Snow Day

We took the opportunity to play in the snow a little bit today. The weather was supposed to be bad today, but it turned out pretty good in our area. Hailee loves to be pulled around on the sled, she wanted to take Jake for a little ride as well.

The Best Christmas Song Ever

I've found a new favorite Christmas Song and for anything to surpass a Something Corporate song for me is a huge deal. It's from Relient K called "I Celebrate The Day". I get teary every time I listen to it. It's on my playlist, so check it out.

For All You Mom's Out There!

I just wanted to post a few of my favorite websites because I thought some of you may enjoy them too. I'll probably create some permanent links on the side as well, but I just wanted to list them here so I could tell you about them.

First of all, I have been having so much fun with Hailee's hair since I discovered the wonderful world of hair blogs! I should've known there would be something out there like that, because you can find everything on the internet, but it wasn't until Ty's sister sent me a link once that I found out all about it. There are lots of them out there, but these three are my favorites. Basically these women do their girls hair everyday in all sorts of creative ways and take pictures to walk you through the process. Go check them out and then have fun!

It's A Girl Thing
She Does Hair
Cutie Pie Hair Creations (This one sells darling bows too!)
Oh So Girly (This one just sells bows, doesn't do hair)

The next few are some of my favorite sites for moms that help you organize & manage your household. They all have great information .

Organize Your Life
The Household Helper (This one has a great podcast as well. I listen to it all the time.)
Organize It Mom (This one sells fun products for organizing your home & family)

These last few are, of course, food related. I wouldn't be able to post about my favorite websites without including some about food!

Simplify Supper (This one allows you to program in your own recipes or use theirs, put it on your meal calendar and print out a grocery list. It's very easy to use)
Meal Makeover Moms (These ladies take easy to make meals and find ways to make them more healthy. They also have a podcast that I listen to regularly, which is how I found them in the first place.
Super Healthy Kids

I have more, but these are the one's I seem to be visiting the most often. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. If you check some out, leave a comment about what you think.

Potty Training Moments

Ok, so we did it. Here's my method: I decorated the bathroom with crepe paper, balloons, and a princess banner hanging across the doorway. I planned to stay home the entire week getting this potty training done!! I put Hailee in only underwear, so she'd be able to do it herself and I set a timer for every hour. Every time the timer went off I did a dance and sang a song written by me..."it's a potty party! it's a potty party!" (If you want to see the live version, let me know), and ran Hailee into the bathroom. This method worked well because she wouldn't even sit on the potty before. She hated it and would scream and cry every time we tried (despite the potty charts, candy and reward box we had offered in the past). This "potty party" method made her excited and willing to give it a try. After she went, she'd get candy. The first day she had 4 accidents. That was a rough day. The next day she had 2. The next day she had 1. Oh my gosh! It's working! Each day they were fewer and further between.

Well, at the current time she is occasionally having accidents (I'd say once every 3-4 days or so) & she is actually telling us when she needs to go, which she has never done before. I only started this 3 weeks ago, so we've made great strides. We still use the timer when we are home so we don't forget. So, now that all is said and done, here's my theory. When a kid is ready to be potty trained, the parents have to be ready too and they have to committ! I just never dedicated myself to it, in fact I preferred she not be potty trained (we could spend all day at Lagoon without wasting any time going into nasty public restroom). We tried the other methods like potty charts and candy rewards and everything, but we were never consistent. We asked her if she needed to go when it was convenient for us. So that's it...when you know your kid is ready, make sure you're ready and then go for it. Do it 100% or don't waste your time doing it at all. Well, now that our kid is 75% potty trained, I can laugh about it a little bit. Here are a couple of potty training moments that have cracked us up during this ordeal.

Hailee had gone potty at her Grandma's house, so in keeping with our methods, she presented her with a little bag of gummy bears to take home. When Hailee got home, she was watching a little TV and eating her gummy bears and daddy suggested she go potty. She looked up at us with the most confused look on her face and said "but I 'ready have candy?!"

One time Hailee was standing by me looking like she really needed to go. She ran into the kitchen where we keep the timer and ran back to me frantically "mom, it's not beeping!" She thought she had to wait for the timer to go off before she could go! Talk about plan backfire!

Now see how happy this girl looks to be using her big girl potty! Hailee, we're so proud of you!

Official Handoff

Well the time has come, I am officially handing the blog responsibilities over to Brooke. I started this blog in April of 2005 with this post. It's been fun and I have enjoyed having an outlet for some creativity and just a place to write whatever I wanted.
Lately it seems that most of the interest in this blog is family related, which is cool. However when I started my blog one of the reasons was for some creative expression on my part. I feel that most of the people who visit this blog are interested in pictures and stories about our family and our children. I think this blog is a great place for that type of information and I am glad so many people have chosen to see into our lives. We average about 20 visits a day from friends, family and anyone just stopping by. Brooke has wanted to make the blog very family oriented with "cute" backgrounds and all sorts of stuff that doesn't really go with the content that I want to provide. I have held a hold on the content of this blog, but we decided it would be fun to see what Brooke can do with it. Look for many "cute" improvements in the days and weeks to come.
But never fear, you aren't getting rid of me entirely. I will, of course, continue to post on this blog and I have started a new blog of my own where I am free to control the content without any complaints from Brooke. So come check out my new home, although it will look very familiar until I get some time to make some changes. My new blog address is http://www.tygibson.net and there is a permanent link on this blog in case you forget. Come by and check it out, read, and comment.

Family Fun Pics

We have been taking a lot of pictures lately so I thought I would take a minute to post a few of them up.

Here is one of Jake looking smooth before we went to church.

Jake, Hailee and I were all ready to go for church, we were dressed up so nice maybe we can just photoshop in Brooke and use these as family pictures.

Jake has been smiling a lot lately. All you have to do is hover over him and smile and he will smile right back. He gets distracted when you hold up the camera but we were able to catch a few good smiles from him.

Jake some day when you are older you will look back on this blog archive and see this picture of you laying next to Hailee, your wild and crazy sister. At that time you will wonder how you survived her chaos and "affection" for you. Don't worry we protect you from her as much as we can and try to never turn our back on Hailee when you are around.

Hailee and Brooke having some fun. Brooke wanted a picture of the two of them because they were both dressed so nice in new outfits, but it's pretty hard to get a real picture of Hailee looking at the camera, sorry this is the best we could get.

Twilight

Well, I went to the midnight showing of twilight last night. I had really high expectations, probably too high. I knew that there's no way it would be as good as the book, but I was still a little disappointed. I didn't really like the director's style all that much. However, I did enjoy it and I think it was an entertaining film. I really liked the casting. I thought Edward and Bella were great. Although lot's of people are complaining about the special effects, I thought they were pretty good. The baseball scene was my favorite. What I didn't like is that the whole thing just seemed too serious and I felt like the books were a lot more lighthearted. Also, of course, it's difficult to be objective when you are noticing everything that they are cutting out of it. They did fit a whole lot in though and stayed very true to the books, but that also made me feel like they were just skimming past all of the detail in order to fit everything in. So that made me wonder what someone thinks of it that hasn't read the books. I wonder if they'd be a little lost.t All in all, I'd say it was pretty good. If I were going to rate it (under Ty's rating system), I'd probably give it 3 out of 5 stars. I still plan on going to see it again and I'm looking forward to it. Now I know what to expect, so I can just enjoy it without analyzing it too much. Here is a link to a review that I really liked because his thoughts were right along the same lines as mine:

http://www.cinematical.com/2008/11/20/review-twilight/

If any of you go see it, please comment and let me know what you think!

Technology

I was just thinking about how cool it is what we can do with technology now. I think back to when I was a kid and we didn't have anything! I remember when we first got the internet at our house and were totally amazed when someone could send us an email and we could get it instantly! To all my high school friends...how cool would it have been if we'd had texting available when we were in high school!?! We would actually carry around pagers and in order to know who was calling, we'd leave our "code numbers" at the end of the phone number. When we received a page, we'd have to go find a phone and sometimes that meant a pay phone. It totally cracks me up!

Even in recent years I've lost touch with so many friends and in the last several months have been able to reconnect with them through blogs and facebook. I love to be able to spend a few minutes a day and just be able to see what everyone is up to and what's going on in their lives. I have no excuse to ever lose touch with anyone ever again!

The Best Husband in the World!

I've been feeling bad because before I had Hailee, I had her whole nursery done and beautiful long before she was born. Well, Jake is 10 weeks old and I haven't done anything with his room. I just haven't had the time (or the energy for that matter). We put his furniture in there and bought some pirate bedding, but that was about the extent of it. Well, I went to Phoenix with the kids for the week to visit my brother and Ty's sister. Ty wasn't able to come. Well, you'll never believe what I came home to!!!

He painted all the walls red, bought the pirate flag and even found the cool treasure map from Pottery Barn. Our good friends Jeff and Juline contributed their touch with the cute vinyl lettering on the wall. It was such a surprise. I really think I have the best husband in the whole world!

Happy Birthday Hailee!

Today is Hailee's Birthday! I can't believe she's 3! She had a little pre-birthday celebration with her cousin Addy while we were down in Phoenix. They are 3 weeks apart. Here are some pictures of the beautiful princesses!


Hailee knows that with turning 3 also come some sacrifices. We've been prepping her for this. Now that she's 3, she can't have binkies anymore. I was literally crying today as I gathered them up and hid them. Ty is going to "take care of them" when he gets home. We both know that I can't know where they are or I'll cave. It could be a rough night! I'll let you all know...Maybe it seems mean to do this on her birthday, but we've got a lot of things planned for her this week, so hopefully she'll see giving up the binkies as a fair exchange for all the fun she'll have. Wish us luck!

4th Picture in the 4th Album

Several of my friends have been doing this. You go to the 4th album and open your 4th picture and post it. Now this one is so scary that I didn't want to post it, but Ty said I had to because he thinks it's hilarious. So here it is... The story behind this picture is I was newly pregnant with Hailee. I know I was at an event for Bryce. I think it was his seminary graduation or something like that. This is how I felt all the time. My mom labeled this picture "I don't feel good!" I think that's what I was saying when it was taken. I know, SCARY! Well, if any of you see this, go to your 4th album and post your 4th picture. It's fun to see what you'll find!

Wordle

I stumbled upon this fun little online app while browsing online tonight. It's called Wordle and you can insert the URL of your Blog or any web site and it will put together a little Word Art Graphic. Here are a few I created. They come in on the Blog pretty small but click on them for a larger, better view and to create your own. I wonder what the most common word we use on our blog :-)

October Spook-tacular!

We've sure had a wild month. Hence, the lack of posts lately. I thought I'd put up some pictures of what we've been doing.

Snow Day!
What a surprise to wake up to find snow! Hailee was so excited, she wanted to go out and play right away! Later that afternoon, she looked out the window and said "Mom, where did all the snow go?!"



Black Island Farms!


Hay Ride


Jumping in the giant pumpkin bounce house


One of many slides


Hailee's favorite activity...rubber duck races. Climbing to get to the slides.


Corn Maze: The look on her face was because she asked me not to take any more pictures of her!


See Saw


Piggy Train: Hailee's other favorite activity


Hailee's Date with Grandpa!


Carving Pumpkins & Being Silly

Mommy/Daughter Date: Last Day at Lagoon!
The Lagoon season is coming to an end so Hailee and I went one last day. We had so much fun! I couldn't help but remember the very first day we took Hailee to Lagoon and how tentative she was. She sure knew her way around this time! She was running from place to place telling me which rides she wanted to go on and getting in and out of the rides all by herself. She has come a long way.


However, the lame baby boats are still a favorite!


Proof she likes a little adventure too!


Unfortunately on this last day during the last hour we were there, I discovered she had grown quite a bit over the summer and was actually tall enough to ride a bunch of other rides. We had fun trying those out and since I wasn't pregnant anymore, I got to ride them too!


They had this darling "non-scary" spook alley for little kids call the Spook-a-boo. She got to go trick or treating in a bunch of different rooms. She loved it!


Aquatic Center Boonanza!
This was a blast. I've never seen a halloween party like this. I couldn't believe all the stuff they had. Jake slept through the whole thing, but Hailee had so much fun!


Rubber Duck Ring Toss, Canoe Rides & Catch the swimming duckie


Cookie Decorating, Hailee cheating on ring toss & Coloring

Halloween Party!


Our beautiful princess & cute little bat


All the cousins


Fun Games! Hailee carefully carrying her candy corns with a spoon and playing "hot pumpkin"