Necklace Giveaway!

My cousin Jodee is SUPER talented and crafty. Right now she is giving away a necklace that she made and it's SO pretty. Check out her blog, leave a comment and share her post and you could win the necklace!!

http://bradenandjodee.blogspot.com/2012/06/necklace-giveaway.html?showComment=1339103200324&m=1#c2278808348980638696

Pinterest projects

Woaaaah! It's been a super long time since I've blogged. Especially on this blog!

With my recent transition back into full time mommyhood/wifehood I've found I have A LOT of time on my hands. Time on my hands + Pinterest = crazy projects and a uber organized house.

I also decided that I'm going to update our blog more often. What a better way to update our blog than to post the projects I've been working on from Pinterest.

Right now I have two projects I'm working on:
1. Potty train my very independent 28 month old
2. 21 day organization for my home

The first is obviously going to be an ongoing project...at least until he gets the hang of things. The first day was REALLY rough. I think we went through 5 pairs of underwear and pants before 10am. That's when I hopped on Pinterest and found THIS:

Source: themoesfamilyintexas.blogspot.com via Kim on Pinterest

So I'm not really sure I buy the whole POTTY TRAIN IN ONE DAY thing. I mean... maybe they'll be going when you take them....but really...by the end of day one I was ready to give up!

I took this lady's tips and started implementing them and they work great, BUT we still have a long way to go. He still doesn't understand that he needs to tell me when he needs to go, and he still has some accidents when he's not reminded to go. What has worked for us:
1. LOTS of juice
2. Setting a timer to go off every 15 minutes (for the first two days, now we set it for about every 30 - 45 minutes)
3. Treats - we used M&Ms and I gave him two or three the first time he sat down and actually went pee pee. We did this consistently until he stopped asking for the treat. Now I use the treats for BIG accomplishments like going all the way through nap with no accidents and telling me when he has to go or going in to use the potty by himself.
4. LOTS of praise. He loves to be told he's a big boy!

Problems we've ran into:
1. Synchronizing when he had to go. It took him about 10 big accidents before I was able to get our timed trips to the potty to line up with when he really had to go. It seemed like would just get him off the potty with NO results and he would pee in his undies. I just kept taking him to the potty every 10 to 15 minutes until he finally went. We've had minimal accidents since then.
2. Treating the undies like a diaper. At first it seemed like he didn't care if he was wet in his undies. It was just a diaper to him... so I ditched them for the first two days. I slipped him in a pair of soft cotton pants with no undies. He REALLY doesn't like the pee dripping down his leg so he's more willing to hold it until he gets to the potty.
3. Not being able to open his potty or reach the light. Tanner has a potty that's pretty simple. It was like 10 dollars at WalMart with no bells or whistles. The lid snaps down and becomes a stool. This became a problem. After we would dump the potty into the toilet we would close the lid. It's pretty hard for little hands to open the lid when we're in a hurry to make it to the potty. We had to make it a point to keep the lid open so the potty was ready to go. We also have to leave the light on so that he's more willing to run in and use the potty on his own if he's playing.

Like I said... we still have a long way to go but he is making HUGE strides and I'm only using diapers overnight. (Letting him have accidents over nap time but he's doing really good staying dry).

NOW! Onto Project number 2:
I found this post on Pinterest and thought "I could SO do that." So I decided to take on the 21 day challenge for an organized home. THIS is the post I saw:

Source: amazon.com via Kim on Pinterest

I know it says that day 1 you should organize your junk drawers but my pantry door fell off the hinges today so I figured I would start there and maybe skip around depending on what I felt like doing. I should have taken a before/after picture.... maybe for future posts! But it really only took me about 20 minutes and it looks SOOO much better. I'll post an AFTER picture maybe in a few days.

So that's what I'm working on lately... for those who say that Pinterest is a total waste of time: not in this house!

Ch Ch Changes

Soo many changes!

First off, I got a job! Months and months after I applied for a position at St. Mary's I got a call back for an interview. Went in and felt really good about it. A few days later I was asked to interview at a Dentist's office. Went in for the interview and was offered the position. I took the position and was filling out the paperwork when I got a call from St. Mary's hospital offering me a full time position. It was a hard choice to make but ultimately St. Mary's won. I start full time Monday thru Friday from 8am to 5pm on the 2nd of May!

Most of you know we had a fire a few weeks ago. We had to wipe everything off and put it in boxes while we painted. Well, we've been wanting to buy a house for some time now and realized that now was the perfect time to do it. No use in unpacking everything from boxes only to box it all back up in a few months again. So we met with our loan officer and he got us pre-approved for a loan!

Everyone keeps telling me "don't rush!" or "Take your time". Well, here's the deal.... if we can get the loan processed before I start my job on May 2nd we qualify to use CHAFFA (an awesome program that helps out Colorado first time home buyers, only $1000 down.) If we wait, we miss out on a great opportunity. So we went out and looked at a slew of houses all within our ward boundaries. Our poor Realtor. We were certainly picky! We had a specific area that we wanted to look because we don't want to change boundaries at church, we have a very specific price range, and specific needs for the house like sq. footage and bedrooms and everything. Well, she found us a great house behind Zoey's school that was a hud home. It needed a lot of love but it was mostly cosmetic. We really really liked it and decided to put in an offer... only to find out that it was already under contract. DANG! We were really disappointed and we started to talk about what houses we liked and just couldn't get on the same page at all. What I loved he hated, what he loved I thought was way too small. We decided to pray and wait until after we went through the temple to make a choice.

Jon and I woke up this morning with the same house in mind.(If you knew how different our wants were yesterday you would know this was huge!) It only has 3 bedrooms right now but we have the potential to make a fourth really easily. We decided that we would go ahead and make an offer today. We're going in way lower than what they're asking for so we're pretty sure they're going to counter offer but we'll see what happens. I can't wait!

Along with starting a new job and buying a house Jon and I are preparing to go through the temple. We're making two trips, one for our endowments and one for our sealing a week later. We are so excited and have been studying Moses a lot lately. We have an interview with the Stake Pres on the 26th for our recommends!

Exciting exciting but also very stressful. We've sure been tested a lot lately and we know that Satan is trying everything in his power to keep us from making our spiritual goals. We're staying close to each other and close to our Heavenly Father so he can't slip in the cracks.

So that's it! Exciting exciting changes! We'll post more later!

Odie the "Special" Wonder Dog

Ever since Jon and I got married we've wanted a good family dog. Our first attempt to make this happen was with a German short hair/chocolate lab mix named...wait for it.... Bruiser. His name was so fitting. This puppy was a total brute. We were both working at the time and didn't have the time to spend with him on training. It was unfair to him. PLUS he was IMPOSSIBLE to keep in our yard. We have a 6 foot privacy fence in the back of our house. I kid you not, this dog would take off running for the fence, jump, bite the top of the fence then fling himself over the gate. No lie...we watched him do it. Plus, our fence has teeth marks on the top to prove it. Bruiser was too much for our family to handle, so reluctantly we took him to the Humane Society. He was eventually adopted and I hope he's a good boy now! This is picture of Bruiser after he was at the Humane Society for a while. Apparently they're much better at getting him to sit. This dog was CONSTANTLY moving when he was at our house... and yes... I tried taking him to training classes at Petsmart. The second day of class he sprung himself from the car and drug me through the entire store where I finally came to rest...on top of a store employee. It was humiliating. The dog was a brute.

Fast forward about a year and Jon starts talking about wanting a good "little" dog. How his sister always had miniature dachshunds and they were the best dogs ever. I started the look out for one but they were pretty pricey. Finally, around Christmas time last year, I found a Craigslist ad for a dog named "Cheeto". I know exactly what you're thinking "Cheeto???" I agree. Totally stupid name for a dog. Anyway, this adorable little doggie needed a new home. The girl told us that she had too many pets and that her husband was making her get rid of a few. Her house smelt like someone had let a skunk lose inside, but we figured that one of her 4 other pets may have been the cause. We bought the dog and immediately changed his name to something more fitting... ODIE.

Odie is... how do I say this.... "Special". LOL he looooooooooves to be touched. Like, constantly. When we first got him he was very aggressive. He growled and snapped at us for a few days after we got him. He has turned into a very protective but very loving dog. He has some very bad habits that make me frustrated and call him names like "dumb dog" and "O-tard". He isn't house broken (despite what the girl who sold him to us had said), he chews on the strangest things... like diapers. This dog has a fascination with digging out messy diapers and eating the contents. See.... he's special. He too has an uncanny ability to escape from the back yard. He is small enough to fit through pretty much ANY hole in the fence. We've fixed our fence the best we can... but this dog can still escape. He's magic.

Despite his "specialness" we still love him like part of our family. Last week we had to go out of town for a funeral. We had planned to take Odie to the boarder but needed to take the boys to a friend first. We unloaded the van, leaving the keys in the ignition while we took the boys inside, doors unlocked. After a few minutes we came back out to find the van....completely locked. Odie was sitting on the driver's seat wagging his tail blinking at us. The stupid dog had stepped on the lock button for the car and locked us out of the van. The thing about our van is that it has a unique key... one that costs almost $150 to make copies of. Because of this we have ONE copy of the key, that was now locked inside our running van along with our dog. We immediately began to panic. We start talking about calling a lock smith, getting a key code for the van, etc. etc. Then my husband says "Maybe we can call Odie back over to the door and get him to step on the unlock button." While our friend called her neighbor(and a friend of ours as well) to see if he still had a wire coat hanger he used to spring someonelse's keys a few days before. We started calling the dog trying to coarse him back to step on the lock.... no luck. He kept getting sooo close, but never stepped in the right spot. I even called the cops to see if they would help us beings the dog was locked inside. The dispatcher responded by saying "we can break your window." Uh... no thanks. After about 5 or 10 minutes of trying I finally said "if this dog manages to unlock this door, I will NEVER call him a bad name again!" I must have said the magic words. His little tiny paw hit the window down button just enough for us to shove a plastic bat in the window and hit the unlock button. I jumped and clapped my hands like a giddy little school girl. My sister later laughed at what my friends and their neighbors must think of me.
I didn't care! I was proud of my little wiener dog!

Odie the wonder dog saved the day!!! A few days later he got back on my naughty list by eating Zoey's pillow pet... but that's another story.

I love being a freak!

I'm kind of a freak when it comes to certain things.... like lists. I really like to be organized but most of the time I'm not. Lists help me with this. Jon makes fun of me and says that I always make lists but never look at them. Well, sometimes even writing it down helps me to sort things out in my crazy brain.

One of the things I've been struggling with lately is managing my time. I seriously have no clue how I had time to work and be a mommy. Both Jon and I can't seem to figure out where my time has been disapearing to. Well.... I mean.... I spend too much time on Facebook (working on that!) but sometimes it feels like my time just disapears into thin air. This leaves a TON of things left undone and me feeling frustrated and cranky. No bueno.

So, here's what I did: I made a list! Three lists to be exact. One for the things that I need to do. One for the things I have to do (no, it's not the same thing), and one for the things I want to do. Then I pulled out my calendar for the week. I love this calendar it even has a mobile app for Androids that allows me to share all the things we have to do as a family with my husband. It is amazing. Anyway, I took the lists and added the things I HAVE to do (like take Zoey to school, Girl Scouts, Young Womens, Scripture Study, etc)first. Then I put in the things that I need to do (like laundry and cleaning out the garage). Next, I put in the things that I WANT to do (like having dinner with friends, reading, and watching my shows). I found a TON of free time! I'm so excited to see how this works out. Hopefully this will help me to get more things done. I'll keep you posted!

Starting an Additional Blog

Hey guys!



I don't want to be one of those people who are constantly creating new email addresses and blogs and blah blah blah. BUT.... I got this idea for a blog not too long ago and I want to get it going.



I have a couple guilty pleasures when it comes to blogs.

The first? I love to click on my friends blogs and then up in the top right corner of the screen hit "Next Blog". I have found the COOLEST blogs this way! I seriously can sit and click "next blog" for hours. I don't know these people... I've even randomly and anonymously commented on some of their posts. I know it's geeky but what can I say.



Second guilty pleasure? This is a new one for me. I was reading a friend's blog and he pointed out that one of HIS guilty pleasures was to check his "stats". I didn't even know what that meant until he posted that blog. NOT FAIR, CHARLIE! I was totally cool not knowing how many people view my blog. But now that I know how to check, I do it all the stinkin time.



Okay...back to the new blog thingy. Well one day while I was browsing through blogs I stumbled across a blog of a family who had lost their baby over the summer while they were on vacation. I had mentioned this in a previous post a few months ago. This poor family lost their little girl so suddenly and were totally devastated by it. In order to cope with their grief the family started writing letters to the baby as if she were still alive but on a vacation or somewhere far away. I thought it was a great way to deal with such a hard loss. I dwelt on this idea for quite awhile and then I had this thought: I thought it would be so neat for my kids to have letters written by their mommy that they can look back on as they get older, and maybe even after I'm gone. So I wanted to start a blog writing letters to my kids about the little things that are easily forgotten over time. The things that I cherish so much right now. BUT then my idea grew again on me. I don't want to limit it to ONLY my children. I thought I could start a blog of letters to everyone who touches my life.



I'm not FANTASTIC as writing letters, but I do think that I can put my feelings and thoughts better in writing than speaking them. Did that make sense? LOL



So here's the deal, I'm starting a new blog. I'll keep this one for more detailed explanation of things going on in my life, but will probably update the other one more often. Thanks for being such great friends and following my blog. I hope you'll follow this one too! http://http://lettersfromme2you.blogspot.com/

Thanks Guys! I love ya!

You've Got Mail!

Lately it seems like the universe is trying to tell me something about the order of my house. It started a few weeks ago when I spent the entire day cleaning my house from top to bottom, only to have it completely annihilated within a few hours. I was so frustrated I "boycotted" cleaning my house for the next few days. That's when it got really really messy. We're talking out of control messy. Which equaled more and more frustration with the help I've been getting... or not getting I should say.


A few days later I saw a post on one of the blogs I follow with a cute idea of how to encourage your kids to do their part. The post showed little letter sized chore cards that had point values assigned to them. They then had two sets of mailboxes; one for each child and one for the parents. In the morning the mom would put the "letters" into their mailboxes showing them which chores they needed to complete. The mom would then flip the flag up to let them know they have mail. When the chore is complete they put the chore card back into the mommy/daddy mailbox to track points earned. I knew as soon as I read the idea that it would be perfect for my kids. They LOVE to pretend to play mailman! I put this idea on the back burner and continued my daily routine for a few days.


That next Sunday our 1st counselor in YW was teaching a lesson on organization/cleanliness/attitudes. She had the girls (and leaders) do a quick word association with words like Home, Parents, Dark, My Room, Messy. You should have seen the words I associated with my room and messy.... not pretty. One of my answers was literally "Ughhhh!" I knew that I needed to make a change in this home.



Yet again, a few days later my husband and I went to Target to do some birthday shopping for Jon's oldest son, Trevor. When we passed the dollar section I noticed these: (SOOOO EXCITED!) PERFECT! So each of us have our own little mailbox that will have our chores in it. I then went and created a few little letters with the chores I hold my kids responsible for using paint.net and laminated the letters.

I haven't implemented our new system yet because Zoey's been sick all week but I can't wait! The kids are pretty excited too. I'll let you know how it goes!

Kind of a dumb random post but it's pretty much all that's going on in my little life. hee hee I'll write more next week when we get home from our quick trip to Roosevelt.