the big PT

Although we did this 3 months ago, I wanted to document it so I could remember this milestones in Maggie girls life. She is officially Potty trained!!!

It was a new years goal of hers and mine so on January 3rd (at 27 months) we decided to give it a go! Maggie was never too interested in the potty before training, never really even peed in the toilet before that, but I knew she was smart enough to understand the concept. A lot of people said to not push it until she shows interest and others were saying she should be potty trained already. I thought it was worth a few days of trying and if she didn't take to it I would be willing to wait a few more months. No pressure. I did some research online and pinterest and found this awesome blog I followed on her potty training technique Here.

We started the day like normal and after breakfast I brought out the "potty doll". The doll whispered to me that she had to go potty. She went pee in the little potty (thanks to a siring i filled up with olive oil behind her) and I got super excited for her!!! The doll got a treat and put on cute big girl undies. I asked Mags if she wanted to be like the doll and try on the undies. She was so excited!! The blog suggested to have them drink as much as possible that day, with the help of salty snacks, so that they are on the potty every 30 minutes or so. After the first 2 or 3 times of me insisting she goes on the potty she eventually just told me through out the day when she needed to go. 

Here we are eating our yummy salty snacks and dancing to music.

We filled the day with fun activities to keep the excitement there. Every time she would go in the potty I would freak out with excitement and she would get a princess sticker and 2 reeses pieces. 

I got a little too confident and 3pm and started cleaning up in the storage room with her. It had been a little more than an hour when I heard her gasp and turned around the see her peeing. "I pee!! I pee!" I could tell she was so concerned and disappointed in herself. She didn't want to pee on the princess of minnie mouse! (on her underwear). "Minnie sad?" she would say. That was her only accident for the day! I was so proud of her.

Since then, there has been good streaks of no accidents for weeks, to sometimes an accident or two a day on random days. It's a roller coaster, but all in all it wasn't a bad experience for us. It's so fun to watch her grow up and experience these fun milestones together. 

Merry Christmas 2012

The older I get the quicker the holidays seem to come and go. I can't believe it's already time to take down Christmas! I started putting the nativity away the other day and Maggie yelled, "No! Daddy will be sad!!" But it sure was fun! 

Our Christmas Holidays started out with Holiday Manicures. (I love my girl, can't you tell) She sits still even for them to dry and with every dot on her toe, she did a cute gasp. Aah! Sadly the fingernails didn't last long. She got picking of her finger nail polish from her mom....

Maggie enjoying some snow. She was hilarious in it! This first picture I told her to look at me so I can take a picture. She turned around with this face and pose and said, "Merry Christmas"


SNOW ANGELS!

Making Gingerbread houses at Grandma's house. and Maggie with a mouth full of candy. You can't have bowls of candy and expect a 2 yr old not to eat all the good stuff. 

Caden and Maggie did such a good job as shepherds in Grandma and Grandpa Meacham's Nativity. Maggie got distracted by the cute baby Betsy, I mean baby Jesus

All season long Maggie loved singing, "You better watch out! You better not cry! You better not pout I'm telling you why. Santa Claus is coming to town!" I guess that slipped her mind when she sat on Santa's lap. Poor girl! She was so nervous waiting in line at our ward party. She wouldn't take her eyes off him.

The Meacham family Christmas Card. We put the camera on a tripod, set the timer and didn't look at the pictures until after. Funny Ash making funny faces. HA!! So grandma and I had fun making it work for a funny Christmas card. Not to bad!

Mags got spoiled by Grandma and Grandpa with 4 princess dress ups!! She absolutely loves them!! Now if she would just understand.... We can't wear them to church!!

Playing with cousins Ash and Nix. Best buds!

During the Christmas Break Caden enjoyed some time off so we went wild.....
we went bowling in Ephraim :)


Christmas Eve and Christmas day we spent at our house with Papa Carl. We spent christmas day watching movies, eating appetizers, playing with toys and relaxing. It was fun!

Opening Christmas jammies after we set cookies and soda (per Maggie's request) out for Santa.

Maggie and her goods

and then we had this surprise under our tree!!!!!!!!!!

on the 20th of December we had our 20 week ultrasound. We thought it would be fun to wait 5 more days to find out the sex of the baby on Christmas. So we had the tech but the ultrasound sonogram in an envelope to take home. Well I knew I'd be tempted to peek so I dropped it off at my friends house where she said she had a fun idea for us to find out. She dropped that box off to us on Christmas eve. I told Caden it had to be the first present we opened in the morning. I kept having a feeling it was a boy. Maggie almost always said boy. Caden and Carl thought it would be a girl. Well we opened the wrapping to find another wrapped box inside wrapped in blue wrapping paper. Was it a boy???? We opened that box and there was another wrapped box with hot pink wrapping paper. Was it a girl??? We opened that box to find this inside

IT'S A BOY!!

We are so excited! and a little nervous.  A boy will be a fun adventure and we can't wait! 

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas! 

Big Sister

If you haven't heard... someone is going to be a Big Sister in May!!!

and we couldn't be more excited!

halloween 2012

I was so excited for halloween this year. Holidays are just so much more fun with kids of your own.

We hosted an awesome halloween party that I'm bummed we didn't get a single picture of, but we had a blast with all our friends! 

Maggie dressed up as her favorite, Minnie Mouse. After making last years costume of a sheep and the struggle with that I promised myself I would never make another costume..... well I did it anyway. I couldn't resist the 3$ dress from DI turning it into a minnie dress. 

Maggie was a little unsure about the whole trick of treating thing. At the trunk of treat, people would hold out their bowls of candy and she would just stare at them like, " You're really giving me this?" After much time and hesitation she would eventually reach in the bowl and grab something. She has always hated anything in a scary costume, so I constantly had to assure her that everything was pretend.

But she sure did love the candy!!! and so did Mom and Dad!

Elder Meacham

About a month ago, my little Brother Weston left for his mission to Spokane, WA speaking Marshallese! It was such a neat experience to attend the temple with him a few weeks before his farewell and watch him embrace the importance of the gospel. I'm already missing my little brother, but it's so exciting to hear his letters and the success he's having in the MTC. He says the language is easy?? and he was called as district leader.  I was lucky enough to take some of his mission pictures. 

Mags prays for Weston every night. She'll randomly ask about him or mention him. While watching a BYU basketball game she said, "That's Weston?" She really loved giving him hugs before he left. Weston wrote in his letter, "Will Maggie and his nephews remember him?" How could they forget!

Squeezing in one last family picture before he left.

We decided to drive down on Wed when he left for the MTC. I was a wreck. He just kept smiling and laughing about all of us being emotional. You could just tell he was excited and ready to go.

 I'm so proud of him and the decision he made to serve the Lord. He'll be such a great missionary! I envy him, and know this will shape who he is for the rest of his life. 

The church is true!!!

happy birthday mags!

A few months ago, our Mags turned 2!!! My family wanted to squeeze in a mini vacation before my brother left on his mission, so the weekend of Maggie's birthday we went to Park City for a long weekend. She was spoiled with a Minnie Birthday Party! I'm pretty sure my family bought her the whole Disney store. 

Mallory, as always, made a fabulous cake!! Unfortunately, this momma forgot candles... so we pretended.

We had so much fun in Park City we even got to do the Alpine Slide together!! They asked, "Is she 2??" and we were able to say, "YUP! Today's her Birthday!" I was surprised how well she did on the slide. She sat on my lap, gripping me as tight as she could while mimicking my "Wahoo's!" 

Shopping with Miss Bets!

When we got home we were able to celebrate with Papa Carl and have real candles!!!

I can't believe my little bug is 2! More to come on my little Mags. We love you!

Summer in a nutshell

This summer has been a crazy, fun, busy one!

Maggie and I took a fun trip with the fam to Bear Lake (while Caden had work meetings). I had a crazy not so full week at girls camp. We were evacuated after being on the mountain after 2 hours because of the crazy fires surrounding us. We come home to more fires. So we finished up camp at a near by park for a day.

Terrible picture, but fire view from our side porch.

I had a getaway weekend to St. George with my girls in Mount Pleasant! We left the hubby's in charge. They survived!!!

I did a triathlon in May and did Mount Pleasants 4th and 24th of July 5k with friends.

Here we are enjoying the Mount Pleasant 4th of July parade.

I love this girl!

I planned my high school 6 year class reunion. Phew! Glad that's over.

And helped Caden and his cousin plan the Gurr family reunion. Caden and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary with a fun getaway weekend to Salt Lake where we stayed at the Little America and got massages and relaxed.

One of my favorite memories this summer was witnessing and photographing the birth of my beautiful niece Betsy Tiff

We've done a lot of walks, parks, picnics, swimming, drive inn fun, etc etc etc and we're sure looking for school to start again so we can slow down a little.

our typical afternoons

She loves to play mom! It's kinda cute that she'll find a random dish cloth somewhere and us it as a blanket. A perfect size. If she spots a baby somewhere, she freaks out! "BaBY!!!" She's a little protective of them too.

Daily walk with friends at 9am.

Now I know we've seen enough shoe pictures, but I don't think I can say enough how much she is obsessed with this. Especially the heels!

Chocolate Chip cookies anyone??

YES please!!!