Long Time No See

Sorry it's been forever since I've posted. We don't have internet at our house anymore, but hopefully will be getting it back soon. So just to fill everyone in on what we've been doing. Alex had a birthday on June 29th and I surprised him with a party. It was way fun and he got a camera! Yea! So the next time I have my camera and the internet at the same time I'll post some pics.

We're super excited because this weekend we are heading up north to Roy first to see our brand new niece Carly (my brother Philip's second daughter) who was born about a week ago. Then we'll be heading up to our cabin before driving up to Jackson hole to run the Snake river with Alex's family, my parents and the kids. Tate is so excited about going camping! Don't worry we won't take the kids down the river. My mom's not much of an extreme sports person so she'll stay at camp with the kids.

Wish us luck. I'll post pictures when we get back.

Sleep over!

So Alex's parents went out of town and took their dog, but left ours (who's been living with them for almost two years now). So we've been hanging out at their place a lot with Oscar. (We can't even have a dog on our property so we have to go there.) Sorry I don't have a picture of him so those of you who haven't met Oscar let me just give you the reader's digest version of our history with Oscar the pug.
Oscar is on his tenth life, we discovered his unusually high levels of anxiety when he was about a year old when we left him for the first time while we went on vacation. We had to cut our vacation short and rush home because our Oscar had collapsed after throwing up all over Alex's parents house. But don't worry after some I.V.'s and a few days at the vets he was just fine. From there he's done a number of things like walk into oncoming traffic several times, get chased by an angry moose, swallow a fish hook, have a $2000 surgery to get said fish hook out (paid for by an anonymous donor) and now has some kind of strange yeast infection that is all over his skin.
So since we've invested quit a bit in this stupid dog Tate and Alex decided to sleep over tonight so that he wouldn't be alone. And that meant that me and Allie were going to have a sleep over at home. (Alex told Allie that she got to have a sleep over with mommy so I had no other choice :)
At first I tried just laying her down in her bed and then laying on the floor next to her. That didn't work because she wanted to sleep with mommy. So I pulled her out of bed and laid her on the floor next to me. I figured I'd just put her back in bed once she fell asleep, but all she could talk about was how I was laying on her princess pillow and using her butterfly blanket (She has a real hard time sharing with anyone!)
So I told her that I was just going to go to my bed and go to sleep then. That did it. She wanted to sleep in mommy's bed now. Okay. We can have a sleep over in mommy's bed. It was already almost 8:15 and she's usually in bed asleep by now so I figured we'd lay in my bed for a few minutes and she'd fall asleep and then I'd carry her back to bed.
Yeah right! She talked and sang and babbled about everything from Mickey Mouse to how the five little ducks go over the hills and far away and every ten seconds she stopped to ask the same series of questions: "Mommy, a daddy go? A Tayden go? A Oscar go?" I'd tell her they were having a boy sleep over and we were having our girl sleep over. That meant that she needed to go to sleep.
But then she had to go potty (yes she is getting the potty thing, though not so much the pooping on the potty thing) Then she had to put her flower sticker on her potty chart and get a treat before we could go back to bed. So then I tried a new tactic. Just like you do with a preditor, I layed perfectly still and avoided eye contact in hopes that she'd just forget I was there and go to sleep, but her preditor instincts were too good. I finally gave up and chatted and laughed with her until she was rubbing her eyes.
"Let's go read a book in your room now" I told her and and so we read a book and I layed her down and said goodnight. She went right to sleep. So our first sleep over only lasted an hour or so, but it was really fun. I hope the boys are having a good sleep over too.

Busy, Busy!!

We have been so busy and yet have nothing to do. It must be summer! We have been going swimming nearly every day so we are super tan. I told Allie and Tate to pose for me for a picture before we went swimming one day and this is what I got. That's Tate's "Muscles" and Allie's "pretty smile". They crack me up!

Thank you for everyone's advice on potty training! Our internet has been screwy so I haven't been on the blog for a while. I agree that I just need to loose the pull-ups and go cold turkey. It's really not Allie so much as it's me. She's ready I'm just too impatient and busy with all these projects I keep taking on, like...

Ta da! Tate's fancy new dresser! It actually was Alex's when he was little and we kind of inherited it when we didn't have any furniture for Tate's room. I should have taken a before and after, but it used to be that caramel stain that was graffitied with pen and water spots. So I started sanding it and the stupid stain would not come off. I was running out of sand paper for the electric sander so I asked my awesome neighbors, Josh and Lotti if they had any. Before I new it I had sand paper, another sander, their air compresser, spare blue paint and lots of great advice. I never would have been able to finish it in one day without them. Thanks guys!

Another one of my many projects is my potted garden with is, needless to say, very sad looking. this is my lowly tomato plant. I have one green tomato growing and if it wasn't for that one thing I would have thrown it away along with my spinach that died, but somehow it's still hanging in there. But my watermelon plants are thriving. You can live off watermelon, right!?

And finally there's my Tater bug who is becoming much more flamboiantly open about his opinions and has developed a nasty case of selective hearing . In other words he is being a major pain in the butt! We had to establish a "behavior chart" with stars and X's. It's working to help him remember to obey and stop bossing. This is him working on his online preschool after we had gone to the library for story time. Doesn't he look so cute.

Desparate mom seeking potty training advice!

Hey all you mom's out there who would consider yourselves in-the-know on potty training, I need your advice because I'm obviously not very good at this! I need some input on what worked for your girls to get them potty trained.
Allie is so stubborn! She'll tell me either after she's already gone or just not tell me at all. If I do have her on the potty, unless I'm sitting right there with her, she'll actually get off the potty and go take a dump somewhere else (like in my closet! Yeah!)
We're going through more pull ups than we ever did diapers, because she can't stand the feeling of being wet. I know I can use that to my advantage, but whatever I'm doing is not working. So please help!

Princess Allie & The Royal Potty

Once apon a time there was a beautiful princess named Allie. The world revovled around her and she loved every minute of her enchanted life.

















Princess Allie and her mommy (the Queen ;) painted their toe nails and had so much fun. She never had to worry about anything.... Until one day....

It was time to potty train! Yes I know that she is only 21 months old in 2 days, but she's been showing a lot of interest and understanding of the whole potty concept for a couple months now. She's done pretty well so far, but just like everything else, she has her moments. I'm confident and hopeful that she'll catch on and that I won't have to buy anymore diapers, pullups or otherwise. Wish us luck!

A series of unfortunate events!

So at the last minute I decided to take the kids and caravan to Roy (where my parents live) with my sister, brother-in-law and their daughter. You see they were going to be leaving for 5 months for Baltimore, Maryland to sell alarm systems and my brother, who just got home from his mission would be giving his homecoming talk in church that Sunday. I really wanted to see everyone and spend a couple more days with my sister, but Alex had school and fire fighting. Nonetheless, I resolved to attempt it on my own.

The first part of the trip went pretty well, except for Tate was super winey and the DVD player wasn't working right. We stopped in Filmore for lunch. I was going to gas up too, but Tate suddenly went completely pale white and said he didn't feel good. He was still trying to get over an ear infection so I was thinking it had something to do with that. So I go looking for the small zip-lock bag I'd packed with all the essentials for such an event. No where to be found. I must have left it on the counter at home. Crap! The only thing they had a Maverick was children's Mortrin. So I bought that. All I needed was for us to make it to my parents. I took off pretty quick, before Mat and Amanda because it was sooo nap time for Allie and I was hoping Tate would fall asleep and feel better too.

Well Tate didn't sleep and he woke up Allie after only 20 minutes. Then suddenly I realized something else I had forgotten when my gas light came on in Salt Lake. Of course I was on the North end of Salt Lake in the industrial part with no gas stations. Fortunatly I made it to Farmington (because I missed another exit before that). Finally we made it to my parents. Sigh of relief, right? Wrong!

I looked at Tate and noticed these big red, welty sploches all over him. The motrin was the only thing I could think of that he had that was different. So I gave him some Benedril and helped my mom fix dinner, But by the end of dinner I was beginning to worry. His arms and legs were getting puffier by the minute. So I went looking for my medicaid card and called an instacare. Double wammy. Not only was it Saturday night and all the instacares were closed, but I had also forgotten my medicaid card! @#!%&#@

So I called up the ER at Odgen Regional and told them the situation. They said they could look up his file as long as I had the ID number off the card. So Alex got the number and me and Tate headed to the ER. "Yup, it's an alerigic reaction all right. No, we don't know what it would be from, you'll have to see an alergist for that. Good Luck" THANKS A LOT!
They did give him a disolvable pill that is kind of like an epi shot though. He was so tired and so swollen that his little feet didn't even fit in his flip flops. But he was so good. Such a trooper. He just sat there. When I asked him if he was okay, he said "Yeah, this is just my tired face".

What a trooper!

He's doing better now, he still has a rash that comes and goes and is itchy, but he's feeling better. But we had to top it off by Allie face planting it and getting a big old bruise on the side of her head. Good trip! But I won't be doing this again any time soon.

The fun and the not so fun!

It felt more like summer rather than spring yesterday. It got up above 80! So after I picked Tate up from preschool we dropped our library books off and went to the splash pad/river thing on main street. I was thinking that the water would be too cold to actually play in so I didn't bring swim suits (after all it is just barely April). And I was right about one thing. The water was cold, but the kids didn't seem to mind much. Tate took off his shirt and was wet from his waist down. He and Allie have had colds for a couple weeks, but I figured (once again) that they wouldn't get too wet and it would just be fun to walk around in the water and soak up the hot sun.


Allie got really wet too (mostly from Tate splashing her) and so dirty from climbing on the rocks. They had so much fun. Then we went home and Me, Tate and one of his buddies played baseball in the front yard while Allie took a nap. I was the pitcher and outfielder so I got some excercise and a sunburn on my arms!

By the end of the day I could tell Tate was dragging and he had little sunburned cheeks. I had to go to a meeting for the charity commitee I'm part of with the Washington City fire department and I knew that Tate was really tired and not feeling super good, but other than that he seemed ok. After the meeting I put the kids to bed, Alex got home and I headed off to Lieto! (choir
practice). I got home around ten right when Tate woke up...with a fever. He was up till 1:30. Then again at 4:30 and finally awake for the day at 6:20. He was so tired and out of it last night. He just kept crying and telling me that I wouldn't let him ride in the rocket ship! Other than that he wouldn't tell me what hurt or anything. I gave him some tylonol, and it let us sleep for a couple hours. Finally this morning when he woke up he was able to tell me that his ear hurt. Double ear infections, AGAIN! They were both infected just about a month and a half ago. The only other time he's ever gotten an ear infection was when he was a month old and we found out that he's allergic to penecillin (the hard way.)

The good news is that after medicine for the infection, drops to numb his ears, tylonol, a humidifier, a children's vitamin just for good measure and a 3 1/2 hour nap he is feeling much better!