It's not easy being green...

So, our dryer broke the other day. Michael was out of town and didn't get back until the weekend, and I forgot to tell him until Friday night that the dryer was broken...oops! My Saturday was spent washing clothes in the washer and then randomly hanging them around the house and outside.

It was going well until it started to rain Saturday night. I was okay with hanging and laying all of the "colored" clothes outside but I had planned to take the "whites" to a friend's house. I forgot, and I was not okay to hang those out randomly on the porch. I would've taken a picture of all the "whites" strung out all over our kitchen cupboards, laundry room and anywhere I could find a place, if it wouldn't have been so sacreligious. Thankfully though, Michael and I did get them all cleaned up before Monday morning when our sitter came.

First Day(s) of School

The start of this school year has been a little crazy. I am in the midst of finishing my degree in Elementary Ed, and so I am doing my student teaching right now. Little did I realize that in doing so, I would totally miss all of the firsts for my kids this school year. Totally missed "Meet Your Teacher," I was at my school's "Meet Your Teacher;" totally missed the first day of school photo ops too. I barely was able to help Sydney fix her hair before I had to leave. It's been really hard, I'm glad for the experience but my timing is a little off.

Thankfully my friend Angela snapped a picture of Sydney getting off the school bus on the first day. Sydney has to go to her house because I have to stay at my school for an hour or so. =( I don't know what I would do without Angela!

Noah just started middle school this year. And the poor boy actually had to ride his bike on the first day and he said that when he went in the lunchroom and the administrators told the parents to say their final good-bye's that he looked around and there was no one for him to say good-bye to. He was a little sad. I was a little sad for him.

We have survived and thanks to Angela, Ms. Kim and Michael we finally got some first week of school pictures. A big thank you to them and Michael for making all of this craziness work!

RV trip to Nauvoo, IL

This past summer, my family took an RV trip to see some of the historical sites of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Originally my dad and mom approached Michael and I about doing the trip with the kids...we ended up with 5 adults and 7 of the grandkids. So, my mom and dad, my brother Brent and three of his children (Jordan, Spencer, and Marisa), my niece Carlin (Darin's daughter) and my three children (Noah, Sydney and Kaden) all piled into a rented RV and took off on the open road.

The first evening we didn't get quite as far as we had planned. We ended up finally stopping a little after midnight at a friend's home in Georgia. My dad, Michael and Brent busted out the tents and camped in the backyard and the rest of us stayed in the RV. The funny thing is that these friends have a home with 5 large bedrooms and a basement and normally they have a house full of kids (their's and others) but it happened that this weekend all of the kids were gone...little did we know that the "tenters" could've slept cozy and comfortably inside. We didn't realize it until we actually talked with them the next morning that the boy's were off at Scout Camp and their two other daughters were also headed up to Nauvoo. We did pick up a nice little find there, one of their married children was having a yard sale and Michael picked up an iPod for $50 that already had a ton of songs downloaded too. We really enjoyed having it.

We spent the next 10 days together driving up to Nauvoo, IL. Michael has the day to day activities that we did over our vacation on his blog: lavoieworl.blogspot.com. It was fun and I totally recommend it to everyone!

"My hanz er told..."

Our youngest is not quite three yet and is learning new things all of the time. We've had so much fun with him lately. And yes, that is a pair of Thomas underwear on his head as a "hat" as he calls it. From our last post you can see that he is now completely potty trained...YEA! We are so glad for that.

Besides learning how to potty train, he is also learning some other things...among the many things, is the art of manipulation. I'm not sure where or should I say whom he picked it up from. But, sometimes when you ask him to do something like say for instance this paper towel that you see laying on the floor beside him...the conversation might go something like this:

Mom: "Kaden, can you pick up that paper towel and put it in the trash, please?"



Kaden: (starts rubbing his hands together like he's by a fire warming them) "I can't my hanz er told (My hands are cold)."



Mom: "What?"



Kaden: "My hanz er told..." (continues to rub his hands together like it's freezing in here or something)



And so it goes, "Kaden can you pick up your trains...Kaden can you get your fork...etc."

"I can't my hanz er told."

Hmmmm, I wonder where in the world he came up with that. He doesn't like it so much when you say it to him, he gets a little perturbed. The other kids try to use it sometimes too, it doesn't work so well for them. It must be something about being two years old and adoreably cute.

Potty on Dude!

No more diapers for Kaden! He has successfully been potty trained, YEAH!! He is not even three yet and we are so excited to be done with diapers. BIG props to Mrs. Angela's Joy School, we think that going there was very instrumental in his success...Thanks Ms. Angela, and Thanks Ms. Lisa. We love you guys!!

Kaden washing his hands.

Yes, he does have a little bit of a black eye.

We had gone to my parents over the weekend and he fell off my lap,

face first, on to "Cranky the Crane."

Kaden "making bubbles."

Daddy came up with that term for Kaden, and it worked!