My little boy is 5!

WOW Charles turns 5 today! '
He is such a FUN kid and always keeps me on my toes! He loves being a big brother and can't wait for our new little girl to arrive in September. We are so Happy and grateful that our Father in Heaven entrusted this amazing guy to us! We can not imagine life without him.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
CHARLES!!!!

Mattress Fun

My parents neighbors gave us a new twin bed for Madison. It has drawers on the bottom which will be perfect for when the new baby comes because her existing dresser will be moved into Charles room to use as a changing table for the baby. So while Daddy was moving her new bed around and taking the old one to the garage he decided it would be fun to slide down the stairs on the mattress. He hesitated about doing it since the kids can be wild and we don't want them trying it on their own, but then decided to take the opportunity to have some fun. Charles was really scared and did NOT want to do it at all. After much convincing he finally did it. And as you can see in the video and pictures, he was not to happy! Madison however LOVED it! She is our adventurous thrill seeker. Charles is more reserved and does NOT like to take risks. Daddy had such a fun time!

(I can't get the video to work...I will keep trying)

My New RIDE

So bought a NEW car!!! I love love love my new car, well SUV. John and I both are not fans of mini vans, no offense to anyone that has one or loves them. We are just not van people. So after we sold John's car we started searching for an older Suburban or Yukon that was in our budget. We looked at several on-line and checked out a few in person and than found this one. It was perfect! The dealership had just reduced the price by $5K which meant it was now in our budget. It is so clean and well taken care of. The kids love it! It has all the bells and whistles including two DVD screens and power everything! I'm still trying to figure out what all the buttons do. (I think I may have to start looking at the manual.) So here you have it... our spacious new ride.
Like the bling bling 22 inch rims!!! Those were just a bonus.

Bye Bye POS

About a year and a half ago we bought John a very inexpensive crappy car to use to drive to the train station. Since he would be taking the train when we bought a house we decided to eliminate a car payment while we could. So we bought an 85 Chevy blazer. It was the ugliest color possible but it did the job and John doesn't car what his car looks like. Over the past year and a half he maybe put 3K miles on it. Come April of this year we needed to renew the registration and get it smoged. We thought, not biggy, it passed smog when we bought it so it should be fine. WRONG!!! It did NOT pass smog and we did not want to pay to fix it so it would pass. So we thought he could drive it until we get a new car in the fall and hope and pray he doesn't get pulled over. Well little did we know that the lovely Riverside Police department checks the cars in the Metrolink parking lot for expired tags. So we get a ticket in the mail for expired tags. Now we are to decide what to do.
1. Fix the car and get it registered
2. Sell the car
3. donate the car to charity (its not worth much)
4. drive it over a cliff (I've always wanted to do this, like on XXX)
After calling some mechanics to find out pricing for diagnosing the problem we decided it was definitely NOT worth fixing. (We are planning on buying me a new car in the fall, but want to wait until he gets is annual raise.)
So we decide to just sell it and look for a car for me more in our current budget instead of waiting for the raise.
Saturday morning John asked me to post it on cragslist. We just wanted to get rid of it and figured anyone that bought it would have to pay several hundred dollars to fix it. So we posted it at 10AM for $200, we only paid $800 a year and a half ago. Within minutes we had several phones calls. The phone did not stop ringing for about 20 minutes. And when John was on the phone messages were coming in. It was crazy. We had people willing to pay more for it. I finally took it off craigslist at about 10:40 just to stop the calls. By then we had 3 people interested, two of them were on their way and they all were willing to pay more. And there were several people we told to call back in an hour to see if it was still available. The car was sold and gone by 11:30 for $400. It was so crazy!!! But so nice to have it finally gone. Now we just need to find a new car for me. We LOVE craigslist!!!!

Potty Training

Madison is 2 1/2 and I really want her to be out of diapers before our new little girl arrives in September. So yesterday I decided to try potty training. I got all prepared with M&M's for treats and made sure to have plenty of towels and panties on hand. I took her to the bathroom about every 15 minutes. She sits on the toilet quite often at her request but has yet to actually go while on the potty. I figured if I could catch her then once she realized what she did she would catch on quickly. That or having pee run down her leg would make her want to go on the potty. (Especially since she is so crazy about washing and being clean she will wash her hands after each Oreo she eats, even if she eats 4 cookies, she will still wash between each because she is messy.) Well after several hours of taking her every 15 minutes or so she still had yet to actually do her business on the potty. I decided to call it quits. She peed on the couch and on the carpet in the family and all over the kitchen floor. I figured since she could not stop herself mid peeing and I could not catch her while taking her to the bathroom so often that she just is not quite ready. Good thing we still have a few months before this new baby comes.
I managed to keep my cool for this whole potty training ordeal, which is pretty good for me. The first time she peed she was laying on the arm of the couch and it went ALL over, I just had to laugh. She does not usually lay on the arm of the couch and of course this one time she just so happened to be on it. But each time she had an accident (luckily we called it quits before she had to go #2) she would look up at me and say, "Sorry Mommy, Sorry" it was so cute!!! So she obviously knows that she is making a mess and mommy has to clean it, how sweet of her. I guess we will just have to give it a try again in a few weeks and hope she is more ready. That just means that by tummy will be much bigger and it will be more difficult to get on the floor and clean up the messes. Who said girls were easy????

She's Here!!!!

No, not my baby.....

My brother Justin and his wife Kristyn had their baby on Saturday night May 8th. Her name is Kaylee and she is so adorable. She weighed in at 7 lbs 6 oz. and was 20 1/2 inches long. Pretty good size baby for being almost 3 weeks early. Mommy and baby are doing good!

STICKERS!!!!

Madison has a new obsession with Stickers! It started a few months back when I got the kids a new sticker activity book for church. During Sacrament Meeting I take the stickers out of the book and put them on Madison's arms, then we find the page they go on and her and I take them off her arms and put them in the book. It keeps her quiet for quite a while so I really enjoy it. But now she wants to do it with every sticker that she sees. I even hear she puts the stickers on her arms in nursery before she puts them on the paper. When she gets bored at home she will come into the office and ask for the envelope of stickers. Then asks me to put them on her and then she transfers them to paper. Its pretty funny! Today she did NOT want them on paper. She wanted to wear them on her body. So she moved them from her arms to her legs and then kept asking for more. We left to do our grocery shopping and her legs were covered in them. She forgot they were there and came home with only about 2 left. I'm not sure where they all went, but she did not scream when they fell off or scream at me for taking them off, so it doesn't really matter to me where they are now. Oh, the little things that keep kids occupied.

Yes, I know her hair looks awful, I will totally admit I am not that mom that makes sure her hair is combed or even looks perfect. I much more concerned with getting her to behave in public rather then look cute. Maybe one day I will be more concerned about her hair, but for now it's not worth the fight.
And I have no idea why she always winks now when I take her picture. She looks like a little pirate. Crazy girl!