Love my girls.

No I'm not referring to the ones I gave birth to, but rather the ones I choose to hang out with whenever I can. hee hee! I spent a glorious weekend in SoCal with my best gal pals - and even though we seemed to take the heat from Phoenix WITH us instead of escaping it, we still had a great time. We learned all sorts of interesting things about each other {And what was heard in the Armada STAYS in the Armada!}  We spent hours cricut-ing (is that a verb?), swapping ideas for, and creating scrapbook pages (I think D got 20 pages completed!)  We ate great food in and out of restaurants; I had a pazookie for the first time and will for certain be ordering the Pasta Rustica again the next time I visit Macaroni Grill.  J's dad should seriously open a little gourmet sandwich shop. Remembering my asiago cheese-bacon-tomato-avacado-turkey sandwich is making my mouth water right now.  And by the way, Boston Miller has to be the most entertaining kid I know. "Speaking of whatever you were just talking about.... " And "Get ready for the funniest joke you've ever heard. You're going to laugh your head off..."! Too cute! Thanks Ashlee for sharing your boys with us for lunch!

We also spent a whole morning wandering around at garage sales where I don't know if I found what I was after, exactly, but I did come home with lots of totally random treasures - including a couple of rubber snakes (project to be unveiled at a later date).  Here's all of our stuff so artfully packed back into D's car. DANG, I told myself I would never stand next to Amberly in pictures anymore. Oops.

We could have use another couple of days away, as there was still many, many things on our to-do list that we didn't get to - pedicures, bra shopping, haircuts, card-making classes, beach, pool, reading.... but hey, there's always next year...that is, if J's Mom and Dad will have us back...

This was my favorite pic from the weekend - Here I am with my fat calves in an awesome motorized recliner on wheels at a garage sale. The homeowner had crafted it himself out of a wheelchair's mechanics. It had a joystick to move it around and everything, and even a spot to hold your ice chest full of beverages INSIDE the chair. Super cool. I was impressed with the guy's ingenuity, to say the least.

So many crafts to make, so little time.

http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2010/09/todays-guest-sisters-stuff.html

Dare I say it??

TRAINED. 

We will stay in Pull-ups at night for a while, but he really hasn't needed those either, so it's really more for my peace of mind when he tends to drink too much at night. J is awesome, if I do say so myself.

Get on board the Potty Train!

99% of you reading probably couldn't care less about this particular posting - so feel free to click away to some other, more interesting website now.

Many of you who have spoken to me in the last few weeks know that I'm obsessed with potty training at the moment, and I'm bound and determined to make this work with J.  Right now. As of a week ago, he protested (read: yelled at the top of his lungs) any time I tried to put him in anything but a diaper. He wanted no part of pullups or of "big boy" underwear. I knew this was the week to do it, so we casually ran out of diapers over the weekend, and only had a few pull-ups left by the beginning of the week. On Monday, we went and picked out some new big boys for him - and even though he kept trying to take them out of our cart and put them back on the shelf, we still came home with lots of fun ones. Tuesday began the fun with Lightning McQueen! (He started off wanting to wear them all backwards, so the big characters were on the front instead of on his bum, funny)  I was thrilled that he would wear the things at ALL, but we had no successes that day. Wednesday and Thursday morning we went back to pullups because of our schedule, but starting Thursday afternoon we went cold turkey. Score was 3 successes, 2 accidents. Not too bad. Today's score was better with 4 successes, 2 accidents - and 2 of those successes were NOT AT HOME - yeah! He actually stayed dry from 3pm until bedtime. Awesome. I'm trying to keep this a positive experience for both of us. He gets a few M&Ms with every success, which is working pretty well so far. Don't judge me when you find out he's a sitter - it honestly didn't occur to me to have him stand up while he "went" - and now he absolutely won't. Oops. Wish us luck tomorrow - hopefully we'll have a #2 success soon too! He is great at telling us when he needs to go, and he's quite tired of us asking him every two seconds "Are you still dry? Do you need to go potty?"  but so far so good. I'm keeping him in Pull-ups for nighttime for now, because I have no idea how else to do it - he wakes up earlier than me and is always soaked by the time I get up. Any advice on how/when to do nighttime too?

Deirdre, will you make me one of these??

How can I score some ASU fabric/embroidered Sparky to create this reversible tote - anyone??

Thursday thoughts.

It's been a very good couple of weeks - why, you ask?
- Fitness challenge is OVER
- I read "Mockingjay" and though didn't love the ending, really, really ended up liking the series overall.
- J loves his preschool class and is so proud to show you his projects
- N got a promotion
- small miracle - I had a thought one morning to go get something out of my car, immediately, and I found J in my front seat. He had popped out several "M&Ms" from their packaging and had them all laid out, ready to eat. I don't know what eating half a dozen adult-strength antihistamines would have done to him, but I'm glad I got there in time so we didn't have to find out.
- my sore throat/cough only turned into a cold, versus a nasty strep throat or sinus infection
- N took all three kids to the cabin last weekend, and I had 48 hours to myself
- I was able to get a bunch of scrapbook pages finished up
- I went shopping on Saturday for MYSELF and actually found a few shirts to wear that don't have holes or stains - amazing
- Went out with some old girlfriends on Saturday night and had a great time eating mexican food, laughing at a Jesterz show - and then enjoying dessert at Yogurtland
- I went to church ALL by myself - and yes I was on time - and actually was able to pay attention to what was going on in sacrament meeting
- Washed and vacuumed my car and got all the cabin dirt off of it
- Got the yard cleaned up on Monday and it looks SO much better
- Enjoyed FHE with some friends on Monday night
- Got a couple of vinyl projects designed
- Was able to make MUCH progress on J's quilt thanks to Grandma
- Got my A/C fixed for FREE even though we were three weeks out of the warranty period
- Went and helped out in M's classroom today. I love her teacher!