Outdoor Fun

Well, to make a long story short...

'Tax refund=the largest, sight unseen, online purchase we've ever made...a swing set for the kids!!'

We are not going to tell Liam about it because we don't want the same thing happening to the swing set as it did with Riding Thomas. It will just have to be a big surprise, and aren't those the best anyway?!

We have thought of getting a swing set for a while now. But, we really didn't want the maintenance of a wood set, and all the metal ones we had seen were a bit of an eyesore. I happened upon Costco's site yesterday, and found a really nice, attractive metal one. It has really great reviews on all the sites we looked on, and is $400 less than the manufacturer's site...gotta love Costco! It will get here in about 2-3 weeks, and we are very excited. Our yard is pretty, but is also pretty boring for kids...so hopefully this will get us out enjoying fresh air and our yard more!

VIDEO

Correcting a Parent's Mistake (Hopefully)

Liam is TOTALLY obsessed with Thomas the train right now. And I made the mistake of telling him that we got tickets to go ride on him over 2 months in advance. He wants to go 'RIGHT NOW!', and because he's only 3, he doesn't fully understand the concept of time, and that he won't be here for a couple more months. Lately, he has been waking up and wanting to go 'RIGHT NOW!'. And after I explain to him that it isn't till May, he gets very cranky, and is not happy for a long time. I got the brilliant idea (I hope) this morning to print out Thomas's schedule and a map of the U.S. and put stars on the state he's in...I hope it works, otherwise the next 2 months are going to be miserable ;)


SCHEDULE


MAP

We Got Our New Lens Today!

And Mike took this beautiful picture of Rowan...

Birthday Party!!

So today Liam's cousin had her 4th birthday party. They rented a bounce house, and Liam had an absolute blast!! That kid played for 90+ minutes strait. He crashed about 5 minutes after I got him in the car and fell back asleep right after I got him in the house and changed him...Looks as though he will sleep through the night (if we are lucky).

Since I know how hard it is to get pictures when you are in charge of an event...I went crazy taking pictures (233 to be exact!!) Family you are welcome to visit the link and upload any picture, or the whole lot. Sorry they are unedited, so if you like them you are on your own in that department :) The password is the initials of the guest of honor...if you are unsure of her middle name, just email me :)

CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK TO THE BIRTHDAY PICTURES

If you want a specific picture, just run your mouse over the picture, a pop up menu shows up...there is a yellow folder at the bottom of the menu that says save photo. It will save that file at full resolution. If you want a zipped folder of the whole lot, just let me know and I can forward it to you...I'm still learning how this site works, so just let me know if you have any issues or questions. Thanks!!

Spring is around the corner...

I think the kids are on the mend as well as myself...sadly Mike seems to be feeling worse, but his started later, so that is to be expected. For the past 3 days Liam has slept really hard at nap time, but then was up really late, close to midnight?!?! Today we stopped at the store on the way home, so he did not take a nap. I'm hoping this will get him back on track. But then another whammy...daylight savings this weekend...not really looking forward to that!! Last year it took us about a month to recover from it. It never really affected me that much until we had kids. Only time will tell, but I'm hoping it will be easier this time.

Below are a couple of my favorite recent pics of the kids.

Rowan 14 months


Liam 3 yrs


And here is cute one of them around Christmas:

Sick day AGAIN.

Liam started to have a fever last Monday evening. He started with a fever and cough. His cough was so bad that he gagged up his food and sometimes his medicine. Usually when he gets a fever it breaks after about 3 days. This one was not going away, so by day 5 we took him to the Dr. The Dr. listened to his lungs, and heard a crackle. He checked his Oxygen too. He wanted to determine for sure if it was a bacterial or a viral infection, so he had us go to the hospital to get an x-ray. While we were waiting to be seen, Liam was getting anxious waiting. We walked around a bit, and we came across a vending machine. He wanted the Doritos, and so I checked my wallet, and there was NO CASH! I called my mom, since she wasn't too far away and asked her to bring some cash. They took us to the back before she arrived, but they told her where we were when she got there. Liam was happy to see Grandma. Liam did really awesome getting the x-ray. He listened to direction, and wasn't scared at all. We got him the Doritos and went home 2 hours later! The Dr. called later that afternoon, and told us that it appeared as he thought, as a viral infection. He thinks it's RSV, so no meds for that...just have to wait it out. Now it's a week after his fever started, and his fever seems to have broke, but his appetite is still gone. And poor Rowan has a fever, and me and Mike are sick too! Ugh, hope this thing clears up soon!!

Potty Party

So I happened upon a site from someones blog, and found the secret to potty training our stubborn 3 yr old. We knew he was ready for it, but we just needed that extra tool to figure it out.

The site is: http://www.3daypottytraining.com/

It is an E-book, and there are some copyright issues, so I can't share too much publicly about it, but we are just thrilled with how well her information worked with Liam. After reading it, I have to admit I was a little skeptical and a little upset we had just paid $24 for an E-book, but being able to potty train him in about 4 days all but makes up for the diapers we are going to save!!

We did a variation of her method, and since we didn't have 3 entire days in a row to work on it ourselves, we decided we would just test it out, to see how well it worked and go from there. We also have decided to not worry about night time right now, and let him wear a diaper. We also were unsure what to do about preschool since he has multiple teachers throughout the day, so we decided he could wear a pull-up until we are all confident that he is comfortable asking to use the bathroom there.

So we started our 'Potty Party' on Friday morning. He had pooped in his diaper that morning, and I was ready to begin!! On went the big boy underpants, and shortly after that he told me that he had to pee in the potty!! I was shocked how quickly it worked?!?!

Day 1: He did all his pees in the potty! Had some #2 accidents though.
Day 2: He had one pee accident, and 1 #2 accident, and did 2 #2's in the potty
Day 3: Tricky day since we had prior plans and had to send him to G'ma's he did really well with pee's but not so well with #2
Day 4: Back on track, had ZERO accidents!!!
Day 5: Went to G'ma's again, and had school, NO ACCIDENTS

We are currently on Day 6, and I got a text from G'ma that he told her he needed to go #2 for the first time! I dare say our little boy is potty trained, for the most part. I expect he will have a few set backs here and there, and we will need to work on night time later, but we are just super happy with the results. So if anybody out there is needing a little help with this, I do recommend this plan.