Fun shopping

At our local "SaveMart" they have a cool shopping car car thingy (you know, the ones like this)
but this one is a pretty pink butterfly one. Anyway, last week I realized that Blaise is now old enough to sit in one (and Rae has always been obsessed with this one). So they both sat in it and had a blast! They were both cracking up the whole time and Blaise was turning the steering wheel the whole time. People would pass us and just have the biggest grin on their face to see such a little guy in the drivers seat. :) We went there again today and he enjoyed it just as much as the first time. Really makes shopping easier! Wish they had them at Walmart!

Sigh. As I was writing this Rae was sitting on my bed watching a cartoon and eating some yogurt and I turned away from the computer to see her doing this:



In her words: "I was pretending it was makeup". She also likes to pretend markers are makeup. I don't even wear makeup - where does she get these ideas? Sigh. Sometimes I wish she still took the occasional nap!

I feel like a new woman

This morning I could hardly walk. At "Music Makers" I was struggling during marching time. I got home and just sat around letting the kids trash the house. I emailed Roy telling him how much pain I was in and how I HAD to go get shoes when he got home and he surprised me by coming home early. He's a terrific hubby. (He's getting Blaise to sleep right now - woot) Anyway, he came home and I did as little as possible to try to stay off my feet. But we had promised Rae we'd take her to the carousel at the Farmers Market (only open on wednesday evenings and saturday mornings) so eventually I had to leave the house. We ran a few errands and then I dropped Roy off with the kiddos at the Farmers Market and headed back to Big 5. It took me a while but I finally settled on two pair of shoes. One pair cost more than I wanted to spend and those will be my exercise shoes. The other pair were marked way down and will be my everyday shoes (to replace my unsupportive flip flops). I've been wearing the "everyday" pair all evening and I feel so much better already! It really made a huge difference. I'm going to have to start wearing them around the house (sorry downstair neighbors!). I'm so excited to be able to go walking again in a couple of days (Roy insists I take a few days off - he's so tired of my whining) :P But anyway, just wanted to share the good news. It's great to know that my feet apparently weren't seriously damaged - just wish I had gotten new shoes earlier!!

So my house is completely trashed (seriously, I was trying to clean up for the home teachers to come over tonight and Blaise took every single book off the shelf) but I have renewed energy and hope all from a pair of shoes. :)

I need me some chocolate

I need new shoes. Walking shoes. I've been trying to go walking every night lately, but the shoes I have are killing my feet. Really, really hurting them. So today I took the kiddos to Big 5 and started my hunt for new shoes. HORRIBLE experience. The kids were SO bad. But not bad like purposefully misbehaving kind of bad - just bad like bored and wanting to touch everything. I finally gave up and walked them over to Panda Express for a little "pick me up". I'll try going alone tonight or something. Ugh. I need to lose weight and to do so I need to walk and to do so I need shoes...but the process of finding shoes makes me stressed which makes me want chocolate which makes me gain weight. Oh yeah, and makes me want Panda Express too - whcih also makes me gain weight. Anyone want 2 adorable kiddos for a few days? :) Seriously, check out how adorable they are:

He fell into this bin last night and got stuck He was so ticked!

Rae took a pretend shower and then wrapped this blanket
around her and asked me to wrap the other blanket around her hair.
I guess she's seen me do that a lot - what a cutie!

Old Stuff

I've been meaning to post these pictures from earlier this month when we went to my sister Lindsey's house in Visalia for her baby's blessing.




The happy family: Seth, Lindsey and baby Lily


In the back: Roy, Seth and my dad
In the front, Me and sleeping Blaise, Lindsey and sleeping Lily and my mom and Rae.

And just for the sake of being random, here are a few pictures of the kids doing fun stuff around the house:

Rae loves to walk around in my church shoes, and
this time got a hold of my nylons as well!




Mom and Dad, this is part of what Rae bought with the Target card you sent her for her birthday...don't remember if I ever told you about that. :) Thanks!

Awww, he did NOT want those bubbles on his head!


I guess that's all for now. I have a couple of random things I want to write about, but we are supposed to have a "date movie" tonight after Roy finishes the dishes (no, I'm not just sitting here blogging while he does dishes - my job was to do the laundry and he'd do the dishes) and I think he's almost done, so I better go. More to come later!

Life is good...for the most part

There have been a few fun things going on around here. Blaise started taking his first steps a few weeks ago, and now he's up to about 15 steps at a time. He still mostly crawls, but he's willing to practice walking. He also likes to climb. Rae has a little chair that he likes to get on and today he used her potty chair to climb onto the couch. I'm gonna have my hands full with this kiddo.

Speaking of the potty chair...we are back to potty training again. Bleh. It feels like it's been such a long process because back in March we started and Rae totally had the hang of it and then we went on vacation and she lost it. And I should have let it go but I kept trying....and then there was a month being away from home...then NC....and now we are home for good and trying again. We've had one really good day with no accidents, but the other 2 days haven't been so great. I can't give up this time though, because she's going to think that every time we start this process it just ends up that she's back in diapers. But it's hard to not go very many places so that we are able to have easy access to the bathroom. Actually, I think what makes it so hard is that I know I can't go anywhere, and now I want to! Anyone out there have any potty training tips? We are doing a potty chart and she gets fruit snacks when she goes. She's just wearing underwear all day (pull ups are just like diapers to her) and because of going back and forth between training and not training at all, peeing in her underwear isn't much of a big deal to her now. Sigh. I try to just take it easy and not ask constantly if she needs to use the potty and that seems to be working better. Before we go somewhere or start a movie or game I ask her to please go and try to go potty and she does it very willingly and that's when she's being going. Only once so far (this time around) has she really gone on her own, but that was to poop (a big step since she usually poops first thing in the morning before I'm fully awake) so that was good.

Oh my word, this post is a bunch of unnecessary information and randomness. I'm going to bed now. But first, a few pics from NC


My brother Levi, his wife Audra and their 4 kids
(the babies aren't twins, one was born to them in November of 06
and they adopted the other when she was born in Feb of 07)




My brother Bobby and his wife Sabina and their two boys (ages 3 and 5) Roy isn't as unhappy as he looks! :)


My sister Katie and her husband Chad and their two boys (ages almost 2 and 4 1/2) We stayed at their house (the one in the background) I like Chad and Roy's pose




I had to post this one too so you could see that the other was actually the better of the two.

My mom's birthday is tomorrow (Saturday the 15th) She is an amazing woman and is always doing so much for her kids. When we were all together in NC we made this video for her.

Happy Birthday Mom! We love you so much!

Okay, I am really, really bad about updating this. Sorry.

I have some bad news and some good news.

Bad news:



We buzzed Blaise's head. I meant for it to look more like this, but Roy said we should do it without any attachments. I started crying when I saw how close of a buzz it was going to be. I'm a little more used to it now, but I still miss his hair. :(
(Oh, we buzzed it because it was doing the mohawk thing again and was tickling his neck a lot, and he had bad cradle cap again.)

Rae also got a haircut tonight. Just a little trim to make it easier to wash and brush. Hers turned out fine, thankfully!



Lots of good news though! We just got back from a week long vacation to North Carolina where my sister and 2 of my brothers live. It was a lot of fun. 10 of the 13 grandkids were together. There were two 5 year olds, a 4 year old, three 3 year olds, one almost 2 year old, a 10 month old, a 9 month old and a 6 month old! Crazy, loud stuff! Rae had so much fun with her cousins. Here are a bunch of pictures:

Rae, Gabe, Colin and Evan

All of the cousins - not a very easy picture to take.


Blaise and Jovie (she's just a couple of weeks older than Blaise)





Colin and Rae got along really well for most of the trip. We stayed at their house.

We also went and saw Roy's dad (he hasn't seen him since he was like 10 years old. Roy got to meet one of his half-siblings and some aunts and cousins. That was also a nice visit.





I'll post pictures of us with each individual family tomorrow - and I also have some pictures from my other sister's baby blessing to post. Oh, other good news - we got a new TV from our laundry room donation bin today! It's a lot bigger than our old one and works just fine - woo hoo!