Kaylin's Fashion Corner: Outdoor Wear

This ensemble is perfect for taking out the garbage and checking the mail on a crisp March evening. It's also well suited for playing in the yard afterward.



(pre-haircut)

March Randomness

A few random pictures from this month:

During nap/quiet time one day Kaylin got the doll pack and play from the bonus room and brought it to her room to sleep in. It sure looks comfortable.

Lauren has become quite the bubble blower.

Lauren on a Sunday. I wore the purple flower clip on her headband at my uncle's wedding when I was really little.


Kaylin gluing. It's probably her favorite art activity. Also notice the haircut.

Kaylin's new reward chart

We've been using sticker reward charts with Kaylin for the past couple of months and it has helped tremendously. I made three different charts: Cinderella, Aladdin (aka Jasmine), and Sleeping Beauty. Each one said something like, "Help Cinderella get to the castle" at the top and then had 10 spaces until the goal.

I made stickers with clipart from each theme using a sticker maker I won from a blog giveaway. To earn a sticker Kaylin could do various things that change depending on what behaviors we're trying to reinforce. Stickers have been earned for leaving a friend's house without throwing a fit, sharing with friends, doing something nicely the first time asked, using the bathroom by herself--including washing her hands, and most recently for keeping her underwear dry overnight.

Once she reaches the goal she gets to pick a prize. We tried taking her to the dollar store, but that was a little overwhelming for her, there were too many options. Now we just let her pick out two packages of candy from the store. Skittles and M&Ms are her favorites. She doesn't reach the goal all that often (every 1-2 weeks), so I don't feel too bad letting her have some candy.

I was getting tired of printing out charts, making stickers, and buying Kaylin candy. So I made a NEW chart:

The yellow spots are the "prize" spots. Cinderella moves along the path, so no more stickers. I'm just hoping that Kaylin doesn't try to move Cinderella on her own. If she does, I will have to put it out of her reach.

To make this chart I made the rectangle path in Word using tables. Then I used stickers from a Disney Princess sticker book that Kaylin has (thanks, Ashley!) to decorate it (don't tell Kaylin). Then I laminated it and laminated a Cinderella sticker for the moving piece. I just put a loop of masking tape on the back of Cinderella.

When Kaylin woke up from her nap we decided on what the prizes would be. Here they are:

1. Have a friend come over to play.
2. Get a Dora DVD from the library.
3. Have a slumber party in the bonus room.

I wrote the prizes in the yellow boxes with a dry erase marker.

She immediately got to move one space because she kept her underwear (and bed and carpet) dry during her nap. She's super excited about her new chart and keeps asking what will happen when she gets to each princess. I think this one should work great.

Contest Follow-Up

Remember that contest I told you about? The one for the OfficeBox? Well... I am one of the 25 finalists!!!! Can you believe it?! I also won a cool prize package for being one of the finalists. You can see what I won here. The winner of the OfficeBox will be announced on Friday. Let's all cross our fingers for me. Thanks. And a BIG thank you to Rachelle and random.org for picking me!

Vancouver Temple

Yesterday we went up to the new temple for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Vancouver (Langley), British Columbia. It isn't open yet but the outside is complete. The angel Moroni (the gold guy at the top) was put on on March 10. The open house, which is free and open to anyone, will be April 9-24.

The front of the temple.

Eric and Kaylin on the front steps.

The back.

Side.

Back/side

Church building on the property.

Kaylin LOVES temples and was so excited to see the one in Vancouver. We are going to attend the open house next month and Kaylin is looking forward to going inside. We are so happy for the people (including my parents :-)), who will have a temple closer to them.

P.S. Happy Pi Day! (3.14)

"I Am a Child of God" frame

We're going to the baptism of a friend's daughter and after seeing this frame, I decided I wanted to make her a similar one. I think my version is cuter :-).

I bought an unfinished wooden frame at Michaels for 66 cents. (I used a 40% off JoAnn's coupon, did you know that they take JoAnn's coupons? I didn't until the lady in line in front of me used one and I just happened to have one in my bag. I only saved 40 cents, but still.)

I picked light pink and lavender because those are the colors of her bedroom.

Step 1. I painted the sides--both the outside edge and the picture opening.
Step 2. I placed my paper face down and traced the frame on the back of the paper. Then I cut out the pieces and decided where I wanted the seam between the colors to be and cut there. (I didn't cut out the entire frame for either piece, just about half of the frame.)
Step 3. I mod podged the paper onto the frame.
Step 4. I went to Laura's house and cut out "I Am a Child of God" using the Cricut Cuttin' Up Cartridge at 1 1/4". THANK YOU LAURA!!!!!!!
Step 5. I mod podged "I Am a Child of God" onto the frame.
Step 6. I gave the frame 2 coats of mod podge.
Step 7. I hot glued ribbon over the seam between the papers. I made a cute little bow too.

I added the picture of the cute girl getting baptized using the picture they sent on the invitation. It takes me FOREVER to put pictures in frames, so this way they can get it up right away if they want.

I am really happy with how it turned out and I hope she likes it too!

3 Months

Here is Lauren's three month picture:




On Saturday I came downstairs after showering to find this:

For some reason Eric loves to put Lauren in the boppy pillow. Don't you just LOVE a sleeping baby? So cute.

Later in the day, I came in the room to find this:

They were watching a basketball game. Because 3 month old babies love to sit up in a chair and watch college basketball. If you can't read it, the onesie says, "Daddy loves me". Lauren had an "accident" in the previous outfit and Eric put her in the "daddy" onesie. Love it.

Contest for an OfficeBox and Wrong Number book

Hey friends, I've had some decent luck in the past winning giveaways on blogs and this one is a biggie. I figured I'd let you in on it and give myself 15 extra entries by doing so :-).

Here's the prize:

The OfficeBox by The Original Scrapbox.

This would really help us with space in our computer/guest room. Look at all of that storage and how nicely it closes up.

An autographed copy of Rachelle Christensen's new book Wrong Number.

I really want to win this one. But I'd be happy for you if you won. Because if I can't have it, I want one of my friends to have it. Plus then maybe I could come to your house and drool on it.

Go here or here to enter.

Slumber Party!

What do you do on a random Tuesday night? Well, last night, we had a slumber party. We took the cushions off of the couches, took our blankets and pillows off our beds, and camped out in the bonus room.

It's not a slumber party unless there are treats. We had cookies, candy, and pop. This was the first time we let Kaylin have her own cup of pop. She's had a few sips of pop in her life, so this was pretty special for her, she was thrilled.

Kaylin is saying, "Cheese!!!"

We watched Aladdin and stayed up until the very late hour of 10:00. That's pretty late when you're three years old. Lauren couldn't make it that long, she slept in her own room and went to bed around 8:30. Kaylin LOVED it and is already asking if we can have another slumber party. I'm glad that she's at an age where it's cool and fun to hang out with your parents :-).

Friday Harbor

Eric has been really busy with work and church lately. He has a couple of days he needs to take off before the middle of March or he will lose them. He will be losing some days, it's just too hard for him to take many days off :-(. We decided to have him take this past Friday off and go do something fun. We decided to go to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island for the night. To get to Friday Harbor from Renton (south Seattle) you have to drive about an hour and 45 minutes north to the ferry dock in Anacortes. Then it is a one hour ferry ride to San Juan Island. Friday Harbor is right at the ferry dock. The island gets half of the rain that Seattle does. It's located in a rain shadow. We weren't lucky enough to benefit from the rain shadow this weekend.

Kaylin was super excited to ride on the ferry. No matter how many times I tried to explain that the ferry is a boat and I kept calling it a "ferry boat" instead of just a "ferry," she still thought I was talking about a "fairy". She asked me multiple times if she could "ride on the fairy's lap". She also wanted to know where the fairy's daddy was. She didn't seem too disappointed when we got on the actual ferry, though. She thought it was pretty cool that we drove our car onto the boat.

Trying to be prepared, I charged the camera battery the day before we left. I made sure I had the camera in the diaper bag. But somehow, I failed to put the charged battery in the camera. Oops. I almost cried when I tried to turn the camera on to take pictures on the ferry and it didn't turn on. Luckily for me, Eric's phone has a decent camera. Since he was in charge of the picture taking, we don't have a lot of pictures. But for once I'm actually in some pictures. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing :-).

I think Kaylin must be looking at a bird.

Lauren wanted to be in a picture too.

Kaylin and Eric played on the deck of the ferry for nearly the entire ride both ways.

This is the Lime Kiln Lighthouse.

This park is considered one of the best places in the world to view whales from land. The last sighting was of the J-pod at the end of January. During whale season (about April-October) whales are spotted multiple times a day. One time I visited this lighthouse in the summer and I got to see some Orcas. Pretty amazing.

Kaylin had fun on the rocks near the lighthouse.

Overlooking the harbor and ferry dock from a shopping area.

We also went to the English Camp. There was joint military occupation of the San Juan Islands in the mid-1800s. It hadn't been decided who owned the islands, the British or the Americans. Eventually, the San Juans were given to the United States. For those of you unfamiliar with the NW, Vancouver Island (where Victoria, the capital of British Columbia is located) is directly west of the San Juans. The island extends far past the 49th parallel which is the border between mainland Canada and the United States on the western half of the countries. There's your history/geography lesson of the day :-). Anyway... the English camp is located on a beautiful, calm bay. There are still a couple of buildings and an ornamental garden. And for some reason, we didn't take a single picture. Bummer. It was pretty muddy and Kaylin FREAKED out. She would have thrown herself on the ground crying if she wasn't afraid of getting her pants and coat muddy. Thankfully I brought an extra pair of shoes. When we got back to the car we changed her pants, socks, and shoes and all was right in the world again.

We had a great trip! It was so nice to have time with just our family. Plus, our phones were picking up Canadian cell towers, so we couldn't call anyone or receive any calls, unless we wanted to pay 79 cent a minute. Yikes. If anyone wants recommendations on where to eat, stay, or what to do, let me know!