April 29th

The summer temperatures have arrived! It hit the 100 degree mark today. We have been getting in the pool and enjoying our mornings and early afternoons outside before the day gets too warm out to play. I have learned that taking them both in the pool is a bit of a challenge! Tyler is not very comfortable in the water and he likes to cling to you. Emma, on the other hand, wants to just jump in--even though twice she lost her footing and got a face full of water!:) I am thinking that a move to a house without a pool might not be such a bad thing after all! A kiddie pool might be more our speed for the next summer or so.

Emma is my dare devil! She climbed up the steps to try to get herself on the rollercoaster!

We checked out a book about firefighters from the library and Tyler has focused ALL of his energy talking about fire, fire trucks, smoke dectectors, and any other thing that is related to the topic! He tells me about a hundred times a day that if the smoke detector beeps that we get out and stay out! He is so funny because once he gets on a topic he is stuck for quite awhile! I am glad however he has changed his interest from the garbage man---following the truck around the neighborhood and watching it dump trash was geting a bit old!:) Matt sent him a gift card for his birthday so we went and got him his own fire helmet-- he will tell you that he is only a firefighter not a chief because his helmet is red, not white.

I am not sure what the attraction to Mr Potato Head's glasses are but both my kids feel the need to wear the glasses around the house!

The whole time I was pregnant with Emma I said I thought I made a really good boy mommy and I would be perfectly happy having two boys. But I have to tell you my sweet girl is just the best! She melts our hearts a million times a day. I can't even begin to tell you how much fun I am having dressing her each day! Whenever she comes out of her room Tyler always says, "Look at Emma she is so cute!" I would give anything for that to never end!!!! She has been given so many pretty dresses so I am trying my best to get her picture in each of them. This cute little one was a birthday present from Katie.

My wonderful friend, Marie, and her beautiful boy, Evan, came over on Sunday. Here is a cute picture of Evan and Emma taking a break from playing to have a drink.

Tyler was great with the little ones. I can hardly wait to get back to Tucson so that we can get these kids together more often. Here is a sweet kiss before Evan had to go home.

Yikes!

Tyler's favorite thing to do lately is to go in to my closet and take out my shoes and try his best to walk in them! He is getting pretty good at walking in high heels! The shoes I am not too worried about...but this pose is little much!:)

Happy 3rd birthday Tyler!!!!!

Our big boy is three year old---can you believe it?

We had a wonderful day full of Tyler's favorite things. Marshall had to go to a breakfast meeting so we started off the day like normal by going to the gym---Tyler loves this because he has a friend named Ryan who is usually there. The best part about the gym that day was that because he is now three he can go in to the "game room." He spent the whole hour coloring and playing video games. He felt like such a big boy being able to go in there.

We got home and put Emma down for a quick nap while we got ready to go to the park. Marshall got home so we decided to give Tyler his birthday gift from us.......a Big Wheel!:)

He can't quite reach the pedals but he scoots it down the hall. This will go outside very soon! It has three spaces to move the seat back so I am hoping he uses it for a long time!

We headed off to the park where we enjoyed McDonald's for lunch.

As soon as we were done with lunch we fed our leftovers to the ducks and headed off to ride the train. Here we are with our sweet kids!

It was a beautiful day so we packed the kid's bathing suits and they played in the water in the splash pad that is at the park. Little Miss Emma is fearless---she didn't hesitate for a second she just ran out there and got in the middle of things.

After the park we headed home for naps. When the kids got up we let Tyler open the rest of his birthday gifts. Aunt Katie sent a guitar and Nana got him a soccer net.

I made Tyler's favorite dinner of bean burritos. The boy would eat this every single day! After dinner we enjoyed (Emma probably the most!!!) birthday cake.

It really was a wonderful day!

Long overdue update

Sorry it has taken me so long to update this. We have had a lot going on lately. We have one last couple trying to decide between our house and one other in the neighborhood so we are hoping that within a few days we will know if we have this place sold!:) If it does not sell we have decided to go ahead and rent it out for a year or so and wait for the market to rebound and then try again. We have a friend that is going to work for Marshall that would like to rent it so it looks as if we are going to be in Tucson before it gets horribly hot this summer.

It has been unbelievably windy here during the past week so poor Tyler is back to coughing---three to four times a day you will find him in this position.

Marie flew over here last week and stayed with the kids while Marshall and I went to a wedding in Tucson. It was wonderful we got to stay out all night and even got to sleep in past our normal 5:45am!!!

I am thinking that they must play superhero at the gym or else he has seen a cartoon there because Tyler has become fascinated with Superman and Spider-man. He pretends to talk to Superman on the phone and they discuss saving Emma and myself from danger. He also likes to pretend he is Spider-man and throw a web on me---I think he just likes to watch me fall to the floor and ask him to please release me!:) Marie bought him a pair of Superman pj's while she was here.


We got free check-ups while Marie was here. Emma still had an ear infection so we did another round of antibiotics for her. Both of the kids liked playing doctor with aunt Marie's cool Dr. stuff.

My dear friend Keli made Emma a tu tu for her birthday! Have you ever seen anything this darn cute?!?!

Tyler got to open an early b-day gift from aunt Katie. He is obsessed with singing and dancing (Dancing with the Stars and American Idol are two shows we TiVo and watch in times of chaos). Here is our little idol singing with his cool new Doodlebop microphone!

Growing up too fast!

I can't even begin to tell you how fast the last few years of my life have flown by! Tyler is about to turn three and has just suddenly morphed from my baby into this little man. In fact, if I call him "baby" or "little guy" I am quickly reminded by him that he is a "big boy!" He just does and says the funniest things. We were sitting outside the other day with our feet in the pool looking at all the golf balls and rocks that were at the bottom. I had already tried to get out the rocks but they are stuck in the drain and are going to require us getting in the pool to get them out--this won't happen until we have a few more VERY warm days in order for the pool to be warm enough for either Marshall or I to get in it!:) Anyway...he asked me to get out the rocks (which if I forgot to mention he threw in there) and I told him that I had tried and I couldn't get them. He just looked at me with his giant eyes and said, "Don't worry I'll use my muscles and get them out for you."

I had asked him to bring me something yesterday and he yelled across the room, "I can't help you I am busy right now."

Each night I read Good Night Moon to him and Marshall and he always try to say goodnight to everything on the last page as fast as they can. Tonight Marshall was gone so I did that with him but when I started to say goodnight to everything he said, "Don't do that Mom that is my Dad's job."

He can be a bossy little thing thing and we find ourselves having to turn our heads because he makes us laugh when we should be offering some type of correction or discipline!:)

I think he is enjoying his role as big brother to Emma. He loves to be the first person in her room in the morning to greet her. He has also decided that he is the person who is going to be in charge of teaching her what she can and can't do. He was very upset with her today because she turned off the TV--now I can remember just a few short years ago this same child standing in front of the same TV and turning it on and off over and over again.

While we were driving today I saw in the mirror that Emma had taken her clip out of her hair and had it in her mouth. I told her to take it out but I couldn't do much since I was driving. Thankfully I had little Brown with me to sit there and say, "No Emma we don't put those in our mouth." "Emma I just said stop" Emma, don't do that again." I guess that even though he doesn't always respond to me when I am talking to him I can tell that he does hear me since it sounds like mini me in the backseat!:)

Thankfully he does still have his moments when he wants to be my baby. Each night while I read to him he lays across my lap and has me scratch his back. He also promised me today that he would always crawl up in my lap and cuddle no matter how big he got-----I am writing that down so that in a year or two when he doesn't want to kiss or hug I can remind him of this day!:)

There are many days when he can be such a challenge but he can also be the sweetest little boy in the world and it just kills me that he is growing up so darn fast!

Emma is one and she is walking!!!!

Well, I felt guilty that I didn't do the big birthday bash for Emma like I did Tyler but as I look back on it her birthday seemed to have been celebrated a lot more than his was. We had her first "party" in Tucson on Easter, her second on the 30th when Marie was here with us, and her final one the night of her actual birthday. She loved being sung to and especially enjoyed the cake that always followed. She actually picked up a piece of ice cream cake and ate the whole thing----the little piggy cried when it was gone!:)

We got Tyler a chair for his room for his first birthday so I decided to get Emma one too. The one that Tyler has is from Pottery Barn and I was really disappointed in the quality of it so I had been on the hunt for a better one for Emma. I found this cute one at Target

The thing is.... Emma has decided that she likes Tyler's better and he is pretty fond of hers!

The biggest accomplishment of the birthday weekend was that she is now a full fledged toddler! She had been taking a step or two between us but the night before her birthday she took off! We had given her a bath right after the whole ice cream cake mess so she had time to play before we put her to bed. We were all sitting around in the living room and she just decided to walk from one couch to the other. The saddest part of it was that my camcorder must have had a bad DVD in it so I didn't get it taped on there. I did get it on the little Flip one but my computer has the wrong version of Windows on it so as soon as Marshall gets his new laptop we will get the video up on here so that you can see her.

She is fast becoming a pro at walking and is crawling less and less. The great news there is that I am going to be able to dress her in some of the fabulous dresses that she got for her birthday.

We went for a walk outside today and she walked (holding my hand) from our house to the mailbox and back. Tyler is very good with her and has been screaming all week..."Look Mom, Emma is walking!!!"

She also crawled up this slide today so Tyler decided to join her----they are pretty cute together if I do say so myself.

Tyler's funny moment of this week came last night while Marshall was trying to find something for him to watch on TV. He asked him if he wanted to watch "The Singing Show aka American Idol"----Tyler said, "No, how about General Hospital?" I guess that one would be my fault!:)