Flying North

This morning's message comes to you straight from the bathroom...where I feel like I've been planted for the past 48 hours.  We are in full-blown potty training mode with Autum.  And so far, we are 0-4,656 in her actually going in the potty.  She tells me she has to go potty, we hurry in to the bathroom...and she either pees her pants while I'm trying to get her pants down...or she holds it until right after I take her off the pot.  Ohhh!  So here we are...singing, dancing, bribing, clapping, talking...and now typing...all in hopes she actually potty's in the toilet today...instead of just making the sounds effects with her mouth--clapping her hands--and then saying she's all done and wants to wash her hands.  Followed up with asking for a candy cane...She SO doesn't get this bribe thing yet. :)

 Mr. Boots had an interesting weekend.  Poor guy.  Friday morning he made his appearance being silly, hanging upside down, in our cabinet.  On several occasions Leah got on me for smashing his nose when I shut the cabinet door too hard.  She kept having to check in on him to make sure he was okay.  I was in the kitchen getting after-school snacks ready and someone made it very clear they pooped their pants...but NO one wanted to admit to it.  I asked who pooped...to which Autum replied and pointed up in the air-- "Boots!" Hahaha...what's the saying "He who denied it, supplied it?"  Very true in this case.

Then the next day...he and his buddy Mr. Snowman decided to roast marshmallows over my new candle.   You will notice there are only 2 marshmallows left for them to roast.  The interesting thing about this is...there were about 5 marshmallows for Mr. Boots and Mr. Snowman to roast that morning...and by the end of the day NO ONE knew what happened to the other ones...Leah said Mr. Boots must have eaten them.  I just replied that Santa will find out who really ate them...
And after that the rest of the evening went TERRIBLE.  We had a late night Friday night, following a crazy, busy week.  And it all came snowballing down on us Saturday afternoon.  It got so bad that Mr. Boots left Leah a note from Santa, Sunday morning when she awoke.  Mr. Boots hung out on the TV and left a note and the book open to the page about Santa being sad when the kids are naughty...she wasn't too happy about the idea and wrote Santa a note back...but I convinced her it probably wasn't a good idea to write Santa mean notes...so we tore it up. :)

 Here's the note Santa left Leah.  It said that Santa thought she'd have a better day Sunday but she had to do 8 nice things for other people that day to make up for Saturday's behavior.  So...this list included: writing her great grandma and grandpa notes, giving her brother a hug, playing dolly's with her little sister, sweeping the kitchen floor for mommy, wiping down her bathroom sink, writing a thank you note to Miss Sierra, who takes her to school everyday for us, and telling her mommy and daddy she loved them.  We finished the list by 8 pm Sunday night...just in time.  Phew!  Mr. Boots actually left early Sunday to go back to the North Pole to report to Santa how Leah was doing with her list..and that seemed to kick things in to gear.  We were on the up and up after that...(I'm seriously thinking we need an elf or guardian angel year round to watch over the kids...a parent has a lot of leverage with that little thing)

And finally...Mr Boots returned today in his pink minivan/school bus with a treat for Autum.  A motivation you could say...motivation for her to go potty on the big girl potty!  So we'll see...more to come.

In other news...Jerad shot another 2 deer.  Our freezer will be full again.! Yippee!

This deer was shot in Kansas along with a doe I didn't get a picture of, this past weekend.

This one he shot in Oklahoma a couple of weeks ago.