1 to go

I suddenly felt the potty training pressure once I learned that my nephew, who is only a couple months older than Avery, was fully potty trained. WHAT? Where the heck has the time gone? Is Avery really old enough for this? I guess she is and I knew it was about that time. So, the day school started, I used my new found freedoom with only 2 kids and headed to "the Walmarts" We found the cute pink potty chair and some new undies and we were ready to go.
I guess I was just thinking to myself that I had this made. I had already done it with 4 other kids-im a pro. Right? SOOO wrong! Avery wanted nothing to do with it. She thought the potty was cute and wanted to play with it and that was it. It took her a good 2 days of accidents to realize what going potty really meant. Finally on day 3, she had her first pee in the potty chair.

Hip Hip Hooray!!
Her hapyy little smile says it all. I realize that its kinda gross to put pictures of pee, but you cant really see it anyway. We did pretty good for a few days and really only dealt with pooping accidents. Then one morning she woke up and would not put her undies on. She was done. I was not gonna push it, so I let her go back to diapers for a few days. A few days turned into a week and a half so I decided that I was not going to let this go by. Gosh darnit, I am going to potty train this girl. So, we started again. Every morning I have to force those undies on her, but once they are on, she does great(except for the poop). We have gone 4 days with no accidents. Bill even took her out last night with no diaper and she told him she had to go potty and all was good. This brings me to today.
We decided to take a trip to tjmaxx. We had been there a good 2 minutes and she says she has to go potty. So we rush to the bathroom. Nothing. Seriously 1 minute later, she says "its coming, its coming". Back to the bathroom. She goes!! So I think we are good for the next 20 min or so. About 5 minutes later, I smell that lovely smell. You have GOT to be kidding me. I lift her dress up and I can see a nice big suprise poking out of those cute little undies. As I pick her up, I notice that her shoes are off and her feet are wet. This cannot be good. Sure enough, there is a lovely puddle with feet prints walking away from it. I dont see any worker to tell, so I just figured I would find someone when I was done cleaning her up. I get to the bathroom and reach in my purse for a diaper. None. Oh crap(no pun intended). So I head out, leaving Avery and Caleb in the bathroom, to find some undies. Luckily there was a nice cleanrance rack close by with the perfect ones. I grab a pair and run back in the bathroom to clean her up. When I go to put the underwear on, I realize that they are way to big. I look at the tag and they say 6, but on the package they were 4. Great, now I have to buy these underwear that are way too big-oh well at least they are only $3. So we head back out. She started running for the toys and the underwear fell off around her ankles, so I rolled them at the top to keep them up-nice touch. I figured that would work until we got home. When we got to the toys, I saw that the mess had already been cleaned up. Phew-awkward conversation about my childs pee on the floor avoided!
About 5 minutes later she has to go potty AGAIN! Its crazy, but she goes...alot. Then about 10 minutes later, again. We did this 2 more times and she went all times. She hadnt even been drinking, where is this liquid coming from? After I had tried a few things on, she said she had to go again. There is no way! But, I hurried and put my clothes back on and away we went. After this time, I was done. It was time to go home. When we got to the bathroom she had already peed all down her legs and onto her now soaking wet flip flops. So I ran back out to the cart and grabbed another pair of the huge underwear. These ones werent big-they were size 4. I looked in the package and realized that the big ones must have just been stuffed in there as an added bonus for such occassions. So back into the bathroom I went to scrub her legs and wash her shoes off. I put the new undies on, wrapped her flip flops in paper towels, and threw the huge, wet undies in the trash (dont judge me). I was done. This short little trip was supposed to take me like and hour, instead it was 2. Luckily, she made it home, but had to pee right when we got home. Her potty chair was on top of my bathroom counter, for some reason, and she couldnt get to it. She peed in the new undies and all over the floor.
Its been a great day!! And wouldnt you know, she has been accident free the rest of the day. ( this all happend in the morning)

Why am I doing this again?? Ahh, yes, all in the name of saving a few bucks a month on diapers. Am I really that cheap and lazy?

Yes. I really think I am.

Tyson is 6!!!

Summer is our time for birthdays. We have 3 right in a row-only 2 weeks between each one.
In July, its Ty-bo who has the birthday. This year, he turned 6!!

Tyson talked about his birthday for months and months and had a list a mile long of what he wanted and it changed about every week.
Tyson didnt have a friend party this year, but he still invited his one friend Daniel to come. We BBQ'd and Tyson got to eat on the special plate.


Yum!! My mouth is seriously salavating

I love when I pull the camera out-everyone ducks or looks away-except my kids.

Now, doesnt that food look super yummy!!

Tyson asked for a beaver webkins, but being the procrastinator I am, I couldnt find one but we found something that resembled it and he couldnt tell the difference

Holly and Tiare were right on the mark with shoes (which he is OBSESSED with) and baseball gloves. He was in HEAVEN!!

And who doesnt love money?

For Christmas, Tyson got some wrestling guys. He has been asking for a ring for them to play in since then and he FINALLY got it. (now its broken-it lasted a whole 2 months)

His bike was hanging by a thread and it was too small for him, so he got a new one and moved up a size. He didnt ask for this and was really suprised.

But, being the sports obsessed boy he is, all he was asking for was a wooden bat, some sports clothes, a shiny baseball, and a glove. Such an easy kid.

Grandma Sandy really scored big points with this awesome D-backs outfit. He wore it for 5 days in a row and I finally made him take it off so I could wash them. Caleb and Tysons fought all the time over who was going to wear it and one day while I was at tjmaxx, I found a set just Calebs size in the clearance section. So now they get to be twiners.

Tyler, Calbe, Tyson and Drew

Even though he didnt get EVERYTHING (he told me this later) he had on his list, he still had a great birthday.

Here are some things we love about Ty-bo.

He loves sports

He watches every D-backs game and knows all the players. His favorite is Eric Burns

His favortie color is Blue

His favortie food is steak

His favorite sport is baseball

His favorite movie is Nacho Libre

His favorite book is the big book of insects

He is a fierce competitor

He is a perfectionist

He always wants his hair done and in a mohawk

He loves to read

He loves to play with friends

He is good to his brothers and sisters(most of the time)

He worships his Dad

He is always trying to do whats right

He changes his clothes about 4 times a day

He always has to be wearing shoes

He has the BEST smile

We love this kid!! Happy Birthday Ty-bo!

Lani is 8!!

My sweet Lani Lou turned 8 back in June. She didnt have a party because she was having one for her baptism, but she had invited one of her BFF's, Abby, to come and celebrate with the family.

She got some scriptures

Is she really still into dolls? Only if they are Hannah Montana!!

She got a DS for Christmas and only had one game, so she was sooo excited to finally have another game to play-especially HSM3

Uh-oh, she is already into teen magazines. Yikes.

But the favorite of the night was the bead set. Too bad none of us are creative enough to make anything out of them.

Lani wanted a cake from Costco, and since her birthday was on a Sunday, I had to get it on Saturday. When I brought it home, she was upset because it wasnt chocolate. She told me 100 times that she wanted a choc. cake from Costco and I messed up the order. My bad! So I made her her very own chocolate cake-not pretty, but chocolate nonetheless.

Did I say it wasnt pretty? What I meant to say was it was the greatest cake-even better than Buddy from the Cake Boss. Just look at that perfection!!

Having a birthday on a Sunday is never a fun thing, but I think she had a good day. The day before she had the choice of going shopping and pedicures with me or golfing with dad and what do you know, she chose her daddy!

Some things we love about Lani are:

She is so sweet

She makes friends where ever she goes

She is a hard worker

She loves to sing

She loves HSM and Hannah Montana and Wizards of Waverly Place

Her favorite color is pink

She LOVES food-her favorite is noodles.

Her BFF is Abby

She loves animals-anykind. She wants to be a vet when she grows up (oh, and a dolphin trainer)

She loves stuffed animals-her favorite is her stuffed bunny bun-buns.

She is happy

She HATES to read

She loves to get down and dirty with her brothers and Dad

She loves getting her nails painted

She loves high heels (what?)

Her feet are size 7 in womens

Her eyes are the prettiest color brown

She has such a sensitive little soul

She is very tender hearted

She can argue and play the blame game all day long

She can talk and talk and talk and talk about everything and nothing. You should hear her stories!!

We love our lani lou!! Happy Birthday Sweetheart!

Summer Basketball Camp

This summer was a bit crazy in the mornings, but by 11:00 we were bored out of our minds. The kids did swimming and basketball camp. I never did get any swimming pictures-but being the first year, they decided they didnt want to compete anyway. I was ok with that since I was doing it mainly for the excercise-well, they were doing it for the excercise. Maybe next year.
The boys did the Mesa high school basketball camp and they LOVED it. Caleb and Tyson are sports junkies and loved every minute of it. Noah had fun, but he was kinda forced to go. We are trying to make him a bit more athletic, but truth be told-he would rather be at science camp.


This is the boys with one of the many coaches.
(I love Lani loungin in the background)

Caleb was so pumped and ready to go!!!

Tyson is quite the competitor. He is the one child who lives, eats and breaths sports. All he wants to wear is sports clothes, jersies, basketball shorts. Hes crazy.

Caleb is the kid with the natural athletic ability. (He takes after his mama!) He was built to play sports and does well at every sport he tries. He is quite a bit more laid back than Tyson, but he follows Tysons every move and that usually includes one sport or another.

It was funny to watch Tyson and Caleb play on the same team because if Caleb got the ball he would immediatly look for Tyson to pass it too. When Tyson got the ball, he would take it straight to the hoop. (shows the difference in their personalities)

Here is the only shot that Tyson made the whole game.

And, here is Tyson asking Caleb why he didnt give HIM the ball.

This is the younger age group. I still had my zoom lens on and I didnt have time to switch to my regualr one so I wasnt able to fit in the whole group. Whoops.

Noahs team won their game and he wanted me to take a picture of the scoreboard. So, here it is. Noah played all of 2 minutes. There were so many kids and they all had to take turns.

He had a great warmup...

And some pretty good blocks in his 2 minutes

But this is what he did for most of the game.

But he got pretty good at mastering a few tricks =)

Noah hates sports and would rather be doing anything but, but he knows that we are having him do sports regardless because its good excercise and its good competition and interaction with other kids, so he is at least a good sport about it.

I really, relly enjoyed this camp and I cant wait for it again next year!!

Noah the Builder

One of Noahs favorite things to do is to build things. He loves to put together, take apart, create new things and make stuff up. He has one of those creative brains-im not sure where he gets it from.

For his birthday, he got this new k'nex set and started building that day.

I think he stayed in his pj's for 3 straight days and just stuck to it until it was done

This was the final result. It was a machine with a motor that he put together that brought balls to the top and then droped them down into a maze of sorts. I looked at the directions and I seriously dont think I could have done it myself. (I guess thats not really saying much)

We plan on Noah designing and building our dream home-seriously, he is that good!!

Easter

Unfortunatly, this is the only picture I took during easter time. This was a chemo week for me, so I wasnt up and around. I was able to get my easter shopping done before chemo and then I got up out of bed long enough to put the baskets together. We didnt do dresses or church clothes this year, so I wasnt too conserned about the before church picture. Stacy was in town, so her and my mom made it a fun day for all the kids. Hopefully next Easter will be a happier time...I plan on it!!

( This is also the first picture I took with my broken camera. Bill took it to Tysons football game and broke the flash somehow. So, the next few posts have horrible pictures. I still havent gotten it fixed, but I learned how to shoot without a flash-in most situations anyway)

Spring Football

Tyson is our super sports obsessed boy. He loves all things sports and he seriously lives and breathes sports.
We decided to try out some flag football this year and it went pretty good.

I was only able to go to 2 games the entire season because of the chemo and how sick I was, but Bill went and took some pictures for me (although right after this game he came home with my camera...broken) The first few games were still pretty cold and it actually rained on them a few times.

Unfortunatly, sweet boy pulled a muscle or something-we still arent sure what it was because the Dr's didnt know. Apparantly, its pretty hard to pull muscles in kids his age, but nontheless, it sidelined him for about 3 games. Poor guy was super bummed

But after a few weeks of rest he was ready to head back out on the field. He grabbed a few flags and ran as hard as he could, but mostly he just chased the kid with the ball.

This age is so funny because they still dont know what they are doing and they just follow the ball. Pure entertainment

He felt like he was pretty tough stuff when he played-that was only like 3 minutes out of the whole game.

He has only played one other sport in his life but he was only 4 and he wasnt into it at all. At this stage all he really wanted was the trophy...

...And he finally got one!

Did I mention that his team didnt win a single game? Oh well, its all for experience and he got plenty of it. He loved it and I think it will be something he sticks with for years to come!!

Such a handsome little dude!