Anna Never Did That

Nicholas loves his play mat.  He LOVES playing, rolling, and ripping the toys off.  Anna never did any of that. This video is long, but it shows  how much fun he has.  We usually let him play until he has ripped everything off.  Then we put everything back on so later he can do it all over again.

The Pull Up Bar

I wish I had more time to do everything that I would like to do.  Exercise is one of those things that I wish I had more time for.  In my quest to cram more than is humanly possible into the day I am always looking for quick effective ways to exercise.  To me quick and effective means something as simple as flossing my teeth, 5 minutes tops.
My sister-in-law gave me the great idea of getting a pull up bar.  So our family now has a new friend.
Anna likes it she can do the most pull ups.

Dad likes it too.  He can do a few pull ups.

Julie has a ways to go.  You can see from this dorky picture.

But I am please to report that tonight I did a real pull up, all the way.  So hopefully in the near future I'll be able to crank out 20 like G.I. Jane. Wish me luck!

He's Come a Long Way

Nicholas has come a long way in the last 7 months.  He was a pretty stinkin' cute newborn and I love his fun personality that is coming out.
Here are two video clips.  The first is from when Nicholas was just a few days old.  The second clip was taken this last week, so Nicholas is almost 7 months old.

He has the best laugh!!!

Potty Training

Do you remember this picture?

I can't believe that I haven't posted about Anna being "potty trained." Anna started showing interest in the potty last year. In the fall, going potty after her bath became part of the nightly routine. In February we bit the bullet. We said good bye to diapers and got Anna some cool Disney panties. Thank you Disney for making panties for girls with Lighting MacQueen! We did the "3 Day" method. Which I personally call the "3 Month" method. Anna did great. She loved getting her "giant chocolate chip" when she asked to go potty and made it without any accidents.

To help motivate Anna to not have any accidents we told her we would buy her a sandbox if she was "dry" for a whole week. We lined up seven little rubber ducks on her book shelf and each day she was dry we would put a duck in the bucket. If she had an accident she would have to take all the ducks out. She was REALLY close a few times, but we stuck to our guns, she had to be completely dry for a whole week.
On May 2nd she finally got her sandbox. We even let her stay up late so that she could be awake when Devin brought it home.

She was SOOOO excited as you can see.

The kids in the neighborhood love Anna's sandbox too. I wish I had pictures of all the kids piled into the sandbox playing. We have had 6+ kids crammed in there having a blast. Good work Anna!! We are so proud of you. And it is SOOOO nice to only have to change one set of diapers. Ok Nicholas, now it is your turn.

Grow Baby GROW!!!!

For the last several years we have been "long distance" gardeners. My mom has been nice enough to let us plant a garden in her backyard. One of the reasons why we were ready to buy a home was that we were ready live where our garden was so we could take care of it every day. We finally got around to digging out our garden.
We started out with this...

And did a lot of this...

And lots of picking up rocks

Did I mention rocks???

So it would look like this...

That is some good looking dirt!!!

Anna was a great helper planting things. She loves wearing her "work gloves" just like Daddy.

We did most of the major planting while kids were sleeping. Saturday we finished up planting. It was nice enough Anna had a little pool party while we planted. I guess you could say we had a Planting Pool Party.

It was a so much fun we invited the neighbor girl over to play. The girls had a great time together.

So our garden is planted. It looks really pretty! Hopefully it will grow. Devin's brother Kyle gave us a whole bunch of pepper and tomato plants. I have never planted such small plants. The ones we get from the store are usually twice as big. I guess this will be my lesson on faith this year. We'll do the best we can with our garden, and hopefully something will grow.

Even if nothing grows, you better believe we are going to keep it weed free. I'll post pictures in a month. Hopefully there will be a whole lot of green by then.

Very Familiar

Nicholas was playing on the floor the other day and I looked at him and thought, this looks very familiar.  

I took a picture of Nicholas.

I then compared it to the one I was remembering of Anna at the same age.  

It is fun to see how much they both love the same things.  The stacking cups are still a favorite toy to play with.

I know you shouldn't compare your kids, but I sometimes do.  I love Anna's dark brown eyes and I love Nicholas's light blue eyes.  I am amazed at Nicholas's fair skin and jealous of Anna's naturally tan skin.  Anna's hair is the same color as mine and Nicholas has strawberry blonde hair. Funny to think that they have about the same amount of hair and that Nicholas has already had three hair cuts.

I love both my kids so much.  They are very much the same, but so different at the same time.