eat sleep and farm

Ethan had a huge breakthrough today! He has gone on the potty (all by himself) more than 3 times! This has been very exciting for me, as I've been wondering if any of this is making sense to him. Thanks to those of you who have been praying. I appreciate it! He said he wants to keep his big boy underpants dry ALL day tomorrow. I think its a nice goal. :)

Ethan and Rachel are in the bathtub right now and Rachel is yelling that everything is "petty" to her. She's holding a Buzz Lightyear toy and saying "Oh.... petty!!!" Poor thing. We need to get more girly bath toys. :) Ethan started asking her what colors on Buzz that she thought were pretty. She doesn't know her colors, so she's just sort of rambling on in her own little language. He wasn't satisfied with her answer, so the following is his response to her. "Rachel. Colors come from the rainbow and the rainbow comes from God. You won't know that until you're 2, okay? Some things you don't know until you're 2, Rachel. Did you know how God got the rainbow to give colors? You tip it u-side down and then squeeze it. Like ketchup, Rachel. Remember Mommy shakes it and squeezes it? That's how God goes to the rainbow to make colors. When you see Him do that you have to say "Oh, fank you, God!" and then He will say "Yo...

She climbs up on the stove... To get to the drawer with her pacifiers! Wearing her brother's hat on our way to church!

I have kind of an odd question for you readers. I'm curious what you ladies typically eat for breakfast. I find that breakfast food NEVER fills me up and is often too sugary and leaves me feeling shaky and starving within and hour. I know eggs are probably a good thing to eat, but they're not my favorite. Maybe I could get a little more creative with them? I'm often times in a big hurry in the morning and so I grab yogurt and maybe a Z-bar, but come on... that's a terrible breakfast. So, if you care to, please share your ideas with me! I know they say breakfast is the most important meal of your day, so I'd like mine to be worth something. :)

Rachel can officially count to 10! I was doing a puzzle with Ethan today and it had numbers on it. He was missing a few, so to help him figure out which numbers he needed, we were counting from 1-20. Rachel was in her room playing and we all of the sudden heard her saying "un, two, free, fow, five, sits, heven, ate, nine, TEN!" Ethan and I jumped up from the table and ran into room and asked her to do it again for us, but of course... she doesn't perform on demand. She did count for Daddy when he got home from work, so at least we know she really can do it. :) Anyway, thrilling news.

"Mommy... If you marry me, I will give you babies." Ethan's quote-- following him asking me why I still don't have babies in my tummy. I told him I wasn't sure why and he's decided he does know why. :) He's also learned how to use the word "couple". Kind of odd, but I thought it was pretty good for his age. He sees things in 2's and 3's and he'll say "Oh! There's a couple pictures we can look at!" I'm his mom, so its amazing to me... humor me. :)

Hello Readers, I'm taking my website setting off of private for a couple reasons. I think it makes it harder for you all when you have to sign in every time you want to view the site, its harder for people to set it on the feed reader and quite honestly, if someone wants to get pictures of my kids and use them wrongly... they'll figure out a way. Unfortunately Blogger isn't as secure as they'd like us to think. :) So... don't be alarmed if you go to log in and don't have to. -Stef

Might be a strange thing to ask prayer for, but I'm feeling like I could use it. :) I'm potty training Ethan this week... next week... as long as it takes. He's doing well so far. I think what helped this time was me telling him "there's no more diapers". He doesn't think he has the choice to go back, so he's just moving forward. Thanks for the tip, Mom! We're at that rough place where he still won't tell me when he needs to go... he relies on me setting the timer and taking him every 25 minutes. But, if I do that we have minimal accidents, so that's good. Please pray that I would have patience and that he would learn quick. This is only day 2, so I'm very proud of his quick progress. His goal is to be done by his 3rd birthday, so he has only a couple more weeks. The sticker chart has helped greatly and we got this cool potty chair at Target that really seems to have helped. It plays music when you pee into the potty and so it gives you...

Getting our nails done at our girlfriend reunion and then having Jason's family over on Sunday afternoon!

Our week got started off in full swing! Among our daily activities, we had fun at a play date at our friends house. Heather has 3 kids, Emma (4), Jack (18 months) and Will (3 months). Ethan loves playing with Emma and Rachel and Jack are good buddies. I also uploaded some pictures of the kids during the very stormy, rainy days this past week, being cute and cuddly in R's bed. Ethan went and got books and told me he was "reading" to Rachel. :)

Ethan's newest quote this week... "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

We've been really enjoying this weather lately. Ethan has been fighting off what looks like the beginnings of a cold. I've been using all these home remedies to try and keep it from turning into a full fledged cold and so far... they're working!! He looks totally healthy today, so yay! Anyway, this morning the kids got up at the same time and wanted to lay in our bed, so they cuddled in and I turned on cartoons. They both looked adorable all cuddled in with their blankets and sippy cups. I took some pictures, but I have to wait for Jase to come home tonight so I can use his laptop to upload them. Today we're going to our friend Emma, Jack and Will's house. I almost don't want to go out in the rain, but the kids are so excited to go play with their friends and I could use some adult time. :) Happy Thursday!

My friend Jennafer Rippee has a family blog that she has had a hard time keeping up, due to technical troubles. We went to their house today for the afternoon and Jason helped her fix it, so she's up and running again! For those of you who care, I've posted her blog link in my side bar.

I (sadly) had some difficulties with my last theme. I think it was my fault and something I was doing wrong in the html code. It was driving me nuts though, because editing anything on the site was taking forever. So... for now I've found this one and have done only a small amount of fixing it up and I like variety of colors. I'm going to keep this and continue working on the piano theme for a later use. In the meantime, bear with me. ;)

Here are just some random pics of us around the house. The first two are my favorite.... yesterday Rachel was in search of her favorite blanket. I told her it was in the dryer getting nice and warm and then 5 minutes later, she was no where to be seen. I looked all over the house, starting to panic and then heard laughing and giggling coming out of the laundry room. I walk in there and there she is... IN the dryer! I thought it was funny and so took some pictures, but Ethan was very disturbed and wanted her out of there immediately. :)

New Year's Eve/Day were a total blast! Our friends from Sacramento came and spent the night and we partied... way too late. :) I think it was 3:30 when Jase and I finally went to bed and then the kids were up shortly after 7am. Ahhhh, the life of being a parent! We actually all did fine after we had our coffee. Just as I was starting to regret staying up so late, I reminded myself that its only once a year. :) Here are some pictures from our time with them.

We went to the McFarland's house the Saturday after Christmas and played some wii and had great fun! Here are some pics from that day, plus the following day was Joey's 20th birthday and the last picture was taken of him just before blowing out his candles .

Most of California has been hit with this huge storm and I hope it continues on a little longer. I'm enjoying the rain and hearing the wind and such. So cozy to be tucked away in the house with the fire going and candles lit. As many of you know, our backyard is yet to be landscaped (starting day is in less than a month though!!) and so its also not leveled. There's just a huge lot full of clay like dirt and a retaining wall that we put in last summer. If you go to our back door and look outside, it looks like we've got one dirty lake forming out there. All the rain has really been flooding our yard. So much so, Jason said he might have to go to Home Depot and buy some sand bags to keep it from coming too close to our back door. I have some funny quotes from Ethan upon seeing the yard (he goes and looks out the back door probably once an hour, making sure we're still safe, but pretending Rachel is the one who's worried and not him). "Mommy? If the house floods ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =XK97CHQZhq0