Potty Training

Starting in November, my baby started showing signs of being ready to potty train. In fact I went over the list of skills she needs and she has them all down with flying colors. However, with he holidays and the new house and the fact that I dread potty training I kept putting it off. Well it was becoming a problem because she would just take her diaper off and go anywhere. Something had to be done! Yet, I still kept putting it off, until Martin Luther King Day when she refused to be put in a diaper. So I am potty training!

I had no idea how to potty train a baby so small! I didn't feel like she would understand or be motivated by charts or any of that so I talked to my friend, Angie< who potty trains all her kids as soon as they are walking! It is basically you cut the diapers cold turkey and let natural consequences teach the child. It was working really great until she got sick and then I lost my focus and got distracted with projects so we are still in the process of training, but she is doing so well! I am impressed with how quickly she has gotten in and how much control she has. She is a very smart girl who watches people and learns from them. When she goes she'll say, "AHHH" which is what Ellie does. lol

Other mimics that she is making, she fake burps after she drinks, she scrunches up her nose and squints back at me whenever I do it to her, she will copy your dance moves, and she laughs when you laugh.

Seriously, I am so proud of her potty training skills! She is doing an amazing job without the bribes of toys and charts. She wants to do it for her own reasons. She is such a sweet heart!

New Year's Resolutions

New year's Resolutions are always very important to me. I take them serious and I try to really get through the whole year with them. This year there were way too many improvements that I need to make. I kept thinking of more and more things that could be my resolution, but they were so overwhelming, and I wanted mine to be a really good one this year.

So after a lot of consideration I decided that what I needed was to learn how to live in the moment! Live for today and not for tomorrow. I have written in my journal how I plan to track and achieve my goal.

One thing that I did to live in the moment was to take pictures of my kids in their clothes. Tsadakah LOVED it! She put on every outfit she owns! Then together we drew on them adding flowers, bracelets, and other such stuff. She was so happy about it. She kept saying that this was the best day of her entire life! Considering that Christmas was only 2 weeks away, I thought that was quite a compliment! :)

Eliannah didn't love it as much, she wanted to stop after 3 outfits, but she loved having her picture taken! She smile and then move just as the picture was taken so she looked like this.

MiKaylah also loved the attention she got. She said "Teese" and looked so pretty. Its the little moments that make up life and life isn't always perfect. Sometimes life is a mess, but if you can't smile about the little this that happen to warm your heart, then you will struggle to get through those bigger messier things.

For FHE we made goals as a family. Our family goal is to hold 42 FHE evenings. Tsadakahs goal (which she thought up all by herself) is to write cursive small. Eliannahs is to count to 20. MiKaylah's is to be potty trained. :)

Well wish us all luck!

Christmas/Hannukkah/New Years Party

Yea! happy New Year! With my family we had an all in one party. A lot of us couldn't be there until then, so we celebrated all of the holidays on New Year's Eve. It was fun, but also exhausting! I am going to describe the night backwards.

Here we are running down the street at midnight screaming and yelling and trying to be as loud as possible. There were a few neighborhood fireworks that we saw go off and one other person out who wished us a happy New Year.

This is me with Yumi, Ramsom (my brother) and Erin. They came all the way from Japan to spend Christmas with us! It was a very special time and my girls loved playing with them. Tsadakah still talks about them. His wife Kieko was still in the house. She is an amazing person.

Before that we had Hannukkah. It was a fun and beautiful thing! It included lighting the candles and singing the prayers, which I love to hear my dad sing. It is beautiful to me and reminds me of childhood.

We also played dradle which is fun. We played the speedy version where any time a person has to leave the game because they are all out of candy you up the anti.

The rule is that you are not allowed to blow the candles out, they have to burn out on their own, s it is common to still and watch them at least for a little while. I remember my father used to put them into the window and I would watch them until the last one burnt out. Its so peaceful and relaxing!

Before that we did a Nativity play. It was Tsadakah's year to be Mary but she declined the role. She said that she wanted to be an angel again because I call her my angel-baby. Really sweet! Here is the curtain call. Four wise men, Mary, Joseph, and our star baby Jesus :), 2 angels, a cow, a horse, and a shepherd.

The wise men. My nieces were so cute in it. Christ in Christmas was an all new concept for them. They played their parts beautifully.

Tsadakah was so so so cute! She was killing me with her dramatic flare, but then she would always break character to wave to mom! She makes me so happy!

Eliannah was also an angel, but in being rambunctious behind the scenes she had ripped her skirt. Here she is coming to tell me. She didn't want to be in it after that. :(

Look at that pose Tsadakah is doing! It mkes me giggle. I missed the shot, but she was looking over her shoulder at me like, "Are you getting this mom? I am looking so fabulous!"

"And Mary took the new born babe and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger..."

Before that, we opened presents. My mom gave everyone a blanket. Tadakah is a blanket-a-holic. If she could sleep under a hundred blankets, she would. Every one that my mom has made her is her "special" blanket! She adores my mom!

Eliannah was being silly with Grandma and the bows. She is such a silly personality. She can be absolutely fabulously photogenic!

My dad built every one of us a solar heating oven. It was pretty cool. He tried it a couple weeks ago and they re-heated some food. He said it wont be able to cook from scratch until summer time. He loves to make home made gifts to show his love!

Mike's blanket was the Packers because that is his team. We loved that they won the super bowl last year!! :)

MikKaylahgrabbing her blanket! haha

Eliannah got a Dora blanket. She loves her right now, so that was perfect. My mom put a lot of thought into these blankets to geive what we would truly love.

For our exchange this year we did books. Moriella and Tsadakah! :) Tsadakah was pretty excited to give her selection to Moriella. It was called St. George and the Dragon. She loves our copy and that was ok with me because they live there so it was extra fun!

Eliannah and Erin exchanging their books. Ellie got her How Many Is A Million.

MiKaylah, reading her new book with Daddy! She got too even!

Before we opened presents we sang carols together. We love to sing. Its kooky to go caroling these days, but singing the carols just with family is always beautiful. Here Moriella is dancing to the music. She can be quite a hoot some days.

Mike and Tsadakah singing. (Tsadakah doesn't sing at church. It makes me sad, but she never has. even if she knows the song word for word, like I Am A Child Of God.)

So this was our holiday celebration shibang! We loved family and fun and we were litterally exhausted by the end. Eliannah put herself to bed somewhere in there and didn't make it to midnight.

Happy New Year!

A very special week!

Christmas morning included Church this year. Mike and I really enjoyed it. Other people complained, but what better way to spend a day that you are supposed to remember Jesus Christ? Not to mention, that there is nothing open anyway so you cant go do something so you might as well be at church.

The bishop in our ward talked about the gifts of giving. He challenged us to ask, "What did you give for Christmas?" instead of what did you get?

Tsadakah in her new winter church dress! (and baby elephant)

MiKaylah in her new church dress.

This is the baby Jesus that we received on Christmas Eve! Seriously so special!

December 30 I was waking my girls to start going on the day, and this is what we saw! It was so beautiful, even more than this picture can provide. It was such a special moment for me and the girls! We all stood there looking at the sky and loving the closeness of each other in that moment!

Now my girls ask every morning if they have missed the sun rise. When the sun is setting they get excited too and they say, "Mom, come look at the sky!" I love it!

Christmas Day!

What time did you wake up on Christmas morning? I am usually the first one to get up and want to open presents! I usually can't last longer than 6AM. As much as I love Christmas Eve, I hate Christmas night, because I can hardly sleep. It is seriously like a series of cat naps.

Well this year, I was not the only one who had this problem. lol Tsadakah came in our room and excitedly exclaimed that it was Christmas morning and that Santa had come! So we groggily got out of bed and then we saw the clock 3:18! She had already seen it all and was bouncing off the walls about it so we decided that there was going to be no way to get her to go back to sleep, so we woke Ellie and let them open presents. (We let MiKaylah sleep in) Eliannah loved her barbie! It is something she has been desperately wanting for months.

MiKaylah loved the attention. Since everyone else had already opened their presents we had nothing better to do than give her 100%. She loved the candy more than any of the present, in fact, she didn't open one! We would give her one and ask if sh wanted to open it and she would say un un with chocoate dripping from her lips.

Mike enjoyed his scrap book and loved reading through it for quite a while. He appreciated all the work that went into it, which was a lot!

Ellie's obsession with frogs was increased with this stuff toy!

Tsadakah and her stocking.
For Tsadakah I wanted to get her this Disney magic Artist because I think that she is good at art and she has good computer skills too. I thought that she would really like it because she saw it on the previews for her favorite movies all the time. She does love it.

Christmas Eve

I'm going to be honest, December seems more like a blur! What did I spend all my time doing? I was working on a scrap booking Mike's, mission as a gift, so the house always seemed to be a mess, wrapped presents and we watched a lot of TV. Every Christmas special, we watched it, even the dumb ones. But it all lead up to this glorious night. I love Christmas eve! There is something so magical about it.

The lights set a romantic mood after the sun has gone down so early. Then there's eating good food and thinking about the true meaning of Christmas.

Michael made the most amazing roast I have ever had in my life! It was perfectly done! I was savoring every bite!

While we were eating the doorbell rang and someone doorbell ditched a baby Jesus in a manger on our doorstep! It was life size, not a little one from a Nativity set. My girls loved that so much! They each wanted to have a turn caring for baby Jesus. It was so precious and it made our evening so special! Whoever you are, thank you so much! It was a gift that will never be forgotten and re-used forever!

Here is our stockings hung by the chimney with care. I love that our new house has a fireplace! It i so beautiful and fun t have this here!

My tree is so simple. You might think that after having done that magnificent tree that I would want a polished and perfect tree, but this tree that has my kids ornaments, and my traditions and my memories and my Christmas cards on it is perfect to me. Iv been using the same stream of stars since Mike and I got this tree and it seems to me to be symbolic of year after year of putting it up and taking it down.

Merry Christmas.

Family Visit

On December 9-11th Mike's brother, Devin, and his expecting wife, Becky, came to visit with their two boys. It was so fun to see them! I have really missed Becky, since we used to live so close to each other all through the first 4 1/2 years that Mike and I were married. We had so much to catch up on! We were regular chatterboxes! :)

That is after I got back from doing volunteer work at Tsadakah's school. I love her school! It is really amazing! It is a charter school that includes elementary and Jr high so I went to help during their etiquette dinner and dance. It was fun to see the nervous little 14 year olds. I was expected to serve them with proper waiter etiquette, which was so crazy, cause I had to take from the left and serve from the right, but the tables were too close together so I was awkwardly stumbling over people and dropping silverware and bumping kids in the head with the serving tray. I almost dropped the stack of 5 used salad plates in one kids lap! It was a funny evening.

So then that night after I got back we hung out and had a chill evening talking and having so much fun. Becky kept me up until way too late! Both our husbands went to bed before us. The kids loved seeing each other again and Eliannah and Xander really bonded.

The next day we made this Gingerbread house. It was a wonderful gift from our new friends, the Bergantz family. We think they are amazing!

It was right after breakfast so we were still in our pajamas with messy hair. It was a way fun project. They kids loved being involved.

Jaxton, Tsadakah, Eliannah, Xander, and even MiKaylah were in there making it "pretty".

Xander ate more than he put on the house. lol

Me and my angel baby.

MiKaylah is so hungry for some that she is eating the table. haha

Later that day we went to Kravers for lunch. I am totally a fan! It is good food for a good price! Becky was so excited too. There were so many things on the menu that she liked.

We also watched Christmas Vacation, and went shopping! It was a fun visit! So glad that they could come!