Going Batty

Look at this beautiful old home we live in.




Halloween came a little early for our family. Look what decided to move in without an invite..




The first night we realized that we had a bat problem, was when I awoke at 5:50 am to a bat fling over me. I immediately stood up and turned on the light as I saw it fly over on the wall. I opened the door and grabbed something to shoo it out, closed the door and then amazingly went and got my son out of his bed with out waking him and put him in bed with me. Katelynn was already there. The next day we went about our business, but that evening we found three bats hanging over our fireplace and one hanging from the ceiling in our computer room. That was the end of staying there for me. We called around to find out how to get rid of them. Come to find out, not very many people terminate them anymore and its very expensive because the bats are a protected species. I'm not sure why since they are ugly and carry rabbies, fleas and lice and there guano (poop) has toxins. Can you imagine living with these ugly things? Well, I couldn't so they moved in and we moved out. We have great family members. Everyone was so gracious to offer their home to us. So, we moved in with Fletcher's brother and sister-in-law (thanks Sam). Their little girl gave up her room for about three weeks which was just long enough for the bats to migrate out. Last night was my first night back. It was a little hard to sleep. I kept waiting for a bat to fly over me. At the end of every thing, Fletcher got a total of 43 bats out of our house. We put moth balls and these sonar plug-ins to get rid of them and they have now been gone for about a week. Now I'm back in and cleaning up to make our house feel like home again. During all of this, we put an offer on a house and will now be able to finally move out of Fletcher's Grandma's house and have a place of our own. It's a little bit of a fixer upper. but, if you know us we like that kind. Our plan is to fix it up, live in it for a couple years and then turn around and sell it hopefully making a profit. We'll see how the market holds.

"Oh Boy its Potty Time"

You know that time that you dread, but are so excited to get through and done. Yep its that time "Potty Time" I decided that its time to start training Mason, since he cant keep his pants on. I've known that this time was coming for about a month now since about a month ago mason actually went it the little potty. I am hopping it goes as well as Katelynn. Katelynn was trained in a week, although it took about a month and a half to get to her wearing under wear and telling us every time when she needed to go even when we were out of the house. We've been at it for about 5 days now, and its been going pretty good so far. Mason prefers the big potty, he looks like such a big boy and so cute.

These are my steps to potty training:

1-Introduce them to Elmo's potty time.

2-buy them/Introduce them to the training potty.

3-Let them set on it wail watching potty time.

4-Make potty chart with stickers and potty treats

make sure there are different ones for each kind (pee and poo)

5-Let them run dipper less and teach them were you go potty.

6-Ask frequently if they have to go, make sure they are drinking lots and lots of fluids,

7-once they get it down start with training pants.

8-Then take them to get some new under wear.

9-Each step, make it a big deal, get them excited.

Camping with the Hope's

We went camping thursday through Saturday July 19 2008. Our Family went with Prescotts family: Prescott, Sam, Jordan, Jaydan, Charity, and Jaxon Hope. We had a great time at Gooseberry Campground. We road four weelers, and fished and just let the kid play and get realy dirty, if you cant tell in the pictures.

Swimming party at Grandmas.....

Grandma loves to have the Grandchildren over for partys. Where they play and make cookies and have just have tons of fun.