Prayer

Last night we asked Kayleigh to say the closing prayer at the end of Family Home Evening. Sometimes she'll start the prayer by herself, so I encouraged her to go ahead and do so. She said the entire thing by herself and it was quite lengthy! As she kept going, I thought she'd include the normal things in it, but she came up with a variety of others that we don't have her say routinely. She said things like, "I'm grateful we could have FHE" and "I love my mom and dad." It was so cute! Of course, we made a big deal about it so she'll probably be too embarrassed to do it again!

Bedtime Woes

Kayleigh and Tara share a room. When Tara is here on Thursday nights and has to get up early in the morning to get ready, we let Kayleigh sleep in the playpen in our room. Tara hasn't been here the last two nights, so K's been sleeping in her room. Well, we've put her to bed in there. After being there for ten minutes or so, and being told "one more teeny, tiny story," she has come barging into our room, "I'm awake now! I came to see you, Mom!" The first night, it was just too cute, so we let her fall asleep in our bed, later transferring her to the playpen. Last night, though still cute, we held firm. We only have a queen-size bed, so it's too squishy with her there. Needless to say, she wasn't very happy and it took a few times of getting after her to keep her in her room. She even managed to fake me out during all of the crying by saying she had to go potty.

Four Days Accident-Free! YEA!

Kayleigh's really doing a good job, especially considering all the running around we've been doing. She's not only doing the "dance," she's actually telling us when she needs to go. She said, "I'm all grown up now!" Hopefully, she'll never realize that her nakey knees were posted world-wide!

Hip Hip Hooray!!

UPDATE: I think we're making good progress. Kayleigh isn't telling us yet when she needs to go potty, but she's developing the "pee-pee dance" (thank goodness!). At my brother's house over the weekend, she had to master the "big" potty and did quite well. I do too much running around to stay holed up for a week getting it under control, so have resorted to taking lots of extra clothes with us. The number of accidents per day has dropped dramatically from 10 on Friday to 2-3 since. She doesn't like it, but she's doing it. She does get excited when going: "I'm doing it!"

Progress? Not yet...

We're an hour and a half into potty training...two potty sittings with no results (though some tears and lots of stories read) and two non-potty results on the carpet (no tears, but excitement about choosing the next cute underwear).

Brownies for Young Women's...we can't keep up!

One Smart Cookie

Kayleigh: What's that, Mom?

Mom: What are you talking about?

Kayleigh: That (pointing at my drink). It sounds like Diet Coke with a lot of ice.

Definitely Blog-Worthy

Little Red Riding Hood...try to disregard the witch cackling in the background...

Yeah, more Kayleigh...

Something is wrong with the sound on our computer, so I had the great idea of putting this on the blog so that we can pull it up elsewhere and listen to it. I initially taped it with our camera, downloaded it to the computer and deleted it from the camera...then went, DUH!...and haven't been able to listen to it. IF I remember correctly, it's kind of cute...I mean, it's Kayleigh, right? So it's gotta be!

Susie Homemaker in the making:

Jenny and Kayleigh made Christmas cookies last night. I think Kayleigh's will be going to her little friends in the neighborhood. (She has many more than we do - friends.)

Santa's Little Helpers

Yesterday

Yesterday we had tithing settlement with the bishop. Kayleigh was out of control! In the ten minutes we were there, she was up and down in the chairs, opening drawers, messing with the phone, and (best of all) running back and forth yelling, "I'm pooping! I'm pooping!"

Santa Visit

This afternoon we went to see Santa at Sunset City Hall. Kayleigh wasn't too keen on sitting on Santa's lap, but she did talk to him and she didn't cry, both of which suprised us. She managed to grab a candy cane from his little sack before it was her turn to see him. Smart girl!

Bates Motel...almost!

Early Friday morning, Jenny, Kayleigh, Jenny's friend Corina, and I left to head up to Rexburg, Idaho for Visit Day at BYU-Idaho. The trip up was uneventful. We stopped a few times along the way so Kayleigh could get out and run around. We took a few pictures at the Idaho Falls Temple then headed up to Rexburg. We drove around there for a few minutes then continued on to St. Anthony where we were staying that night at the Guest House at Henry's Fork. Sounds quaint, huh? This is where it all got interesting. First of all, if you don't know about St. Anthony, it's a small farming town of about 3,000 people just north of Rexburg on the way to West Yellowstone. There's basically nothing there...and I mean nothing. As we were driving into town looking at all of the dumpy stores and houses, I tried to be positive..."Maybe the motel will be this nice surprise...like a really cute Bed and Breakfast type." Uh, no. It was just as dumpy as everything around it. But, what do you do? We only had about an hour and a half to get back to Rexburg for Visit Day, which wasn't going to end until 5:30pm. I guess you could say the room wasn't really dirty, though we all decided that there was no way we were showering in that shower! The advertised "kitchenette" was a microwave cart with a microwave and a tiny refrigerator. My sheet had what I've decided was blood splatter residue (because it makes a better story), though Jenny was positive enough to suggest maybe someone spilled their coffee on it. The best part was that the deadbolt on our door didn't work. We shut the door and flipped over the little latch thing. You know, kind of like a safety chain, but it's a solid bar thing with a ball on it? We were beat and had all fallen asleep around 8:00pm. At about 10:00, someone tried to open our door! The door actually opened and caught on that safety bar. Jenny and I semi-freaked out. Corina and Kayleigh slept through it. After that, for the next hour or so, we heard doors slamming all around us. We put a chair in front of the door, not that it would do any good, but there wasn't much else we could do. I suppose we could have asked for another room, but would it have been any better? I doubt it. The next morning, we realized that we really had to slam the door to get it to stay closed. Jenny and I mulled it over and decided that the wind did NOT blow the door open in the night. Someone was seriously rattling the door trying to get in. It was much more creepy talking about it after the fact than it was at the time it was happening.

"Hello? My name is Kayleigh Mattison Hales."

Other than that, the trip went well. Kayleigh was so very good the entire time, especially considering she didn't get a nap at all that day. The student ambassadors at BYU who were in charge of Visit Day went out of their way to entertain her and to make sure Jenny and Corina enjoyed their time there. Jenny's still excited about going there, so I guess it was all worth it.

I've Been Converted!

Kayleigh's Pumpkin #2 became Turkey #1. We spent a good amount of time trying to come up with a name for her, but were unsuccessful. She's just "Turkey." I guess that's better than "Girl," which was what K originally wanted to call her.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

I really like Jen's idea of writing down Cade's cute sayings, so I'm going to be a copy cat, although I worry that I won't remember Kayleigh's long enough to get to the computer. Plus, there are so many! Today, while at a craft store, where I seem to be spending all of my time lately, an Hispanic lady helped us. As we were walking away, Kayleigh said, "We're all done talking to the brown lady?" I'm pretty sure we were far enough away that she didn't hear, but there was no way I was looking back to find out! When I told Matt about it, he said, "You have to put it on the blog!"

While we were eating breakfast yesterday, just out of the blue, she said, "You're my best buddy, Mommy." I'm glad she's so forgiving since I feel like I'm getting on her case all the time.

In this picture, Kayleigh is wearing Matt's baseball hat. She called it his "jogging" hat even though he wears it at other times as well.

Change - is it always good??

Our lives are taking a drastic change as of today. Kayleigh, who likes to play in the pantry in the dark with a flashlight and with the door closed, was able to get out on her own. She hasn't yet tried to open any other doors, but she's smart, so I'm sure she'll realize all too soon that the process is the same.

Happy Halloween

Halloween was fun for us all. We started early in the day by carving a pumpkin for dinner. Actually, we cooked our dinner in the pumpkin. Sounds gross, doesn't it? We were scared, too, but it turned out okay. It was supposed to be "soup," but it ended up being thicker like a casserole. We put browned hamburger, cooked rice, onions, cream of chicken soup, brown sugar, sour cream and carrots in the pumpkin and baked it for an hour. It had a slight pumpkin flavor to it, but mostly it wasn't very warm after being in the oven for that long and we're not big on onions, so there were a lot to pick around. The carrots were also still hard and crunchy even though I had cooked them in the microwave some before adding them. I think next time we'll use onion flakes or powder and corn instead of carrots. It had a good flavor though. I'm always looking for new traditions to start (ones that are different from the same ones everyone else always does). Maybe this is it. Maybe we can try cooking different things in the pumpkin now that we know kind of what to expect.

While the pumpkin was cooking, Matt and I took K out trick-or-treating around the cul-de-sac and about halfway up the block and back. It took an hour just to go that far. She had to stop and check out everything along the way and inspect all of the decorations. We also had to take pictures of her with her little friends. Princess Leia is really Princess "Tayah" - Kayleigh's friend who we babysit a few days a week. Tara and Garrett went out with some of their friends while Jenny stayed home making treats and handing out candy.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

"Beauty" is a process!