Happy Birthday, William!

Last week, while we were on vacation, William had his 3rd birthday! We were in Sedona that day and celebrated with the family. Gramma and Grandpa treated us to ice cream. William chose to eat (and wear) chocolate. He opened his present from Mom and Dad, which was the hit of the trip. Buzz Lightyear...to the rescue!!

Here is our precious 3 year old boy on his special day.


On the drive back to Phoenix that night, we heard this repeatedly: Buzz: "To infinity and Beyond!" and then William: "To infinity and Deyond!"

Robert's first haircut.

I took Robert to the mall for his very first hair cut. He hardly has any hair on top, but he was growing some shag in the back, so it had to go.

I juggled him, the camcorder and the still camera and watched as he sat still and happily while the young lady trimmed away. In fact, he did so well that she got the electric trimmer out and buzzed around his neck. He loved it!

Here are some photos (silly me, I forgot the before photo, but got it on video) of the whole experience.

William is POTTY TRAINING!!

The time has finally come. We talked up how important William was now that he is 3 years old and how 3 year olds use the potty and wear underwear. He recently told me that he didn't like the potty because he was afraid he'd fall in and I'd flush him down, so I broke out the old potty chair and he seems to like it much better.

Yesterday was his first day to give it a try. He sits nicely, but isn't able to control much yet. But, at naptime I put the potty chair in his room, put him in a pull-up and just a few minutes later he was calling because he had pooped in the potty! Sure enough, the teeniest little poop was in there. If you've never done a dance and given monster hugs and cheered over tiny poop, you haven't lived. He was SO proud of himself. I took a picture only for the humor of how excited he was over something so miniscule, but I won't post it here.

We're making progress and I can't wait until he decides that this is definitely the way to go. The prospect of choosing special underwear at the store is quite appealing to him, though he likes the regular cotton training pants too.

Go Go William! I can't wait for your success!

Thanksgiving was great!

We returned safely from our Thanksgiving vacation. It was an 8 day caravan from DFW to Phoenix with Doug's half of the family. We stopped in Carlsbad, White Sands and Sedona too. With 2 days left to our trip, we drove from Phoenix to Taos, NM to visit my brother and left the extended family behind.

The weather in Phoenix was beautiful. Sunny and 75 all day. We couldn't have asked for better. But, even the cold weather in Taos appealed to me. The night before we left about 6 inches of snow accumulated on the ground. It made the drive home a little dicier, but even so, we made it safely.

I'm slowly uploading pictures from our trip between other tasks this week, so bear with me, but here are two of my favorites so far. There are plenty of great shots on our smugmug site.

Sedona AZ


The kids at White Sands, NM

If Autumn won't come to us...

...we'll just have to put the clothes on anyway and snap a picture.

I got tired of waiting for Mary to be able to wear her long sleeves and beautiful rich autumn colors, so we just did it anyway and she was a little toasty.

Here are our 3 beautiful children celebrating autumn.

My Wiggly Hair

I got my hair cut today. It was time and I wanted to lose several inches. I did it while the big kids were at school. When they saw me, William asked "why is your hair short like mine, Mom?" He had just gotten his hair cut. But since I was also experimenting with a new style, using my natural wave in my hair instead of spending seemingly endless hours straightening while drying it in the morning, Mary asked, "why is your hair wiggly, mom?"

Well, it wasn't too long after that that my natural wave fizzled and I decided to take Jennifer up on her offer to enhance my wave. So, after several hours at the salon, I emerged with the wiggliest hair I've ever had.

I'm not positive that I like it, so your honest opinion is helpful, but don't be too brutal because I'm stuck with it for at least a couple of weeks until her next available appointment. :-)

You'll have to forgive my crazy-eyes and odd angle. Self-photography (yes, that's my mirrored image) isn't easy.

Halloween

A few pictures from Halloween:

Mary's Mid-night Mischief

We stayed at Gramma's house on our birthday for Sunday morning convenience and while we were there Mary was sick. She woke up in the middle of the night and came down stairs to find me, but got distracted before she made it to me.

I woke up to find all the lights in the house were on, but it wasn't our house, so I couldn't be sure that Gramma hadn't turned them on herself. Then it was pointed out to me that Mary had raided my purse. Inside, she found a birthday check for Doug and me. Being ever so helpful, she decided to make the check out more clearly for the bank by filling in "Mommy" in her 3 year old hand writing in the Pay to the Order of line. She signed her name in various places and really did the check up right with the purple felt tip pen she found in my purse.

When she appeared on the landing of the stairs something looked a little funny, but I couldn't be sure from such a distance. It was pretty clear once she got close what had happened though. She'd also found my make-up bag and had adorned herself with Mascara. She's not an expert cosmetologist, so her efforts were concentrated on her eyebrows more than her eyelashes. Of course, when we brought it up, she was humiliated. If she hadn't been sick, we would have sent her to Sunday school looking like Groucho Marx. The embarrassment of it all would have been punishment enough. It will all make a rather funny scrapbook page.