This melts my heart!

Everyone was good this year.

This year we broke tradition and got our christmas tree at Home Depot rather than cutting it down in the Santa Cruz mountains. We needed to get a small tree again this year since our place is so small so driving the few hours to the mountains and paying to cut a tree down is a lot of time and money so we decided to have FHE at Home Depot this year.

It was nice celebrating Christmas in our own home this year. Christmas Eve was spent at my dad's house with Lauren, Mariah, Mats and our little family. We had a delicious ham and scalloped potato dinner, played around out side and opened presents by the fire.

Christmas morning we got up about 8ish turned on my new Mindy Gledhill Christmas cd which is so spectacular and started opening our stockings. After church we headed over to my mom's house for a Christmas dinner with my mom, dad, Lauren and our little family.

I was a good girl this year (after all, I birthed a 9 pounder child drug free) so Santa was good to me this Christmas. I got hot pink shoes and belt -so cute, 2 shabby apple dresses that I have been wanting, pink crackle nail polish (what a husband I love him to pieces), oh yeah and Santa brought us a new camera (Cannon T2i). It took us a while to decide between the Cannon and the Nikon and we finally decided on the Cannon. It was faster and had a higher resolution. We LOVE it! Oh yeah, how can I forget, I also got a gym membership. Rick found me a gym in Piedmont that has babysitting. Although, I am looking around a little more to find a gym with babysitting for under $200 a month.

The boys did pretty good for themselves as well. We bought them dual dvd players for the car (which was great for our New Years trip down south to the beach house). They also got WAY too many toys. We had to take a trip to Ikea after Christmas to find storage bins and ways to store all the new toys.

Here are some pictures of our Christmas.





Athen was easily distracted after opening each gift. It was a challenge to get him to open another gift.




Crew on the other hand was a pretty good gift opener.




Look at all that loot!

Pop A Wheely

Now that the holidays are over and we are back in town there is lots to catch up on. I hope this adorable pictures holds you over until I get updating. Happy New Year!

Head over to my friends blog - Toddler Approved to enter for a free Christmas book giveaway. She also has the best ideas for teaching your toddlers.

Athen's Carnival Party

We had Athen's second birthday a few weekends ago and it was a carnival theme. He had so much fun. Here are a ton of pictures.
Ticket booth


I made clown bow ties for each of the kids and had clown noses for them.


We had a photo booth area.



We played pin the nose on the clown.



I made a clown mouth out of wood and painted it for the bean bag toss.


We had a face painting station, however, we didn't end up using it.


We made animal balloons.


We had a tin can toss.


Here is the table. We had lemonade, popcorn, corn dogs and cupcakes.


Lemonade glasses


Hershey kisses with A's and 2's.


Circus Eats with noisemakers I made for the birthday song.


Balloons for the kids to take home.






Birthday banner.



The party bags said "Thanks for clown'n around with Athen on his birthday"


Athen's circus peanuts and circus cookies.




In the treat bags we had clown noses, noisemakers, circus peanuts, circus cookies, hershey kisses, and button magnets with the kids name on them.

Now to all the fun stuff! The kids and their fun.








He got a red bike and LOVES it.


Blowing out his candles.


Eating his popcorn.


We had a blast. The people that came were Grandma & Grandpa S, Aunt Sara, Anupa, Jack, Kristen, Isaac, Amy, Mike and his little buddies were: Alyssa, Blake, Brady, Haliey, Chetan, Malini, Aiden, and Kiel. Thanks for coming everyone and happy second bithday Athen we love you to pieces!

HELP!

Calling all mom's who have successfully potty trained recently. I need help. The first week and a half of potty training (although exhausting) went well. Athen only had a few accidents and he was doing so well. It was a positive experience and he was happy to go potty on the big boy toilet. In the beginning we were bringing him and he was going on demand and then he started letting us know when he needed to go. We finally started leaving the house and I was a little worried but still we had success. He stayed dry all day, he went potty at church, at the mall, and my moms house and was doing great.

Then he started going through a phase for a day or so where he would say he had to go and then sit down and wouldn't go. He did this for a day or so, wanting to go to the potty every 15 minutes. The last few days he has refused to sit on the potty. He will not go to the bathroom. He holds it in all day long. I know he needs to go because he dances around and holds him self but he will not sit down. When we bring him to the potty he staightens up his body and wouldn't sit down. He won't take bribes - no candy, toys, movies, vitamins, stickers anything. Eventually after way too long he wets his pants. We have tried having him take off his own pants and putting them in the laundry and putting dry ones on but he doesn't want to do that. We have tried leaving the wet ones on which he doesn't like but that hasn't worked either.

I have been giving him tons to drink and am trying to feed him things like prunes (because he is way constipated at this point). I am worried he is going to damage his blatter (which happened to me when I was pregnant with him and the doctors wouldn't let me pee, it was a painful experience).

Any advice???? Please help!

Thanksgiving

We had a nice Thanksgiving in Utah. The night we got in was the only night that it snowed. The next morning there was a little bit of snow of the grass so Rick took Athen and the cousins out to go sledding down the front lawn. It was Athens first and only time.

We had a busy week. We visited with some friends and spent time with family. Thanksgiving day was delicious. We had some unique dishes that really added to the meal. We played games, went to the pool and did some black Friday shopping. We got all the deals we wanted to get so we were happy. We started our black Friday shopping at 10:00pm on Thursday night and ended about 1:30am. We then started back up at 7:00am. Luckily we were able to shop without the kids.

Here is our week in pictures:




At the pool with all the cousins. Athen loved the slide.




We made some turkeys and acorn treats for the kids on Thanksgiving day.




We went to Jump On It with cousin Dallin for his birthday.




My sisters and I.




We went to see the temple lights with both Rick and I's family.







And this is the view from Rick's parents front door!