Mommy's Little Helper: Diaper Changer

Okay so a funny thing happened this morning.. our usual routine is Jocelyn comes in our room at about 8-8:30am and crawls in bed with us for about a half hour or so and then makes some comment about Ethan being awake because she can hear him in the monitor. Then Dave or I usually tell her to go get Ethan followed by Dave or I drawing the short straw to change his diaper and feed them breakfast. HOWEVER, this morning I had a little helper. Jocelyn did the usual routine but instead of just getting Ethan, she went into his room and changed his diaper for us. Ethan has been doing the "assume the position" changing here lately, where he tells us he is pee pee and then lies down on the ground or bed. Well this morning was no exception he did that and Jocelyn took it upon herself to get the diaper and wipes and take care of his pee pee diaper. It was a wonderful suprise when she came out of Ethan's Room and told us she had changed his bum. Here are some pics of E after the change.. she really did a great job!

FHE-Monday July 21st

Okay so I am really horrible at doing FHE, normally I consider just sitting together as a family watching a movie or playing a board game a good FHE. But I have been trying to be better at it especially since Jo is getting bigger and can really participate in whatever we do. I am going to have to give big thanks to Brandy's blog because one of her links was to a FHE blog that is geared to children 0-5 which just rocks in my book. So I wanted to share a pic of the treat I managed to make for this weeks FHE lesson from that blog. I was thrilled that it turned out as well as it did. Here you go:

If you want directions on how to make them just click the FHE link in my blog list.

UPDATE: So I figured I would post how the FHE tonight went and what the kiddos did. Oh and by the way the sky dessert was SOOOOO YUMMY!!

Okay so here are the Lehi's Vision Pictures the kids did. Ethan was less than cooperative tonight so I helped him color his poster. Jojo's poster isn't done yet but she wanted to eat her sky so she is going to color it later.

Happy 4th Birthday Jocelyn

Naturally, for Jocelyn we had to have a Princess Birthday Party. We have had a very busy day full of birthday fun. We went to church this morning and Jocelyn had the birthday song sung to her in Primary. Then we came home and had lunch and all took naps. After naps we had hamburgers and french fries per Jocelyn's request followed by a Birthday Party with cake and ice cream. It is really hard to believe that I have a 4 year old now. She is so big and so very independent. We are so in love with our precious little princess, it is amazing to me that only 4 short years ago we were sitting in the hospital welcoming this tiny baby into the world.

Then she got to open all of her presents, which she has been dying to do for a few days now as the majority of them were purchased via Internet or being sent for grandmas & grandpas.She has been really good about though and knew she had to wait until after cake.

This one is for you Grandma & Grandpa Battson, your little birthday princess.

Dave & I got here a Princess Pop-up play tent since she has been making "forts" here and Ethan keeps knocking them down. We decided this would be a good solution.

A new big princess blanket, most of her blankets now are from when she was born. I figured it was time for an upgrade.Princess Game: Domino'sPlay make-up: mainly lipstickPrincess Backpack for Preschool this fall.

More play jewelry...can you really have too much :)

All in all she had a very fun day playing with friends and getting to dress up like a princess.

UPDATE: So Jo got one more present from her Meme & Poppop that we need to share it with you because her expression was priceless.

Just a little brother sister fun

Just thought I would share this with you all... Jo and Ethan are too funny sometimes. Jo was drinking a capri sun and decided to share with Ethan. Some how she figured out that she could blow it up and then squish it when it was in Ethan's mouth. She thought it was pretty funny and well.... Ethan did too.

Potty Mania...

Well I guess it should really come at no surprise that Ethan has been fascinated by the potty since Logan, Cayden and of course Jojo have been potty trained or training. But sure enough the past two days Ethan has come up to me saying "potty, potty". Finally today I said "Oh, do you have to go potty? well lets go". He then preceded to drop his drawers and waddle to the bathroom. I helped him up on the potty and he just sat there with a huge smile on his face. Of course he didn't go potty.. but he did sit there and then flush the toilet. It is crazy how much he is growing...what happen to my baby?

Latest News

Well as most of you know we are putting Jocelyn in Preschool this year, but have sort of put it in the back of our minds with all the drama in our lives, Not to mention us currently living in Oregon. However I called today to figure out monthly tuition costs and when classes started so I could figure out when we need to be back in Utah....Well we have to be back before AUGUST 18th. I about died when the gal told me that because we had really thought it would be starting the end of August and we would only be without Dave for 4 weeks as he will be coming home around the end of September. So looks like me and the kids will be returning home in 5 weeks so Jo can start preschool. I am really excited to be coming home but really sad that I will have to be without Dave for so long (I think we will have to plan a weekend trip or two for him). Hope everything hasn't changed too much, see you all soon!!!

Happy Independence Day!!

For the 4th of July my Dad came down to visit with me and the kiddos and help us celebrate the day since Dave was out working hard in the heat. We didn't really budget in fireworks this year so we settled for pop-it for the kids. I think it was a great plan as I am a little leery of the sparklers and the hot sparks it shoots off with Ethan (aka accident prone boy). They did really well with it Jojo could make them pop most of the time, but Ethan on the other hand had a hard time..he did manage to do it once or twice.

We were sitting down eating dinner trying to decide where we should go to watch fireworks when I got a call from Dave saying he was on his way home and wanted to take the kids to go see "Wall-e", it was a great surprise! So we loaded up the kids and headed for the movies. They were really really extremely good through the whole movie. Ethan was content to sit on my lap as long as he had a jumbo sprite in his hand and the popcorn close by. It was a cute movie but don't think it was all that entertaining for our kiddos as they seemed to get really restless during the last 30 minutes of the movie. After the movie was over we rushed home to see if we could watch fireworks from our patio. Sure enough we could see some big ones just down the street so it was probably one of the best 4th's considering we were just winging it.

Playing at "Home"

Since we have Dave in the mornings and on Sunday's the kids like to take advantage of that time with him. This day they were playing tackle/ride Daddy. Then later they decided they were going to take their naps out in the front room...Tooo cute!!

Taking a Zoo day!!

Okay I know I am a little behind on events so I will try to catch back up. When my mom was down here we decided to take the Kids to the Portland Zoo since it was suppose to be a really nice day, or at least we thought. What we didn't account for was the fact that it was early morning and most of the zoo is under tree cover soooo...it was actually pretty cold but the kids were troopers. This is a pic of all the kids looking at a sleeping black bear, it kept moving so they thought it was pretty entertaining not to mention we had them all growling like bears.

Next we went to the fish, this was Ethan's favorite because he can actually say "fish" well "fis" is what it sounds like but that is close enoughThen it was off to the petting zoo portion of the zoo which we thought the kids would really enjoy. Most did but Jo seemed to be in a bad mood by the time we got there because she just put on a frowny face whenever we tried to get her to pet an animal. At least Ethan enjoyed it!!

Here are a few more of the animals we saw at the zoo..

We were pretty lucky the day that we went they were really trying to draw attention to their wild cat exhibits so the kids got to say hi to "Tony the tiger" It was a blast and one of the cooler zoo's I have been to.