Potty Trained

This little girl is potty trained. She was so easy!! I have really wanted to potty train her before we left Maryland but with having to drive 27 hours to get to Texas we thought it would be easier to wait until we settled in Texas. I would constantly ask her if she wanted to sit on the potty and she would always tell me no. Hallee was really interested in the potty when she was about 19 months, but with being almost 9 months pregnant, I didn't really pursue it.

We had been in our house for about 3 weeks, when Janica and Brielle were here. I took her diaper off one day and told her I wasn't putting it back on until she sat on the potty. I sat her on the potty and we did a lot of coaxing and she went. I left her naked and she was playing and then ran in there and went poop all by herself. We made a huge deal out of it and she got to get a snow cone. After the Poulson's left I just put her in panties and she stayed dry. She would put a sticker on a chart and then pick a treat once it was full. She didn't have any accidents. I thought it was going way too good--we've had some small accidents--but she never has had any accidents outside of the house. The few accidents she has had, I believe, were due to distractions. She stays completely dry at nap time and at night.  



it only took her 2 days of sticker chart to get it down





showing me her princess stickers 



This little girl is growing up way too fast!
It is so nice not to have to change her diapers anymore! So proud of my big girl!
Let's hope Mckenna is this easy to potty train :)

Ballet

Hallee has just started doing a ballet class once a week with her friend Mallory. Hallee is in heaven every class. She is such a good listener. Her teacher, Ms. Norma is always telling me how good of a listener she is. They have a window that I can watch through and it is the cutest thing! 



Look at those adorable curls! I love it! 



 We are lucky that we found such a great teacher! She is so cute with them! 

Mckenna

I feel bad because I haven't done any post just about Mckenna. She is already 11 months old and is the cutest thing around. She has the cutest personality! She loves following Hallee around and tries to play with her as much as Hallee will allow. She is such a happy baby.  She is constantly getting compliments about how pretty she is and about her big blue eyes. Her eyes are killer! I hope they stay the crystal blue that they are. She loves to eat what we are eating. If you try and give her baby food she will spit it out! Also if she doesn't like what we are eating she will press her lips closed. It is so funny! The other day I showed her something we were eating and she spit, so I tried to give her a test and sure enough she kept those lips closed. She is so funny! 

She has 8 teeth, and is taller than Hallee was at her age. 

she loves to watch what Hallee does and is constantly laughing at her. 

She says dada, mama, and loves to wave. We are working on signing more and thank you. She will do it sometimes. It's so cute! She does the cutest sad face. If she bonks her head or if Hallee does something mean if I look at her with a sad face she will make the cutest face. I hope I can get it on camera. 

She wants to walk so bad. She finds anything to help her stand up. Just in the last few days she has started standing on her on! She will be walking in no time. 

gg gave her this darling outfit



she is such a busy baby. She loves to explore everything. Her favorite thing to do is climb up and down the stairs. The first time I let her crawl up the stairs she did it like she had done it before. She got to the top and gave me a huge smile. We have a gate and the bottom and top of the stairs. She is constantly crawling over to them to see if by chance they are unlocked. If the gate is unlocked, she heads straight for her chance to climb. 



She has become a great sleeper. She likes to have her naps during the day. Which sometimes it is hard with Hallee and getting out of the house for errands, play dates, or dance. She takes 2 naps a day and likes to be in bed by 7:30 or 8:00. She puts herself to sleep, she just needs her blanket and binki. She loves to talk to herself in her crib.
It's so cute to hear  her.  

She loves to play with her toys. She does great playing by herself. It's crazy how different her and Hallee are. I know a lot of it has to do with her being the 2nd child.

She really has been the best baby! She has been sick a few times which is the saddest thing but she tried so hard to be happy. It makes me so sad to think that she will be one in a few weeks. Time just goes by too fast with these girls. They are growing up way too fast!! It's crazy how your heart just grows with the more kids that you have. I know I was worried that I wouldn't love her as much as I love Hallee but I do! I love my girls and I'm so glad I get to be their mom!! 

Janica and Brielle come to Texas

Janica and Brielle came to visit for 10 days in August. It was so fun to have them here. Hallee loved having a playmate all day long. It was hard at times for them to share toys, but they got along really well. I felt really bad because Mckenna got really sick the 3rd day they were there and I had to spend 6 hours in the ER with her. Luckily Janica and Brielle spent the day at Sea World. 

eating ice cream after baths. 



Hallee loves to hide under blankets, we were showing Brielle how fun it is. 

playing with playdough

Janica did Hallee's hair. I lack in the creative department, but Janica showed me some ways I could do Hallee's hair.



Janica made these cute dresses out of bandanas. So they were matching friends at church. 

Brielle brought a fun painting book that they both loved.

We tried to do fun things despite Mckenna being sick. We went to Sea World a few times, rode the train, went swimming, went to story time at the library, shopping at target, and just playing together at home.
We are so glad that they were able to visit us in Texas. We hope they had as much fun as we did! 

Summer 2012

After we moved into our house we spent the rest of the summer unpacking, swimming, going to Sea World, riding the train at the zoo, hanging out at home, playing with the water table, and hanging out with friends. We are lucky enough to have friends that moved here with us from Maryland that live super close. 

Jared's internal medicine rotation has 2 parts. The first 6 weeks are out-patient so it's clinic hours, write-ups, and weekly paper. He was home between 5-6 and would spend Friday's working on his paper. He had weekends off which was extremely nice. The other 6 weeks is in-patient. So he is working in the hospital.  His hours have not been the best. He still has the papers due each week and then a shelf exam that he takes at the end of the 12 weeks. The in-patient has been harder on us girls. He works 6 long long days and has one day off, add his calling in the Elders Quorum Presidency and he is one busy man.  He handles everything so well. He would come home every night totally exhausted but made sure to play with the girls for a little bit. He starts Pediatrics on Monday and we are all excited for the change. We are hoping we will have the weekends to spend time together. 

Mckenna loves to play the piano



matching jammies that gg gave them 

hallee shared a bite of her ice cream with her 

we met friends at the library and park you can tell by Hallee's red face that it was very hot. I stopped at McDonalds and got her a ice cream to help cool her off. 

She was nice to share with kenna 

reading bed time stories with dad

she loves holding onto things and walking around 

playing the piano again

we got hallee a little tikes car and she is in heaven. She loves it! Mckenna loves it as well. Hallee will push her  around or get on top and I push them around. 

Hallee and Stephen playing with the water table that mema and papa gave them 

Mckenna loves to be outside especially playing in the water. 

this girl loves to dance. We have daily dance parties at our house. 

hallee and her baby playing in a box 



hallee loves to have her mckenna hide in the cupboards, and under blankets. 

We spent a lot of time at Sea World with friends. I was never brave enough to bring my camera to take pictures of our fun adventures. The girls love it and are troopers. Hallee does really well and is such a good girl. We have had a fun summer. It was a scorcher here in Texas but everybody says if you can make it through the summer you will love it here! Let's hope they are right!

Jared's Birthday & More Hotel Life

Jared started his first rotation on June 25th, which is his birthday. We weren't sure how his day would be. The girls and I found the dollar store and got some decorations to decorate the room. He got home in time for dinner and he chose Olive Garden. After Olive Garden we went back to the hotel and had ice cream cake from Cold Stone.

We had the 2 other guys from his school sing with us. Hallee thought it was for her birthday. She helped blow the candles out.



I bought trick candles without knowing, it took quite a few blows before they finally blew out. It was funny

We switched hotels the Sunday before his rotation started. The only nice thing about this hotel was that it was right across the street from the hospital. When we both walked into the room we knew it was going to be a long three weeks. It was tiny! We were wall to wall beds, there was a bathroom, a small sink and microwave, bed, pull out couch, and tv. 

We had to become creative with entertainment. It was way too hot to be outside for very long.
We did spend time at the pool and the play ground outside. We had dance parties, watched shows, and played games.
Thankfully Jared did have the weekends off with the first 6 weeks of Internal medicine. So we were able to get out on the weekends with Jared. 

Mckenna learned how to crawl at this hotel. The floors were nasty!
 I'm pretty sure the carpets hadn't been cleaned in years. I had no choice but to let the crawling happen.



This is our room. You can see how tiny it is. I'm standing by the bathroom. It goes our bed, Mckenna's pack n play and then Hallee's pull out bed. The girls were troopers. Nap times were tricky, but we survived!

Every time we would pull up to the hotel, hallee would say; "my new house."  We had to explain to her that it wasn't our new house and we will be moving into our new house soon! We were lucky to have Jared's parents came to help us move in and to bring down the van. They got in late on Friday night, Saturday we went to Sea World for the day. It was a very hot day! We went to TGIFriday's and then down to the Alamo which was already closed, and we walked around downtown San Antonio. The girls were exhausted. Poor Mckenna cried the whole way home. Monday we moved into our new house!! We were SO excited!! Jared has all the pictures of the Robert's and of our new house that I will try and add. 

First 2 weeks in a Hotel

When we first got to San Antonio the first thing to do was to find a place to live. We had look at several places online. We were working with 2 relators. We got in a Wednesday night and Thursday morning we were out looking at places. We had 5 houses set up to look that morning. The first house we pulled up to was the house I really wanted. There was a pool and playground right across the street. It would be perfect for the girls and I. It would be in the same ward as our friends the Berry's and Farnsworth's. We walked in and of course we both loved it. All of the space, 2 car garage, a back yard. Even though the yards in Texas are horrible, to us it was still a fenced-in back yard. I loved it! We went on to see the other houses and there weren't as nice as the first one. They all had something wrong with them. So we decided to just go with the first house. The only problem is that we couldn't move in until the 17 of July. That meant almost 6 weeks in a hotel. 

We thought it wouldn't be that bad, but there were times that I was done! 

Our first hotel was really nice. We stayed at a Residence Inn-Marriott. We had a little kitchen and we had a separate room so we weren't all sleeping in the same room. 



The first week we went swimming 2 times a day until the both the girls got ear infections. Hallee loved her ladybug floaty's. She just plays in the water by herself now. She loves swimming. 

The second week both girls got sick with ear infections. It was not a fun way to end Jared's vacation. We did get to go to SeaWorld which Hallee loved! After the two weeks we moved to the military hotel. It was definitely a couple steps down from what we had been staying in--but it worked.