I Do It!!!

Logan is Mr. Independant lately. He will tell me, "No, Mom, I do it!" As pictured above, he got himself dressed this morning. (NICE choice of shoes!) As long as we're not leaving the house - I say go for it! He's officially potty trained but still needs practice getting his underwear and shorts back on. The 70's/80's handbag is a nice accessory. My family may remember it as one of our dress up items from Grandma's house. It's still getting lots of use here!

4-Year Old Logic

"Mom, where does the chocolate milk come from on the farm? Does it come from the brown cow or the white cow?"

Adventures in Parenting

It seems like forever since I've had time to post some new things on our blog. Life with 3 little kids is just CRAZY some days. Here's a glimpse into our wonderful and wacky world:

Logan is about 80% potty trained. We're still working on the poop training part of it. Our son (25 months old) REFUSES to leave a diaper on. Rather than fight Logan with the diaper I decided to break down and just DO IT. This past weekend we devoted 2 straight days to nothin' but potty training. We're on day 7 and he's finally got the hang of most of it. Yeah!! He's getting to be such a big boy!

I went back to work a couple of weeks ago. I go in at night after the kids are in bed. I only work 10 hours a week as the floral manager at a grocery store. It's fun to get out and do flowers to help support our family. The kids don't even know I'm gone most nights. However, last week the local HS had their homecoming dance. I've been building the dance corsage & boutonniere buisness since starting a year ago. My first dance I had 11 corsage orders. Last weekend, I made 55 corsages. My friend, Melinda, was able to come help me for a couple hours one night. Even Aaron's brother Nick helped me some. This week, the store had an open house. Aaron brought the kids down for all the free demos and to visit. Here's one of my arrangments. Some of you ladies will remember these from Mr. Ritchie's class. People LOVE these things:

This afternoon the kids and I made Halloween sugar cookies. Just between you and me....I HATE making sugar cookies. I guess it's because I've yet to find the perfect recipie and I just get frustrated when they stick to everything, get rock hard, or just don't turn out. The kids had a GREAT time though making and decorating the cookies. All Logan wanted to do was eat the cookie dough. (Thanks Papa) Here's a picture of the kids having a grand time:

Below is a picture of Kaya's finished product. It's supposed to be a cat. Aaron said it looked more like a murder victim.

I need to take some more pictures of Emily since she's growing like crazy. I got her to giggle the other night and she's got such the personality. Thanks to the advice from my friend, Lisa, Emily is sleeping an average of 7-9 hours at night. Her naps are still kind of erratic but she's sleeping really well at night. With Logan not taking naps these days - all the sleep we can get at night is crucial.

On another happy note, Aaron got a promotion at work. I won't go into details since this is still a public blog but we're happy for the extra income this will bring in along with the "perks" of the job including a "take home car". With the price of gas these days - having a vehicle from his employer to drive to and from work is a huge BONUS!! (Especially on the pocketbook!)

And guess what? It's supposed to SNOW tonight!!! 2-4 inches here on the valley floor. I'm not ready for the snow yet. I really enjoy the Fall weather. Kaya has been asking me when it's going to be warm enough to fill up her pool and play in the sprinklers. No matter how many times I tell her, the 4 year old mind just doesn't understand that it's going to be MONTHS before it'll be warm enough for that again. Time to break out the winter clothes.

Need I say more???

What's New??

It's been a little crazy around here the last 6 weeks. As if taking care of a newborn isn't enough to keep me busy, add a 4 year old who started pre-school, and a 2 year old boy who thinks he wants to potty train to the mix. Actually, he just doesn't want to leave his diaper on and wants to wear the big boy underwear so he can go to pre-school too. He does pretty good, but he still has a hard time recognizing when he needs to go. Half the day, I'm trying to keep clothes on him and keep him from peeing on the floor! He'll come out to the family room naked and I'm wondering, "Where is his diaper/underwear and what's in it?" I'm always afraid of what waits me when I finally FIND the surprise he left me. UGH!! It's a work in progress though. I really need to just devote one whole day when Aaron's home to get him trained and be done with it.

Kaya had her first field trip with the pre-school to Wheeler Historic Family Farm. She had a great time. Look at the picture below. The geese came running when they realized the kids had food to feed them. It almost looks like something out of a horror movie. Attack of the Geese!! (They're about as big as most of the 4 year olds!!)

2 Fridays ago took the kids to the BYU Life Science museum. (FREE!) The kids had a good time checking out all the animals and playing in the activity room with the museum's toys.

After the museum at BYU we headed to J-Dawg's restaurant just off of campus. This is the infamous hot dog shack that we've been dying to try. Not only were the hot dogs and polish dogs superb (With the special sauce) - we got to meet a "Utah" celebrity. Former BYU Head football coach LaVell Edwards stopped by for a bite to eat. Aaron struck up a conversation and I happened to watch him rub somebody's bumper while pulling out of the parking lot and then keep driving. In Lavell's defense, I don't think he realized what he did, but it was pretty funny none the less.

A week ago Saturday we took the kids to the Utah State Fire Museum. It was a fun and FREE museum in Grantsville, UT. The kids enjoyed climbing all over the old fire trucks and we just enjoyed getting out and doing something fun. The kids got some free fire hats!
After the Fire Museum, we zipped over to the Tooele Valley Railroad Museum. Another FREE attraction for the kids. Logan LOVES trains and loved seeing the full size trains up close and also checking out the huge model railroad disply they had. Kaya's favorite part was the picnic lunch we brought with us to have on the grass. We had a good family outing seeing some of the museums in Utah.
And for Emily...well we have a thumb sucker! Kaya started sucking her thumb when she was about 3 months old. (And she's STILL sucking her thumb - any tips?) Logan preferred the pacifier. We just broke him of the pacifier shortly after his second birthday last month. Now that I've had one of each, I must admit I prefer the thumb sucking. Of course, that's going to obviously be a harder habit to break than just snipping a hole in the pacifier. But it was so much more convenient than always trying to FIND the pacifier and making sure it's clean. I especially hated the stage when Logan needed the pacifier to fall asleep and then would wake up and cry when it would fall out (because he didn't know how to find it and put it back in his mouth.) We would have to give him his pacifier 10 or 12 times a night before he would get into a deep enough sleep and not care if it fell out. Emily has never really cared for the pacifier and she likes to suck on her hands. She's been getting closer and closer to finding her thumb over the last 2 weeks or so. It's only been in the last couple of days that she has definitely shown a preference to sucking her thumb. It does look cute and she's pretty content when she gets it in. However she does get pretty mad when it comes out. She'll get the hang of it soon enough, I'm sure. So here's a picture of how I found her after her nap the other day:

That's about it for now. It's a full time job taking care of 3 kids under 4. I LOVE it but I sure am tired by the end of the day!!

A Quick Picture

I haven't had much time to even think about updating my blog lately. We've just had a lot going on around here. So here's a cute picture of Emily for the time being. Look at all that hair!!!

The Circle of Life

We have had a busy last few days. It started on Thursday night when my parents flew into town to visit for the weekend. For easy reading I'll create several posts for each event from our long weekend. I titled this post "The Circle of Life" because of the variety of things that happened this weekend. All we needed was a wedding to really make it complete!