potty training round 2

let me start by saying having two kiddos in diapers is no fun. I was so tired of changing so many diapers during the day that i decided it was time to potty train brooklynn. my first experience of potty training with parker wasn't the most fun, (is it ever fun?) and i was pretty sure we would never leave the house again in fear of him having an accident. but this time around i entered potty training with a different perspective. a we will still be able to leave our house, if accidents happen they happen, and one day she will be able to run in there and do her thing all by herself perspective. 

so day one. it was awful. awful, awful, awful, awful. way worse than parker's first day of potty training. day 2 came with the same results. awful. during those first 2 days she only peed on the potty ONE time. day 3 came around and i decided to see how the morning went. if by lunch time we were still having ZERO progress i was bagging the whole thing and putting her back in diapers. parker had preschool that day so we ran him to school and came home and sat on the potty for seriously almost 2 hours. i didn't let her off until she finally peed. after she FINALLY went, I'm not sure what exactly clicked, but something did and we ended day 3 completely accident free! whaaaat??!?! it was awesome and weird. but the following days came with the same results, accident free (in BOTH categories!) and she told me every time she had to go! (parker never did this, i always had to remind him to go.)  

and just like that, she's potty trained. I never worried about taking her out in public cause she always tells me when she needs to go, and we have conquered the public restrooms, as long as I cover the automatic flusher sensor, and she plugs her ears before we flush, ha! we still put a diaper on her at night and she has woken up dry a handful of times, but not consistent enough to keep her in underwear. but eh, I'm not worried. 

Easter 2016

We found ourselves over in Eastern Idaho for Easter this year. Brian and Misty were blessing their new little guy that sunday, so we used it as a double excuse to head that way! we love traveling over there to see family!

 i am so happy our kids are great travelers!

 we gave kyle and carissa the game pie face for christmas, and we finally got to try playing it! 

 we did a few easter egg hunts. this one was done at the elementary school where kyle teaches. it was so fun to run around and play with all the balls in the gym. 

 jackson and joshua.... hoping these boys are good buddies the older they get!

 we did another egg hunt in grandma and grandpa rucks' backyard. 

 oh i just love these kids. i am so happy carissa is having a little girl to get some pink up in here!

 saturday night i got to go to the womens general conference session with my mom and sisters. oh how i wish so bad i lived close to them. 

 easter morning!

 handsome boys at church. 

 all the rucks' cousins after joshua's blessing 

happy easter from our two sweet boys and fiesty, SASSY little girl! 

Stacey's Homecoming!

Back at the beginning of March, my sister Stacey returned home from her mission in Virginia! Since jared and kyle couldn't take that much time off, Carissa and I decided to drive over to colorado together. We met in Utah, and the plan was to stay at GG's house, but carissa's boys had come down with a NASTY cough, and we decided it would be best to continue on and get a hotel room. After meeting up and getting dinner we went over to GG's house to switch carissa's stuff over into the minivan. holy cow that was a sight to behold, with our kids running around crazy while we tried to get her carseats and belongings into the car. At one point I found brooklynn and brant chugging my completely full dr. pepper.... oops. but no worries, we got everything in, and the kids buckled up and continued on another 2 hours to Little America. where we stayed the night in a creepy looking hotel.

(you can't see jackson, but he is behind brant!) 

The kids did great in the car, and were so happy to be riding together. we pulled into the hotel just before 9. the room we stayed in had one big room, and then another little bedroom, carissa took the little bedroom with her boys and i took the big room with my 3 kids. to say our night was awful was a bit of an understatement. i think it must have been 4:30am or 5 when i texted carissa asking her if she was awake. we decided since neither of us were sleeping, we might as well be driving. we were up and on the road by 6:30. we had some rain and snow mix for a little while but things cleared up soon after. the kids again did great in the car and it was nice to chat with carissa.

soon it was time to stop for some lunch. we were in wyoming, and stopped at a wendy's. here is where things got a little crazy. we had 5 kids with us..... a 5 year old, a 3 year old, two 2 year olds and a 7 month old, who needed to nurse. we decided to take everyone into the bathroom, then ordered some food. carissa sat inside with the 4 older kids while i nursed jackson in the car. that doesn't sound too awful now does it? HA, WRONG! have you ever tried to get 4 little kids lunch at the same time? OH EM GEE! it was complete mass chaos. i am sure we looked like some kind of freak show. after getting parker and brooklynn set up with lunch i went out to nurse jackson.

i texted carissa saying i was done and she tried to get lunch cleaned up and all 4 kids back out to the van. i cant even remembered what happened next, but for some reason kyler had a full fledged temper-tantrum. kicking-screaming-crying-bloody-murder-all-hell-brake-loose temper tantrum. i looked up to see carissa trying to get all 4 kids back to the car, dragging a kicking, screaming kyler behind her. did i mention the wind was blowing at LEAST 50 MPH. it was quite the site watching her try to pick him up and throw him into the car to try to buckle him up as he continued to scream and kick ans i scrambled to buckle everyone else in. finally everyone was back in their seats and i began to back the van up.... we parked at the end of the row next to the sidewalk and every time i tried to back up i kept running over the freaking curb! as if our lunch break wasn't comical enough, i couldn't even back us up out of the spot to hightail our very embarrassed heads out of there! we had a pretty good laugh about the whole thing later, but my goodness, it was traumatic. so PHEW, back on the road again, and the good news is kyler lived to see another day, LOL. we were SO happy when we finally made it to grandma's house, all alive and all in one piece. that will definitely be a trip i will never, ever forget. I can't wait for 10 years from now when we say, hey remember that time we decided to drive to colorado? good times.

stacey was scheduled to fly in tuesday late afternoon. we spent most the morning making signs to take with us to the airport.

i made sure to facetime jared when she came walking down the terminal! it was SO exciting, i think we all shed a few tears when we finally saw her again!

we spent the rest of the week playing, playing, playing. it was so fun and so exhausting.

phew, so glad i got all that recorded. it's about time i get back to writing about our life!

Holiday Recap

We had a wonderful holiday season, that of course went by way too fast. for thanksgiving, we traveled over to idaho falls wednesday afternoon to see the rucks family. that night they had a big blizzard roll through so on thanksgiving morning, the kids all bundled up and went out to play in it. on one of the days we left all the grandkids at home with grandma and grandpa and the adults went to see the last hunger games. it was fun to get away for a few hours.  

for christmas, we decided to stay home. i was a little sad to not be with any family, but also a little relieved to not have to pack up christmas. 

 of course we went and saw our favorite santa, and got ourselves and nice crying picture!

 we decorated a gingerbread train.

christmas eve was also parker's 5th birthday! crazy right? Jared took the day off and we had one VERY fun christmas eve/birthday. 

 parker chose to have pizza for his birthday lunch, so we headed to pizza pie cafe. we came home to open birthday presents, and then headed out into the back yard to play in the fresh snow that had just fallen that morning. 

 jared built a little snow hill for the kids to sled down. 

 they could also slide down on their backs and stomachs.

 christmas eve night we went over to our friends the mendenhall's for dinner and birthday cake. 

 pretty proud of my spiderman skills. 

santa also stopped by for a surprise visit and parker was start struck! he was so excited to see him it was cute. 

 looks like the kids were good this year and santa accidentally left his whole sleigh here. christmas morning was a bit chaotic between parker and brooklynn ripping through presents, and jackson needing attention as well, so i didnt get any pictures of the actual event :( 

 we got to skype with our favorite sister missionary for the last time! she comes home in 7 weeks!!!!

and parker got a bigger bike, but looks like we will have to try riding it again once the weather turns warmer. it was a great christmas!