Baby Marcus - Newest Cousin!

Meet our newest cousin baby Marcus! Born August 11th 2015 to Ashley and Justin. We were watching inside out a few days ago, and Boston said 'that's baby Marcus, mom,' when it shows the baby seeing the parents. Haha!  So fun getting so many cousins to play with!

Thanksgiving

Ellie 9 months

9 months has come and past! Can't believe we are creeping up on Ellie's first birthday! Ellie is crawling EVERYWHERE, and trying to climb the stairs. She's gotten up to the 3rd step by herself. The vacuum is currently blocking the stairs until we can get a baby gate. She likes to crawl around behind the couch where the toys are and just play. She loves that she can move on her own now. She also likes to crawl up and down the hall when we are upstairs. While i'm making dinner, she'll crawl around in each room just to have a little look before she comes back to the kitchen. She has 3 teeth, the front two on the bottom and one on the top. The second one on the top will be following any day now. Her hair is long enough to put in a little ponytail at the top of her head. It doesn't look too good haha. I can't say i'm a big fan of the top of the head ponytails, but maybe it will grow on me. Looking forward to the first Christmas with this cute baby of mine!

Once Upon a Time - Young Women in Excellence

This past summer I was put in as the Young Women's President in our ward. It is a wonderful calling that totally stresses me out, yet is so rewarding. I had my first big YW event last night in our YW In Excellence event. Boy do I have a greater appreciation for everything my leaders did for me! Its a lot of work! But I think it turned out great. I only had 6 girls show up (I was hoping for ten, but had a few girls cancel, some last minute :( bummer) so that had me down a bit, but a few of the girls came up to give me a big hug after it was over thanking me for everything. Turned my frown upside down. One thing i've learned in this calling so far, is that with every negative thing that happens, I'm rewarded with at least one really positive thing. Some prayers were answered with some of the girls who did show up, and left me feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

Our theme for the night was "Once Upon A Time." We started out the night with a picture slideshow to the songs "Happily Ever After" and "Daughter of a King" to showcase their pictures throughout the year, and also to present the pictures from our temple photo shoot. (They all got wedding dresses and we took them to the temple for pictures, SO fun!) They loved seeing their pictures. I followed with a talk based on President Uchtdorf's talk "Your Happily Ever After." Following that, I had my class presidency present the values with this poem (I changed it up a bit to shorten it) that presents each value with a different princess object, i.e. crown, pearls, wand etc. They had a volunteer come to the front and as they read the poem, they dressed her in the values. It was really neat! The girls and leaders then sang "Walk Tall You're A Daughter of God," while I accompanied them. We presented a few awards, and ended the night with an amazing talk by the first counselor in the Bishopric. He read a poem about our Heavenly Father's Garden, and replaced the names of the flowers with the names of each of the girls, and replaced the names of the tree's with the leaders names. He ended the list of leaders with the "Megan" tree, and everyone laughed, because, well, that's pretty funny.

I got most of our printables and a few idea's here, which is awesome because it was all free! Most of the decorations I had just sitting around the house. The glitter pumpkins I made from styrofoam dollar store pumpkins, and the cute garlands are made out of tissue paper. The wine bottle vases (actually Torino syrup bottles;)) I had already painted, I just filled them with dead branches from my backyard and then of course added glitter to them. 

I'm so grateful for wonderful women to serve with, and amazing young women. It was a great night. I'm so glad its over! :-)

Values - each had a "princess" representation

Presentation of the Values

My awesome leaders!

                                     

                                     

                                     

                                     

                                     

 

Ellie 8 months

Ellie is now clapping, and waving! She is the funniest little baby, and makes the goofiest faces. She cracks us up! She loves to eat. She gets mad when we give her baby food and not the same food we're eating. She hasn't officially started crawling yet (thank goodness) but gets around very efficiently by army crawl. She is such a ray of sunshine in our home. Always pleasant and happy. We love our little Ellie Bean!

Check out this cheeser!

The Time I Lost My Marbles (pun intended)

August 29th 2015

Dear Blog
Today I began the first day of my slow, drawn out, utterly painful death. Today I start experiencing the changing in the winds....the few seconds left of the calm before the storm. Life as simple as I knew it was about to rain poop on me. Literally.

Today I started potty training.

Today Boston asked us to use the potty. Today Jeff and I decided to go off diapers cold turkey. Today we took him shopping for big boy underwear. Today we bought paw patrol underwear, pull-ups, flushable wipes, Finding Nemo fruit snacks, Paw Patrol pajamas and several other potty rewards. I wish somewhere in Wal-mart I could have found some extra sanity...an extra dosage of patience, or perhaps an umbrella to shield myself from the storm about to hit.

When Boston asked to use the potty, we knew we had to jump at the opportunity. We've talked about it a lot over the past few months, and even bought him a potty at the beginning of the summer to try and get him to go, but we couldn't even get him to sit on the potty with the lid closed for the longest time. The first few days brought lots of accidents. To be expected of course, and I held my patience pretty well. He even pooped in the potty several times that first week. We found out that leaving him naked (like many blogs suggest) didn't work because he could pee anywhere and not be wet or have to change underwear/do laundry. So we kept him in his underwear, and then when he peed/pooped, he realized and didn't like the wet/dirty underwear. Everytime he went pee in the potty, he got a fruit snack.  When he finally went poop in the potty for the first time, he would get his pajamas. He earned everything within a few days, and I was thinking, man, this is too easy!

This is when I started dying inside. He was doing so good, and then all of a sudden he would pee his pants standing practically on his potty. "Stay positive" all the books say. "Show no signs of frustration or anger" all the articles read. I found myself practicing deep breathing. Counting to ten. Biting my tongue so hard I tasted blood. I needed a chill pill. I could probably still use one.

Laundry was piling up. I felt I was in a constant cycle of accident-bath-clean-up-laundry-accident. Boston was responsible for putting his laundry in the washer, and cleaning the carpet/furniture when it happened. Trying to get him to be responsible for these things was an even bigger pain than doing it myself, but I figured it would help him not want to have an accident. My patience was running so thin you could sever it with a cotton ball. Boston was frustrated too, and would ask for rewards after peeing in his pants.

Mom: Boston, you only get a 'memo snack' when you pee in your potty.

Boston:"Mom, I want a fruit snack." 

Mom: When you pee in the potty you can have a snack.

Boston:"I want a memo snack. Please, mom, i want a snack. Mom, i want a fruit snack.

Mom: Boston. You can only have a nemo snack when you pee I the potty. 

Over and over and over and over....

Then it happened. I was emptying the dishwasher. Boston was standing on his chair asking to watch TV in the same pattern as with the nemo snacks. With each response, I could feel my body temperature rising. Patience Megan. Patience. Count to ten. Deep breaths. No, Boston, we aren't watching tv right now. I can do this, I can! I can survive this. I pull out a couple of our red and white plastic plates as he asks for the billionth time in a row. The plates are in my hand as I snap. I lift the plates up and proceed to slam them on the counter with such force it cause the plates to shatter. The next 10 seconds are slow motion. I can see the pieces of plate flying around Boston as he is standing on his chair at the table. His face has a look of pure terror on it, and he lets out a high pitched scream. We are not watching! I drag him downstairs to his room and we both proceed to have a large meltdown. 

Mom of the year award right here! 

This wasn't the worst yet. The following 2 weeks were torture. No matter what we did, what rewards were offered, he would not poop in the potty. He had the pee thing down great, but nothing worked. We made a chart that had fabulous prizes on it. Took hi to toys r us to pick out a toy. Nothing. NOTHING! How the heck does anyone stay patient through all this?! Finally, I cracked again and slapped a diaper back on him. If you are going to poop in your pants, you will be treated like a baby. I took away his water bottles and zippy cups and gave him his lemonade in a bottle. He was so mad. 'I not a baby!, I'm a big kid!' This finally got him going. He wanted his underwear back, and his cups. 

So now, I'm proud to say that we have gone over a week pooping in the potty! Hands down one of the hardest and most trying things I've ever had to do. Ellie will be in diapers in High School. 

Here is Boston enjoying some rewards from pooping in the potty. 

7 months

7 months and Ellie is sitting up like a champ, babbling mamamama (in your face, Jeff!) has two teeth, likes to stick her tongue out, and is developing a cute personality. She currently has a cold, but even through the cough and stuffy nose, she is so happy! I am so grateful for her, especially during the last month while we've been potty training Boston....a story for another post!
Her daddy is her favorite, despite her saying mama all the time. She loves to FaceTime with him and lunges for the phone when she hears dad on speaker phone. She loves to laugh and play with Boston, especially when he pulls all the toys out, and she has a sea of random toys to roll around in. Boston is super good with sharing, but occasionally i'll catch him yelling not to touch his toys, or not to touch him. Haha. She likes to roll over and be right up in his business. They are pretty good buddies! Happy 7 months!

You can see her teeth! I was trying to get a good shot of them...

Boston, don't touch my stuff!

Trying to get both kids to smile is hard. Boston thinks i'm an idiot!

Hammin' it up