This week

A few fun photos of what we've been up to...

Smiling

Having tummy time

Sleeping with the lion

and smiling some more

We haven't gone anywhere far from home lately.  And this is why:

Yes, Connor is potty training.  He turned three on November 6th, so on November 7th I told him three year olds don't wear diapers.  Each day seems to get better-he's making a lot of progress.

A little funny/kind of gross story-today he came inside from playing out in the dirt.  I told him it was time to go potty.  He says, he already did.  So we went to the bathroom.  He pulls his pants off and I don't see anything, but the smell is there.  He turns around and his poop is still stuck to him.  I grabbed him and put him on the big potty.  The poop falls off and he gets all excited that he can see the poop in the potty while he sits.  We made a big deal out of it and he wanted to sit on the potty longer.  After cleaning him up, he left to play.  The next time he was told to go potty, he sat on the big potty and told me that he went pee and he heard it go twinkle twinkle in the potty.  I laughed-that's what I told him it would do as it splashed the water.  Now he seems to really like the big potty-which is wonderful, since cleaning the little potty is a bit gross.

While potty training we have been having fun doing some art and craft projects at home.  This week it is painting stepping stone bricks to look like turtles, lady bugs and bees.  We also painted some big rocks today, which we'll turn into a caterpillar.

So simple and fun

On Tuesday Mary came over with Calvin and Heidi.  Connor played pretty well with them.  Then at one point it got really quiet.  Calvin was in the family room playing with toys, Heidi was in the play room and Connor was outside in the sand box.  I guess you could call it parallel play-sort of.  Later Mary and Calvin left, so Heidi and Connor played together in the sand box.  They enjoyed scooping the sand into the trashcans.

One cool dude!

Halloween...Blessing...Birthday Pictures Oh My!

As promised...here are the pictures that go along with the previous post:

Halloween

Chloe gets her Halloween shoes put on

 Heidi-pink triceratops, Camille-Hermoine Granger, Chloe-pumpkin, Claire-chef

Kirk-Green T-Rex, Ellie-Pioneer, Connor-Dalmation, Calvin-Monkey

Chloe's Blessing

Can you believe that I wore this outfit when I was blessed 32 years ago?!

 Family Photos-I had to include all of these as I just love Connor's expressions in each photo.

Part of the group that came to support Chloe-My parents, Fred and Lisa Leavitt, us and David.  Peter's mom took all of these photos and we missed a group shot with Mary, Amy and Sean who were there with their families as well.  Oh and I know there are some pictures floating around with my aunt and uncle in them, but I don't have them.

Connor's Birthday

I don't have pictures of his actual birthday, but on Sunday we celebrated with cousins.  Here's a picture of the awesome cake I made-okay I copied a design, but I was thrilled that it actually resembled the picture.  Though the candies on the blue frosting should look like a person-Peter did that part and I don't think he realized that.

 Here he is being a feller buncher

Happy 3rd Birthday Connor!

Halloween...Blessing...Birthday Oh My!

So I'm a little behind in my posting...mostly because I don't have pictures, though as soon as I get some I'll post them.

For Halloween we had a party at our house and had Chris, Mary, Sean, Amy, David and Diana and all the cousins over. We had a spooky spaghetti dinner with orange jello and spiders, and salad.  Chris made orange rice crispy treats and David made orange and purple popcorn balls.  After dinner the Guys all went trick or treating with the kids.  Chloe went to one house and decided she was done with that experience.  Calvin and Heidi returned early when their little legs gave out.  The others came back later with a decent loot.  Meanwhile the girls stayed and passed out candy by the handful.  I didn't want much of my Costco sized bag left over.  When everyone got back it was interesting to see how each family allowed treats to be eaten.  Amy let Heidi, Calvin and Kirk pick out five treats to eat.  Chris let his kids go wild for four minutes and then all the candy was put away.  Peter let Connor have three treats.  After the treats were done, we cleaned up and everyone went home.

We then went to my parents house quickly for a brief visit.  As Connor was melting down we left.  I dropped Connor and Peter off at home and went to the Leavitt's, but their house was dark (they were working at the temple), so we went home.

Sunday was Chloe's blessing.  It was wonderful!  After sacrament meeting we went outside for pictures and then went to class.  I went to primary to find my only student was my niece.  Ellie has been wanting to go to my class for a long time, but with only one student, I sent her to another class and I went to relief society.  Afterwards we went to my parents' house for an early dinner and invited the Leavitts over.  We had a great time!

Yesterday was Connor's 3rd birthday!  He requested blue jello and blue chicken nuggets for dinner.  I couldn't pull off the blue chicken so I made blue cool aid, and blue frosting for his cake.  He thought that was pretty cool.  He also ate his meal off of a blue plate with a blue fork and spoon.  Earlier in the day I took him to Walmart and bought him a playdoh garbage truck.  The look on his face was priceless.  He was an absolute angel and sat in the cart playing with his toy.  We also picked up an excavator sand toy and some Christmas presents for cousins.  After dinner he opened another present from us-Twenty Trucks DVD and CD and T-shirt.  These are fun videos on youtube we found and Connor just loves them.  He also got a car transporter and playdoh play set from grandma and grandpa.  The play set had rolling pins which Connor excitedly called steam rollers.

We will be celebrating his birthday with the other cousins soon...

Carving pumpkins/Smiley girl

Last Sunday we all gathered at Sean and Amy's house for pumpkin carving and dinner.  Connor loved getting all dirty.

Ellie and Kirk watched and waited for help with their pumpkins.

The adults helped carve the creations

There I think everyone is in at least one picture.

Pumpkin carving takes a lot of concentration and a bit of fun.

While Claire's pumpkin was carved, she put Chloe to sleep.

This week Grandpa has really gotten some good smiles out of Chloe.