This will make you laugh

BTW I'm thinking that I write too much in my blog. It's a journal, what do you expect??? But we're really happy that you read our blogs, though we're thinking we ought to close it to just our blog readers and not to just everybody. Anywho, if you're our regular blog reader, please leave me a comment so I know who you are or send me an e-mail. Many of our readers don't have blogs so up until now I had the comment setting closed to all comments (I don't know why...didn't mean to...still learning I guess) but that is changed now and you can all comment on there or just send me an e-mail like many of you have (which I really appreciated your thoughtfulness) so I can send you an invitation when I decide to close our blog to just members. Meanwhile, enjoy these pictures of Debrie Camli. This was the order that these pictures were taken. FOR REAL...I KID NOT. Absolutely hilarious!!!

Yay! We're done with pictures!!!

Wait, more???

Yay, we're done!

Huh??

NO MORE MOM!!!!

The Potty Trained Reena

Two weeks ago I thought "we're never gonna get this. She's gonna wear a diaper until she's 4" Last week she did it and then this week she's a pro and she has had no number 1 or number 2 accident. I'm proud to say Reena's potty trained. Here's what I've learned from potty training my 3 year old. Hopefully I can do this briefly so you all don't get bored reading this.

When I took child development I learned that you don't want to force them to go to the potty but make it fun for them. So we did these things to help her with it
1. Checked out books about potty
2. Timed her and bribed her with what she loves most - chocolate (I wish it could've been fruits but it didn't work as well as chocolate. We used chocolate chips so it looks a lot but only about 5-6 pieces.
3. We promised her 2 prizes and one was to the zoo and the other was to take her to the temple if she could use the potty (She loves the temple. Yeah we have a righteous kid)

The sky was really that blue that day! Look how cute she is! The Seattle Temple is less than 15 minutes from our house!

This is at the Woodland Zoo in Seattle.
Reena had more fun riding on the fake Komodo dragon than seeing the real thing. I don't blame her, those dragons all they do is sleep.

This bear was so cute. He was playing with a backpack in the water.

The Funny Reena

Normally I don't blog until Friday but Reena is too funny so I'm writing these things down for the record.
It was a beautiful day so we decided to go on a walk. Reena on her bike and Debrie in the stroller. We barely got on the trail, which is about 200 yards from our house and this was our conversation:
Reena: There's SO many hills around here
Me: Yep, just keep paddling
Reena: I can't. I'm too small
Me: Well, don't just leave the bike there!
Reena: No, just leave it alone
At this point she is crying because I had taken the plastic strings on her bike and tried to tie the bike to the stroller. She was very unhappy so she sat down on the ground fussing and crying the words "Leave it alone, just leave it alone"
Me: Reena, are you gonna be happy or should we just go back home?
Reena: No I don't want to go home
Me: So are you going to be happy?
Reena: No
Me: Why not?
Reena: Because I'm NOT happy with you
She's not happy with me. At this point my anger just turned into laughter. She totally got that from us.

We made it home at last! with 2 happy kids!


Regarding me blogging just now
Reena: Mamma, you're working?
Me: Yep, I'm working
Now she hands me the scriptures
Reena: Let's read the Holy Spirit

It's so fun to have a 3 year old. She sure keeps my life fun and interesting and who says you can't have an intelligent conversation with a 3 year old. Maybe my level of intelligent is low but to me she is a pretty bright, intelligent, and logical kid. She'll give you reasons to why she does things and give you solutions to a problem when what you want is for her to JUST DO what you ask her to do.

Semptember entry August news

Where do I begin? Whew! August was such a busy and fun month. We had my brother Mike here with us and we did a lot of fun things with him. We had a party for Dan's class, went to a big Amazon party (they had all you can eat food from the famous restaurants around Seattle, kites for the kids and t-shirts for the adults, a live band, train rides, hay ride, bouncy house and slides), a Star Wars birthday party for Reena's friend Isaac wherein we dressed up in our old Star Wars costume from 2 years ago. Perhaps the best thing about this month was also when my mom got in town and took care of the kids with Mike so we could celebrate our 6th Anniversary. We went kayaking (our favorite thing to do nowadays, but our arms and shoulders were sore for days), ate a huge campfire meal with the awesome 12 platter appetizer, New York steaks and cake and ice cream for dessert. With my mom here, our dishes get done ever night :) and we had time to play lots and lots of games. We played, Mario Kart, Rockband, games on the Wii, Warcraft, mostly Dota but Mike and Dan played tower defense, we played Cities and Knights for 3 hours one night (too long). My mom took care of Debrie in her room so we got to sleep longer. We went to a ward camp so I could sing and we brought the whole clan through the beautiful Cascade Mountains up to Ensign Camp the following day. Reena got to ride on a horse and was not afraid at all. We had a little bit of a hard time leaving in fact. We went to the Seattle Woodland Zoo which our reciprocal zoo pass got all of us in for $35 (this cost is for a whole year pass) What a steal. We waited forever for it so I decided we would just go ahead and go anyways while Mike was still here. All I had to do was mention that our pass is on its way and the lady trusted me and let us in for free. Then when we went and ordered food the guy gave us a free drink. Another steal! The Woodland zoo is so big and we were only able to go to 2 replica regions of the world so we're glad we got a pass. Reena got to see elephants, tapirs, tigers (Tigress as she calls it) and many many others. That's it folks for August!











News to come for September:
Reena's potty trained. The joy that came with all the frustrations and anticipations.
Debrie is a big smiler and can almost roll over
Dan marked his 1 year and will get his 2nd half of the bonus with Amazon (can't wait!) Where did the time go? Have we been here for that long already?
Thuan is an on-call counselor at House of Hope/Mama's Hands