Picture TAG

Pictured from left to right: Noah, Curtis, Wyatt, Hailey, Lexi, Paige, Jerika, Kaylee
Summer 2006

This was a great summer! We had our nieces Paige and Hailey visit us from the Tri-cities for a couple of weeks to hang out with the kids! My sister LaBretta was here from Blackfoot, ID with her four kids....Kaylee, Noah, Peyton, and Corinne, and my sister Sandra came from Echo, OR with her three girls....Lexi, Rylee, and McKenna. My parents were also here for a little while. It was really great! The tarp that the kids are sitting on in the backyard is what all the bigger girls slept on. The boys slept on another one a little ways away. All the little girls, Abby, Rylee, Corrine, McKenna and Clarissa slept in the house. We had campfires at night and s'mores, bbq's, the kids spent time riding bikes, going to the park around the corner, going to the library and generally doing summertime stuff outside. I think they may have caught a movie or two at the theater on base also. Now that I have blogged about that summer I am thinking it is time to do something like this again. It has been too long!! Start planning now girls!


This all started with a picture tag that I would like to keep going. What you do is go to your 4th album in your pictures and then to your 4th picture in that album and see what you've got!
Now, if you have read this, YOU HAVE BEEN TAGGED! I would love to see more crazy random pics like this one!

All Aboard the Potty Train!

The last couple of months I have been prepping Clarissa for Potty training by talking about it quite often with her. Abby has been very helpful and encouraging to Clarissa also.

About two weeks ago Clarissa decided she was ready to sit on the potty. I was a little alarmed since I usually wait for my kids to be very close to 3 when I actually move beyond the talking stage. I have found if I do that then it is usually a very quick and relatively painless process for all of us. I figured I'd better go ahead and let her since up till then she had expressed a lot of fear of falling in. (I don't use small potty chairs etc.) She was very brave and now she is an old pro. She has never actually "gone" potty but she loves to sit on it. Abby would tell her "Rissa do you want to go potty?" and we would be in there again.

Abby must have heard me talking about "potty training" with Phil or other friends because she started saying "Rissa, do you remember the potty train?" Now Clarissa comes to me all the time and says "Mommy, I want to sit on the potty train". It makes me laugh every time!

So I guess it will be worth the extra work and time from starting her early, just to have Abby be so encouraging and Clarissa so excited about the "potty train"!