Catch up!

So it's been forever since I've posted...sorry. I really don't have an excuse, here are all the posts I should have been doing all this time in one!

First:

In January we celebrated Mahlon's 29th Birthday. We went out to dinner with his mom and sister and brother-in-law and had a yummy ice cream cake.



Second:

Chocolate face.
I gave Madison a piece of Chocolate...this is what I found a few moments later.


Third:

Valentine cookies.
I have heart shaped cookie cutters so I decided to make Valentine's Day Sugar Cookies. I let Madison help and she loved it! unfortunately, my camera battery died before we finished...luckily we didn't use all the dough so the next day we finished baking the rest of the cookies and took pictures (that's why she has two different outfits on!)


Such a big helper...I love the flour on the nose!


She LOVED using the cutters and would not let me help her, she'd push my hand away and say "no" if I cut out any cookies. I kept having to re roll the dough because she kept poking holes in the middle of all the cookies with her little fingers.


When she cut one out she'd get all excited and say "Did it!"


Enjoying the end results!

Fourth:
Madison has been sick for a few days, with a cough and runny nose. She was up late last night and was pretty tired. She asked to watch Tinker Bell (her new FAVORITE movie) so I put it on for her and figured she could watch it for a little bit, then have lunch and take a nap. After about 20 minutes, it was pretty quite in there so I went to check on her and this is what I found. Poor thing!

No More Diapers!!!!!!

Hooray! Madison is Potty trained! We started last Teusday and she has done so well! It took her a few days to get the hang of it, but we just stayed in and did a lot of potty time and practice -and lets face it, used a few bribes (candy and playing at the park) Now, a week later she went all day with no accidents, not even a little one! She wears "big girl" panties all day and uses the potty-even at Wal-Mart! She still wears a daiper at night to sleep, because she dosen't wake up, but if she has a diaper on before she falls asleep, she'll call for me and go potty on the toilet! I'm so excited to finally be finished with diapers (at least for the most part) especially stinky ones! Once she starts sleeping dry through the night we'll get rid of them for good! Hooray! Great Job Madison! I'm so proud of you! Now you really are a big girl-definately not a baby anymore!

Happy 2009!

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We definately did.
We spent our first Christmas Eve at home. We had a wonderful dinner, watched Christmas movies, painted Christmas ornaments and got to play Santa! On Chrismas morning we opened a few presents then headed over to Gilbert to be with Mahlons family and opened more presents. We had Christmas all day! It was great! We spent the weekend there then came home and enjoyed Mahlon's time off. It was so great to have him home for a couple of weeks! New Year's Eve my sister and her two little ones came over and we partied all night (not really, they and Madison crashed at 10pm) Mahlon and I watched movies and said "oh, happy New Year! around 12:05. It was fun but we neglected to take pictures. It was a great break and now that Mahlon's back to work I'm back to my routine. I decided to start my New Years resolution once things got back to normal so I'm back to my work out routine that I gave up on pre-Thanksgiving! Also I'm going to try and get better about reading my scriptures, going to the temple, having Family home-evenings, reading the sunday school and relief society lessons and coinsiding scriptures before class, doing my visiting teaching, etc., etc., etc.! Ha Ha! That's a pretty long list of resolutions so wish me luck! Now that I look at all the things I need to improve on, I feel like a big slacker! So here's to 2009 and a perfect me! : ) Enjoy the pictures!


Madison making her Gingerbread house!

This is Madison openeing her HUGE present from Grandma and Grandpa which had to be brought over from Gilbert seperately and required that we totally rearange Madison's room inorder to make it fit!

Madison : 18 months

Merry Christmas everyone! I haven't posted in awhile because I've been too busy shopping, baking, making gingerbread houses and getting ready for Christmas. I love this time of year, but there are too many things I want to do in too short amount of time. I think we need two months to get ready for and anticipate Christmas (I suggest they just add in a month after Thanksgiving!)Anyway-I haven't uploaded Christmas pictures yet...so those will proabably go up AFTER Christmas, but what can you do? So instead I thought I do a little post about Madison turning 18 months old on the 10th! This is a big deal because now she can go to nursery-which today was her second time and she still cried when we left but was happy to have a candy cane when we went to pick her up. She's growing up so fast and learning so much here are some things about her.
Weight: 19lbs (yes, she still can't sit in a front facing car seat!)
Height: 28 3/4 inches
She loves to talk and sing. Her favorite song by far is Old McDonald (which she requests by saying "moo-moo" while bobbing her head) but she also loves Wheels on the Bus (called "Bump") and If you're happy and you know it...(clap,clap,Horray!) Its so cute, I wish she would sing for the video camera but once it's out she stops!
She's learning her colors and loves to color with markers and crayons. I quiz her about what color she's using and is right about 80% of the time.
She has such a personality and a sence of Humor and is always making me laugh! I think this shows best in the portraits we just took of her! Enjoy!

Fun in the Fall!

I decided I needed a Fall Themed post for Thanksgiving so I'm putting up some pics from our last trip to Flagstaff, even though it was before Halloween. We drove up the Peaks to a place calledLockett Meadow-it's my favorite place to go in Flagstaff for a couple of reasons.
1. In the Fall the Aspens turn beautiful colors!
2. Mahlon and I went hiking here on our 2nd date so it has sentimental value.
3. It's only a few minutes drive from my parent's home where I grew up so I have a lot of memories of Church activites and family outings from there.
4. It's beautiful all year round.

It had been warm all week but turned cold the weekend we went up so we were FREEZING up there (it's colder on the Mountain) so we didn't stay long : (, but it was worth seeing!

Happy Halloween! Part II

We had a great Halloween- it felt like we celebrated for a week (because we kind of did). Our ward had a Trunk or Treat on the Friday before, so we went to that. Madison's costume was such a hit- she won best overall child's costume in the costume contest and won a Free Car wash, which came in handy b/c while Mahlon was transporting my crock-pot of chili to the church it fell over in the car spilling chili all over the carpet, and under the seat (yuck!) so we were very glad for the car wash.


Then, on Wednesday we went to Gilbert to go to the Ward party there with Mahlon's mom. It was the biggest ward Halloween party I've ever seen-it was more like a mini carnival. They had games, a DJ, 3 enormous jumping castles, train ride, pony rides, a rock climbing wall, video games, Free Kettle Corn, Cotton Candy, and Bahama Bucks shaved ice-it was amazing and a lot of fun! Madison loved looking at the ponies, but once she got on it to ride she kind of freaked out and had to get off early-but she had a great time!



Thursday we carved Pumpkins. Mine is on the left, Mahlon's on the right.



Then FINALLY it was Halloween. We got Madison dressed up for the third time (at least we got more than one use out of her costume!) and wend to the Apartment complex Halloween party (to enter our pumpkins in the pumkin carving contest) where once again, Madison won the Costume contest for "Best TV/Movie Character" and won us $25 at AMC Theaters (Go Madison!) Our Pumpkins didn't win, however, but that's ok, Madison had us covered! I then took Madison trick-or-treating with her cousins around the neighborhood. She was such a trooper and only threw one fit when I picked her up to catch up. She wanted to eat the candy as soon as one piece was in her bucket-but she eventually got the idea. She started say Bye to every house we left, even blowing kisses for a few. She made out quite well, Mahlon and I are enjoying her candy-but we share b/c she's discovered she likes lolly-pops and asks for one every day (several times actually, but she's only allowed one) Anyway, by the end of the night we were Halloweened out and pooped but we had a lot of fun!

Happy Halloween!

Wow! I can't belive I've taken so long to update my blog. However, it's not all my own slacking that's caused the delay Here are some of my excuses:
1. Boring life, nothing to post about
2. Busy life, too much to post about
3. I've taken up reading (not something I used to do a whole lot of!) since Madison and I go to the Library for story time once a week. I've found I really enjoy it and don't get much of anything else done when I'm reading a book. In the past two months I'vre read five novels, and started a sixth, that's more than I've read in the past three or four years!
4. Our internet has been "finiky" lately. This really is the main reason for the past few weeks of no posting. It's been in and out for almost three weeks, sometimes we have internet, but most the time we don't-it's been rather frustrating and trying to get it fixed has been a nightmare! It's working now, but who knows if it will be in 5 min!

Well I'll post some pictures for now and try to get up to date soon! Hope all is well with all of you and sorry I haven't been keeping up with your blogs, I'll try to be better!
These are pictures of Madison finger painting with pudding. I've started doing small little themed activities with Madison, as smoething fun to do while teaching her and this was a great activity about colors. She loved it, and the pudding mixed with food coloring made it so she could eat the paint without me freaking out! Since this, whenever she wants to color she points her little finger and moves it in circles, like she's finger painting-it's so cute!