Friday, January 22, 2010

First and Last

Well, Nicole is making me do a post to let everyone hear the news. This will be my first blog post and most likely my last post ever as well. It was a good run, but you might as well quit while you're ahead. Anyway, just got news an hour ago that the Air Force had accepted me into their Audiology program, and we've decided that that is what we are going to do. Ciao.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Just because they're cute!

Okay, this will finally conclude the posts to update all of the pictures I've taken over the last month. What is the story behind this one? Absolutely nothing besides going out to shovel snow. But, aren't they just the best?!



LOVE YOU TWO!!!

All things in order...

Everyone at Christmas can attest to this but Zaylee has loved lining things up lately and putting things in certain orders. The other day was the perfect example of this. I had taken her letters on the fridge and put them all in alphabetical order (to see if they were all still there!) and came back a little later to find this:



She's a goof!!!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Getting closer....

Okay, so I'm getting close to being caught up but still not quite yet. While playing with family for over a week, we found that the kids needed some out of the house time. Well, actually Alex came up with the idea. Brilliantly, he decided to ask the kids (before asking the parents mind you) if they wanted to go to Jumpin' Jacks! Of course there was a resounding "YES!" Meanwhile the adults all wondered how much we were going to have to spend and who was going to be "lucky" enough to go and hang out with all the little ones! Pretty soon we were off!










It was fun! Great idea, Alex! =)

Steph's Family's New Horse

For Christmas, Steph's family got a new horse (bet you didn't get that from the title of the post, huh....) =) With Zaylee being all excited about horses this Christmas, we knew she'd loved it so we headed over to Washington to go for a ride.

Zaylee absolutely loved feeding the little pony that was there. I think that that was one of her favorite parts. She let him/her eat out of her hand like one time and then after that she would grab the hay, throw it in the stall and say, "here's your dinner horsey!"



Alex found that he too like feeding the horse. (He said this one kinda reminded him of Grandpa Heaton's horse).



The horse, decided that the hay wasn't enough and started going for the strings on Alex's jacket. It was funny!



But even if Alex wouldn't let him eat him, they still decided they could be friends. (I know, I know, I am corney!) =)



Finally, we got to meet Patches. He joined the Burch/Adams family this Christmas. What a fun present!



We asked Zaylee who she wanted to ride with: Mommy, Daddy, or Aunt Steph? No hesitation, Aunt Steph won that battle easily. She didn't have a whole lot to say while she was riding but she seemed to enjoy it. She even reached down and played with Patches mane during the ride!



Of course, I took a turn, but chose not to have a picture of it. I haven't ridden in YEARS and was a little shy about it but I did it and I didn't even fall off! =)

Alex on the other hand was an expert. (Gotta love the face, Alex!)



He even had to show me up by running with Patches (I freaked out when he started to trot!). I have to admit, I was impressed--I'm obviously not much of a cowgirl!



Somewhere in between the posing and the running Alex did ride with Zaylee for a minute for her second time around.....



So, after all was done we were able to say we all successfully rode a horse and it was fun! Thanks for letting us Steph and Dave!


(I just thought this was a cute photo so I had to throw it in!)

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Tree House

All that Alex's mom wanted for Christmas this year was a tree house. So what does that equate to for all the sons and sons-in-law on the day after Christmas? WORK, WORK, WORK! Don't let them tell you any differently, they LOVED it! (Okay so that may be a BIT of an exaggeration....).

So while the men worked:







(Which was NEVER frustrating!!)

(Yes, I just cropped this from one of the other photos but the close-up on their faces was classic!)


The children ran,



Played in the dirt and rocks,



Said hello to ALL of grandma's snowmen,








Posed for cute photos,



And were just all around cheesers!




And if that just doesn't beat all, I didn't even get a photo of the finished project!! But, they LOVED the tree house most of all. They all had a blast climbing up and running around. GREAT WORK GUYS!!!

Potty Training

Yes, it's true. We're potty trained!!! Most of you that actually read my blog already know this (and have heard ALL about it) but for those of you that may not know, we worked hard and we're done! =) Warning, this is going to be a long--mainly words--post so you only have to read if you are REALLY interested. (It's mainly just a journal post.)

This was day one (January 6):



We (okay, I need to stop with the plural at this point), Zaylee spent all day in just her unders as we worked on the process of pottying in the toilet.

I based my training off of a book recommended by a friend: "Toilet Training in Less Than a Day." I knew of 8 success stories using this method so I figured it was going to be piece of cake! Well, let me tell you. Anyone that knows Zaylee knows that she is not textbook material. She has a definite mind of her own! When the book said to give her a treat as a reward for completing a step she had no interest. It says make sure the child drinks a lot, well, she had decided that day she was going to try a liquid fast--no interest in ANY kind of drink! And so on so forth. She just did the opposite of everything the book said she would do.

So we tried a little bit of adaptation. I kept a lot of the ideas but just altered it a bit for what I thought would work for her. The first few days were pretty challenging and I had a few doubtful people tell me just to put her back in diapers (you know who you are--shame on you! j/k) =) But I was determined that once I started, she was not under any circumstances going to ever put a diaper back on. And we didn't! It took about a week but by that point she was almost completely trained. She still did have the occasional accident but they were rare. Now she will loudly announce what she has to do and take off running. She's completely independant with it other than she can't reach to wash her own hands and she still needs the convincing of the need for wiping. She has had no accidents outside of the house (YEA!) and has even held it in the mall long enough for us to find a public toilet she could use. After falling in the toilet at church during nursery the first week we thought she would have an aversion to that but this Sunday she did great going numerous times during the meetings. (I think she finds it fun to be a big girl!)

Nighttime updates then I am done. Nights at first were pretty challenging for her and still are not competely mastered but she's doing great. I decided that I didn't want to use pull-ups either so for the first week I did a lot of washing in the mornings but now when she wakes up in the middle of the night (no she still doesn't sleep though the night!!!!!) she is dry and will go potty in the toilet when we tell her to then she will stay dry for the rest of the night after that. Now this is not an every night occasion, mind you, but it's more often now than not.

So, to conclude, it didn't take less than a day but I am still happy with a week and 1/2 - 2 weeks time frame!

**This post is completely out of order with the posts still to come, but I just had to post it now--I didn't want to wait until I was done updating the rest to get it out there!!**

Christmas Presents

You'd think that with getting a new camera for Christmas (yea!!) that I would have a ton of photos. Well, I don't. We video taped the opening of presents and then the day was just busy so not many got taken. However, I do have a few. So sit back and enjoy!

First of all, we have to start of with Grandma Gubler's Christmas tree--she's amazing. This is one of the three trees. I didn't get pictures of the others but I love them!



Of course, we have to get Alex being a great poser for my first shot with my new camera....




Zaylee was so excited about opening presents (okay so this picture is not the best image describing that but really she was!!). This is one of the presents from Grandma. When we were opening the presents that morning she was so excited! She kept telling us that "this is not yours, this is mine!" It was great! She loved it!



As you can tell, the piggy bank from Grandma was definitely one of those presents she loved!



Almost all of the whole clan getting ready to open presents from Grandma (and Grandpa--we know Grandma did all of the work but he gets some credit, right??) and gifts from the siblings:



Okay, so this picture might have been a better description of the excitement she had opening the presents....gotta love her!!



And somewhere through it all, Zaylee found a spot that she thought was a great place to rest from all of the activities--Grandpa's belly. She sure loves her grandpa! =)

Monday, January 18, 2010

Lots to update!

Well, with it being Christmas and all I have a lot to update. I'm not going to do it all in one post though, so check back and I'll try to get up to date.


For starters:

Zaylee got to sit on Santa's lap TWICE this year. She was VERY excited about it. The first time was at our ward Christmas party. The whole time she kept talking to us all about what she was going to ask him (like where his reindeer were) and what she wanted for Christmas. She sat willingly and was perfectly content to be there but she got completely gun-shy. She didn't say a word. She stared straight ahead at some random spot on the wall and completely froze. As soon as she got off, she started telling Alex all about how she got to sit on Santa's lap and how he told her about his reindeer (I asked about them for her). She just didn't dare to say an actual word TO HIM. It was great! =) The ward took photos but I haven't gotten it yet so no photo accounts of that one.

The second time she got to sit on Santa's lap was at the La Verkin Christmas party. This time she was all prepared. We talked to her about how she actually had to SAY something to Santa in order to get it. Once again, she was completely stoked about it. She kept practing all week about how when she sat on his lap she was going to ask for a "dolly and a horse." She had it down perfect. And when the time came, she nailed it!! She sat, he asked, she told. It was great! =) The photo didn't turn out great but this is what I got: