Summer

I haven't blogged in a while...sorry. My only excuse is that we've been busy. I know, that's a pretty lame excuse. "Summer" has been a little scarce it seems here in the northwest, but we've had a few warm and sunny days. It's funny what I think is "hot" now, after living here in Seattle for a few years. Yesterday it was about 79 degrees with 45% humidity and I thought it was HOT. Thankfully, Mother Nature kicked on her air conditioning again and we're back to a little cloudy and 57 degrees this morning. Phew! :-) Anyway, here are a few pics from our SUMMER 2010!

Kids playing at Richmond Beach Park. They love to go here and throw rocks in the water, especially Sam.

Like I said, we have had a few really HOT days. We've enjoyed a couple trips to the wading pools in the neighborhood.

I love this picture of Sam with his little friend Marie. Marie is moving soon...we're going to miss her! :-)

We had a neighborhood barbecue the other night and the sheriff showed up for the fun. He was nice enough to let my two little kiddos sit on his motorcycle for a bit. They LOVED it!

We recently took a trip to the local fire safety station with friends in our ward. Sam especially loved this trip. It was hard to get him to take off his fire jacket when it was time to go home.

Sam with his buddy Josh. Too cute.

Family Fun

Tonight for FHE the activity was playing Simon Says. The kids are so cute when we play this game. I especially love to watch Lauren try and jump when Simon says to jump. We sure love our kids and love being a family.

The kids have been having a little fun in the bathtub lately. :-)

Sam's Potty Training Story

Where to begin? I guess I'll start with just saying how much I love this little boy and how sincerely proud I am of him. He's is successfully on the path of being diaper and pull-up free. Yeah! Yeah! Such a big boy!

Here's the story (I would stop reading here if you don't want the gory details):

Sam has been ready for a few months now to potty train, but I've been the lazy one. Let's be honest...diapers are just way easier and the idea of potty training really overwhelmed me. Call me a pessimist, but in my mind potty training meant loads of frustration and staying home for two weeks straight. Yikes! I like to be out and about with my kids so the idea of staying home with them both for two weeks made me a little crazy even thinking about it. Well, my friend recommended this method (potty training in THREE days) and I jumped on it. You mean I only have to do this for three days and you say it will work? Sign me up. Evan and I both read the short e-book and picked our three days and went for it...full throttle. Evan even took a day off of work (Friday of last week). I'm so glad he did because I really don't think I could have done it by myself, especially the first day.

How did Sam do? Simply put...AWESOME!

Day #1: Sam helps me throw all his pull-ups away in the trash because he is a big boy now and big boys don't wear pull-ups or diapers. He really bought into this idea of being a big boy. It worked like a charm. We started and he had a few accidents in the morning, but then was dry the rest of the day. Yeah! :-) He did poop in his underwear. Sigh. But I can't expect a full miracle on the first day, so we're proud of him and hopeful this is going to work.

Day #2: One accident in the middle of the day, the rest of the day dry as a bone. :-) No poop...he's holding it in. Lovely.

Day #3: He poops in his underwear before church, but no other accidents the whole day. We even went to church and he stayed dry the entire time. Yeah! Yeah! So proud!

Day #4: Normal life resumes...we go to the gym (no accidents) and to McDonald's with some friends (no accidents). He takes a 2 1/2 hour nap (no accidents). Then tonight he pooped in the toilet...ALL BY HIMSELF! We were sitting at the dinner table and he announces he has to go potty and wants privacy and to do it by himself :-). We say okay and he goes trotting off to the bathroom. The next thing we know he's screaming, "I went poop in the toilet! I went poop in the toilet!" WOW! We were so excited and proud! I wanted to call everyone I know and tell them (instead I'll just blog about it). Sam just wanted to call Grandma and Grandpa and his cousin Malachi because in his mind Malachi is his very best friend and the coolest kid in the world. Anyway, it was a very fun moment. :-)

Here are a few cute things Sam has said while potty training:

"Mommy, the pee-pees are trying to get on my underwear..."

"Mommy, my penis said it needs to go pee..."

Sam: Mommy, Did you go poop today too?
Me: Yes, Sam...I did.
Sam: I'm so proud of you mommy! :-)



There is one minor issue that Evan and I just hope goes away. When Sam is bored (like in sacrament meeting or when he's trying to fall asleep on a day when he had a 2 1/2 hour nap) he tells us he has to go to the bathroom literally every 3-5 minutes. What do you do? You have to take him. We're not sure what to do about this and just hoping he stops doing it. On Sunday it was fast and testimony meeting and I don't think I heard one testimony. I must have taken him to the potty 10 times. No joke. And tonight Evan probably took him to the bathroom every 5 minutes for about two hours (I was gone). Yikes. Anyone have any advice?

All in all I have to say that potty training has been a positive experience. Not even close to being the beast I thought it might be. Thank goodness!

Memorial Day 2010

We had a great Memorial Day as a family. The day started with this...

Evan took Sam to the cemetary near our house early Monday morning to help distribute flags to all the burial sites of those who died while in military service.

This was right up Sam's alley...He loves flags AND lining things up in rows. As you can see he thoroughly enjoyed himself!

Mostly Sam just loves his Daddy and spending one on one time with him.

Later in the day we went to a great barbecue at Grandma H's house complete with lots of fun relatives and yummy food. After the barbecue we went to the cemetary where Grandpa H is buried. We tried to tell the kids about Grandpa H, but all they wanted to do is chase eachother around the cemetery. 

All in all a GREAT day together! Wish we had these sorts of days more often!

Moving Day

Today we are moving to a new apartment. The house we are/were renting was forclosed on the 15th of April and we are being forced to move. The past 10 days our lives have been in a whirlwind...trying to find a good place for our family to live, finding "the one", and then packing up all our stuff and now today...moving!

The kids have been troopers through all of this. I'm so thankful that wherever I move to I will always have my family with me! I love them. They make me happy.  :-)

 

Lulu

Our little Lulu is sick this week. She's got a nasty runny nose and cold.

PS-Yes, that's snot coming out of her nose. Gross!

Besides having a cold, Lauren (Lulu) is growing up! :-)

S-A-M and U-E-L

According to Sam any and all printed words spell SAM. He'll tell me a bill board we happen to be driving by spells SAM or a paper he's looking at spells his name. The thing is he can pick out the S, the A, and the M, no problem. However, try and tell him it spells something other than his name and you're in trouble. Recently, though I think we've made a little progress. He's learned to spell his whole name: S-A-M-U-E-L. However, and again this is according to Sam, S-A-M spells SAM and U-E-L spells LAUREN. I'm just happy he's willing to admit that it might be possible to spell a word other than Sam. :-)

Speaking of S-A-M and U-E-L (Lauren), we've had some fun afternoons the past few weeks. The weather has been mostly fabulous here in Seattle, so we've spent quite a bit of time outside. Anyway, these pics are mostly for Grandma Thacker who I know loves to see new pictures of the kids. We miss her and wish she lived closer!!

We've also had some rainy days inside. This is a cute picture of Sam trying to figure out how to use his new giraffe scissors. Here's a little side note about how Sam colors...He lines up his markers on one side of his picture and colors with them one by one. After he colors with a marker he lines it up on the other side of his picture. Once he's colored with all the markers, he's all done. Don't even think about trying to get him to use the pink marker in the middle of the pack again...NOT going to happen! :-) I love my orderly little boy!

Lauren LOVES the slide. She will go down the slide again, and again, and again. Last week Evan took a day off (Wahoo!!!) and we took the kids to the Children's Museum in Everett. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it so much we bought a year's membership there. The coolest thing about this Children's Museum is the HUGE playground they have on their roof. So much fun and so cool!

Sam and Lauren playing with the really GREAT train table at the Children's Museum.

This picture is for Uncle Kimball...;-) He'd be proud.

Lauren on the slide at Greenlake. Did I mention how much she LOVES the slide?

So cute! :-)