Update

Well, I gave up. It's really OK. I'm at peace with the decision. The hard part was that she was basically completely potty-trained in regards to #1 but for some reason decided that she didn't want to go #2 in the potty anymore. She would tell us when she needed to go #1, or at least say yes when we asked her, but never give any warning or indication about #2. After 4 days of watching her like a hawk all day to try to catch her and get her on the potty, and not succeeding once, I kind of realized that I shouldn't be pushing it when she doesn't even care. I asked her if we should just go back to diapers and she said yes. The plus side is that I'll at least get to use up the new package of diapers I bought not long ago.

It didn't help much that we've all been sick and I wasn't really up to the challenge anymore. Elizabeth had a rash that I noticed a little over a week ago on her neck. We didn't take it too seriously since it didn't itch or anything and seemed to be harmless. After it stuck around for a week we decided to take her in and we discovered that she had the chicken pox! She was immunized but somehow still managed to catch it. I wonder if she was somehow more susceptible to it since it is a respiratory illness and she's had respiratory problems in the past. That is just a theory I came with that has no medical or scientific backing at all. Anyway, it is very mild, because she was immunized, so it doesn't itch and she hasn't been sick (until we all got colds this week). The little bumps were mostly just on her stomach and back so you wouldn't even know she has it by looking at her.

Still, we've been staying in since we found out. I think they have all scabbed over but I guess we'll give it a few more days to be safe, since we're sick with colds now anyway. She hasn't been phased by any of this and affectionately refers to them as her "dots". We'll be glad when we're all feeling better. Good health is one thing I am always taking for granted. You don't realize how wonderful it is to wake up feeling good in the morning until you have gone through a few days of feeling crummy.

Before all this happened, we had a fun time at a joint birthday party at my sister's for three of her boys who have birthdays in January.

I love Natalie's face in this picture with Grandma and cousin Emily

Presents! Elizabeth loved watching and gearing up for her birthday coming up soon...

The three birthday boys around their cake
Scarfing down some cake

Thanks again guys! It was a lot of fun to be with everyone.

Potty-time

I am potty training Natalie as we speak. It was a spur of the moment decision one morning when she decided to go in the potty. She is actually doing pretty well. She had one accident yesterday.

Today I was falling into the trap of thinking, "I think she has it down! What if she's one of those kids who never has an accident again once they understand? How great would that be?" (Side note: I wish moms who have such luck/skill/memory loss would keep it to themselves because it just creates impossible expectations for the rest of us. Thank you for your consideration. :) Even as I was thinking those thoughts, the danger light came on in my head. I knew I should stop thinking that or disappointment would surely follow. Sure enough, she pooped in her pants.

Still, I really do think it will stick this time. We're both more committed to it. Wish us luck!

Back to Normal

Joe was back at school this week and we all got back into our routines. The girls and I managed to survive the week, despite some difficult moments. Mostly with Natalie. Elizabeth has been doing great lately. There have been occasional lies, so we've been working on that. One actually worried me with how skillful it was.

I was upstairs showering while the girls were playing with play dough. When I came down, Elizabeth came running into the room with a guilty smile on her face. I asked her what was going on and she said, "I just love you, Mom. I just like to be with you." Since I had no proof of anything, I chose to believe the compliments (and am still choosing to believe that they contain some truth :). Later I found her showing Natalie a candy wrapper that she had hid and found out she snuck some chocolate. She is definitely moving into the stage of being able to lie without me knowing it, which is scary.

Still, despite that, she is doing great. Her prayers are wonderful lately, so thoughtful and sweet. She prays for people to make good choices and for our whole family. The other day at lunch she said, "Thank you that we can all be together, except one" (referring to Daddy).

Natalie has been having kind of a rough time lately. It's just the usual tantrums, whining and crying, but it seems to have reached a new level. Whenever I say no to her about anything, it is proceeded by loud crying and/or angry tantrums. We had a particularly hard day on Wednesday, which was unfortunately a shopping day. We went to two stores and she basically screamed and cried the whole time. Over there only being one kid-sized cart and having to take turns with Lizzie; over not getting every single item at the grocery store that she desired; over the horrible snacks I brought--no wait, I actually do want those snacks! You get the picture.

I don't really know why I'm recording this, except that it is honest. This is a part of motherhood. I think my kids are the best kids in the world, but they don't always act like it. That's really OK. I don't always act like the best mother, either. Sometimes I think that my job is to guide them to the right path, and other times I think that my job is just to not screw up and corrupt their little innocent spirits. I guess it's both.

I watched the CES devotional with President Monson the other day and I was struck during the part where he talked about how someone had done a study that determined that children at the ages of 2 and 3 are at the peak of their learning. Especially what they observe around them. Whoa, I thought. That's the exact ages of my children. That was a pretty sobering thought. I hope I am helping to fill their minds with good things and that I am being a good example. I hope I am teaching them through my words and actions that the most important thing is to admit when we've made a bad choice and to try to be a little better.

Anyway, of course, despite our struggles, there have been wonderful moments, too. Just tonight we were having fun playing Memory as a family. Elizabeth is so good at that game and really schooled us the first round. Joe fought back to win the second round. Elizabeth is all about winning lately and is always saying she won and Natalie lost, in various games she makes up. Luckily, as yet Natalie is unconcerned about this. Tonight as we were laying the cards out for the second round, Elizabeth said, "I hope I win!" Natalie then said, "I hope I lose!"

The other day I found the girls like this in the kitchen, saying they were making snow angels:

They're Californians, now. They have to improvise.

One day, Elizabeth was so excited to see Natalie wake up from her nap so they could play. I was able to catch their reunion on camera:

They begged me to make these crowns from The Friend the other day. I took these pictures of them wearing them while watching Super Why. So, in the picture they are putting their hands in to help. (If you've watched the show, you get that, if not, don't worry about it. :)
Absorbed in the show

Another thing I wanted to mention is that a goal of mine for the New Year is to eat healthier. Nothing drastic, I'm just trying to get more whole grains into our diet and give more attention to fruits and vegetables in our meals. So far it's been great! It feels good. The girls are definitely on board. I gave them quesadillas with whole wheat tortillas the other day and they didn't even notice. That helps a lot. I got a new healthy cookbook for Christmas and have made some great new meals that we all liked. It helps that I bought a gigantic bag of spinach at Costco that we're trying to use before it goes bad, too.

I've decided I actually love Trader Joe's. I always thought it was some elitist, overpriced health food store but a lot of the food was actually pretty cheap. We got a huge thing of blueberries for cheaper than they would have been on sale at a normal store, and they are lasting and not going bad right away. They had samples of food and balloons, which are both great for the kids. I'm a believer.

OK, this post has gone on enough. Life is good. :)

Hawaii!

Ah...where to begin? We loved our trip to Maui. My parents took us to Maui for a week and it was wonderful. I had been to Maui once before when I was 13 and Joe had never been. We were both looking forward to some time together after surviving the first semester of law school. It just so happened that we celebrated our 5th anniversary while we were there, too.

We flew out of Boise the day after Christmas. We had only a short layover in Seattle and so we were worried when we realized our first flight was delayed. We had to literally run across the airport to our next flight and we made it just in time. Our bag wasn't as fortunate... :(. We had to admit, though, that being in Hawaii without our stuff was still much better than not being in Hawaii. We landed Friday night and ended up getting our luggage midday Sunday, so it wasn't too bad. We were kind of a scrappy looking couple in church, though. :)

We got to do a lot of fun stuff while we were there. Joe golfed twice with my dad and I laid out by the pool and swam in the ocean with my Mom. Joe and I got to go to a luau one night and see a world champion fire-dancer guy.

Here's a boat-load of pictures of all of our adventures:

Here's right after we got our clothes on Sunday. Joe laughed at me because I was complaining about not having any good clothes right after we got our bag. Such a girl thing to do...

All of the pictures with my parents are on my dad's camera so I might post more if I get copies of those. These are just a whole bunch of us.

Joe and I decided to drive up the road to Hana on Monday and had a great time. I would definitely recommend it to anyone going to Maui, although it did take most of the day and we didn't even travel the whole road.

We hiked up this path
(Note: Some of these pictures are poor quality since they were taken with a cheapie waterproof camera. I even ruined some of them when I couldn't remember how to correctly wind the film back by hand.)

Stopping to pose
We loved these Rainbow Eucalyptus trees.
A view of the road

We stopped at this stand so Joe could get a coconut and some avocados. The woman there chopped the coconut with this huge machete. Joe learned that eating almost all of a large coconut + driving a long, winding road = carsickness. Luckily he wasn't too sick.

Another view

We stopped to see a little mountain pool and decided to take a dip. It was freezing but so worth it.

We stopped at the Waianapanapa Black Sand Beach and swam in the ocean there. It was beautiful.

We saw this stand and got a little homesick for our kids back in Twin Falls.

Tuesday was an awesome day. We got to go on a helicopter ride with my parents. Unfortunately, we didn't have the best of weather so we didn't get to see as much. Still, it was amazing and pretty surreal to be riding in an actual helicopter. The views were beautiful. The maneuvering of the helicopter was frightening but fun.

Our helicopter

These are some of the highest sea-cliffs in the world (on Moloka'i island)

They say this island looks like a sleeping elephant.
I definitely see it.

These next pictures are from Thursday, when we got to snuba. It's a cross between scuba and snorkeling where the oxygen tanks float on rafts and you are connected by a long tube. So, you can go like 20 ft under and you don't need any certification. It was really fun and I would highly recommend it. Joe especially loved it was talking about even getting certified to scuba dive in the future.

Us with my dad
Most of the pictures of the fish aren't very good. I guess nothing compares to being there underwater.

We didn't see any turtles but we did get to interact with this octopus.
We also saw a ton of whales and some dolphins while we were on the boat.

After eating dinner with my parents, we went out on our anniversary to go see the movie Austrailia. We had time to kill beforehand so we played around at a little arcade by the theater. We played a bunch of skee-ball, air hockey, and had mini-basketball competitions. Of course I have to mention that I won at skee-ball and basketball and we tied 1-1 in air hockey :). We both really liked the movie, too. As simple as it seems, that night was actually one of the highlights of the trip for me. I just love how much fun I have when I'm with Joe. I can't believe it's been 5 years now. I know to some of you that probably seems like nothing but it's a big deal to me. It has been a wonderful 5 years.

I definitely don't think we're going to top this anniversary for quite awhile... :)

One of Joe's favorite things was to look at the tide pools so I'm putting these pictures in for his benefit:

An eel he saw
A hermit crab in a shell
Sea urchins

I like tide pools but I can't spend as much time looking at them as Joe can. Maybe it's because of the field trips to tide pools in elementary school.

This is what I was doing while Joe explored:

I love swimming in the ocean. I think it's one of my absolute favorite things to do. I love to swim out as far as I can before I get scared. I love to float. I love to body-surf in the waves and feel like a little kid again. I love that scared/excited feeling when a big wave is coming at you. I even love getting rocked by a big wave. Sometime I'd like to try surfing. It was wonderful swimming in ocean water that wasn't freezing cold.

And of course, it wouldn't be a Hawaiian trip recap without pictures of beautiful sunsets.

We had such a great time and we can't say thank you enough, Mom and Dad, for letting us come with you. We had so much fun hanging out with both of you. It was amazing being surrounded by so much beauty. It was sure nice to wear shorts and flip-flops, too, after being in a snow storm in Idaho :). We love you!

We also can't thank Marsha enough for taking care of our girls while we were gone. How can we ever repay you? It was so nice to just be together and to know the girls were in good hands. Thank you again! By the end of the week, we were really missing them and were excited to come home. We had three flight legs on the way home and some long layovers so it took awhile but we finally made it. They were so excited to see us and gave us big hugs. I cried, of course. Natalie was being so sweet and just kept looking at me and smiling. Elizabeth gives the tightest hugs ever. It was nice to feel loved. Trips like these are great for realizing how much I take my time with my girls for granted. I'm so thankful for such sweet, precious daughters.

After we got back from Hawaii, we spent a day longer in Idaho with Joe's mom and brothers and their families, who were all in town for a little reunion. Then, we drove down to Logan to his dad's for a night. Elizabeth started throwing up that night but was luckily fine in the morning. Then, it was down to Salt Lake (which took 3 hours because of snow!) where we spent one night at Jon and Jaime's so Joe could quickly visit a friend in Provo. Unfortunately, Natalie got sick that night and threw up all night. We had been planning on leaving in the morning and just decided to go, even though she threw up as we were getting ready to go. Blessing of all blessings...she actually did pretty well. She threw up once while we were stopped for lunch so it wasn't too bad and we could clean her up right there. Then, she didn't throw up again until we were about 10 minutes from home. Somehow, we made it.

Needless to say, after a red-eye flight and sick kids, we were both pretty exhausted and were so happy to be home.

Well, I doubt anyone made it to the bottom of this post and that's OK. What a great trip!

Let the Catch-up Begin...

We're back and I wanted to kick off a string of blog posts about our Christmas vacation with these Santa pictures. Almost a month ago we got to attend the annual gathering of my Californian siblings for Christmas, in which Santa is always the honored guest. He is actually a friend of my parents who dresses up every year (yes that beard is real!).

The girls did great with Santa this year--no one cried!

Natalie nonchalantly sharing a princess book with Santa

It was kind of a different story when she found out she would be required to sit on his lap. So, we eased into it.

The three of us

Success! She's on his lap...
She told Santa she wanted a little broom.

Elizabeth took her time deciding to go up but when she did, she did great!

I love this picture:

She told Santa she wanted a music box for Christmas.
Here she is with her well-earned candy cane:
Kari, my best friend of 20 years, came over to visit while we were in town and everyone forced us to go up and sit on his lap, as is also the tradition for anyone weak enough to give in to it (You can see who ended up on his lap and who didn't). :)
Here's a cute picture of Elizabeth and her cousin Brayden on the trampoline.

We love being able to attend these get-togethers now that we're in California!