Saturday, June 28, 2008

Potty Training update

Aunt Nancy- take notes. ;) Potty training is going really well so far. We have been using our cooking timer and setting it for 45 minutes/30 mins after eating and/or drinking and as soon as it goes off, it's a game to run to the bathroom as fast as we can and go. Then the reward is one jelly bean for doing #1 and two for a #2.

Surprisingly, in the last couple of days, Alex has been going to the bathroom before the timer has gone off on his own to do #2's, but not always making it there for #1's. I'll admit though, the last few days have been hectic/away from home and he's been in pull ups quite a bit instead of his big boy pants, so we've not used the timer as much as we should be. So hopefully we'll get back to that routine here in the morning.

So all in all, things are really looking promising and hopefully he'll be pretty well trained by the time he starts preschool on August 18th! :)

Whoo hoo, I'm working out!

I NEVER thought I'd ever say that.... But it's true. Sue and I are going to the HS here and doing water aerobics on Mondays and Wednesdays and then going to the church gym on Friday's. Mike's new schedule of working from 7-3:30 is working out super well too, as he goes to the church gym on the same days, working out before he picks up Meaghan. Then he comes home in time for Sue to pick me up and the two of us go and work out.

I can really tell it's making a difference already, as yesterday I did a 2 mile walk in 33 minutes. I'm sleeping better and in general have more energy and feel better than I have lately. I just hope the weight will start coming off as well with the workouts too. Also, with mowing the yard on Thursday, I wasn't completely wiped when I was done either! Katie, Alex and I also made the 1 mile trek downtown to the hearing aid place and the 1 mile walk back as well, which that was hot and muggy, but all in all good practice for Disney and was good experience for me to be in tune to Honey and how hot she is getting.

Speaking of wich, I'm seriously having to think about what means to keep her cool down at Disney and water down there for her. I've gotten some pretty good ideas from my GDF list, but I'll be honest, I'm a little nervous about it.

Mike's family reunion

We took off on Sunday morning for the family reunion. We made the mistake of letting Alex nap for 45 mins on the way over, which resulted in a SUPER grumpy kid for most of the meal. :( He eventually woke up and began to play, but until then, EVERYONE in the room knew he was NOT happy. *sigh*















So about 3:30pm we loaded up and actually put Meaghan in the back with Katie, so Alex got a new seat partner:

A veiw of last weekend- First Road trip with the family for Honey!

Last weekend we headed north for the weekend to go to Mike's family reunion. His mom isn't able to go anymore, so we stayed with college friends, Aleatha and Joe instead of at a hotel. The kids had a fun time playing and feeding their bottle calves as well. :) The reunion went pretty well to. :) Honey did great in the car and is such a good traveller. The kids weren't too bad themselves as well!

Here's some shots of the kids playing at Aleatha's house with Cole and his cousin Lucy.
















Then after the storms that kept us from going to Black Pines Animal Park as we'd planned, we took the kids to the park in town instead, and then came home and had some awesome steaks on the grill. :)












The Boys....



















Then we came back to the house, ate and just before bed, went to feed the calves. Alex REALLY got a kick out of the week old calf sniffing his hand! :)















Thursday, June 19, 2008

Fabrics, Sun Dresses, & More....

A good friend of mine that I talk with online, shared some pictures of her daughter, of some sun dresses she'd made for her. I was like hmmm, both girls are constantly asking to wear thier dresses for going out to play, and not wanting them ruined, tell them nooooo, go get some play clothes on.

So I was on the hunt for the shirred fabric, and we did well! :) JoAnn's has it on sale for 1/2 off right now! Just double check what is and isn't on sale though, as the minnie mouse fabric below about broke the bank and I didn't realize it until after in the car and headed home.

I was able to do a set of dresses for the girls and a set of dresses for thier American Girl dolls plus head bands for them. Meaghan's dress I need to cut off shorter as it's too long and my plan is to make headbands for the girls too. but it's super late and I'm catching up here, so will have to do that later on today (after I get some sleep though)

These are incrediably easy to make. Seriously, if you have a sewing machine, you can do it. You measure around the kid, at a 1/2 inch shorter than that measurement, turn the fabric inside out and fold it back half the measurement amount. Then sew along the cut end with a straight stitch and then go back up it with a zig zag stitch. Then take your good scissors and cut just outside of the seam you've just created.


Next measure how long you want your dress down, and add an inch. Turn up the end the width of your sewing machine foot and straight stitch around. Turn it up a second time the width of what you did before and put the edge of the foot again on the edge of the fabric and go around again in the straight stitch.

Then you put the strap material on the kid's shoulder, pin it in place, and stitch it down and Voila! You have a sundress. Each dress took me maybe a half hr? 45 mins tops for the sun dresses. Super simple and easy! :)

So here's the girls in thier new sun dresses I got made today. Katie helped me pick the stuff out and the strap lace/ribbon/etc.





And here are thier dolls below. I didnt have enough width on the shirred fabric so cut the lower part off and made a top and skirt for the second doll. :)





I also have these fabrics, which all but the white eyelet and the Little mermaid stuff, I'll make matching dresses for both girls and hopefully stuff for thier dolls too. :) Hoping to make these for this summer and for the trip to Disney too. :)







(For the record- Katie picked out those primary dots...)

The Big Disney Reveal....

Katie has been asking off and on if we'd be going to Disney World, but Mike has done pretty good at diverting her and leading her to think that it was too expensive and such.

Since we have 4 weeks left until we fly out, and two girls that have never flown before, we figured we'd go ahead and tell them where we were headed and such, so we could field the majority of the questions, educate them on what things we were going to try to see/do and so forth, trying to eliminate some of the frenzied excitement once down there.

So Here's how it went:





Mike was showing the girls what resort we'd be staying in- the All Stars Movies resort. :)

A really good day in Indiana! :D

Today was awesome. Lots of good things happened and fun things to boot. :)

1. I got an I Love You Award! :D

award

Thanks Stacie! Love you too! :) Check out her blog at
Stacie's Madness

I'd like to pass this on to several people that I try to talk to regularly, if I don't though, they are dear to my heart though in all that they do! :)

Of course all of my Lucky Charms Friends

Shari in WI
Erin and Midnight
Stacey here in IN
Angela here in IN
Crystal in LA
Val in VA
Suzi- my partner in crime with InDBA. :) *We did it!!!!*


2. It was Disney REVEAL Day! A separate post is coming up about this, but as expected, girls were estatic. :)

3. The skylight in the bathroom is FINALLY done!!!! Woot Woot!!!! It was so worth the money spent and looks soooo good!






4. Major proud moment here for InDBA (Indiana Deaf Blind Assoc. ) We did the final siggys, wrote the check, and the application for the non profit status has been mailed off!!!!!! We did it!!!!!

5. I found the fabrics I was looking for last night and got one set of dresses made for the girls, and one set made for their dolls off the same fabric. Will work on more tomorrow. :) Another post coming up with pics on these. :)

Somehow I missed this picture from Father's day, so had to share:

Monday, June 16, 2008

Father's Day Weekend

The weekend was a pretty good one, kinda off key, but it was good. Friday night, Sue and I went to the church and worked out, I walked a 16 minute mile on the treadmill, then biked for about 5 minutes on the recumbent bike until I got frustrated at not being able to get the prgraming/level set up on it at a comfortable level. Then I moved over to the Elliptical, where I lasted 10 minutes and through the first "wave" on the program and then I was ready to call it quits for the night, as I was worn out. Sue had walked a good while on the treadmill and I then walked two laps around the walking track in the gym for cool down. We left there and went to walmart so I could look for some shirred fabric, where the top 9 inches is shirred and the rest of the 45 inches isn't. A good friend made her daughter some super cute sundresses with this type of fabric and some ribbon, some being in disney princesses which is the "IN" thing right now with my girls. So I'm hoping to find some for the girls to make them some sundresses and with the leftovers, make some for thier American Girl Dolls as well. We'll see if I can. :) Unfortunately, they didnt have the fabric, so Sue picked up what she needed and we headed on home. Mike and I then raced a couple of games on the Wii Indy 500 legends game and both went to bed and crashed.

Then Saturday morning, we were kinda lazy, I got up with the kids, letting Mike sleep in until almost 10am, the kids and I fixed breakfast of french toast, serving Mike his breakfast in bed. The kids kinda putzed around the house, watching tv and playing as well as coming in and out of our bedroom for an ongoing tickle fest for all. :)

We finally got out of bed and I worked on stuff around the house as Katie folded laundry and put it away. Mike went and picked up our lawn mower that was finally repaired after 4 wks of being in the shop and $250 more. Ouch... So after he got home, Mike mowed the yard and I had pretty well picked up the house and cleaned things up. Then we fixed a late lunch, since we'd eaten a late breakfast, and put Alex and Meaghan down for a nap. Mike and I hadnt planned on it, but wound up taking a nap as well.

We then got up and went to church, which afterwards we all went to walmart to do the grocery shopping and grabbed dinner at Subway there in the store. It's always an adventure going to Walmart with Honey, since there are typically lots of kids and they tend to be pretty insistant about wanting to pet. Which it is ok, just something to deal with while there. As we were eating, Alex became more whiny and cranky and continued to do so as ge was feeling warmer and warmer. So we hurriedly tried to get the shopping done and finally piled everyone into the car and got home around 8:30pm. Got the kids medicated, ready for bed and then into bed and groceries put away. Mike then ran back out to Lowes to get the plexiglass to put over the 19" LCD monitor that Marland gave us and a couple of other things. After he got home and all was settled, Mike and I watched
The Guardian, with Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher. It was a pretty good movie! :)

Sunday morning we all got up a little later and had breakfast together. Alex was still running a pretty good fever so we decided that Mike would stay home with Alex as the girls and I went over to Dad and Sue's for the Father's day gathering. We watched another really good movie, Night At the Museum with Ben Stiller, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney. The kids really enjoyed it and it was cute. :) For the afternoon, we had planned to go and get the remote control cars out and have at it with them. So we went to the elementary school and had fun with those before heading back to Dad and Sue's house to open presents and played the Wii games with the racing wheels that Dad and Sue's Dad, Dan got. We then all enjoyed an awesome meal of lasagna and garlic bread with some cake and ice cream after. :)

Here are some pictures of the day: