For some silly reason, gmail/blogger only allows a certain percentage of storage space for pictures, and I have used up 99% of it (having multiple blogs will do that!). I would have to pay $3/month to pay for more storage space and I do not want to do that! So...I've opened a new one under Erik's gmail account. Unlike this blog, it is public--at least for now.
The address is www.erkamy2.blogspot.com
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
A Quick Trip to Kansas
A few weeks ago we went to Kansas with Erik's parents + Makayla. Well, they came for a visit first. We all had fun eating donuts, getting a garage door opener, going to the hospital (just kidding--I'm sure that was NOT fun for poor Rick!!), shopping at the mall, and going to the beach. I think the most fun part about visiting with family is that the kids love it! And I get a break from them and their clingy selves.
The babies and Makayla at the beach. I forgot to bring Elisa's swimsuit. Whoops. She had a great time chasing the birds though!
Me, the kids, and Makayla flew while Erik and his parents drove. Elisa was NOT as good on this flight as she was the last. Oh, and just after the plane had landed she found some guy's hairy, HAIRY legs and proceeded to rub them. All the way up his thigh. Her taste in men needs adjustment.
We finally got to Kansas, and Mary (Erik's aunt) kindly took us to our nice hotel. The next day was spent at the train park. Gabe's dream come true! He sure had fun.
We also rode a carousole and the kids put their cute little faces through these:
So the main point of going to Kansas was to visit with Erik's Grandpa Raper. He is 91 years old and as cute as can be! He hadn't seen the kids before this trip, so we wanted to make sure the kids got to meet him. Gabe sure took a liking to his Great-grandpa and gave him lots of sweet Gabie hugs (those are the best hugs ever!)
Family photo after eating at Boss Hogs
We went back to the train park and Gabe got some train money (a coin with a train on it--it's a token to ride the train) and he held it in his hand almost the whole car ride home! Then we went to a burger joint called Spangler's with Aunt Mary. The kids at a month's worth of ice cream there.
P.S. Our anniversary was the 28th of July, the day we left Kansas. We got to spend our anniversary night in a boring, small hotel room in Oklahoma with two wired but tired kids. Jealous?? Didn't think so.
The babies and Makayla at the beach. I forgot to bring Elisa's swimsuit. Whoops. She had a great time chasing the birds though!
Me, the kids, and Makayla flew while Erik and his parents drove. Elisa was NOT as good on this flight as she was the last. Oh, and just after the plane had landed she found some guy's hairy, HAIRY legs and proceeded to rub them. All the way up his thigh. Her taste in men needs adjustment.
We finally got to Kansas, and Mary (Erik's aunt) kindly took us to our nice hotel. The next day was spent at the train park. Gabe's dream come true! He sure had fun.
Family photo after eating at Boss Hogs
P.S. Our anniversary was the 28th of July, the day we left Kansas. We got to spend our anniversary night in a boring, small hotel room in Oklahoma with two wired but tired kids. Jealous?? Didn't think so.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Gabie and Friends Dance to Thomas and Friends
So I checked out this Thomas and Friends CD out at the library a couple of months ago (back in AZ of course) and Gabe couldn't get enough of it! As soon as the music started playing, Gabe would start dancing. It was the cutest thing ever so I took a ton of videos, and here they are:
P.S. In case you noticed that Gabe is in his undies in just about every video, Gabe was in the process of being potty trained. I have no excuse for Elisa not being dressed though :P
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Lil' Strummer
I saw this little 4-string guitar at Goodwill and for five bucks, I just couldn't pass it up! Gabe has a blast when Erik brings out his guitar and I always catch Gabe messing with Erik's guitar, so I thought this little guitar would be perfect for Gabe. Gabe loves to play it when daddy brings out his guitar. We are trying to teach him how to hold it properly, but he wants to hold it his way. Either way, he sure is cute with it!
Nuts for Nutella
Here is a super-cute video of my super-cute girly diving into a jar of nutella. I love nutella too, but she needs the extra padding that comes from eating it more than I do!
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Potty Trained!
Gabe is finally potty trained! It's been a long, long journey but we made it. We attempted potty training Gabe at the very beginning of the year. FAIL. The house smelled like feces, mommy was loosing patience, and poor Gabe I think was very confused about the whole ordeal. I know he was was not ready, even though he was already well over 2 1/2. So I gave up and back the diapers went on his little bottom.
Then we found out we were moving, so I thought, meh, we'll just wait until we move until we bother with potty training again. Erik disagreed and thought we should try again (it was already late March by that time). I told him he'd better help out A LOT this time (I dreaded cleaning poop out of the carpet again)! But I was sick of changing diapers all the time (2/3 of the trash can was filled with diapers!), he was already past 3, and two kids in diapers is expensive!
So we tried again! Before, it was a struggle just to get Gabe to SIT on the toilet. We had tried to bribe him with money and we had him watch Elmo's potty time over and over again, but neither work. I don't really know what we did right this time, mostly I think Gabe was just ready. Praise and consistency helped I'm sure, as well as talking about going potty and watching close friends and family go potty. Once Gabe got the concept of going pee on the potty, he got it quick.
However, the concept of pooping on the potty alluded him. For whatever reason, we just could NOT get him to go poop on the potty. And unfortunately, he always pooped right around nap time, so we had a hard time catching him in the act. But one day, I did! I immediately put him on the toilet and let him finish his business. That was a huge milestone, and since then, he has had less and less pooping accidents. I say less and less, because it definitely was a gradual process. We won't talk about the time I thought he was taking a nap, but instead, he was smearing poop all over the door and putting big chunks of it in his drawer :)
Moving time came, and I had heard big events in a small child's life can undo potty training, but in Gabe's case, it actually helped! I think it was the fact that Gabe did the 18-hour drive and knew he would have to sit in his poo for a long time, and since then he's been going poop fairly consistently. Within the past 3 weeks, Gabe has only had 1 maybe 2 poop accidents. We have had a couple of pee accidents. Those were due to the fact the light switches are too high in this house for him to reach, one toilet was out of commission (the one right by him room of course) and the others shriek when they are flushed (I don't blame him for not wanting to use those creepy toilets!)
We are so proud of Gabe and relieved that he is potty-trained! What a good boy!
Modeling his undies. Thomas, of course!
The potty. This one pee-pee trained him
The toilet seat potty. This one pooped trained him. Thomas the train all over the potty, of course!
Gabe's "potty train book". He could only open the trains until he put his poo-poo in the potty. I thought it would work like a charm, but he was content just looking at them.
Then we found out we were moving, so I thought, meh, we'll just wait until we move until we bother with potty training again. Erik disagreed and thought we should try again (it was already late March by that time). I told him he'd better help out A LOT this time (I dreaded cleaning poop out of the carpet again)! But I was sick of changing diapers all the time (2/3 of the trash can was filled with diapers!), he was already past 3, and two kids in diapers is expensive!
So we tried again! Before, it was a struggle just to get Gabe to SIT on the toilet. We had tried to bribe him with money and we had him watch Elmo's potty time over and over again, but neither work. I don't really know what we did right this time, mostly I think Gabe was just ready. Praise and consistency helped I'm sure, as well as talking about going potty and watching close friends and family go potty. Once Gabe got the concept of going pee on the potty, he got it quick.
However, the concept of pooping on the potty alluded him. For whatever reason, we just could NOT get him to go poop on the potty. And unfortunately, he always pooped right around nap time, so we had a hard time catching him in the act. But one day, I did! I immediately put him on the toilet and let him finish his business. That was a huge milestone, and since then, he has had less and less pooping accidents. I say less and less, because it definitely was a gradual process. We won't talk about the time I thought he was taking a nap, but instead, he was smearing poop all over the door and putting big chunks of it in his drawer :)
Moving time came, and I had heard big events in a small child's life can undo potty training, but in Gabe's case, it actually helped! I think it was the fact that Gabe did the 18-hour drive and knew he would have to sit in his poo for a long time, and since then he's been going poop fairly consistently. Within the past 3 weeks, Gabe has only had 1 maybe 2 poop accidents. We have had a couple of pee accidents. Those were due to the fact the light switches are too high in this house for him to reach, one toilet was out of commission (the one right by him room of course) and the others shriek when they are flushed (I don't blame him for not wanting to use those creepy toilets!)
We are so proud of Gabe and relieved that he is potty-trained! What a good boy!
Thursday, July 5, 2012
The Move
There is SO MUCH to blog about that I will just have to break it up into sections. I know the few who actually read this blog are just dying for pics of the house, well I'm sorry you will have to wait just a tad longer! This post is about the move itself, I'll post pics of the house later. For now, here is an overview of the move:
Well we made it to Texas and are FINALLY settled in (mostly)! Let's just say this past month (June, that is) has been a very LONG month. We had originally planned on packing up the trunk June 2nd with Erik and my dad leaving the 3rd and me and the kids leaving the 4th. Well, the bank being the horrendously slow and inefficient bank that it is (dang you, Bank of America!) we were unable to close until the 21st! Meh, things do not always go as planned so I've (re)learned on this move.
While we were waiting for the bank to get in gear, we packed. Little bits here and there, what do you pack when you know you are going to move but don't know exactly when? Frustrating! Well on Monday the 11th,we finally got the okay to pack up the entire house and move, because we thought we could close the 15th (haha, yeah right). Besides, Erik had to be in Texas for orientation on the 20th, so we figured we probably outta move out of AZ anyway. What a chore, I'll tell ya! You think you have enough boxes, but turns out you can never have too much! We loaded everything onto the Uhaul truck on June 12th. Gabe sure had a blast running back and forth from the truck to the garage. His friend Kade came to visit before we left, and that made it all the more fun! A huge thank-you to the Rose Valley ward Elder's quorum for helping us load the truck, we'll sure miss that ward! And an even bigger thank-you (albeit a very inadequate one) to my in-laws for practically EVERYTHING dealing with the house and the move, we would so be living in a crappy apartment it if weren't for them! I guess we owe them 23 grandchildren by now :)
Since we had to reschedule the flight for me and the kids, the price went sky high. In order to save money, Gabe did the 18-hour drive with my dad and Erik instead of flying with me and Elisa. He did a really good job-he's such a good little boy! I was worried about the trip being too much for Gabe, but he's such a little trouper. Besides, its one less kid to get through security! Everyone left early Wednesday morning, and me and Elisa stayed behind because the flights were just too expensive if we went any earlier. Luckily enough for us, our kind friends the Riddles took us in and let us mooch off them for almost a week! Thank goodness for good friends, Elisa and I would have been homeless without their hospitality! We are so grateful, and I never forget nice things people do for me. We had a great time staying at their nice home, but all good things must come to an end, so on Monday the 18th we said goodbye to Arizona, and flew to Houston on a 2 1/2 hour flight. Elisa did wonderfully on the flight. She sure can be needy, but all in all she is a really good girl.
By then Erik, Gabe, and my dad were already in Texas (Texas City, to be exact). Erik's parents had left to go home already, and we had STILL not closed on the house! So Erik and my dad rented a room in an extended-stay hotel called Value Place. It was nice to see Gabie and Erik again and of course my dad (that was the longest I had ever been away from my Gabe!), but what a waste of a week! And boring too. Poor Elisa was so bored, any chance she got she would escape out the hotel door. We were able to go inside the house before we closed, but be couldn't do anything to it. It was frustrating sitting around the boring hotel room knowing there was so much to be done with the house but not being able to do anything at all. We weren't even allowed to park the van in the driveway. If fact, while me and Elisa were still in AZ, Erik, my dad, and Erik's dad thought they could at least unload the van and put the stuff just into the garage, but turned out they weren't allowed to do that either. So after unpacking most of the van, they had to put it all back! So glad I wasn't there for that. On Thursday after MUCH much tribulation, irritation, calls and emails, we were finally able to close! We didn't unpack the van until Saturday, and only one guy from the elders quorum helped. Poor guy, but we were happy to have at least one person show up!
Pictures to come in the next post when I find the camera :)
Well we made it to Texas and are FINALLY settled in (mostly)! Let's just say this past month (June, that is) has been a very LONG month. We had originally planned on packing up the trunk June 2nd with Erik and my dad leaving the 3rd and me and the kids leaving the 4th. Well, the bank being the horrendously slow and inefficient bank that it is (dang you, Bank of America!) we were unable to close until the 21st! Meh, things do not always go as planned so I've (re)learned on this move.
While we were waiting for the bank to get in gear, we packed. Little bits here and there, what do you pack when you know you are going to move but don't know exactly when? Frustrating! Well on Monday the 11th,we finally got the okay to pack up the entire house and move, because we thought we could close the 15th (haha, yeah right). Besides, Erik had to be in Texas for orientation on the 20th, so we figured we probably outta move out of AZ anyway. What a chore, I'll tell ya! You think you have enough boxes, but turns out you can never have too much! We loaded everything onto the Uhaul truck on June 12th. Gabe sure had a blast running back and forth from the truck to the garage. His friend Kade came to visit before we left, and that made it all the more fun! A huge thank-you to the Rose Valley ward Elder's quorum for helping us load the truck, we'll sure miss that ward! And an even bigger thank-you (albeit a very inadequate one) to my in-laws for practically EVERYTHING dealing with the house and the move, we would so be living in a crappy apartment it if weren't for them! I guess we owe them 23 grandchildren by now :)
Since we had to reschedule the flight for me and the kids, the price went sky high. In order to save money, Gabe did the 18-hour drive with my dad and Erik instead of flying with me and Elisa. He did a really good job-he's such a good little boy! I was worried about the trip being too much for Gabe, but he's such a little trouper. Besides, its one less kid to get through security! Everyone left early Wednesday morning, and me and Elisa stayed behind because the flights were just too expensive if we went any earlier. Luckily enough for us, our kind friends the Riddles took us in and let us mooch off them for almost a week! Thank goodness for good friends, Elisa and I would have been homeless without their hospitality! We are so grateful, and I never forget nice things people do for me. We had a great time staying at their nice home, but all good things must come to an end, so on Monday the 18th we said goodbye to Arizona, and flew to Houston on a 2 1/2 hour flight. Elisa did wonderfully on the flight. She sure can be needy, but all in all she is a really good girl.
By then Erik, Gabe, and my dad were already in Texas (Texas City, to be exact). Erik's parents had left to go home already, and we had STILL not closed on the house! So Erik and my dad rented a room in an extended-stay hotel called Value Place. It was nice to see Gabie and Erik again and of course my dad (that was the longest I had ever been away from my Gabe!), but what a waste of a week! And boring too. Poor Elisa was so bored, any chance she got she would escape out the hotel door. We were able to go inside the house before we closed, but be couldn't do anything to it. It was frustrating sitting around the boring hotel room knowing there was so much to be done with the house but not being able to do anything at all. We weren't even allowed to park the van in the driveway. If fact, while me and Elisa were still in AZ, Erik, my dad, and Erik's dad thought they could at least unload the van and put the stuff just into the garage, but turned out they weren't allowed to do that either. So after unpacking most of the van, they had to put it all back! So glad I wasn't there for that. On Thursday after MUCH much tribulation, irritation, calls and emails, we were finally able to close! We didn't unpack the van until Saturday, and only one guy from the elders quorum helped. Poor guy, but we were happy to have at least one person show up!
Pictures to come in the next post when I find the camera :)
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