time to potty train?

So this morning Rylie came into the living room and said, "Oops - my diaper is falling off!" So she unzipped her jammies, took off her diaper, and said, "Hey, where are my wipees?" Then she found the wipes, took one, cleaned her own bum (she was just wet, thankfully!) and grabbed a new diaper. Had it been a pull-up she might have been able to complete the process all on her own.  Too bad she's terrified of the toilet...Do we really want to start this before the new baby is born? Do I put her in pull-ups during the day and "test the waters"? Or do I chalk it up to a smarty pants who likes to be independent, but don't push the potty training yet?

New pictures, finally!

Ok, so I've updated our picasa web site with lots of pictures (remember: the link to the website is on the right side of this blog, just below my "profile,") but I wanted to put a few pictures up here. Hopefully  I've got this done in time for Cam and Kym to see on their once-a-month trip to a computer there in Africa!

I've included a picture of my little birthday party that we had this evening when Dan was home. It was a great little party, and the kids made me sweet cards and I got some cute presents from Grandma Jill and Auntie Doone.

Also, after a few snafus with the swingset company, we finally got all the parts to put together the swingset that both Grandmas and Grandpas got the kids for Christmas. And Dad was here this past weekend to help us put it together (which I'm sure Dan appreciated as well, since he won't have a free weekend for some time to come!) It's been super cold here, but the kids have bundled up at least once a day to go play on the swings and the slide. (And the day we set it up, they used the slide to stop the wind as they huddled in their little makeshift blanket tents to wait.) I love having it, though, and we're all so thankful for our sweet, generous grandparents!

Oops...it's been awhile!

I promise that we didn't disappear after Halloween. Life got really busy thru November and December and hasn't slowed much since then but we are doing our best. This is actually Dan making a blog entry, my first one, so I hope this goes over alright. I'm not as eloquent or grammatically correct as Shell is but I'll just give you the facts.

The holidays were great, we really wish we could have made it out to Lake Havasu for Thanksgiving. We really miss that yearly trek and spending time with my family. I realized that I haven't seen my sister's family since we moved out here to Georgia almost 2 1/2 years ago. Fortunately work will take me out to Tempe in late March and I think I'll stay an extra day or 2 and go see them. We spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with Shell's family once again. We had a great time and the kids are always happy to go to Grandma and Grandpa's house. The kids were excited for Santa to come and visit and we were pleasantly surprised by a little extra from the UGA athletic association which made it just a little nicer for the kids. Both sets of grandparents chipped in together to buy us a swingset which we finally got together this weekend (there always seems to be missing parts on those kind of things). The kids are already loving it! 

But with January it was back to school and work. I'm now heading into my busy time of the year. We had our first indoor track meet this weekend in Lexington, KY and I won't be done with indoor and outdoor track until mid June. It makes for many weekends away from home but at least it's a job and with the state of our economy right now...that isn't so bad. Shell is teaching her mon/wed night class again this semester and we're hoping the baby can wait to show up until that's mostly done. Our days and nights are very busy and we get small windows of time where we see each other so we try to make the most of them.

As for the baby, well he and mommy are doing well. For those that don't know yet we are having another boy. That will even things up at our house at 3 and 3, a nice well rounded family. We have no idea on a name yet and really haven't discussed it much. When we have it usually consists of Shell suggesting names and me shooting them down. So we've still got quite a way to go there. We are excited, nervous, a bit scared, and happy all at once.

Well I'm going to end here. We really are going to try and do better with the blog and posting more pictures also. Until later...