Lots of stuff

Where do I start? I haven't blogged in quite a while.

This is a cute picture of Halle playing in the snow. She loves her pink boots.

Every few nights she demands to have her hat in bed and she sleeps with it all night.

And this is the exciting sign that Spring is in the air!!
TULIPS! I worked so hard on these last year, pulling up the ones the old owners planted in a straight row instead of spread all over. I pulled them up, and pulled the bulbs apart and bought new ones at Thanksgiving Point (they pull them up after the tulip festival every year and sell a dozen for $3, so if you ever want some I'm happy to get them for you). I planted them everywhere and I'm so excited to see them all coming up!

This is Halle "cuddling" with Jared.

A little over a week ago we got Halle some paints. She has never painted before. I know, I'm depriving my child, but I finally bought them. She loves painting and wants to paint everyday and will sit for hours, literally, hours, painting.

Saturday it was such a gorgeous day we went to Thanksgiving Point Farm. I love this place because it is so cheap to get in and you can feed the animals and ride the ponies, Halle loves it.

She was so exhausted after the day at the farm.

On Saturday we bought Rameses a new toy. He was so silly. He started jumping up for it like Patch does! Patch always steals toys from Rameses, but he wouldn't let it out of his sight and was so protective of it and would growl and bark at Patch if he got near. When we went to bed I jokingly said to him, "So, you gonna take your new toy to bed?" He promptly got it and carried it upstairs, put it on his bed, and laid on top of it. I have never seen him like that. I would have taken a picture, but if I left the room he would have followed me and ruined the picture moment.


Dogs love bananas. You cannot eat a banana in peace. Just try it, give your dog a bite of banana, from then on they will never leave you alone the second you start pealing.

Sunday I played the organ for stake conference (after being asked Saturday afternoon and called with the hymns on Saturday at 10 PM). Elder Robert D. Hales was there sitting infront of me! I played prelude for 45 minutes, two hymns, and postlude for 30 minutes because everyone wanted to shake his hand. My pinkies and ankles hurt after that.

Today I am home with Halle because Jared is out of town and she is sick. We were giong to stay with my mom and dad, but I don't want to get them sick because they have a foreign exchange student from Germany coming. His name is Nils, and I'd hate to get them sick and have them get him sick for some of his time here. Hopefully it won't be so long until my next posting!

Oh no.

Halle is obsessed with keys. I have no idea why. And our keys fit perfectly into the doors in our house, so she always locks the downstairs bathroom door with my keys. I got a this text this morning from Jared, "Halle dropped my keys down the elevator shaft." Oh no was all I could think. I called Jared and Halle was very distraught asking me for 5 minutes about the keys. Luckily maintenance got there and was able to go and collect they keys. Phew! Halle called me and was thrilled,
"Mommy, I got the keys!! MY KEYS!"
"No, Halle, those are Daddy's keys."
"No, Mommy. MY KEYS!"

Whoevers keys they are, I'm just glad we got them back.

Oh so big!

Halle is growing up so quickly. I can't believe it.

She's learning how to go pee pee in the potty:

(Incase you aren't familiar, this is the potty dance.)

She's learning how to draw:

This is daddy (or me? I can't remember). But can you see all of the lines that are the arms and legs? All of the little squiggles are eyes, ears, hair, a mouth, nose, and fingers and toes. She was doing really well.

This is Mickey Mouse.Now if you turn it upside down, it looks more like it should.

She's becoming more responsible and enjoys feeding the dogs, letting them outside, and giving them lots of love.

These are cute pictures with Patch.

She also cleans out the dishwasher and gets money when she does. She's beginning to understand money and LOVES money. She really enjoys swiping the credit card for us at the store.

Most exciting of all is that she got a new bed last weekend. She was SO excited. While we were putting it up and making the bed she was saying, "I a big girl, I a big girl!" She loves sleeping in her big girl bed and won't come out unless we tell her she can. She'll just sit in her bed and yell, "Mommy? Mommy!" until I tell her she can come out. We did not ask her to do this, she just started doing it.
She can drink from a cup, she can eat with a spoon. That is because baby is OH SO BIG! (excerpt from a childhood book). My mom could still recite this book verbatim if you asked her to. I bet my brother could too. Anyway, my baby is no longer a baby and while it's very exciting, it's also a little sad. She has grown so quickly. She is already enrolled for preschool to start in June and that is just crazy! She will be starting Kindergarten in two years!!

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.