What we've been up to....

This past Friday my brother Sam and his wife Nikki came up for a visit. We had a blast with them. My kids especially love having people come visit. We just hung out, went to the outlet mall, ate LOTS of food and LOTS of candy, stayed up way too late playing the Wii (until we broke it), came to church with us and got to see my crazy four year old class, and got our pictures taken by them. We just went out to lunch this afternoon and they had to head home. Here we are wii-ing it very late one night. We even moved the couches closer to the TV.
We started Tay on rice cereal about five days ago. This was her first experience documented. She was not a super fan at first. These pictures are funny because she wasn't crying, just making these horrible faces. And of course, she wasn't quite sure what to do with this non liquid substance in her mouth and most of it ended back out on her bib.

Andi and Carter had to come check out what Mom was doing to Taytum and as you can see, Taytum was not too scarred from the experience and was easily pacified by her brother and sister.

She loves rice cereal now! She will whine between bites if I'm not fast enough. Whenever we put her in her high chair now she will whine to be fed, even if I was just putting her there to join the rest of us at a meal. I usually just put her in there and let her hang out with some toys while we eat. Not anymore. She wants in on the action. I sense a growth spurt coming on. We've had a few playdates with friends, which is always nice. Here is Andi with our friend Zach. The two are buddies in nursery and Andi will randomly say, "I like Zach. He is so handsome." We also had our friends Ty, Alec, and Ben over. They are fun boys and all of our kids get along great!

Jefferson and I headed down to Idaho Falls last Friday afternoon. We left around one in the afternoon and came back that night around 1-2 in the morning. Ashlee so graciously watched Carter and Andi while we headed down (thank you Ash!!). They even had a sleep over where Carter and Teage shared a room. Fun for them that night, not so fun for us the next day when he was super tired from not enough sleep (and so were we!) We headed down for a seminar put on by a chiropractic business coach. It was a great afternoon/evening. We got eight hours of uninterrupted conversation in the car, just me and Jefferson. Taytum slept the whole way , except for about fifteen minutes out on the way there, and for the last half hour on the way back. Then we got to go out to dinner compliments of the Longs. (Thank you Longs!) And we finished the evening at this seminar, which was super beneficial and got us totally recommitted to our practice.

Oh yes... and potty training. We have been in the throws of pee and poo for about two weeks now. We have/are day training Andi and night training Carter. I thought Andi would never take to potty training. Now, let's revisit my experience with Carter. No accidents since day one of being in underwear. I put them on him and it's been in the potty every since. I mean, he's had a few accidents here and there and there was one week about a month or two after we potty trained where he regressed and had about five accidents in one week, but all in all, it was a cinch! He has never once gone poop in his pants. Ok, let's fastforward to now with Andi. Day 1: 5 accidents (give or take) + 0 times on the potty. Day 2: 4 accidents + 1 kind of partial success on the potty (I caught her peeing on the carpet and rushed her to the potty where she went a teeny tiny bit). We made a huge deal about it and she got what she asked for: pink cupcakes. We offered her Tinkerbell toys, princess stuff, whatever her heart's desire. She picked pink cupcakes like Pinkalicious. Day 3: Just when I thought maybe we weren't quite ready for potty training, I was getting breakfast ready when Andi yelled, "Mom, I went on the potty!" I thought to myself, "Yeah right." She says that every time she sits on the potty. But I came over to check and lo and behold, she had gone on the potty!!! Success!!! And ever since she has been going on the potty for pee. She has had one or two accidents since, but remembered to tell her nursery leader she needed to go in church and has gone out in public restrooms. What a big girl.... mostly. The poop thing is still unsuccessful, and unlike Carter, she could care less if she is sitting in poopy underwear. Any suggestions? My guess is that she'll just need to go once on the potty and then have it figured out. She is doing awesome though. We have really been into doing something artsy or out of the ordinary every day. Usually we do something that has to do with the letter of the week at Carter's preschool. This day we decided to make an ocean. We hunted around the house for all things that had to do with the ocean. We have a whole set of little plastic sea creatures, plus a Little People pirate and treasure chest and an island. I let the kids fill this tub up with water. Then we added lentil beans for sand and added all of our sea creatures. I would make the kids find certain animals. Then they just played and splashed around in it for another hour. This was a few weeks ago when we actually had snow. Today is 55 and sunny. Very pleasant and very not winter. Anyways. The kids LOVE playing outside in the snow. They beg every time there is snow on the ground to go out there and play and they just entertain each other for at least an hour. I was not even out there with them. It was so fun to watch them from the window playing so well together. They followed each other around the yard making fresh prints and "going to the castle." Then we found them over in the farthest part of the yard just sitting next to each other talking. They are the best playmates.

Carter also started primary as of the first of the year. He LOVES primary!! He insists that we wait in the chapel and let him walk to primary by himself, even though I have a calling in the junior primary. He is so attentive during sharing and singing time (even though singing time is painfully boring!!!). He always volunteers to go up to the front and help with sharing time. And whenever they walk out to go to class, he'll pass by my class and flash me this cute little smile and wave. I love it. find myself just staring at him during primary because he is so dang cute! I will have to scan in the picture we have of his first day in Sunbeams. His teacher took these really cute pictures of them in their sunbeam headbands they made. Super cute. What a big boy.

It has been so long between posts because I am helping out with Jefferson's business a lot. I am doing all of the marketing; writing newsletters, designing flyers, ordering brochures, etc. I also answer some calls that come into the "office". I LOVE doing all the marketing stuff, but it is super time consuming and hard to balance that with taking care of three kids, exercising, cooking, shopping, cleaning, doing laundry, joining a book club, arranging playdates, etc. Something had to give and so for now, it's blogging. I will try to keep on top of it, mostly because I love blogging and love having this little family journal of ours. But like I said, there are only so many hours in the day...