Annalise is mostly potty trained now. She still wears a diaper during naptime and bedtime, which makes teaching her how to get #2s in the potty more difficult, but she has only had one accident in two weeks. I am so impressed with how quickly she caught on to it. She gave us a lot of signs that she was ready, and it was pretty much smooth sailing. She even used a big potty in public for the first time last week! That same day, she was so brave that she got her first mini-adjustment at the chiropractor. She climbed up on the table all on her own, motivated by seeing Josiah get his adjustment first.

Josiah has been plugging through his Explode the Code workbooks and is reading up a storm. We are getting ready to start homeschooling more formally this fall, and we are all very excited. We are taking it slow and not rushing or pushing too hard, but he is very interested in doing his phonics lessons and workbooks together for 10-30 minutes a day, so I won’t make him stop, and will just kick it up a notch. A post on what we plan to do is coming soon.

The kids love going to the pool. Annalise, in true Annalise form, is quite a little fish, dunking her head under water, actually swimming about 10 feet at a time with a noodle tied around her chest, and jumping into my arms (dunking in half the time), over and over again.

I have been neglecting the blog the past few weeks as I have been making a little website for my Bradley class. I needed a place to post resources for my students (so I would stop flooding their inboxes), and a place to post birth stories. If any of my past students are reading this and want to share their birth story, send me an email and I will put it up. I have also been working on a website for our local chapter of La Leche League, but it is not up and ready yet. Who knew making simple (and I stress simple) websites would be so much fun? Maybe because Thomas does the hard parts.

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My little brother and sister-in-law welcomed their daughter, Maris Kate into the world about 10 days ago, and I got to meet her when she was just a wee three days old. Isn’t she precious?

We happened to be in my hometown right around her birth for my ten year reunion, which was a lot of fun. I had a great time catching up with friends and challenging my mind to try and place names with long forgotten faces. Here’s a shout out to all my old classmates who told me they followed my blog. Freaky, but I was encouraged to know that someone besides our parents reads this thing. Maybe I will try to resume blogging that isn’t so much about the kids and garden.

Another big milestone of that weekend was my first night away from Annalise. She and Josiah stayed with my mom and Woody and my grandparents, who were visiting all the way from Arizona. They thoroughly enjoyed their time with them, and we enjoyed getting to spend time with everyone as well. And we all survived!

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We had some friends and their kids over for lunch on Saturday.

All of the kids posed for a picture. The baby that Josiah and Annalise are holding together is only three months old, can you believe it? He is huge! (Way to grow him, Erin!)

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Annalise had her first (and hopefully last) ride in the back of a police car at the Big Rigs event at the library.

She received a lot of accessories for her birthday. This is just a sampling of the ones that I didn’t pull out immediately for Operation Christmas Child.

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The post-discipline washing:

And then we dressed up for a tea party.

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Annalise and Avery picking blueberries. Turns out, Annalise did not need much help. She was quite the little picker!

We picked for about 30-45 minutes and got all of these. I love the colors in this picture.

We had so much fun and might have to go back and do this again sometime!

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On her actual birthday, Josiah was so sweet and wrapped up four of his cars in paper and scotch tape and gave them to her, along with one of his favorite stuffed animals. I was blown away by his generosity with her! He got frustrated when she kept giving everything back to him. :)

Annalise got a lot of dress-up accessories–the high heels are a favorite.

For her cake, I did Martha Stewart’s monkey cake. I tried a different chocolate icing, but it was so runny, I should have stuck with regular old buttercream. The monkey looks a little scary, but she was tasty.

We had a mini-banana hunt around the living room and played pin-the-tail on the monkey. Annalise successfully roped in all but two grandparents to participate in the blindfolded game. She was a sweetie and led many of them by their hands to the monkey.

She even had a cute monkey outfit to wear.

The afternoon ended without naps and a lot of bouncing and splashing around outside. Thomas’ parents brought this trash-to-treasure find for us that they acquired. It is a little sun-bleached, but it works great. The kids had a blast!

Both kids were asleep by 7:30 that night; it was a nice end to a great day!

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We headed to Bastrop last weekend for a free camping trip. Josiah and Thomas were the only ones who did any real camping, Pa, Gigi, Annalise and I enjoyed beds in the house. The real campers camped in the garden and even survived a short thunderstorm in the middle of the night, which Josiah managed to sleep through.

Josiah declared that his favorite part was the weekend was making smores over the little campfire. I’m not sure if he ever ate one all together, but he had more than his share of the smore components. Gigi had the great idea of using dark chocolate for some of the grown up smores–fantastic. Pa is going to weld us our own little fire pit, so everyone can come to our place this fall and roast marshmallows with us. Here is a picture of the pit the morning after:

Doing some stunts on the barbecue wagon:

Thanks for hosting us for a fun weekend!

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We enjoyed spending time with our friends and their neighbors who have also become friends of ours. The three families headed to a small town outside of Beaumont for a carnival. I am not a big carnival person, but it was so much fun since Josiah is old enough and big enough to ride some of the smaller rides. He rode this up-and-down bus ride with Thomas and Drew–who is also four.

Josiah and Drew also rode a helicopter ride and the huge ferris wheel with Drew’s dad. I cannot believe my little boy is big enough to ride a ferris wheel! The kids and I rode the carousel before heading home.

It was a fun and tiring weekend–the perfect way to adjust to a time change. Seriously–the kids have adjusted better than ever before. When we got home, our seedlings in our garden needed watering. Apparently, Annalise thought she did, too.

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Blogging has been a little sparse these days. I have been spending almost every spare moment finishing up my lactation educator requirements and they are done! I hope to get them in the mail this week. You can imagine how free I feel! Now I have a few little projects to start (and finish)–taxes, landscaping in the front yard (with the help of Big Event), and repainting the laundry room.

We gave Josiah a bicycle with training wheels for Christmas, but it was a little too big. We put it away since it was too cold to ride anyway and pulled it out two weeks ago. He grew enough for his feet to reach his pedals and is enjoying riding it. He has improved so much in such a short time and is getting better about stopping on his own.

Thomas and the kids enjoyed the snow last week in their non-waterproof winter-wear. They built a little snowman, which Josiah crashed down shortly after it was finished.

And lastly, a cute picture of the kids.

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