LEARNING TO SEW

I decided I needed to find out if I like sewing.  My friend Mandy is a great sewer, and was offering sewing lessons to earn money for a project.  I took her up on the offer, and found that I enjoyed making Emma this dress.  She wanted to put it on, then ran outside to slide.  Such a great play outfit! lol

Potty Training Revisited

 So last time I blogged about potty training, I thought we were on our way to being trained.  I was wrong.  We had a couple days where she decided she wanted to go, and then she refused again.

Looking forward, I knew that time was limited to dedicate a whole week to potty training.  In just a few weeks, Emma starts attending pre-school two mornings a week.  And then in October we are gone for two and a half weeks on vacation.  I decided that we needed to dedicate ourselves to this project once more.

I have become an avid Pinterest pinner.  I have been pinning everything I can find on potty training that I could find, and reading it for ideas to use with Emma.  I had used treats for going potty before with lots of party action with successes, but it was not taking.  I found one that made me realize that part of our problem was that Emma does not pee often enough for a day of potty training to be successful, so I needed to get more fluids in her. My daughter is a camel, and is dry when she wakes up in the morning, and doesn't go for an hour more. Then she only goes once or twice more that day.  I needed to increase this.

In this blog, it suggested lots of sweet and salty treats eating all day to increase fluid intake.  So here is Emma with her treat plate (my vege tray!).  After breakfast, we brought out the goodies to snack on.  She mostly ate the pretzels, gold fish and chocolate teddy grams all day.  And I also purchased a box of Capri suns.  By lunch time she had downed 4 capri suns, and gone potty twice.  We did not have a single accident that day.  Each time she went, we had special treats.  You can see the sucker she picked the first time in these photos. She loved that it turned her tongue green.

 I am now happy to report that Emma is wet trained.  We are still working on number 2, but I am hopeful that it will come with time.  It is a week and a half later, and we have only had two accidents without number 2, the last one over a week ago.  It has been a long time coming, but she finally is excited to use the potty and show herself to be a big girl.  Yeah!

Celebrating My Birthday

 We celebrated my birthday today.  We started our day at the Zoo.  It had been a few months since Emma and I went, and since Zoo Lights for Glenn.  We planned to arrive early, which ended up being a great idea.  We arrived before 10:00 am on a Saturday Morning.  The lot was starting to fill up, but there was still plenty of space.  I was glad we arrived when we did, as the place was full by the time we left.

Coming to the zoo was a great way for us to play with our new camera.  Emma insisted that she needed to see the Giraffe's, Hippo's and Zebra's so we started by going down through the Africa Exhibit, where they all were.  As it was still cool (soon to get really warm) the animals were still active and out eating.

Emma of course enjoyed climbing on all the statues (as usual) but the drums were blocked off as they were setting up for the concert that night.  By the time lunch came around, the park was getting crowded, and we were ready to head out for lunch.

After a quick lunch, we dropped Emma off with my parents, and Glenn took me out for a special date.  The movie "Hope Springs" had just come out, and I really wanted to see it.  As we waited for our movie time, we discovered a new park in Portland that we had not realized was there.  It is new, on the west side of the Fox Tower (where we saw the movie) and is a paved park.  What intrigued us was that it is built on top of a parking garage, and we could not figure out where the cars went in (since it is underground).  We finally asked an usher at the theater and found out it was connected to the Fox tower garage, and they entered there.  Mystery solved.

Anyway, the park also has a great water feature for kids to play in, and we were able to watch a Dance Troop performing under a covered stage area.  We need to return to explore more. I think the name of the park is the Directors Park and it is dedicated to Teachers.

So, the movie was great.  We decided that we brought down the median age as most in the crowd were older couples and groups of women.  It was fun anyway!

After the movie, Glenn took me to The Melting Pot for dinner.  We had been there several years previously for our anniversary.  We had a great time, and enjoyed just talking. Glenn did a great job for my Birthday.  Love you Glenn.

My Birthday Cake

 Since we had already gotten my birthday present (see Camera post!) and celebrated with my parents, I did not expect anything on my Birthday, but my Sweet Husband proved me wrong.  After running errands with Emma, I arrived home to find flowers had been delivered.  And then her arrived home with a cake and Moonstuck Chocolates!

Glenn decided that Emma needed to be involved in my birthday, so he brought home this cake with some Decorating Gel (Princess Glitter ones) for her to decorate.  He diligently worked on writing "Happy BD!! (found it was not very easy) which Emma proceeded to cover up.

The finished product!  We had a nummy dessert, and a great Birthday!

New Camera

 Several years ago (around 6) Glenn and I purchased a used Cannon Rebel SLR Camera.  We have since purchased many lenses for it, but have often wished for a newer model.  So this year, we decided that for both our birthday's and Christmas, we would purchase a new camera.  After lots of research, Glenn found a refurbished Cannon Rebel (need to stay in the Cannon Family for the lenses) EOS T3i for a good price. Today we received it.

 These are the first shots Glenn took with the new camera.  He cannot wait to go out and play photographer, something we have always loved doing but have not done very much of since Emma.  We tend to spend more time herding her! LOL

Oregon Air Show

 One of the mixed blessings about where we live is the annual Oregon Air Show at the Hillsboro Airport.  On the plus side, we can see most of it from our front yard (can't see anything on the ground.) On the negative side, it is loud for several days, and with a child who is scared of the big jets, this is not fun.

This year, we invited my extended family over to watch the air show and celebrate my birthday.  Unfortunately my nephew Army Man got sick, and so it was just my parents and us. Emma was bummed that her cousins were not there, but she loves Grandma Sally and Grandpa so much that she was excited to play with them.

So this years air show was on the hottest day of the year (102 degrees.) We had a good shade cover, but we were so hot.  At one point we let Emma run through the sprinkler, which helped to cool all of us down some. She even got to the point where she was cold, and had us turn it off. 

Hard to tell here, but the planes made a heart shape up there.  Most of our plane shots are too big to post on here.

The big attraction this year were the Thunderbirds ( or as Emma says, the "Underbirds").  This is how Emma enjoyed the Thunderbirds!  She was done with watching planes, and thought that they were too loud and scary.  Grandma ended up going in with her and playing little people.

We had a good day visiting with my parents and watching the planes.  And it was really nice to go into the air conditioned house after it was all done!