Potty Training

We bought Ruark a little kid potty a month or two ago and we have randomly just been pulling it out, until last week. I finally decided to really make a go at potty training him, so I started by putting him on the potty after he woke up and naps. He goes on the potty as soon as I put him after he wakes up, he's gone 24 hours at a time without an accident. YAY!

Unfortunately I decided to let him watch his favorite show, Meet the Robisons, while he sits on the potty. I was running in the other room to get ready, and I had a thought that he might throw it in the toilet. I told myself no way, he watches it all the time in there by himself without doing that. I no sooner finished arguing with myself when I hear the toilet being lifted and a *plop*.

Ugh, running back I found it at the bottom of the toilet bowl. I LOVE my ipod touch, I take it everywhere with me, now the screen is black and it's unresponsive. The warranty we bought now says it doesn't cover water damage but when we bought it they told us they would cover it. Sooo, hopefully that will be my mother's day present. Ruark carries it around crying begging me to turn it on so he can watch his movie. I want to cry too, but maybe I'll take a look at the Ipad's instead.

6 Years

6 Years have gone by and we're even more in love than the day we met.

Our Wedding Day July 1, 2005Our honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas Our Sealing day in the SLC Temple July 1, 2006Our trip to Virginia 2007Our trip to Las Vegas Valentine's 2008Ruark's brithday December 31, 2008, 20 minutes before he was born...

Winter 2009, parents to a 1 year old..

Today is Chase & my 6 year anniversary of the day we met!! Life has flown by so quickly!

We met April 23rd, 2004. It was a Friday night and we were cruising 17th street. The night we met, I told my friend Heather there was something different about him, I didn't know what it was but there was something different. Chase told his mother the same thing the next morning.

We were both dating two people at the time we met, I told him I didn't want a third boyfriend to deal with because I was fed up with the two that I had, and he told me he felt the same way...so we decided to just be friends. Because we were "just friends" we spent all of our extra time together and within 2 weeks we only had eyes for eachother.

We were only 17 when we met, married at 18, had our first baby at 22 and this year we turn 24!!! I am so lucky to have found the love of my life at 17, I feel so blessed everyday. Many of my friends are already divorced once and some even twice, our marriage is one in a million and I am so thankful for my sweet Chase. I don't know what I would do without the man of my dreams.

Meet me at the Rodeo

Our Buckaroo is Turning Two!!!

Not yet, I loved Ruark's first birthday party so much I am getting ideas for his second birthday. I am thinking of doing a cowboy theme, "our Buckaroo is turning Two" it was all inspired while I was searching for baby shower ideas and a friend emailed me this darling idea at Hostess with the Mostess. I found this idea for invitations at Porters!

Not sure how we are going to have hay bales for seating in our house because it will be the middle of the winter, but I love this idea and would love to use it for our party.

Aren't these such a darling place settings? I just love it!!

Goodness knows I have plenty of Mason Jars I could use for glasses for the beverage. Just stick in a straw and bam! They even added a little "howdy" sign on them.

They made individual fruit pies for everyone, and for dinner serve an Idaho Cowboy dinner. Chili, biscuits, baked potatoes and all the fixings. I would love if we could do horse rides too seeing as how my dad has horses. I think this would be a great idea to do in a barn, which my dad also happens to have a beautiful red barn....maybe that something to think about.

In the meantime I am gathering together ideas to go with a cowboy theme, lucky for me Oriental Trading just sent me a magazine this week with cowboy theme birthday parties...how lucky for me!!! They have really cheap ideas for parties, to outfit Ruark's party last year all together it was around $75, you can find coupon codes for free shipping and % off to make it even more cost effective. For now, I'm still surfing the Internet to find more ideas, so if anyone has any more ideas let me know!

Baby Shower Time

In a little less than two weeks I am throwing a baby shower for my little sister!! Ok technically, she's my sister-in-law, but she's the baby sister I've always wanted!! She is due May 25th and is going to have a boy, so for the past few months I have been preparing things to give her the baby shower she deserves.

Lucky for me I have a best friend who loves planning parties and crafts as much as I do! So we have been surfing blogs and craft sites for the past few months getting ideas. Here are some things we've worked on so far.

I wish you could see the invitation better because they are so pretty, I found the paper and envelopes at Artco, LOVE that store! For 50 invitations it was $5.30, amazing! I printed everything out here at home and I love the way they turned out, they are the prettiest baby shower invitations I've ever seen.

It says, "a little baby boy is on the way let's shower his mommy to "bee" before the big day"

There are two little bees at the bottom. There is an envelope at the bottom that hold the information for the diaper raffle. I had never heard of one until my little sister mentioned it to me. It's a great way to get a supply of diaper for new parents. I found a little poem that says, " to add a little extra glee and help the parents-to-"bee" please bring a little extra from the heart, an unwrapped pack of diapers to give them a good start" They can enter as many times as they like, each pack of diapers equals one name at the end, we put their names in a bowl and the winner gets a nice prize.

We tried our hand at a diaper cake, and I love how it turned out!! Have you ever seen a prettier diaper cake? It's up on my mantel being used as decoration until the shower.

These are a great idea, such a cheap way to get decorations. Tissue paper pom poms, they will hang from the trees to give some color. This is a picture courtesy of Designmom. I have even seen where they make small garlands out of the tissue paper pom-poms. For a how-to go to Martha Stewart

These will be the napkin rings, we used ribbon and buttons from the big bin at Porters to tie around the utensils for everyone's meal. Everything is yellow, orange and touch of black from the bumble bees that we're adding. Can't wait to have the shower. We're planning on having it outside I'm hoping the Idaho weather will cooperate! Those tissue pom pom's won't stand a chance against out Idaho wind!

Life with a boy

When I first got pregnant I thought, "I am meant to be a mom to girls." I love everything that has to do with girls. The ruffles, the ribbons, bows and curls. I dreamed about kittens and butterflies, we would play dress-up and have tea parties. Chase would make this fabulous doll house I have already designed. I would make her all kinds of dolls and head bands. I had 3-4 blankets already started for her, I had her name picked out for years. Her clothes were hanging in the closet and I was ready for her...

Week 18 of my pregnancy came and in we went for our ultrasound. We were sure it would be a girl...99.9999% sure it's a boy. I wasn't convinced, I still held out hope for a girl.

The pregnancy came to a close, out he came and my doctor announced "it's a boy" my heart swelled with joy, I held him in my arms and I knew HE was just what I wanted. I didn't care about all those frivilous things anymore, I finally had my baby.

Wow do plans ever change with a boy! When I knew we were having a boy, I was scared! I don't know anything about boys! I don't do trucks, I don't like playing in the dirt. Boys love mud and bugs and getting dirty. I do not. How would I raise a boy to be a strong man? To be prepared to be a worthy priesthood holder and serve a mission for the church? Ruark was born and all my worries flew away.

Summer is here, and I love being a mom to a boy!! Yes, I am constantly pulling rocks out of his mouth because he is chewing on them. Yes, I change his outfit probably three times a day because he's constantly getting dirty. I love playing with trucks and listening to his little boy truck sounds. I adore watching him use his Hanny Manny tools to try to fix things, like building his bed. I love running outside with him all day, chasing after him, playing swords with him. I love watching Chase play with him, to see all of his dreams unfolding of having a son. I love life with MY BOYS!

The other day we were outside burning our weeds, Ruark really wanted to play in the fire and we were having a hard time keeping him out of it. So I gave him the water hose and let him play with it. He put it in the dirt and started making mud. Then he piled the mud on top of his slide, keeping one eye out I watched him make a little mud pie...I giggled...then he started licking the mud pie!!!! Oh my heck, I cringed, I laughed, I ran for my camera and just missed getting a picture. But here is the aftermath!

The water was cold...

Getting angry he's wet...
Soaking wet!! We ran him in for a warm bath and a long nap...

I wouldn't change one minute of my life with my son, although I still dream about ribbons, bows and ruffles, I am happy to trade them in for swords, dirt and little boy truck sounds.

My Garden

I am so excited this year to plant my garden, I've woken up in the night for the past few months having an idea of what I want to grow. Last year was our first real garden and we made a lot of mistakes. Such as not planting things that we really eat, so a lot of vegetables went to waste. We didn't thin out the plants and we didn't use any plant markers, so we didn't know what a lot of things were. One of our biggest problems was the weeding, because we just started our garden in a new spot this year, the weeds were OUT OF CONTROL! I'd weed for hours and come out the next day and it would be just as bad, so this year we're getting fertilizer that kills weeds in your garden YAY!

This year my garden will include:

Tomatoes ( for canning)

Cucumbers ( so I can make my own pickles)

Zucchini ( for zucchini bread, and casseroles)

Onions

Pumpkins (for Halloween and hopefully so I can can some pumpkin pie filling)

Corn (freezes great)

Peas ( freezes great)

Beans ( excited to can these too)

I also bought 50 raspberry plants last year that should be coming up and plan to add in blueberries and even some blackberries this year.

For my garden stakes I found this darling idea from JoAnn's...love that store...it seems really fast and easy and I love pretty things! Won't this make my garden so pretty!!!

If anyone has ideas of what more I can grow ideas would be greatly appreciated I want a really good yield this year!

Cartoons

The last little while Ruark has started LOVING cartoons, during the day when the TV is on it's usually tuned into the disney channel. But where are the classic cartoons that I love?!? There's a whole new lot of cartoons, that to me, seem to lack any storyline or excitement. So here is a look back at all the cartoons I'm looking to buy on DVD so I can have a library of great shows for Ruark and I to watch.

I didn't get to watch these ones very often because we didn't have the channel it came on, but man I loved these too!

I'm excited to find these shows, I know I loved them growing up and I can't imagine my kids not loving them. I cannot imagine watching Spongebob Square Pants for the next few year!

Craft Time

I love crafts! I just started organizing my craft projects last week and realized how many I have bought, cut and prepared to finish. But these were put away because

A- I had ran out of time and I had company coming over, so I needed to clean up
B- I found out I was having a boy, not a girl like I had been preparing for and decided I should hold off on making all the little girls things
C-I'm going to have a girl at some point and so I should just buy and make them anyway so that I can have them ready when she finally arrives
D-Didn't realize how much work I was making for myself, and decided to go buy the finished project instead

So I called Dixie and told her we can't start any more crafts until I finish some of my old ones. She agreed because she is having the same problem. Later that day I decided to go to Porters to pick up some things for a baby shower I am throwing for my little sister next month. BAD IDEA!! I found an awesome fabric for making fabric paper dolls, which I think will be a great church activity for my girls, and while I was at it I decided to pick up extra to make a quilt. The quilt even has a little pocket on the back to put all the doll clothes in to go along with it! Then I bought even more fabric to make a few extra kits for Christmas gifts. Dang, now I'm in trouble!!

I LOVE FELT! Don't ask me why! I hated felt all my life and then when I made Ruark's Pinnochio outfit for Halloween I fell in love. Then I moved on to the felt food for Christmas, and now I have so much felt left over I need to start using it up! We got on the Internet and I found templates for quiet books, and a felt playhouse courtesy of Dixie. Now we have just as many pending craft projects as we have sitting in our closets!! I am really excited to start working on these projects, now that Ruark is playing by himself more and more I think I might finally have the time to start working on everything!

Here Comes Peter Cottontail...

This is what Easter looks like in Idaho! We had such high hopes of running around on a warm day, but with all the snow and wind lately we had to bundle up for all our outside activities.

We had an amazing Easter weekend, it started off with "The Amazing Race", a huge treasure hunt all over Idaho Falls that my mom puts on for all of us. We had a great time figuring out clues and running around town with all of my siblings and their families competing for the trophy. Chase and I took 2nd place this year, which I find pretty amazing seeing as how one of us had to stay in the car at all times because of Ruark, my brothers and sisters all have 2-4 kids each to help them! We look forward to Easter all year, and this year did not disappoint!

We stayed up late Saturday after my family party and started hiding eggs and Ruark's Easter basket. My family has always hidden the Easter baskets, I have such great memories of running all over the house searching for my basket. It was the first time we've ever been able to do these things as parents.

His Easter Basket...

We woke up this morning and walked into the front room fully expecting to have to lead Ruark around to all the Easter eggs. Not our son!!! It's almost as though he could smell the sugar from the candy in the eggs, and he went running around picking up the eggs and pulling out their sweet contents, his overflowing basket of goodies couldn't compete with those pieces of candy. :)

He found a snickers bar, he was very excited

After he found the candy eggs, he pulled out all the extra eggs we had to see if they had any yummy treats too. Look at that smirk!

My cute boy all dressed to color eggs

Our finished project

We had a wonderful relaxed Sunday. We watched General Conference, dyed eggs, played with toys, flew Ruark's new kite, played with bubbles and chalk and read Ruark his books. Finished off with Chase making us dinner which was so yummy, I feel so lucky to have a husband that is a good cook!!

Flying his kite

Playing with chalk

We had such a wonderful day at home together. We are so thankful this Easter for the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ and for eternal families. We hope everyone had a wonderful Easter and that you were all able to take some time to think beyond the bunnies and the candy to the wonderful Ressurection of Jesus Christ. Happy Easter everyone!