physics and healthy teeth

what does physics have to do with healthy teeth, you ask? well, shelby began her physics career today at the dentist's office.

today was the first time that shelby counted to ten! we were counting pictures of kids on the wall. this was her first step to becoming a brilliant mathematician, which imperative to her career in physics :)

training begins

i just realized last night that nathan's triathlon is on sunday, february 1. many of you will recognize this as the same day as the superbowl! i don't know what they were thinking.

he will have to swim six full laps (12 lengths of the pool), ride a spinner bike for a half-hour, and then run two miles. and he only has one day to do it. we will not be camping out at the Y like we would be if i was the one doing all of this.

here are some pictures from last year's event.

back to grandma's house we go!

the girls and i came back to grandma's to visit today. grandma seems to be recovering well. she even made it to church today to receive her 17 year perfect attendance record!

17 years of perfect attendance... can you imagine? i'm thinking that there are some days that i'm just not in attendance, much less able to maintain attendance anywhere else! notice that her 17 years started after her children were all grown and gone.

let's all work towards an attendance record somewhere! we can start next week.

more pictures

grandma french's house

we went to my grandmother's house today. she is having surgery tomorrow on her carotid artery tomorrow. this will be the first time she's been in the hospital ever and she's 86 years old! like my aunt kay says, we come from good stock ;)

i do think, however, that she should threaten surgery more often. all five of her kids were here for the event.

they are a comical bunch. grandma and all five of her kids sung 'if you're happy and you know it' to shelby. she stared at them in total amazement that adults really do such things :D they also took turns blowing bubbles and helping shelby catch them with her tongue! that was pretty humorous, too.

as is the case most of the time, nathan was off playing and i didn't see a whole lot of him. he was playing with his second cousin, mason. they seemed to be having a great time :)

more pictures

grocery shopping

i'm so proud of nathan today! he learned a good life lesson today and yesterday.

he wanted to do my grocery shopping for me. i stayed in the car with the babies and walked nathan through our list over our walkie-talkies. today i had $60 left in my grocery budget, and about $110 worth of items on my list. nathan kept track of the cost of all of the items he picked up, and made good decisions on what needed to be sacrificed for more necessary items. i was truly impressed :)

woo hoo, there's poo poo!

whatever... then you come up with a better title!

well, she did it :) but i don't think she gets it. nathan and i cheered and gave her high fives and a flinstone vitamin as a reward. we need better rewards, but that's all i had at them moment.

oh yes, i have pictures. for the sake of being tactful, i'm censoring them. you're welcome.

christmas x4

i love christmas :) the second best gift of christmas (christ being the first, of course) is family. it's the one holiday that we all seem to make an extra effort to visit all family. most other holidays are spent with one family, but christmas brings us all together, if at all possible.

we spent today with some of stephon's family. we were at his dad's and step-mom's. brell, jerome, joseph and michelle and their boys, and devon's daughters were all there. we always miss bridget and her family when we get together, but it was a great time :)

the kids play great together. shelby and zaire played with matching toys together, but we ofcourse have the whole sharing issue at this age ;) nathan entertained joe-joe and rikia but was most interested in his new remote controlled mustang gt. shelby also followed paige and rikia around. they are sweet girls and love to play with shelby.

stephon watched football with papa joe and uncle charles, although i think papa joe was more interested in holding elise :)

michelle, arlene, joseph, jerome, and i played spades. i did pretty well this time! the last time we played i was pregnant. as you all are well aware, i go through a seemingly significant diminished brain capacity when i'm pregnant and it doesn't show any more than when i'm playing spades! michelle is always my partner, and is always patient with me :) today we kicked butt!

check this out... we had turducken for dinner! have you ever heard of that? me, neither! it was pretty good. you have to check out the link and see what this is.

unfortunately, i have no pictures. that's awful, but between cards and babies, i just didn't pull it off. hopefully i can get some pictures from arlene.

if anyone has spelling corrections for names, i would greatly appreciate it!

it's potty time!

actually, it's potty time about the time your kid starts eating meat!

we technically started awhile ago when we bought the potty seat, according to the books and the tv show... oh yes, there is an on-demand tv show. but today, we began sitting on the potty first thing in the morning, before her nap, and when she wakes up from the nap. we sit and read books and drink water and listen to water dripping from the sink. if nothing else, it's great one-on-one time for us :)

i don't know if she's totally ready, though. she doesn't tell me when she goes, and she doesn't care to sit in a dirty diaper. we'll see. we'll work on it for awhile as long as she isn't too resistant.

oh yes, much to her future surprise, there will be pictures! lol

talkers

yesterday elise confirmed that what i suspected was cooing, is! she's trying to talk. she did it a lot more today.

shelby is learning lots of new words, as you would expect. it seems that we're working on manners and counting these days:

please	peas
thank you	tace
bless you	bus... she isn't learning this one from me. i tend to not say bless you because it's really pointless.
you're welcome	she simply says 'ya.' i have no idea where she gets this one. it's kinda funny to me :)

one	one
two	two
three	it started out as tease, but she quickly upgraded to tea.
four	she only said four for a couple of days, and i can't remember how she said it. i don't know what she has against four. maybe it borrowed $20 and hasn't paid it back.
five	fice
six	ses
seven	sum. finally said that once. she likes seven even less than four.
eight	eight
nine	nine
ten	ten! she is always very excited about ten :)

she is just starting to count on her own up to about three, but when she's counting with me she goes something like this: two, two, tea, fice, fice, eight, eight, eight! (she gets frustrated if you don't listen to her), nine, ten! but she does get them in order :)