Happiness at our house!

Zinch was featured on the Today Show on Monday. As you can imagine it has our household clapping our hands. Sorry guys for the brag moment, but I have to rejoice in the good news, it's what keeps us going when the times are hard.

Cache is the "computer guy" for Zinch (for those who didn't know)

What a boy needs......

a toy truck and a dog. This is my mom's neighbor's dog. One of these days I might kidnap him and take him home. He is so cute.

My Cute Niece

I took some pictures of my niece today, I was getting a little bored of the same subjects to practice on. What do you think? I still need a lot of practice, especially with my composition and focus. I know there are some experienced photographers that read my blog every now and then, if you see these can you give me some feedback? Or anyone that wants to give feedback , good or bad- is welcome.

This is DANG Cute!

Two more pics.

These pictures are for my memory sake. I love them and they make me giggle. They really show Finley's moxy attitude. He was upset because as he was riding on a little horizontal slope his biked tipped over and he got left behind as he tried to climb back on. "Mommy dey not waiting for me!" I had all sorts of sympathy as I kept the camera to my face and kept clicking the button.

potty training, Annie, and a bike.

These are things I have been wanting to post about for awhile. My mom told me that the two hardest things she had to teach her kids were potty training and riding a two wheel bike, I rolled my eyes and thought yeah, we are doing both of those right now. Fin hated sitting on the toilet until I found a potty seat on clearance at TJMAXX for 10 bucks and it came with a stool and reward tattoos (referred to as "Stickers" in our house). He loves it, because it fits on the "big toilet", and the back has a head of a frog as a backrest and Fin thinks that the frog catches his (ahem) pee and poop. It's great, I tell him the frog is hungry and he should go feed him (disgusting I know, but I do what I have to do). Yesterday, he used the toilet 3 times and we weren't even at our own house, "hippee-ray" (fins version of hip hip hooray).

The two wheeler isn't going as smooth. We live on a hill so we have to take peanut to a nearby trail to get her to practice. She is pretty nervous, but getting better, she still hasn't mastered the balance. Does anyone have any good ideas on teaching bike riding, we could use any advice right now. My friend told me to put her on a grassy hill and let her go down. We might try this. One of the highlights of taking Peanut to the trail is that we pass a lot of horses and we always stop to pet them. This last time we stopped the owners were out and asked if we would like to see their other animals, the kids got really excited and ran to their house. I think we walked into a petting zoo. They had goats, chickens, peacocks, a huge "beethoven" dog, a small "taco bell" dog, about 10 scotty dogs, baby ducks, a parrot, and turtles. I am sure I am forgetting an animal or two that they had. These people were so nice and told us to stop by anytime.Now, on to my favorite event of the weekend. The Annie production came to Kingsbury Hall this week and since Peanut sang "It's a hard knock Life" in our stakes Broadway production, I thought it would be fun to take her to see the real thing. It was wonderful! We both loved it. The only bad thing was that it started at 8:00 at night and didn't end until 10:30, near the end Peanut got very tired. I am not sure how much she understood because she was trying so hard to keep her eyes open. It was fun though and I always treasure our mommy and daughter dates.our friends came with us too, Thanks guys!
Pictures from my cell phone

My Little Peanut

I am having a sappy mom moment, I am feeling how much I love this little girl. She is such a sweet heart. She is so obedient and thoughtful and kind. I want to be just like her. Today she picked up the dishes after lunch and stacked them in the dishwasher, when I told her how grateful I was that she would do that without being asked, she responded by saying "I listened to the talk in conference" (meaning Elder Ballard's talk). It made me beam with Joy. She does have her moments though, if she goes too long without a snack she is surrounded by a puddle of tears, and sometimes she loves to try make her brother jealous or angry, isn't that how all kids are though? She was a hard baby too, I remember thinking if the Lord sends me another like this I won't have any more. Luckily my second was a perfect little baby, but he is a terror of a toddler.
I have had some ask why we call her Peanut. It is because she was born 3 weeks early and weighed only 5#9oz. She was tiny just like a little peanut.

Sorry about the sappy cheesy post, but I just had to do it. Sarah, I stole the pose in the picture above from one of Madison's pictures-Sorry.