Potty Time

This little lady hasn't been the easiest to potty train.  In fact, I've been working on getting her potty trained for the last 7 months.  I think it may have something to do with her stubborn personality.  She knows when she needs to go, and will sometimes go on the potty, but I can't get her to consistently go.  I've with candy, toys, stickers, etc.  It just isn't working.  I'm hoping we can get her potty trained by her 3rd birthday.  Wish me luck.

Why I love these two twits

These two turkeys sometimes make me want to pull my hair out and hide in a corner, but they are the loves of my life, and I can't imagine life without them.

Little Miss Addy is quite the girly girl.  She loves anything pink, hello kitty, having her nails done, and doing anything with mommy, oh, and shoes, she absolutely LOVES shoes.  

Her favorite TV show is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

She calls her blanket her "B" and she takes it with her EVERYWHERE

She LOVES chocolate milk and wants it first thing in the morning when she wakes up

She will do anything for ice cream

She hates brushing her teeth and her hair

Her favorite shirt is pictured below . . . "the monkey shirt" that Dad got her in Vegas

She is super picky about her clothes and doesn't like to wear things that are "too tight"

She loves to snuggle when she's tired

She copies everything her big brother does

Ethan is a character.  He's always doing something that either makes me laugh, cry, or a combination of both.  He loves anything super hero, especially superman or spiderman, playing with legos, staying at home, and playing with his friends at school.

His favorite TV show is Curious George

He calls his blanket "orangey" because it's orange.  He still has to have it at bed time

He LOVES fishing with his daddy, and gets super upset if dad goes without him

He hates having his hair combed

He hates losing at anything

His favorite shoes are his spiderman boots shown below

He enjoys torturing his baby sister

He is determined that he will marry Izzy, a girl from school, when he grows up

I sure love these two twits!

Stubborn

We should have given Ethan a different name, and that name should have been Stubborn.  Man, this kid kills me.  After a few hours of playing, I informed him that he needed to clean up his room, and that he wasn't allowed out of his room until it was clean.  You can see that he's laying on his bed rather than clean.  In fact, he laid on his bed for 2 hours!  I finally went in and let him know that in 10 minutes I'd be in to clean up, and that what I picked up would be going in the garbage can.  This motivated him and he was able to get his room clean, but we fight about this EVERY SINGLE DAY!!  Yikes.

Snow Time Fun!

This winter, the kids had a ball playing in the snow.  If a flake fell, they both wanted to get their gear on and head outside to play.  I can't even begin to count the number of times Ethan was disappointed because there wasn't enough snow to make a snow ball.  Luckily, we ended up with plenty of the white stuff this winter, and they had tons of fun playing in it.

Uncle Gary and Dad helped Ethan make this fort!  It didn't melt until April! :)

And of course you can't have winter without Ice Fishing!  Andy, Mike, Ethan, and Kaicyn had a great time ice fishing together.  

Ethan and Kaicyn living it up at the ice fishing hole.

Addy wasn't completely thrilled with the snow at first, but she got brave, and eventually began loving it!

Little Les

Andy calls Addy little Les.  I'm not sure she really looks all that much like me, but on this particular day, she was copying everything I was doing, and she really was a little Les.

Ethan turns 5!

Ethan wanted a superhero birthday party for his 5th birthday . . . surprise, surprise, surprise.  Instead of limiting it to just one superhero, we decided to invite all superhero's to attend.

We made a really fun invitation for his party.  He thought it was AWESOME to dress up like Clark Kent/Superman and take some pictures for his party invite.  I think it turned out pretty darn cute.

This year we decided to have a friend birthday party.  I don't know how, but I've lost all the pictures of the party, except for present opening. :(

Anyway, here are the gifts that he received from friends.

The next day we had a party with the Family. 

 Grandma & Grandpa Trane

 Grandma & Grandpa Allen

 Mom & Dad and Addy gave him a skylander game for the Wii

Grandma and Grandpa Allen gave him a tape recorder and tapes for his birthday.  He's recorded all sorts of stuff.  It can be a little worrisome.

And of course, Uncle Gary gave him the biggest gun he could find in the store.

Christmas

Christmas morning was super fun this year, as both kiddos were excited to see what Santa had brought.  Here is the loot before they opened anything.  

 Ethan was ready to start tearing into presents right away.

Addy on the other hand saw this crib and that pretty much did it for her.  She really wasn't interested in opening any other presents.

 I finally started opening for her, and once she saw this little minnie mouse toy, she decided she just might want to play with it!

 Ethan asked Santa for the bat cave, and here he is opening it.  He was thrilled beyond belief to get this present, and has been so cute playing with all the good guys and bad guys.

 Addy got this cute little pop up minnie mouse boutique.  This is the ONLY time she's sat in it at all since Christmas.  As you can see, she has a binki in her mouth.  She got a bag of baby doll stuff, and this little gem was in the bag.  She found it and popped it in her mouth and wouldn't take it out.  not sure what the fascination is with the binki lately, because she never even took a binki as a baby.

 Here's another of the cool bat cave.  It really is quite an awesome toy, and we've had fun playing with it.

 Santa also brought ethan this really cool navy boat with all sorts of guns and army guys.  He's enjoyed playing with this in the tub. :)

 We got the kids this awesome remote control car.  They can drive it, or you can drive it with a remote. I think Andy's had more fun with it than the kids have, but they seem to like riding around in it.  You can even plug your ipod into it and play music.  Pretty cool.

We also gave them a game to play as a family, and a few games for the wii that they can play.    

I gave Andy a pretty awesome fishing tackle box for Christmas, and Andy gave me a crafting table to add to my craft room.

It really was a fun christmas morning, and we sure enjoyed opening presents, and playing with new things.