Potty Time!

We spent the last 4 days at home potty training Kepler. And it went surprisingly well! (I hope I'm not jinxing myself by saying that) I've heard so much that boys are so hard to potty train, but I think Kepler was actually easier than Jayna, which probably has a lot to do with their personalities. And also the fact that we waited a little longer to potty train Kepler, hoping he would be more "ready", whatever that means.

Some of the highlights of the week-end:

• Kepler singing the potty song from his Elmo movie "Accidents happen when you're awake, accidents happen and that's okay!"
• Jayna reading books to Kepler to help him sit on the potty longer and encouraging him to "push!" hehe
  
• Kepler getting so excited when Jayna and I did the potty dance with him the first time
• Kepler sharing one of his potty treats with his (slightly jealous) big sister
  

Today was the first day we went out with underwear and he had no accidents! I feel like it was almost too good to be true, and I keep expecting something horrible to happen to make it more like the nightmares I envision when I think of potty training.

The only hard part has been that Kepler is terrified and absolutely refuses to go anywhere near a toilet. We tried to push it a little bit the second day, but he started getting nervous, had an accident and then asked for a diaper because he said he's "scared of the big potty." So we just didn't mention it again, and luckily it didn't ruin his progress. But now I'm going to be carrying around his potty seat with me everywhere we go, until he decides he's ready to try out the "big potty". Yup, it's a MAJOR pain! But I'll take it if that's the only struggle we have. We are so proud of our little "big" boy! And he's pretty proud of himself too!

Thanks Mom!

Grandma Kathy came to stay with us for 3 weeks to visit and to watch our kids while we were gone. And as usual it went by way too fast, and my kids wish they could replace me with her. ;) Having her here was such a big help.

I got to go into Jayna's preschool to help out one day. It looks like she's punching me in the stomach, but she's just really excited.

We played cooties a few times, it's one of the kid's favourites right now.

We had a little ice cream party the night before Gibb and I left on our trip.

While we were gone my mom did the usual routine with the kids.
She also took them to a Winter Festival with bouncy castles, games, and the worst face painting ever? Jayna insisted on being a pony even though the lady told her she didn't really do ponies, so this is what she ended up with.

Is it just me or does Jayna look way older than 4 here.
Playing at the indoor playground one day.

Painting

Jayna saw cheerleaders for the first time at a Keyano Huskies basketball game a few weeks ago and now she wants to be a cheerleader when she grows up.

Kepler making Grandma look fancy

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We can't wait to have Grandma Kathy back again this summer for an even longer visit. Maybe we should start making the countdown chain now!

Providenciales, Turks and Caicos

Gibb and I just spent 8 days in paradise!
With no kids!

We have been planning this trip for so long, and it felt like it was never going to come. We debated for so long about where to go. We were so close to going to Hawaii and almost booked the flights, but then changed our minds last minutes because we weren't that excited about it. Okay that sounds bad, we would have loved to go anywhere hot, but we wanted to try somewhere new and we also wanted a really relaxing vacation. Everyone keeps asking us how we picked Turks & Caicos, and one of the biggest factors is that it has some of the most amazing scuba diving.

Gibb did his open water dive while we were there and so now he's certified! He ended up going diving 3 times that week. The diving there was incredible, he saw all the classic tropical fish, starfish and sea turtles. He also saw and heard whales and saw tons of sharks. On his last dive a shark swam right past him from behind and brushed his arm, so cool, and scary!! I have to admit I'm a little jealous, so next time we'll definitely go when I'm not pregnant.

This was our beach!
We had the best spot, we were right on a huge reef and it had awesome snorkeling.
We went snorkeling almost every day.

This is what we spent a ton of time doing! Minus the looking miserable part, I'm pretty sure he's sick of me taking pictures at this point.
This was our view as we walked out of our room *sigh* it was about a 3o second walk from the beach!

You can tell this is our first night, I'm still so pasty white!

The beach we were on is called Grace Bay and we could walk about 10 or 20 minutes in either direction and there were tons of restaurants to choose from at the different resorts, and they were all pretty much amazing!
We had tons of fresh seafood. This night I had grouper and Gibb had snapper, so yummy!

Our pool

On the side of the pool they had these sheets of glass so of course Gibb had to pretend to be the animals at Sea World.
A shark!

A whale

A dolphin

And a trainer? I think

Another night going out for dinner. The sand there is so perfect, we could walk home in the dark on the beach and never had to worry about rocks or anything.

We went on a half day excursion on a boat, they took us snorkeling and conch diving. It was so rough and choppy that morning, thank goodness for gravol!
I dove down for this conch, oh ya!!

Then they took us to a beach and cut the meat out of all the conch shells to make a fresh salad, it was delicious.

On the island there were all these iguanas running around, but we didn't get to explore for very long because it started raining. It was a fun morning, but I have to say that half the entertainment was the older couples on the boat, they were hilarious!

Another day we were going to go horseback riding on the beach. Gibb has never ridden a horse before, and he only got to ride for about 10 minutes and then it started pouring so we had to turn back. I was so disappointed that I didn't get a picture of Gibb on his horse, so I made him pose by one. His horse was named Pilgrim and mine was Mango.

We got drenched!

And we were SOO bummed we didn't get to finish!

About a 10 minute walk down the beach there was this little market selling a bunch of handmade crafts and jewelry. The perfect place to chat up some locals and buy some souvenirs for the kids. We didn't take a picture at the market, but this was right by it.

Another beach picture, it went on forever in both directions.

There were some gorgeous sunsets!

This trip was exactly what we'd been dreaming of! I pretty much just wanted to go to a hot beach anywhere. And I wanted a super relaxing vacation where I could lay out most of the day and not feel like I was missing out if we didn't do tons of sightseeing. And Gibb wanted to do some sweet scuba diving. I felt so rested when we got home (except for the first day when we were just tired from traveling), and that's pretty good considering I'm 4 months pregnant.

I thought that I would be kind of sad leaving the kids for so long, this is the longest we've ever left them. And even though I missed them a ton, and made so many comments about how much "Jayna and Kepler would love this!", I was totally fine. And I have to admit when I saw other moms with their little kids trying to put their sun screen on, carrying all their gear around, and trying to get them to eat dinner, it made me so glad I was getting a break from all that!

The day we left, Gibb and I could not stop looking back for one last look at the ocean, and the beach and the pool, we really didn't want to leave, I mean who would. So we decided to just say
"See ya later Turks & Caicos" instead of "Bye" because we definitely want to go back some day!