Potty Training

When Landon was 2 years old, I found a book at a garage sale for $0.50 called Toilet Training in Less Than a Day. I bought it and tried it out on Landon when he was 2-1/2. It worked like a charm! I used it to potty train Gerren as well.

By the time Chase was ready to potty train, the boys were 5 and 7, both doing school. I did the one day of potty training, but had very little time to drop everything and run her to the potty the next day. After 4 or 5 accidents, I put her back in diapers. A few months later, she was asking to use the potty all the time, so we went back to underwear with success this time. However, on that day after potty training when she was having all the accidents, I said to Greg on the phone, "If we have any more children, you're potty training them."

I reminded him of this, and he agreed to potty train Carys. He read the book and set aside a Sunday for the big event. I took the rest of the kids out of the house (once they got their lazy bones out of bed). Before they did I managed to snap this picture.

You start the day by "teaching" a baby doll that wets to go "pee pee on the potty".


After the day was over, Carys was potty trained! Here she is in her big girl underwear.


As a side note, she was terrified to go "poo poo" on the potty, however, and would only go in her underwear. After three weeks of despair, I tried leaving her bottomless, so to speak, for the entire day. This has worked like a charm, and we plan to continue this until she has many days of success!

CAP Pool Party

Landon has been a member of the Citrus County Composite Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol for over a year now. Recently, Gerren decided he'd like to join, too. The Deputy Commander of Cadets and his family hosted the second annual pool party for this group. So, we all joined in the fun (except Daddy who was at work) last Friday.

A chess game was part of the fun...


so was an exciting football match.


Chase and Carys had a great time in the pool.


Landon is always interested in the food.


This is a picture of all the CAP members present.


It was incredibly hot (hence my hair being pulled back).


Shane and Landon joke around for the camera.


Thanks to my friend Mary for sharing the pictures with me!

Freedom Fest

On Thursday night, July 3, we headed for Brooksville for Freedom Fest. This was an event sponsored by the Joy FM and the Brooksville Ministerial Association as well as a few other groups. The headline of the evening was the free Matthew West concert (well, it cost $5 to park). The evening was awesome except for the 15 or so minutes of rain. We weren't very well prepared for it. The concert was fabulous! Here are a few pictures.

Carys smiles for the camera!


You weren't allowed to take food or drinks of any kind into the park. So, we planned ahead to eat there. Unfortunately, there really weren't a lot of vendors. We were thinking "fair food", but ended up with BBQ sandwiches, a cheeseburger, etc.


Landon's enjoying himself.


The fireworks were put together by the same company that does the Super Bowl fireworks, so they were really awesome.


The only downfall to the evening was the length of time it took to get out of the parking lot. We sat there until it was cleared before turning on the van. Gas is too expensive!

Newest Smilebox Layouts

Well, I've been busy over the last month, but we've finally managed to wrap up our Sonlight 3 and 100 from this past year. And, I've managed to begin exploring digital scrapbooking. Smilebox has been an awesome gentle introduction into this. My biggest issue now is finding a place to print them. My "loopy" friend Cynthia in Montana is going to have some printed at Costco for me. Meanwhile, I continue to look for an online place to do this. Anyway, I thought I could get a blog post done by posting a few of my latest Smilebox creations.

Some of these pics I've put on the blog before, but I thought I'd include them anyway since they can look completely different in these layouts!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today was Greg's 45th birthday! For six months, we'll be the same age. Then for the next six months, I'm older!




Per Landon's recommendation, we got him the new Civil Air Patrol Senior Member Corporate Uniform. This consisted of black dress shoes, a white aviator shirt with nameplate, a cap and device, and blue dress pants (which are on backorder).


He was totally surprised, which is saying a lot since he has guessed so many of his gifts in the past.


Carys thinks the hat is awesome!

A Very Superior Wife

I saw this test on my friend Dorothy's blog. Too funny!

92 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Superior Take the test!

I would have made a great wife in the 30's... by today's standards, who knows? At least I don't wear my stockings with the seam crooked. That counts if I never wear stockings, right? LOL! You get counted off for wearing pajamas instead of a nightgown. I didn't say I wear pajamas since I usually wear a nightshirt which is LIKE a nightgown, right? This test was FUNNY! (I can't figure out how to change the font color, but if you move your cursor in the box under where it says "Very Superior" it will highlight the "Take the Test" link. It's in a beige color on a white background and doesn't show up.)

Too Busy to Blog?

Since it's summer, I should have all this extra time to blog, right? Ha! We are still working on school. We're done with some things, but all the stuff that has 180 days (mainly Sonlight stuff) won't be done until July. I am thinking I'll just begin the next levels then, so we'll have some breathing room next year.

I've also been working on some "big" projects that require more time. I've been catching up on my scrapbooks. I've been learning a lot about digital scrapbooking from my SHS sisters, and I am ready to take the plunge as soon as I finish the pages for which I have already printed out pictures. I'm getting close to that point. I plan to create 12x12 digital pages, then have them printed like a huge photograph to put in my existing Creative Memories albums. That way, I can still do regular 3D pages when the need arises (like studio pictures on the kids' birthdays) and when I choose. I am seeing the advantage to digital, though. Yesterday, I was scrapping the Spring 2008 page in all four kids' albums. I had purchase a Spring Page Palettes kit from Creative Memories. However, there wasn't enough of one particular thing to do four identical pages. So, I had to come up with two different designs. With digital pages, that wouldn't be a problem. I could just swap out the photos for each child's book.

Here's one of my first Smilebox creations. I intend to save up and have a bunch of these printed at once.



I am also busy in the middle of evaluation season. I used to do one evaluation each afternoon. This took up our whole summer last year. This year I decided to try something different. I am doing 2 evaluation days each month. I scheduled the evaluations one after another. I had my first day this past week, and I liked it. It seems like it is going to be a good thing for our family.

I am also in the middle of planning for next year's school. I just placed my curriculum order today. Now, I will start writing course descriptions (high school courses only), making new schedules for each child, planning any new curriculum, etc. There's a lot of work involved in all of this, but it makes the school year much easier!

Here's a picture of Chase and Carys all dressed up before Chase's choir concert. The girls choir is under the direction of my longtime friend, Laurie Dodd. They were fabulous! Greg took some pictures of the concert, but... well, Greg took the pictures. Two of them were fuzzy and the other had all the girls looking like aliens with white eyes. Oh well!



Finally, I have to include this video of Carys spinning. It's so funny! Whenever we hold up the camera, she says "cheese" and then wants to immediately "see cute?" which means look at the screen of the digital camera. This doesn't work for a video. It was all Landon could do to get her to keep spinning while he filmed!