Go Team Dora!!

Belle had her first ever soccer practice this week. She did really well. Especially considering that she had been a sick mess the day before. She is on a team at the church where she goes to preschool. All the 4-5 yr old teams have cartoon names, like Veggie Tales or the Backyardigins. What are we? Team Dora!! There were a few groans coming from mostly the parents of the boys. =) And it's funny because there really are not a lot of girls on our team, only 3. I'm real curious to see if our shirts are pink or something. I say this because I distinctly remember seeing a girl in Walmart last year with a FMCC soccer shirt on that was pink.

Practicing her dribbling.




Devotion time with the coach's wife.


And of course had to keep Ethan occupied.


He would not let me take his pictures. Little stinker.


In other fun news. We made Angry Birds!! How awesome are these! The kids love them and Ethan even wanted to sleep with one tonight. I am however not letting the kids touch my favs, which are the black bird and the yellow bird.



Look Belle even made some!

My Little Reader

I thought I'd document how well Belle is doing with her reading. She's finished her first BOB book set and while at an Usborne Party I picked up this set of 15 books. We have enjoyed a few at the library, but got frustrated when the ones we wanted were never there. So it's nice to have our own collection. She's already on the 3rd book and we just got it Sunday.

She's doing great and loves reading by herself.

Updates

Nic made the comment on how I never update the blog since Facebook. It's the truth. So I thought I'd share some pictures. Truth is that I haven't even picked up the camera much lately.

I think I've pretty much consumed my computer time with either work or researching homeschool. Yes, I've completely lost my mind and we're going to homeschool Belle next year. Crazy, I know!! So I'm researching curriculum and what not.

No child labor laws in this house.




Belle went through a nudist phase for a couple weeks. Here she is working on a workbook and showing Ethan. I was hoping that some of the numbers would soak into Ethan's brain. Im trying really hard not to compare him to Belle at her age. But the good news is that Ethan is trying. He'll count 1,2,3,6,13. . =) And he did recognize 3 letters by sight the other day. I keep telling myself he's only 2.5, geez.



Belle starts soccer practice tomorrow. Stay tuned for cute soccer uniform pics. Belle got outfitted with shin guards and cleats and a soccer ball. Ethan would not stand for being left out. Nic had to take him to walmart so he could get his very own ball. They've been kicking it around the yard during this awesome weather we are having.







They finished the afternoon playing "drive-thru". Ethan ordered "chicky nuggets" and "fench fries".


In other news, Belle has been doing awesome with her reading. She's really coming along nicely. I'm super proud of her.

Do the **clap clap** Potty Dance!

I was excited to hear about the Potty Dance event at the Children's Museum. We don't see that commercial much because we don't have cable, but I know Brody knew the dance. And since Brody has needed a little extra push on the potty training issue, I figured it couldn't hurt. Ethan has even shown some interest here recently. I just thought it would be a fun event to take the kids too.

We had been getting really excited the week coming up to the dance (or maybe it was just me). We were practicing our potty dance and listening to Ralph's World music. I had never heard of his music til I looked him up. Some great stuff. I even downloaded some songs to play in the car. My favs are Animal Friends and The Great Outdoors. I can't get the songs out of my head. That and of course "do the **clap clap** potty dance".

Ethan of course got sick earlier this week. Just our luck. After not being sick most of the winter, it finally caught up with us. But I figured if Ethan couldn't go, Belle would love to go dance around. Well by the end of the week Belle had it. I thought the medicine was helping her, but she took a turn for the worse Friday night. But the good news was that Ethan was well enough to make the trip.

The museum was full of Pull-ups stuff. There were even free pull-ups. Yay!! Between Sara and I, I'm sure we've spent a small fortune on pull ups. So it was nice to get some freebies. Maybe I got a little too excited, because I wanted a spot close to the stage and we got there a little early. The concert was supposed to be at 11am and we got there at 10:30am. The boys got maracas, which they promptly started using as swords, and some inflatable guitars. We tried to occupy ourselves for awhile, but low and behold the concert wasn't going to start til 11:30. It was supposed to start at 11am. I couldn't imagine trying to occupy the boys for another half hour. Unfortunately the boys were done, or atleast Ethan was done, so we decided to just head out. It was a bummer, and kind of crappy considering they couldn't start on time. I mean, who makes 2 yr olds wait. =) We did catch some of the music as we strolled around the exhibits.





There were no picture of Ethan really in the concert area. He was glued to my hip.








The boys played with this constellation area for awhile in the Dora and Diego exhibit.


And what is a trip to the Children's museum without a ride on the carousel.






Its fun to see the looks of pure joy on the kids faces. They loved the carousel.


Oh and of course we didn't expect to come home and kids be magically potty trained. But Ethan has been more aware of his diaper. And he even agreed to sit on the potty tonight. Problem being that he won't sit on the big potty and the little potty was downstairs. So Nic ran downstairs while we waited in the bathroom. We came so close, but Ethan peed on the floor. While doing so, he said "pee pee potty" in a tone that made you think he knew he was supposed to put it in the potty. Maybe this will be a start on the road to potty training.

Almost potty time!

Some day Ethan will kill me for posting stuff like this. But I have the same sort of posts of his sister, so all is fair.

Well a couple days ago Belle was running around in her underwear. For reasons I can't seem to remember. She's going through a phase where she doesn't want to wear clothes. Anyway, Ethan noticed this and thought he would run around in his diaper. Fine, we'll just have a nudist colony in our living room. After about a minute I think Ethan realized that "hey sissy doesn't wear a diaper" and commenced to taking his own off. Fine I thought and went and grabbed him a pull up. Nope, he knew better. So what does he do? He promptly goes over to the basket of clean clothes and picks him out some underwear. His sister's underwear and tries to put it on. I gave in and helped him, knowing full well that I was going to have a puddle to clean up any minute.

I grabbed the potty seat just in case something clicked and he decided to use it. He'll sit on the potty for about 15 seconds, but nothing has ever made it in. So he ran around in underwear for a little while, occasionally pulling them down to sit on the potty. Nothing ever happened, but maybe he's starting to understand the concept. Of course he peed in the underwear and I gave him one more chance. I went and got something a little more appropriate, some white training undies. I even set the timer thinking that maybe we could implement that. Nope, peed right away in those. Well it was fun while it lasted. Now Nic and I can start preparing ourselves for potty training this summer. Im pretty convinced that it's 80% the parent. So as soon as we're ready to get rid of diapers and not turn back, we'll do the potty training thing.

Oh and we are SO getting a new potty seat. The little shield thing kept getting knocked off because Ethan is pretty short. We obviously didn't have to worry about that with Belle. If anyone has any recommendations, throw them at me.

But he did do a fairly good job of remembering to "push it down". =)


Talking to mamaw in his girly undies


Finally in something a little more appropriate


Oh and I have bought him some boy undies in case this comes up again. Had to get 18mos underwear for his tiny little butt.

Next weekend, Sara and I are taking Brody and Ethan to the Children's museum to do the Pull ups Potty Dance with Ralph's World. Should be fun! Maybe it'll get the boys excited about going potty. Well we can hope anyway.

Aww, they do love each other!!

The kids have been playing together so well lately. They'll run all over the house pretending to be someone or something. Belle will sit in Ethan's room with him driving his Cars around his geotrax set. Ethan will play dolls in the dollhouse in Belle's room. They've wrestled on the couch, or took turns jumping off the couch into their bean bags (before they got yelled at).

So I thought it best to document it while it lasts. Who knows, they could be at each other's throats tomorrow.

Laying under the table eating pretzels


Enjoying all the costumes I got for 75% off around Halloween time.


I told Belle to act like a pirate, this is what I got.

Love Shutterfly

And you know what I love more than Shutterfly. Free stuff from Shutterfly (except for shipping of course)

Scripted Name Baby 5x7 folded card

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View the entire collection of cards.

ABC Drill Sargeant

Belle is sitting on an ABC poster and she's drilling her brother on the alphabet. He seems to be a willing participant, so I'll take it.

Saturday morning

Been playing with the ipod camera capabilities. It's convenient, but not always the best quality. Lighting is key. And I haven't figured out how to get HD videos. Oh and wondering if there is a way to record video horizonally. It looks a little weird vertical.

But here is some fun we had this morning. Yep, the kids jump off furniture over here.



This was from the Instagram app.

She's reading!!

I had forgotten about the collection of BOB books that we had. It occurred to me to maybe try them out again. She's doing awesome. She's read two of the books very easily, but gets stuck on a few words with the rest of the books. She's been very proud of herself!

Ah, my baby is growing up.

Droid!!

I've been playing with this wonderful Droid2 now for awhile, but had to give it up this week. It's been wonderful. You may remember me going to this party with Ariel hosted by the Queen of Free. I had been wanting a smart phone for awhile, but just haven't wanted to pony up the money. So this was a nice treat and let me get my feet wet a little.

There were all sorts of fun and useful things I found on the Droid. I think I used the VZ Navigator the most. It was nice since we don't have GPS in the car. I loved how it would find nearby restaurants by using our location. That was an especially useful app on a recent trip to IKEA.

I think Swype, might be my favorite app. I had originally thought that I wanted a Qwerty keyboard, but after discovering Swype, I never used it. It is so easy and SO intuitive. I wish I could get that app on my ipod touch.

Then there were the fun apps like Grocery IQ and of course the amazingly powerful time suck that is called Angry Birds. I was familiar with this app before the Droid, but its just so addicting that I had to have it on the phone too. The kids LOVED Talking Tom. I really didn't see what the big deal was, but man that app really entertained the kids. There was even a Talking Santa app for the Holiday season. One thing that I learned, that once I download kid apps, the device is no longer my own. The kids were always wanting to play on it.


The Droid even saved my rear one night when my internet service was down. I had several projects that needed emailed to their respective clients and the mobile hotspot that the Droid created save the day.

Only problems I had were getting videos off the phone. Seemed like I could never get a strong enough connection to get a large video uploaded to youtube or to an email. And the picture quality wasn't always the greatest, but definitely better than the pictures that come off my current phone.

Overall it was a great experience and when the day comes that I might get a smart phone, a Android phone will definitely be it. Thanks Verizon and Queen of Free for letting me have fun with this phone over the holidays.

Ice Skating

Belle has been asking to go ice skating for awhile now. I'm not sure where she got this idea, maybe she saw something on tv. Well since we were heading to Troy for Christmas and the Hobart Arena is so close, I thought we'd give it a shot.

Now Belle has never even been on skates. At all. We got off to a rough start. Belle wanted to keep moving her legs really fast. But she eventually got going at a good pace and learned to move slowly. I was getting one heck of a workout by trying to keep myself upright, and also pick Belle up off the ice.

In an hour we made it around the rink 2.5 times. She swears she had fun, but asked to go home and cut through the center of the rink. Maybe we should get her some roller skates so that she can practice. 

This was the best pic I got on my phone. I think she was too scared to look at me and lose focus.


And video of course.

Christmas Evening

In the evening Mimi and Poppy came over with their gifts.

They enjoyed their final round of gifts with the grand finale being new bikes. Belle with her new 16 inch bike and Ethan with a new balance bike. Ethan hasn't quite gotten the hang of pedals yet and his tricycle is too short for him to push around with his legs. And boy can he move on his tricycle going "Barney Rubble" style. So we thought the balance bike would be perfect. Poor kid needs a growth spurt in the legs before spring, he was just a little short. He'll get the hang of it Im sure.

Christmas Morning

I need to get the photos from mom for a Christmas Eve post, but here is Christmas morning at the Freshour house.

The loot. Nic and I had our first taste of staying up putting toys together. We had to assemble the train set and the Geotrax set. It was also the year that I was pretty thrifty. I got the Geotrax set on Craigslist for half of what it was new and it was in perfect condition. I bought the train set with a table that came with it. Since we already had a nice train set (from CL), I sold the new train table. Which made the train set itself much cheaper than what I would've paid for it in the store.


On Belle's side she got two of my old dolls. My American Girl doll and one of my Precious moments dolls ( I have over 20!). Mom has been bugging me to get them out of her house. Two is a start. Belle really liked the dolls, but doesn't play with them a whole lot. She's never been a doll girl. And that Zooble set was half off on woot.com. I probably spent more overall than I had hoped, but there are some great deals in there.




The cat had fun trying to get the cars on the Geotrax set.


Time came for our annual Christmas pj picture, and Ethan wasn't having it. I think he got in trouble for something and there wasn't getting a smile out of him after that.

That picture reminded me of this one.

Freshour Christmas

We headed to the Freshours the Sunday before Christmas to celebrate Christmas over there when we could get everyone together. The kids were super excited to get their first taste of presents for the season.

Ethan actually did a good job opening presents here. I think he got his fill at Mamaw and Papaw's, cause we could hardly get him to open a gift at Christmas.


Belle got her Rapunzel. Do you think she looks excited?






Here are Waren and Ethan in their matching pjs. Ethan is little to begin with, but when he's slouching next to Waren he looks really little. They are about the same size, even though Waren is 6 mos younger.


And the family photo.