First Place, I uh ooo, and potty training!

Grace's competiton was wonderful. Her coach is the best! Grace had so much fun which is the most important thing and as her coach said would happen, she is HOOKED and wants to do every competition! She skated beautifully and got FIRST place! She only skated against one other little girl. After her competition she got to go to a sleepover so just more fun!
I can't believe Julia. If I say I love you to her, she actually says "I uh ooo" I have tried it several times and it always the same! AND she has been on the potty four times in the last week. Now I have been lucky and put her on when she had to go, do I think she makes the connection? No, only that Mom and sister get very excited!
Friday night was fun for Caleb as we had a Spooktacular at school. He was a transformer and there were a couple other transformers there. He did the donut on a string, hunted for a bloody bone and other fun games. He asked if he could have a piece of pumpkin pie and I said sure, he forgot the fork and I wondered when he was going to realize. Why should I have worried, no need for a fork, just pick up the whole piece of pie!
Saturday night was mom and dad night as we went out to dinner at a very nice restaurant. Nice relaxing Adult time away. All for now!

Gog-Gog

This is Julia's word for Dog. It almost seems like every animal is a gog-gog. She is starting to talk more. She has learned "Mine!" I wonder how she learned that!
Tomorrow is the big day, Grace's first Ice Skating Competition. She is so excited, she has been counting down all week, I on the other hand am the one that is nervous and I don't know why!
Another BIG decision we made and executed this week was booking the Disney Cruise! We will be setting sail on Dec 1st! Military Discount awarded through Dec 15th and the price was too good to pass up, we will be sleeping in the Deluxe Family Veranda, it will be so much fun and we are Castaway Club Members since we have sailed before and that brings many perks. This may mean that my christmas cards might be later than usual this year as I may have to pick a picture from the cruise, we'll see.
So what does the cruise mean? Um beach, bathing suit, talk about motivation. I am finally going to start losing the baby weight, that I have been procrastinating about. How much can I lose in 5 weeks? We'll see!!
Confrences for the kids went very well and Grace is reading well above average for second grade. Caleb is also doing a great job with reading and loves to read to me. Both kids did well in behavior and both kids are just a tad irresponsible in turning in homework and/or getting all the assigned work done in class before fun stuff. I am helping in Caleb's class and am so impressed with his teacher and how structured she is and how well she handles the class. This past week there was a substitute and WOW what a difference. One little boy was crying, when I asked him what was wrong, he said I want my other teacher back! Wish us luck tomorrow!!!

Two drowned rats.....

Earlier this week it had poured all day. The older kid's bus usually comes a little after 4:00pm, so at 3:55pm I say to Julia, let's go and get in the car and get them, but I turn around and the door bell rings and I am looking at two poor little drowned rats! It was raining again the next day, but I made it up there in time to save them. Julia is amazing how she is really starting to understand. She had taken a lot of plastic cups out of the cupboard and so I handed her one and said, "Go put this back in the cupboard!" She marched right over and did it proudly. Grace has an ice skating competition at the end of October, she is so excited! Every Saturday are her lessons and she is doing wonderful. Caleb has hockey and loves to play the games, but doesn't like the practices as well. On Thurs night it is crazy because I have started playing tennis during Caleb's hockey practice and then Kurt plays hockey with a men's group after Caleb! We do feel like we live at the rink!

The lights go out on a wonderful weekend

On Saturday I got to go to Seattle to do one of my very favorite things, scrapbook for a whole day, it was great and relaxing. I loved hanging out and chatting with friends and I got 11 pages done, so that really isn't too bad. We get done scrapbooking, pack up our stuff and then go to the hotel's restaurant and get some appetizers and then head up to the room to get a couple more pages done. An old friend of mine and I talk until about 3:00am and then my other friend's phone rings in what I think is the wee hours of the morning....I ask MB what time is it? She can't really see the clock and says, 5:22am, I say what is J's husband doing calling her at 5:22 AM????? It turns out is is 9:22am. Somehow I didn't sleep well and don't feel really rested. I go home and am so excited to see the kids!!!! Julia has become a Daddy's girl in that short amount of time!!!! We hang out in the afternoon and Caleb goes to hockey, we then go out to dinner and then I head to a meeting for church. During the meeting, a girl's husband text messages her "Do you have power?" We were in the old section of town doing fine while the new section of town had the power out. I quickly call Kurt and ask if he has power and he doesn't so I go home to help out. It did send flashbacks to December of last year when we didn't have power for about four days......all for now, going to maximize napping time.