Summa time....

I have some serious catching up to do. Now that summer is over I need to re-cap what we have been up to. I just love this picture of Kylee, my little cheer leader! I hope she likes sports or I won't know what to do with myself :)We did a lot of swimming in Papa and Grammies pool! Kylee can swim all by herself with her cool floaty and is getting pretty confident. I think I will sign her up for swim lessons next summer.

In JUNE he kids and I headed to St George with my mom to visit some family. Kylee had so much fun playing with her second cousins and loved all the attention. We went to this really fun water park and it was nice to cool off from the heat.

We love our Uncle Bill and Aunt Pam!

Kylee also said goodbye to her cousins Travis and Tyler. They moved to St George where their dad got a great job teaching Math!! We are so happy for them and can't wait to visit. Kylee misses them very much and asks to play with them all the time.
July 4th weekend my family always gets together to have a bond fire. This is the first time in two years we have been able to go!! We were so happy to spend time with the Pooles and Williams.

Aunt Kiley and Uncle Arch

Our family. Austin is sleeping and hiding from the wind.

Gramps even made it out on the sand!

Kylee and her Uncle Shane :)

Uncle Reed and Papa.

Aunt Tasia and Austin!

We had so much fun with Uncle Shane and Aunt Tasia!! Come visit again soon!!

We also got to see our great friends the Neville's and meet their new sweet baby Nora!!
On the actual 4th of July we stayed home and swam and avoided all the crowds. Kylee loves to help mommy bake cookies!

We watched an awesome firework show at the ball park in Yorba Linda. I love the patriotic music they play. Austin slept through the whole show and Kylee ran around in circles, but I enjoyed it.

This is random, but Jeremy brought home these AMAZING cupcakes for us! YUM.

Austin loved his turtle to keep him a float in the pool!

In August we spent time in Newport Beach with our cousins. It was so beautiful and Kylee loved being with the big kids. She even played a little golf!

and learned how to play ping pong...

and swam all day without a nap!! Now that's a vacation. I couldn't even get her out of the pool for lunch.

We love this smiling face.

He loves taking naps with his Daddy! I don't know how many pics I have of the two of them like this :)

We also said goodbye to our Aunt/Sis-in-law Lacey :( She moved to AZ and has a beautiful house and an awesome job. We can't wait to visit her!!
September started the season of college football. This is a big deal in our family. We had a college game day party Labor Day weekend at my parents house. Kylee loves her Papa, and this is her new favorite thing to do with him.
This is my yummy Corn and Chili Salsa (Trader Joe's) with black beans and avocado. Try it, it is amazing! My healthy snack on a day full of junk food.

Austin couldn't get close enough to the TV. Go USC!!!

Kylee doing her favorite thing again... baking cookies in the kitchen.

Last family beach trip. Although we have gorgeous weather and will probably go again, fall is already booking up!! My two happy kids :) Jeremy had the best idea this trip. We ate our sandwiches on the grass hill overlooking the ocean before going down. This way we didn't have to deal with food and sand! Because Kylee freaks out if she gets sand on her food, this was the best solution, and a great picnic view!

I was worried with Austin crawling now that he would be all over the place! I brought a few toys and he did great! Then he fell asleep :)

Austin loves to give really tight hugs and I'm so glad I got a picture of this.

Out

Austin is now 1o months old!! He is 30 in long (97%) and weighs 21.5 lbs (55%). He is standing alone but hasn't tried to take a step yet. He is loves to clap and play patty-cake. He loves being super messing during meal time and loves to spit out his food at you. He says, mama, dada, uh-oh and mop. He still doesn't care for naps at home but is so easy going in the car, stroller, or anywhere else for that matter. He loves to fall asleep on me in Relief Society in church which I think is the sweetest thing in the word.

Potty Training!!!

I can happily say that our sweet little Kylee is POTTY TRAINED!!!! I was not looking forward to doing this at all, but Kylee seemed "ready". She would ask to use the potty and sit on it for a while with out ever actually peeing. One day as she was sitting on the toilet before bath, I started the water and she started peeing in the toilet! I was excited because it was her first time. After that, she always went potty in the toilet before baths. I was nervous to start officially training her with schedules being crazy in the summer, and let's face it, I was dreading cleaning up accidents! When Jeremy and I got back from Vegas I knew I had to commit and get this thing done! I went out and bought all the princess stickers I could find and made her a potty chart. My plan was to keep Kylee outside ALL day (as much as possible). I gave her tons to drink! Apple juice, orange juice and chocolate milk. She started out fully clothed...
Then ended up in her panties. Here she is watching Beauty and the Beast. I had to take her to the bathroom every 10 minutes at first! Then I would wait an extra 5-10 minutes. It felt like we were going potty all day long! Luckily Austin took two extremely long naps (which is not like him at all!) so I had time to spend with Kylee on this.

Drinking more juice!!!

By the afternoon she was already sick of her stickers :( I needed to bribe her with something better, so I made cookies :)
When she went poo on the toilet for the first time she got a fudgecicle! Then I realized how gross that might look, so it was ottorpops from then on.

She loves wearing her princess panites!!

She did it! She actually filled up this chart the first day because we went so much. I had to make another one. The first day was hard. I think she had 5 accidents. I wanted to cry and give up. The second day was a little better. I just had to keep her motivated to go every 30 minutes. After a week she was telling me when she had to go! She even tells me at the park and the pool. I am so proud of her and thankful for how "easy" it really was. She is such a big girl now. Every time she pulls her pants down to go potty she says, "They're nice and dry mom!!!!"

7 months old

Our sweet little Austin is a few days shy of 8 months!!! That's right, this is just a recap of his 7th month of life. He is the sweetest little guy and so happy all the time. This month he finally started sleeping in his crib!!! His reflux has settled down enough that it is ok for him to sleep flat on his back. It was a few nights of crying at first but now he loves it. He loves to sleep on his tummy. He usually goes to bed around 7pm and wakes once at night to eat, then sleeps until about 6:30am. He went through a phase of waking at 5am for the day and we had to fix that right away. There was no way I could function getting up that early. He LOVES applesauce. He now has 4 teeth on the top and 3 teeth on the bottom! He has bitten me a few times on my shoulder, something Kylee never did. I started giving him rice puffs witch he loves. He has started to crawl witch means I need to be on the look out ALL the time.

He loves swinging at the park! He could sit in there forever, just like his sister.

He is still such a good traveler!! No joke, this baby can fall asleep any place, anywhere. I feel so blessed to have such an easy going baby. I usually try and stay home for his naps now that he is more on a schedule. He usually naps 9am, 1pm and 4pm. He is not a long napper :( That is why I usually just like to run errands and let him catch a nap when he feels like it. I know it's not ideal but he is a trooper and I am always home so he can take his afternoon nap in his crib.

The funniest thing happened the other day. It was in the late afternoon and Jeremy was rocking Austin while watch sports on TV. All of a sudden Austin starts rubbing his eyes. The next thing we knew.... he was out!!! What a crack up!!! Only his daddy can put him to sleep like this :)

Out cold. Thanks dad!

This picture was taken before Austin could crawl. He loved to just sit and play with his toys! As long as anyone was in the room with him he would sit there and be so happy.
Austin LOVES bath time!!! As soon as the water starts running he starts laughing and screaming! It's so nice that he can sit up now and I can bathe the kids together. It's much quicker and actually easier.

Austin loves to play on whatever toy Kylee is playing on. He will actually sit on this horse for a while. I am right next to him the entire time of course.

Austin is such a boy. He already loves to play and wrestle on the ground with daddy. I love my two sweet, smiling boys!

Rest and relaxation...

Jeremy and I were able to go on a vacation without the kids for the FIRST TIME EVER!!! At first I was feeling a little nervous and guilty, then a good friend said something I really liked, "Don't ever feel guilty for spending time with your husband. When the kids are gone it will only be you two, so love him!" After that I felt much better and was ready to have some much needed r&r time :) My mom and Dad were nice enough to watch the kids for us for three nights and four days. Jeremy had to go to Las Vegas for work, so we decided to make a quick va-ca out of it by going out early and taking some vacation time to add to the business trip. The first night we stayed at the Palazzo Resort at the Venitian. It was a BEAUTIFUL all-suite hotel! I'm pretty sure our hotel suite was bigger than our first apartment...lol.

Lobby of the Palazzo....

Living area of the suite...

Above: Our view of the strip. It looked cooler at night but my camera didn't do it justice.

Below: Our huge bathroom with a tv. Oh how I would love to get ready in here every morning.

I had to hop in the jetted tub that I could actually fit in!!

After checking in we headed down to a joint called I LOVE burgers. We ate lunch and watched the US women's world cup game!

This was my bbq bacon cheese burger with an onion ring. I think I finished all but one bite :) Jeremy had ground buffalo sirloin. Sidenote: There will be a lot of pictures of the food we ate on this trip. That was a highlight for me :) That, and the fact that I had several days to just lounge, relax by the pool, read a book, and hang out with my husband!

Inside the Canal shoppes

The 7 pools were AMAZING!!! My favorite part was that there were lounge chairs in the pool! You could get sun and stay cool. We could use the 7 pools at Palazzo or use the Venetian pools that were connected to the Palazzo. Love the man in the speedo in this pic...or as Jeremy calls them "Euro-mansuits"

Our hotel.

We were so excited to find out there was a Serendipity 3 on the strip because we were never able to visit the one in New York City. We tried the famous frozen hot chocolate and it definitely exceeded our expectations.

A little piece of heaven...

The last two nights we stayed at the Planet Hollywood Westgate Towers hotel. It was also pretty cool, it had a younger, hipper style and the pool was elevated right next to the strip and had a DJ playing music the whole time, but after staying at the Palazzo nothing can compare its equal.

For lunch we ate at The Earl of Sandwich. It was amazing!!! Best sandwiches we have ever had!

We stopped in to see the Sugar Factory. I wanted to get Kylee a giant sucker so bad, but Jeremy reminded me about the dental bill that would come of it years later so no luck.
Jeremy heard about an awesome NY style pizza parlor hidden in the Cosmo hotel. There is no address, it's just by word of mouth. It was the closest thing to true NY style pizza I have ever had!


Our last night we ate at China Poblana, a Chinese/ Mexican restaurant. It was my favorite by far!!! I got a carnitas taco and homemade corn tortillas with guac. It was amazing!!!! I know, I get excited about food way too much.


Our last night we stopped by Serendipity 3 again and spilt this amazing red velvet cake, hot fudge sundae! We could barley eat half of it, it was so huge! I think I gained 5 lbs this trip, but that's what vacations are for, right?
The day Jeremy had to work I was able to sleep in, read my book, go to the pool, and the best part, taking a 2 1/2 hr uninterrupted nap!!!
But the best part was coming home to these sweet faces!!! We missed the kids but it was nice to spend time with Jeremy and get re-charged! Thanks so much Mom and Dad!!!