smell out, but when I was playing with the doll it accidentally pee'd on Adelle. She HATED that doll after that. She would yell "No no no no" when she'd see it. Every lesson I tried to "teach" the doll Adelle cried and ran away. Finally I went against the book and set the doll aside.

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The morning started out rough. Before I fed Adelle I through her in the car with Lydia and dropped Lydia off with my Mom. Adelle didn't want to play with the doll, there was a lot of fighting and crying and I was about to give up then. We waited about....1 hr before Adelle finally had to pee. She'd had a lot to drink, and she peed on the hard wood. THEN we did the potty runs, read the book.

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After that she went three times in the potty, initiated by herself, yay!!! She had one other accident and we did more potty runs. We did have to go pick up Lydia at dinner and Adelle had an accident then. So she self initianted pee in the potty about 8 times and only had 2 1/2 accidents. Not bad if I do say so myself!!!

It was very funny beacuse when I got out the camera she got all silly acting. I thought maybe she was getting sick, but then I saw that she was shy. When I asked if she was shy I got the affermative on that.

I know this wasn't much detail, again, read the book. Tomorrow will be another fun day, no more chocolate for going potty. One of these days soon we'll have to get the potty out of the living room.

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But I am SO proud of my big girl! She was proud of herself too, but I did notice with the big change I got some awesome cuddles. The best I've had in a long time. Totally worth it!

My New Toy...

Yes, I have a new toy. Can you tell? My dear husband bought me what I've been wanting for a year or so, a new camera :). It's a canon Rebel T2i, really what that means is it's a REALLY GOOD CAMERA.

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I have been wanting to get into photography and thanks to my photographer friend Nickie and my husband for getting my new camera, I am on my way. Of course I am just starting out but I've been learning a lot and really having so much fun in the process. Here's some of my camera fun.

Adelle and her buddy/cousin Darion. Can you tell how much she loves him?

This is at a play date and Adelle really wanted to put on her friends swim trunks.

Lydia is my little miracle. I've never met such a happy baby, and I probably never will.

Billy and Chase, our newest additions.

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With the days getting brighter my dreams of being outside and starting my garden are getting closer. It has been SO beautiful, it is my happy drug.

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Stay tuned for "Adelle's Potty Training in One Day" post. I ordered the kit and it should be here any day now. It had really better hurry because she is ready and so am I. She's quickly becoming a nudist. The most popular line around here is "boys, cover your eyes!"

Ariane? Who's That??

In the words of Arianna, the most tallented cheerleader, "ITS ME, IT'S ME".

I am well aware I've been MIA. Where have I been? In the car, running errands, on my knees scrubbing messes, washing, yelling, teaching, breathing, dragging, pulling.....I'll stop there.

I have a new plan for my blog. Because nothing of fun greatness happens, I am going to blog about all of my boring nothings.

Like this:

Yesterday I took a shower while listening to Beauty and the Beasts "Be our Guest". I sang along, used fun voices and let my conditioner soak for a long long time. It made me happy. So happy that all my daily stresses washed away and I didn't want to get out. I felt like I was 13 again, it was like my own homemade spa day.

And I needed that.

The Miracle of the Green Scarf...

This was the first Christmas where afterwards I felt like I should have done more. I felt guilty for not teaching my boys more about Christ, for not getting everyone gifts or thoughtful enough gifts. I want to do better next year.

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But Heavenly Father knew I needed a miracle, so he gave me one. The other day as I was walking in Walmart I ran into Karen, a lady from the ward who was with her daughter. They didn't have a shopping cart so I teased her and asked how she could be in a store right before Christmas and not have a shopping cart. She said they were looking for her daughters missing green scarf, they were sad to lose it but were sure it was gone because they had gone through the whole store. My heart went out to her so I told her I would keep my eyes open.

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I found my sister Melissa (we were having a girls day and were all shopping together) and asked her if she had seen a scarf. She hadn't, so I told her to keep her eyes open for it. A Walmart employee overheard the converstaion and mentioned to me she had found a scarf and put it in the front enterance. I asked her if it was green and she said no it was pink. :o(

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I finished my shopping and went to check out when I had the thought to find Melissa and take her broken remote car starter to the jewelry counter and get her a new battery. As I went to the back of the store some lady came out of an isle and said "here you go" and handed me the green scarf. I hadn't seen this woman before and have no clue how she knew I was looking for it.

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I wrapped it up and left it on their doorstep Christmas Eve to Madison from Santa.

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I got an email from Karen saying that her daughter was so excited to get her scarf back. She told her Mom that although she hadn't mentioned it before she had prayed twice in Walmart to find her scarf. She wanted to say a prayer with her Mom and she gave the most sincere prayer of thanks.

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I am so grateful for a Heavenly Father who loves his children so much he found a way to touch so many lives with one green scarf miracle.

Staying Up Late...

I am learning to make every day count. I am also learning to make everything benifit me.....somehow. I am selfish like that :o)

Last night we had a "game night" at Melissas house. It was mostly an opportunity to let the kids play while us girls talked. It was a school night so normally bedtime is 7:45, but we decided to make an exception last night because us girls wanted to just chill. So if I am going to let the kids stay up till 11 (which NEVER happens), what can I get out of it?

I went upstairs while the boys were playing and asked them if they wanted to go home now or keep playing.

"KEEP PLAYING KEEP PLAYING KEEP PLAYING"

Me: "OK I will make a deal with you. I will let you stay up VERY late tonight if you promise to go to bed an hour earlier tomorrow night WITHOUT complaining'

Boys: "I PROMISE I PROMISE I PROMISE I PROMISE"

So One night I get to just hang out with my wonderful family having fun and the NEXT night I get to send the boys to bed at 6:45.

I am getting SO good at this Mother thing!

(in all fairness to me the boys will need this extra sleep because they get REALLY grumpy otherwise.)

Cleaning a Mirror and Reflecting...

Tonight one of our boys informed us that he had one less present than his brother.

"do you really?" I inquired.

"yes" I was told.

I did the "good Mom" thing, talking to him about the meaning of Christmas and how it's better to give than to receive and ya da ya da. I even pointed out that of the bazilion gifts I've bough this year I only have ONE under the tree. (and sadly I know what they are, beaded earings Chase made me.) This talk didn't sink in.

I asked if he would rather us spend the same amount on each kid or give each kid the same amount of presents.

THE SAME AMOUNT OF PRESENTS!!! Of course.

Later this night as I was cleaning a mirror I started to plot. First on my to-do list, take away Billys presents under the tree. But until when? What should the proper dicipline be for this, that would instill the true meaning of Christmas while simultaniously not be forcefull and cause more contention.

I cleaned my mirror. I had some great ideas to make him earn them back, most of them went like this: Make him learn the true meaning of Christmas. Make him serve someone everyday till Christmas. Make him teach us a Family Home Evening on Christmas. Unfortunately forcing someone to understand the true meaning of Christmas might be counter productive. So I continued to clean the mirror. I said a silent prayer and thought some more.

This is what I came up with. I will have Billy read 5 Christmas stories in a book we own. Then he will chose his favorite one and read it to the family. THEN he can have his presents back. How can you not be touched by the Spirit when reading Christmas stories?

He'll have to be right?

Answers come when we clean mirrors. This is what I've learned so far from being a Mom.

My Biscuits are Burning!!!!

Yesterday I was I was rushing out the door to go to a play date I realized Adelle only had one pair of clean jeans, and they were wet. They weren't pee pee wet, but she had spilled my water bottle all over herself earlier that day. We were so late I did my "quick fix" I've done before, but never with jeans. I put them in the microwave. I supervised them for the first 45 seconds with no negative effects, they steamed beautifully. I walked away for the last minute. Bad bad mistake. I came downstairs to smoke. Inside the microwave.....FIRE. Great. Did the smoke alarm go off? No. I threw water on it and put it out. Now I had no jeans for Adelle, a smoke-filled house, and a broken microwave.

Want to know what really erked me?

Read on.

Today I made bacon. After 10 seconds of the bacon frying on the pan, the smoke alarm went off.

It's so reasuring to know that my house is safe from bacon, not fire.

Gotta Love Santa...

A picture's worth a thousand words.

To be fair Santa looks just as happy.