Past weekend update

This past weekend my favorite Aunt was in town. We spent quite a bit of time with her which made Little L soooo very happy. Friday M took the puppy to get groomed at our family friend's house. She looks like a puppy again!



Before the hair cut




After the hair cut



Then we headed over to my mom's house to visit with everyone. It was a lot of fun.

The next day I took the kids back over and my aunt, who loves tennis, tried to teach Little L how to play. He LOVED the one on one attention!!!!

Little E thought she needed to get in on the game too.

They had such a great day. After his tennis lesson Little L went to my grandma's house to play games with my aunt all by himself. He LOVED it. It was a great day! But both kids were super tired after having such fun!

Little E passed out in her princess chair

The next day we went over again and were only able to spend a little bit of time with my aunt before she left to go back home. But the kids sure loved it!

Little E decided she needed to carry Little L's backpack to the truck

It was a great weekend. I have some other pictures on my camera that I will hopefully get uploaded tonight. Or maybe tomorrow. We are going to dinner with my cousin (who is like a brother to me. We are both only children and grew up literally 10 mins away from each other, I'm sad we don't see each other as much anymore) and his new girlfriend. It should be fun!

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Yea me!

I am pretty proud of myself tonight. I finally figured out how to make tabs for my blog. I've been wanting to do it for awhile and finally had the time to sit down and google it. It took me FOREVER but I'm pretty proud of how it turned out. :) I just hope the links work ;)
Whew! Now it's finally time for bed. Hopefully Little L will feel better and get some sleep. He woke up a few hours after he went to bed coughing and not feeling good. I hate when the kids get sick. I feel so helpless. 

Friday Letters...let's try this out :)

I have seen a few people do this and really like it, so I thought I would give it a shot. So.....here goes nothing. :)

Dear students: While you do amazing at some things, testing and not talking are not your strong suits. Can we please work on this? Especially seeing as we are a testing site for the new Civics EOC. It's really annoying to have to do all this work for you guys to have you just fail the test because you couldn't be bothered to study. And I'm tired of waiting for you to be quiet. K? Thanks!

Dear Husband:

I love you! I love you more than I can put into words. You are amazing with our kids and this past deployment has shown me that it's silly to get annoyed when you throw stuff in the sink that should be in the trash can, or when you leave the cupbord doors open. It just reminds me that you are home. Now we need to discuss this upcoming deployment. Like Now!

Dear kids:

You are the light of my life, but could we work on not screaming?? Please?? I know you two get excited over little things, just like mommy, but the screaming is a bit much. :) You two are amazing kids though. I'm pretty darn proud of both of you.

Dear Strong bonds:

I'm SOOOO excited people cancelled and we are able to go now (procrastination almost got me) although I'm a little afraid that you will make problems in my marriage where there isn't any. Please don't. Things are going good, we have a good marriage and I just want to learn to communicate better. Is that too much to ask?

Dear Biffle,
I promise I will come help you pack, just not this weekend :) P.S. I am SOOO excited you will literally be 3 minutes from my house!!!!

Dear family:
Can we talk about how excited I am to see some of you?!?!?! My Favorite Aunt is in town for the weekend and my cousin (who really is like a brother to me) and his girlfriend are on their way this weekend. I am sooo excited to have some awesome family time this weekend. :) Too bad I have to work....boo

Dear Army Wife Friend:
I can't wait for you to get to town either!!!!!! Olive Garden, here we come!!!!

Whew!
I hope you enjoyed. It was fun. Now I'm off to go spend LOTs of time with my family. :)
Have a great weekend!!!!

13 months....oops late again (photo dump)

Oh my dear lord, time has gotten away from me again. Our precious baby girl is over 13 months old now. Where has the time gone? She is quite the little demon girl. :)



Taking a nap on the floor and Roxy decided to join her



Pretty girl



Pretty girl, you are into EVERYTHING! I swear there are days that you get into everything and bug your brother just to get onto everyone's nerves. Then when you get yelled at you either turn those big blue  eyes on us with a look of innocence or you start the fake tears. Yup that's right, you have learned how to fake cry and produce tears while doing it. I don't know where you got it from, because mama couldn't do it if my life depended on it.



"Look mom! I shouldn't be up here, but I followed Little L!"

You have a special place in all of our hearts. You now LOVE to cuddle and play with daddy. And of course if he is eating something, you have to eat it too. Thankfully you are starting to take food from me, otherwise we might have a problem if he decides to deploy on us. You LOVE to walk around now that you have figured it out and love going where everyone else is. You hate being left in a room by yourself.

There are days where you can play by yourself and be such a good little girl, but most days you want all of the attention and to be playing with whatever your brother is playing with. You love your bath time and your bath toys.

Bath time!

You are still sleeping in your crib at night. We have set up the bottom bunk for you and have started to slowly get you used to sleeping on it. You should feel lucky, Little L didn't get out of the crib until he was almost 2. :)



Someone loves her new bed :)





Pretty Princess bed for a pretty girl

I only ask that you stop antagonizing him and the dog and the cat. One day, one of them is going to bite you.

Everyone who meets you comments on how pretty and good you are (if they only knew the tantrums that you can throw). We have our work cut out with you. But I must say, you have a special place in my heart as well. Not just because you are my child, but because I always wanted a girl and you are perfect, even when you are driving me crazy.

You are the light of our lives and believe it or not, your brother loves you too. He loves to play with you when he is in the mood and give you hugs. He will try and quiet you down when you are upset and get you your blankie before bed.



They LOVE giving hugs



You love to scream at the top of your lungs when you are excited, or pissed, and I hope you will soon learn the meaning of "shhhh".

Baby girl, you have grown so much in the last year. The baby is gone out of your face and you are now a toddler. I can't believe how fast the time has gone, but I can't wait to see the girl that you turn into. We are so blessed to have you in our lives and our family.

Happy 13 months pretty girl!!!!!

Our Diva in training

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Must go!!!!

I saw on Facebook the announcement that New Kids on the Block, Boyz II Men and 98 Degrees are starting a tour!!!! Can you believe it??? I SOOOO have to go! I LOVED all of these bands! I am trying to convince the girls in my book club to have a night away and go to the concert. I hope they will come. :) I think it would be AWESOME!

Ohhh lala!!!! How could you go wrong with a concert like this???

Christmas 2012 Recap...Finally

Now that I have my pictures back and a computer to work on, here is our Christmas 2012 recap. Christmas eve we used to go to M's parents house, seeing as we are no longer talking to them we stayed home. We played with the kids and got them all ready for Santa to come. Little L and I got the plate of cookies and glass of milk ready, hung the stockings and we let him open one gift.

In his first gift, his Batman pajamas. He LOVED them!

Stockings are ready to go

Our tree before Santa came

We finally convinced Little L to go to bed. After waiting to make sure he was asleep, we were finally able to play Santa. It was a lot of fun! :) M also put together Little L's new Cars Bike and his John Deer Tractor. We were up pretty late doing this, but it was nice getting these two big things put together before morning.

Christmas tree after Santa's visit

 Finally we were able to go to sleep. My mom and grandma were coming over at 8:30am. It was tradition in our family that my grandma came over to open presents with us on Christmas day. We decided to continue that tradition and have my mom and grandma over to watch our kids open presents. It sure was nice having them come over.
We woke the kids up (which is strange to wake the kids up, usually they wake us up) and Little L was super excited to see all of the presents under the tree. Watching his eyes light up and go "oh wow!" was awesome!
Little L did great opening his presents. He really enjoyed everything he received (not such a big fan of the clothes though). He was such a big helper handing out gifts to everyone. Little E (a.k.a. baby E) didn't really care two hoots about opening presents, but she sure wanted to play with all of Little L's toys. He wasn't too fond of that.
M got me a Keurig for making hot chocolate. :) I used to own the Mr. Coffee Cocomotion, but it died. I was very sad. I don't enjoy drinking coffee or really tea for that matter, but I LOVE hot chocolate. I have been using it just about every day since we got it. :) I just love it!

The cocomotion I used to have

My new Keurig

All in all, it was a great morning. After all of the presents were opened, we let Little L go outside and ride his new tractor around. He LOVED it!

Grandma and Little E Christmas morning

Little L riding his new tractor around the yard

Little E sitting on her kitty piano

Little E in her new princess chair

Later that day we went to our family friend's house to visit and see some of M's family. His parents showed up, they brought presents for the kids. I was impressed with them this year. Normally M's mom would rather spend $20 at the dollar store so that she can give Little L a ton of presents that are cheap instead of just buying one nice gift that will last. I don't care how much someone spends on our kids, my only request is that if you are going to buy something, I would rather she buy one present that is a good one, or educational one instead of 10 that are going to break. I'm sorry if that makes me sound snotty, but I am tired of watching Little L being disappointed that his toys from Nana and Poppop are breaking.
Back to the day. We stayed at our family friends for about an hour and were able to visit with quite a bit of his family. After that we left to go to my mom's house for dinner. We had a nice dinner and the kids enjoyed playing with their new toys at her house.
All in all it was a really nice day. It was great having our soldier home and able to spend the day as a family.
I'm glad we are continuing some old traditions from my family and making some new traditions as a family. It really was a blessed day!

2012 year in review (Jan, Feb, March)

I really liked Monica's idea to recap last year in posts (so I am somewhat stealing her idea). Although I think I am going to lump some months together. Especially because there are some months that aren't that exciting :) I will also be re-posting some pics from those months. So without further ado....here is January, February and March of 2012.

January

January brought the much anticipated R&R. I cannot tell you how much I love and hated R&R. You can read about it here. Baby E was also a month old and was such a great little baby. I was still on my maternity leave and trying to learn how to balance two children under the age of 3. My mom was staying with me when M wasn't home and I will be forever grateful for her help during this time. She was the one to take the 5 am feeding. I don't mind doing the midnight and 3am one, but the 5am one was just too much for me. Sad I know. But I needed some sleep. Baby E also slept through the entire night in January, thanks to her daddy. :)



Sleepy baby

My handsome boy

February

February brought the end to R&R :( and me going back to work. Let's just say I was happy to go back to work and to get out of the house. I needed something to keep me occupied and busy and I wasn't finding it staying at home all day. But with that I faced new challenges of balancing both kids and me. Let's just say there were many nights I went to bed directly after the kids did.
I was able to have a dinner date with my Army Wife friend and of course book club. I am so thankful for those dates and nights out. Those were for me and only me. It gave me a chance to unwind and just relax.
I spent Valentine's Day alone, but to be honest it was never a holiday I paid much attention to. But it still stinks not having your husband home. I did send him a Valentine's care package and thought I was pretty creative.
I spent as much time as I could with my mom (even though it was tax season for her and her availability shrunk) and of course my biffle.
We had pictures done of Baby E and this had to be one of my favorites.

March
With March came Spring Break for me. I was lucky enough to have my dad come visit me for the week. One to see the kids and two so I didn't have to be alone for the week. It was nice having him here. We started off the week with Little L having a procedure to fix a hernia. It wasn't a big deal and he pulled through it like a champ. It sure was nice having my daddy visit.
My mom also started heating her pool so the Little L could go swimming. Let's just say he was one happy kid. Little L LOVES to swim. He's just as happy to sit on the steps of the pool and play as he is to actually swim. He's a little fish.

Kay mom! It's time to go swimming

Favorite Aunt came to visit and go swimming

Throughout the three months, we had our ups and downs. We welcomed home our soldier for R&R (which is quite a tease if you ask me) and watched him leave again. The kids and I found our routine and worked our way through each and every day. Some days were good, some days were not, but we made it through. We were still counting down the days until we could have our soldier home for good.

Check back later for the next update on April, May and June. :)


Remember you can fallow me on Facebook and Instagram (kathrynenlizabeth8)

In the middle of it.....guest post

I am being featured over at Erika's blog today. I am writing about how to deal with your husband (or spouse) leaving for any period of time, whether it's a deployment or training. You never know how strong you are until you make it through something like that.
So head on over and leave her and I some love....you know you wanna :)
Thanks Erika for hosting me today!

Potty Milestone

**Disclaimer, if you don't like reading about poop, I would recommend you not read the rest of this post.....thanks!**

Oh Potty training. If you have ever tried it, it can sure be a pain in the a$$! During M's deployment he kept bugging me about potty training Little L. I kept telling him we were waiting until school was out because 1. I was too busy with work and everything else to even THINK about it 2. everything I had read said you needed at least a week to stay at home ALL. DAY.LONG! and 3. Little L could care less about using the potty.

Summer finally came and I decided I would buy a truck potty, one that would make cool truck noises when he was successful. I read the Potty Training Boot Camp book and thought "this can't be too hard". Oh lord was I wrong!!!! We had a three year old, not happy with me, making messes and I was getting stressed out. Needless to say we were successful for the most part with peeing. He could do really well with that. Pooping on the other hand.....oh lord.

M came home and he vowed to FULLY potty train Little L (insert chuckle here). As you know, a boy takes generally a LOT longer to potty train than a girl, not to mention training for pee is easier than pooping. M thought it couldn't be THAT hard....haha...I was right and he was wrong. :) (I doubt he would admit it though) We tried bribing him, taking away toys, making it fun, showing him that his older friends were doing it too.....nothing worked. It got to the point he would go an hide to poop in his pants/diaper. Ugh!!!!!

Fast forward to Christmas....we are still having issues with him pooping, he was starting to do it better on the potty, but you had to catch him getting ready to go and rush him to the bathroom. That's a workout, let me tell you. For Christmas my mom bought Little L a Mack Truck that she thought would fit is normal size Cars cars.....nope. It was designed for the little cars, which we didn't have any of. So, we told Little L if he went poopy he would get a little car to put in there. I am proud to say that over the two week holiday break, Little L wore underwear every.single.day (except at nap and bedtime) and had only one accident. We have finally made it to the point where he is telling us he has to go to the bathroom, running in there on his own and doing his thing!!!!! I couldn't be more proud of him!!! He just beams when he gets done too, and tells me what a big boy he is. :) We also had another success this past Friday when he went to preschool, he was successful there too!!!! Let's hope today is another great day (he stayed home with daddy yesterday)

I have no idea what clicked with him. Lots of the information I read online talks about it taking from 3.5 to 4 years old generally for boys to become fully potty trained. I believe that Little L wasn't ready and he wasn't willing to stop playing long enough to go to the bathroom. Thankfully he got over that and is doing great!

M has his first drill back this weekend and of course it's a long one. I am hoping is absence doesn't affect Little L negatively and we don't have a set back with potty training.

I am one happy mama, let me tell you!

Computer

My computer bit the dust before Christmas. I left a small amount of coke in a bottle on the table next to my chair. My computer was propped up against the leg of the table. Lovely Little E (a.k.a. baby E, can't really call her a baby anymore) picked up the bottle and spilled the coke down my computer. At first I thought it wasn't very much coke that spilled, I think I was wrong. I tried to clean it and so did M. M took the entire computer apart and it would not turn on. I was panicked! I loved that little computer (I bought it two years ago on black Friday) and had all of our recent pictures on it. Ugh! Thankfully my uncle in law is a computer genius and is able to fix almost anything. We took it to him. The end result is that the computer is dead, BUT they were able to save my hard drive and he has the equipment to transfer the information from one hard drive to another. I just finished transferring all of my documents, PICTURES and adobe photoshop! I am so very excited!!!!! Whew! That was a close one. Now I'm off to go back up my pictures onto our external hard drive.
Happy Saturday y'all!!!!

Milspouse First Friday Fill-In #78

I'm linking up with Wife of a Sailor for this months first Friday fill in. You should link up too!

1. What's one thing in the past month you would have changed?
I think I would have to say eating a whole batch of cookies. :( I only make peanut blossoms and cut out cookies at Christmas time and they are my favorite cookies. I had NO self control and pretty much polished off a whole batch of peanut blossoms myself :( I wish I would have paid a little more attention to my eating over this break, ah well.

yummy Peanut Blossoms

2. What was your favorite thing that happened in December?
I would have to say just having M home this year and getting to play Santa together. It was nice having someone to share the joy of our kids at Christmas time with. Also having two weeks off wasn't too bad either. I could have lived without the lockdown we had the last day of school, but what can ya do when there are stupid people in this world.

3. What are you looking forward to in January?
Having my favorite Aunt come for a short visit. I love spending time with her and so do both of my kids. It's great!!!!

My Aunt and I at my wedding, my favorite pic of us

4. What did you do for New Year's Eve?
We had other couples with and without kids to our house. We made hamburgers and sausages along with veggies and dip and fruit. I made an amazing drink and the food went fast. Everyone seemed to have a great time and it was nice staying home and being able to spend the night with my family and friends. I hope we can do it like that again next year.

Via

5. What are your hopes and wishes for 2013?
I hope that M can find a job and finish up his classes for his teaching certificate. I hope there will be no talk of deployment this year. I hope that my kids stay as healthy and happy as they are now, if not more so. I hope I don't take each day for granted and remember to take time to enjoy the little things in life.