Can it be? Is that Kate on the potty? Kate gave me a false alarm when she was 19 months and wanted to go on the potty. She'd take off her pants and sit and then walk off to pee on the floor. Because of that I haven't pushed her to potty-train until she really seemed ready. A couple of weeks ago she started into a very common occurrence of taking off her clothes. Then the day of the picture she just started telling me she had to go and went in and went. It was such a perfect day with no accidents and then...the stomach flu hit. What timing! I knew what it was because I had just had it 2 days before. It slowed things a bit but she's still in panties most of the time.
This is what we found in our kitchen the other night-a "Giant Crab Spider". They're found in Arizona but never in my house! We've had maybe 5 in the yard and garage total since we've been here for 4 years and it is not welcome inside. They have a painful bite but are not poisonous. We captured it and then let it go in the garden since they are good for pest control. They look more like a little animal than a spider to me.
These pictures are from "Decade Day" dress-ups as a part of spirit week. I made the kids dressed like my high school days and showed them pictures of the hair and pegged pants from my yearbooks. When putting pants on Rachel she came across a pair with a hole in the knee and refused to wear them for that reason. I told her it was cool back then and we would actually purposely tear them in the knee. Rachel's reply was, "So you guys tried to look cool by looking really dumb?" Exactly Rachel! That's why you shouldn't try too hard to be popular-decades later it doesn't matter.
Our neighbor and friend came home the other day with some fish (and without the boat. It hit a rock-a very large Lake Powell rock-and ripped up the end of the boat.) The kids went over to see the fish and when I arrived outside I came upon this very interesting scene-the men gutting the fish with Andrew and 6 little girls excitedly watching up close. I had to get a picture because they were all enjoying it so much. Then Derrick told them to kiss the fish head-hence the other pictures.
Here are some shots from soccer. The season just ended this week. Both Rachel and Andrew played very well for their first time in a league-especially Rachel who missed out on a few years. Andrew wanted to try an optional tournament where they kick balls into goals of decreasing sizes. He won his division (nearly 100%) and was invited to go to Winslow to compete again. It was on a Sunday and Winslow is a long drive, so we opted out, but we were proud. Again, they both played really well and had a great time. I will not miss the meltdowns Kate had many nights there on the soccer field when it was time to go, or nursing when I needed to pull Kate off the field or out of the goal, but I will miss the warm fall evenings at the soccer fields.
Pictures of Ryan over the last few weeks. I love the one of him next to Andrew at soccer awards because it shows his nice big jowls-which we love!
Lastly, a blurb about our first real family canning experience where we took the kids and ourselves all the way through on our own. We made 32 quarts of applesauce over Conference weekend and then Steven made 3 nice apple strudels.
