Marco Island was beautiful!

First, as an FYI. This is the third of 3 postings I've done today. Scroll down to see the other 2. Last weekend Jared had a golf scramble for work in Marco Island, Florida. Hale and I tagged along since we found plane tickets for only $175.00. We had a blast and I often forgot it was January. I want to move there. I have more than 120 pictures, so it's going to be hard to pick ones to post. We stayed in a Marriott on the beach and had a beautiful view from our balcony.

We spent at least 6-8 hours everyday outside. Halle would wake up and say, "All done bed, pool." After the weekend I determined I gave birth to a fish, not a human child. After the first 4 hours in the pool with her SPF 50 on I took her to the room for a bath and nap. People, my child had a tan line! How do you get a tan line with SPF 50??? I guess you have a dark daddy that you luckily inherited his genes instead of pasty mom's. She had a tan line, I had tomato skin. Here are just a few of the MANY pictures of Halle in the pool. She would stand and then bend her knees to go underneath and then come back up. This is the main thing that she did in the pool in addition to playing with dolphin. Grandma Joan bought her dolphin and Halle carried him everywhere. The other thing she loved was jumping in and then kicking back up to the top - by herself. We would then have to pull her all the way out because she couldn't tread water to keep her head above the water. On the last day in our last minutes in the pool she found a noodle. She loved this noodle and just kicked around in the pool on it.

Jared prefers hot tubs.
Joan and Jess found these as they walked the beach.

We also spent countless hours at the beach making sand castles, then stomping on them, and throwing clams, starfish and other creatures back in the ocean. A funny story, we're walking along the beach the first day throwing clams back in the water that had been stranded from the previous night's tide. Halle was dawdling behind us doing the same and all of a sudden we hear a mild screech of, "help, owy!" and more. We turn only to find that a clam closed on her finger. She shook her hand wildly and couldn't get it off. It was hilarious. Maybe you had to be there. After that she wasn't fond of throwing clams back in the water and would only pick empty shells.

She liked to throw the sand back toward the ocean.

These are some of my favorite pictures from our last evening on the beach.

Please don't laugh at my hair. This is what humidity does to me. This is what I looked like for my 15 years living in Texas. Embarassing. But, I do like this picture of our family. Halle and Jared look so cute.Halle and daddy had fun chasing the birds and making them fly away.I love this picture of the Halle with the sunset behind her.

I want to report a recent potty success!! In my last blog I gave a potty training update. Well, as I was finishing this blog Halle started saying "potty, potty". She was in that Cinderella dress and heels that I blogged about earlier so running was a difficult thing. I ran to grab her and sat her on the little potty we have in the family room and she peed!! How exciting! She said she needed to pee, made it to the toilet, and actually peed! AND as I was typing this she just did it again!!

So, anyway, that was our warm weekend in Marco Island.

My princess

Halle has turned out to be quite the princess. She has started liking to dress up. For Christmas she got this dress up Cinderella stuff.

She is surprisingly agile in those shoes. I couldn't believe how well she walked in them.

Then she wanted Daddy to be a princess.


Then it was Mom's turn.

For Christmas she also got a new baby with a bottle from Grandma Koren. She loves that baby so much and she is potty training it. I don't have pictures of the potty training, but here she is watching Little Einsteins and feeding the baby. When watching a show with baby she introduces her to all of the characters. "That's Leo, Rocket...". Cute.

Have I made my siblings with 3 boys each jealous??

An update on potty training, if you're interested. Yesterday (Sunday) Halle did not potty in her Tinkerbell panties once! While at church she didn't potty in her princess pull ups once! We didn't have to change her panties or pull up one time!! I am so thrilled. I'm not sure if that's because she's doing well at the potty training, or if mom and dad are doing well making her go so often. In any case, it was still exciting. Today I have the day off and hope that it goes as well as yesterday. I really hope she's potty trained after this 3 day weekend in complete dedication to potty training.

I have the cutest dogs ever!

Jess let us use his camera for a couple of days and I went CRAZY!! (side note - I want one of these cameras SO bad, but they are about $900. So, if you want to contribute to my camera fund, feel free.) Remember many many posts back I posted a picture of my attempt to show Patch jumping, but all you can see is a blurry Patch. So, I actually got some really great pictures with Jess's camera.

I also got some just plain cute pictures of Patch and Rameses.

I LOVE THIS PICTURE of Patch!!!!

In these pictures the dogs are getting treats.

Rameses always gets bombarded when he gets a treat and Patch doesn't.

They are so fun. They are such shadows. They follow you up and down the stairs constantly. I don't mind when Patch does it, except that he jumps on you constantly, but at least he's getting energy out. Poor Rameses though is so awkward going up and down the stairs that you feel bad for him when he follows you around. Anyway, I just love my dogs and wanted to show everyone how adorable they are.

Christmas and more

First, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Now for the good stuff. Most of the best Christmas pictures are on my mom's AWESOME camera, so we'll have to do with what I have. Christmas Eve we went to my mom's for a wonderful dinner. The kids opened their Christmas Eve gifts and then we all slept there anxious for Santa to arrive. This is Halle opening her Christmas Eve gift (a Tinkerbell robe and pink slippers).

It was morning came and "the package" (Doug) arrived so we were all allowed to go upstairs. Brenden came up the stairs and Erin says, "Look what Santa brought you!" and pointed at Doug. Brenden ran to his presents on the couch. Erin pointed Doug out once more and Brenden gave him a big hug.

Then Nolan came up and walked past Doug. After 10-15 minutes he discovered Doug and he yells, "DADDY!! I BATMAN!!" It was completely adorable. Here's a picture of Batman.

Ethan is such a daddy's boy there was no way he missed him. He wouldn't leave Doug's lap. Seriously, this child cries and screams everytime Doug leaves the room (not just during this time after not seeing him for like two weeks, he ALWAYS cries when Doug leaves the room).

Halle LOVED her gift from Santa, the big kitchen set.

I love that little tongue sticking out. My mom has a lot of those cute pictures on her camera. Some of her other favorite presents were Buzz: (she's yelling BUZZ!)

The new baby from Grandma Koren: (the tongue is out again)

And the Nemo fruitsnacks stuffed in the bottom of her stocking from Santa: (he is such a smart man)

Rameses and Patch loved their bones from Tina (my boss at work):

Then we went to the other Grandma and Grandpa's for Christmas dinner. We were SO excited to give Jess this awesome charcoal drawing that Nicole, at work, did for me.

We slept in our beds at home on Christmas night and then headed back to my parents' for Friday and Saturday. Dustin and Paulette took us (me, Jared, Erin, and Doug) out for dinner while my parents put all 7 kids in bed. We had so much fun and talked for 3 hours. Then we went back to the quiet house and played Wii that the Kline boys got from Santa. We had so much fun spending time with family. Halle loved playing with her cousins. I was really glad we could all get together. We visit each other throughout the year, but we're never all together except for every other Christmas, so I really love that time.

So, now is for the 'more' part of the title of the blog which is just going to be random.

Patch really likes heaters.

The other day when I got home Jared was telling me how it was so cute that Halle was pretending to take pictures of herself and that luckily the camera wasn't on. I then turned on the camera and discovered it most definetely WAS on. These are my favorites:

Halle loves to do flips. These are her front flips with daddy's help. She runs, put her hands in his shoulder, then he flips her over. Then she jumps on his arms. She walks back across the room, and RUNS back again. They did this for a good 1/2 hour or more.

These are back flips with the couch's help.

Good thing Dustin and Paulette got her another leotard for Christmas. She's becoming quite the gymnast.

And she loves being an airplane.

And finally, a story. We are in the midst of potty training, and of course it can be frustrating and thrilling. Unfortunately our child pees like every 20 minutes, so we are constantly running to and from the bathroom, and STILL she goes potty on the princesses on her pull up. Well, yesterday she pooped on the potty. Thrilling, right? Well, yes, but she clogged the toilet. My TWO year old clogged the toilet?!?! Is that normal? So, we continue to work on this. I mostly think she's ready, but I read that a good sign that they are ready is that they wet their diaper only every two hours. This is not how she works. She enjoys sitting on the potty and LOVES doing the potty dance (which I will take a picture of and post later). That's our most recent adventure. Any tips or tricks would be appreciated. Once again, happy new year.