Saturday was a day to celebrate, at least at our house! We started the day by celebrating the high school graduation of Andrea, a strong and courageous young lady!
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Next we celebrated with my family, an early Father’s Day!
A good view of our most recent family pictures~
One of the activities that Zach has enjoyed this school year besides being at home with Dad is School Readiness. The teacher, Mrs. Kay, comes out once or twice a month and spends an hours with him working on items that will prepare him to enter Kindergarten. Every other month they have a special activity that the kids can attend. This month was “Busy Town”. Zach has been waiting for this!!! Each child brought a riding toy, no bikes.
They “drove” around to the different stations, check out Zach’s favorites….
Life is going at its usual hectic pace around here so this is the prefect way to update with things going on.
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I am so excited, the biggest and best milestone has occurred at my house. Zach is finally completely potty trained even at night. This means that I have bought my last pull up/diaper EVER! Let me repeat after 8 consecutive years of buying diapers/pull-ups I AM FINISHED!
Each of my children has been very different in regards to potty training. Both Amanda and Haley, were completely trained before they were 2 years old. In fact, I think I remember Haley being trained before 18 months. Lily was also a very early trainer, I distinctly remember that she was completely out of diapers/pull ups prior to Kendall’s birth. Lily was 2.5,when Kendall was born. Kendall does everything on her own terms. The last time she wore a pull up was during our Disney trip in April 2011. I seriously debated keeping her in pull ups during the day at Disney but she refused! Kendall was 33 months old during this trip.
Then we have Zach, he currently is 4 .5 years old. He has been trained during the day for a year but continued to pee regularly at night. We finally decided that we had to get serious. So we made him wear underwear to bed. To our surprise and amazement, he did not pee the first night but did the second night. Our strategy worked and less than 3 weeks later, he has had only 2 accidents at night!
Join me in my happy dance!
On Christmas Eve, I received a phone call that provided proof of how busy this fall has been. The portrait studio called to remind me that I could pick up my pictures. “You must have the wrong person” was my first reply. After a couple of confirmation questions, I realized they were talking about Zach’s birthday pictures that we had made the first week of September. I honestly had completely forgotten about them. If you know me or have seen the inside of my house or even “enjoyed” my wordless Wednesday post you realize, I love pictures, to completely forget about pictures is not something I would normally do. We just have stayed extremely busy with all kinds of activities. This phone call proved what I had already decided to do for Christmas, enjoy some quiet relaxing non busy time at home.
I am glad to report that this has been a success. The plan for today is a little shopping and dinner with friends but in reality if I ended up at home until time for dinner so be it.
Christmas Eve was spent catching up on some chores and make breakfast for the next several morning. Amanda and Scott arrived at noon, some opening of presents and a quick trip to Walmart, resulting in all the kids enjoying new toys for an hour. My dad called and we left to go over for my family celebration. It was fun and relaxed with lots of laughing and some more gifts. I can’t forget the traditional game of Rook, that was won by myself and my brother! The kids were exhausted and all asleep early by 7:45pm.
Christmas Day was even less eventful. We did awake early, Santa had arrived! Another area that has been successful this year is we greatly scaled down Christmas. The little kids received one gift from Santa; Zach a drum set and headphones, Kendall and Lily both American girl dolls. Stockings had candy only. In addition, each had 2 additional presents from us, one from Grandpa Abbott and one from Aunt Deanna under the tree. But the lack of 6-10 gifts a piece was not noticed. We had a quick easy breakfast of bagels with the entire morning spent playing with the toys. The little kids have been the most engaged and happy I can remember. Amanda is working today but checked in this morning and Haley stayed till breakfast. She has spent the rest of the day celebrating with her Dad’s family. Everyone, well except Matt, stayed in pajama’s all day and alternated playing together and alone.
I can honestly say this has been one of the best most relaxing Christmas’s in memory.
First thing this morning the little ones helped make French Toast….
After finishing a few chores, we decided to play some board games…
Next Amanda and Scott came over and we opened a few presents….
Finally we headed over to Pawpaw and Granny where there was lots of fun and even more presents…
We ended the night by reading the Birth of Christ from Luke and of course some milk and cookies for Santa.
This has been a long week for me. I know that my life and circumstance is no where as near difficult as some around me but some days I just want to feel sorry for myself. But instead today I am going to list all the things that I am thankful for this week.