Potty Boy

Last week Linkin and I went through an intense potty training. I used the Toilet Training in Less Than a Day book and by the 2nd day threw that out the window. :) There was a lot of great things I took from it, but I had to customize it a little bit to make it work better for Linkin. I can say that we have not had any pee pee accidents in over a week!!!! He really only had 2 pee pee accidents to begin with and one of them was the first time we went out in public and I wasn't paying close enough attention. All in all he took to peeing in the potty very well! We started by teaching one of his stuffed animals how to use the potty and than he was so excited he took almost every single stuffed animal we have to sit on his potty chair. We had to switch that "fun" game to putting his stuffed animals on his Halloween bucket because once he started peeing in the potty I didn't want that all over the stuffed animals! haha. Once it was his turn he was so excited to go and he thought it was great he got all sorts of yummy treats and juices. Big boy Linkin!!!!

He is still having a hard time doing the poopoos on the potty. He freaks out and holds it and wont go. Thank he has a hard time going when it's time to go. If anyone has any suggestions about this let me know! Today I bribed him by getting Toy Story 3 and told him he could watch it when he went poo on the potty. It worked for today, but I can't do that everyday!!! As you can see in the picture he has gotten very creative with things to do while trying to poo. He ate his apple, put his underwear on his head, and played peek a boo with himself with the towel. (A few days earlier he took off his underwear and smacked me with them, but that's neither here nor there...) He is doing awesome and Doug and I are sooo proud! Good boy Linkin!!! You are doing sooo good!!!!!!

This was Linkin playing dress up mommy during our potty training fun. He dressed me in buzz than wanted to take my picture since I was taking funny pics of him. I guess this is the payback I get for posting pics of him on the potty, right?! When you are stuck inside for a few days there are crazy thing you will do to pass the time, and this was one. haha

Potty Time

Tomorrow begins the potty training process. I'm going to try to do a program called "Toilet Training in Less Than a Day." I have had several friends who used it and SWEAR by it. I went today to get all of the treats, juices, and potty. Linkin is sooo excited to begin potty training. I don't really think he knows what he's in for! haha. He keeps sitting on his potty and saying, "I go pee pee like Jackson!" (Jackson is his friend from AZ who Linkin saw go through the toilet training process.) Hopefully I will have good news to report soon! I have my fridge stocked with coke to get me through the day and I definitely plan on snacking on those Oreo cookies I bought for Linkin! ;) Here goes nothing....

Halloween

Buzz Lightyear to the rescue!!!!! I mean seriously, how adorable is this Buzz?! Linkin has a history of weird Halloweens. His first Halloween he got super sick and ended up not getting to go and last year he was sick too. I have almost always had to dress him up in his costume after Halloween and do a photo shoot. This year was no different. haha. When it was time for trunk or treat at the church we had to wake him up from his nap to take him. He was NOT happy about this. He refused to put his costume on until we got there and wouldn't even talk about putting his wings on. I took this picture a few days later to show that his costume was ADORABLE! :) He loved trick or treating once we actually got him in his costume and he started gathering candy. He is definitely a fan now! Hopefully next year we have no problem getting him to do it!

Linkin and I took a trip to Arizona right before Halloween and had sooo much fun. Doug was in Miami for a work trip and Linkin and I spent some fun time with family. The Fry's by my parents house was doing a trick or treat one of the nights for the kids. It was really cute. They had all sorts of activities set up for the kids and had workers handing out candy too. I thought it was really cute and Linkin had a great time trick or treating with Monterey and Alexandera (aka: greek goddess and bat girl).

Britany and Linkin making ghost suckers at Fry's for trick or treat. Linkin was about 4 tootsie rolls down by this point in the night. It worked out great for me because I'm not a fan of the tootsie rolls so I got to eat all his good candy! :)

Here is Linkin trick or treating door to door at the church. It was scheduled to be a trunk or treat party but the weather in Cali actually has rain, so we ended up inside the church. He had a great time and people did a great job decorating their doors and handing out yummy treats. Linkin snagged a balloon somehow from a carnival game in the gym and it turned out to be one of the best things of the night. I could always tell where he was! I'm thinking about getting a permanent balloon to put on him at parks and stuff so I don't loose him. I think it's a great idea!!! ;)

This is the game Linkin and I played for seriously about an hour while I was trying to get a cute pic of him in his outfit. He would not run unless I said either, "to infinity and beyond" or "buzz lightyear to the rescue". It was pretty funny! He had a fun time as you can tell from above! Cute little man!

Pumpkin Painting

This week Link and I went over to our friends house for some yummy treats and some pumpkin painting. Linkin was a HUGE fan of the glitter! Takes after his mother I guess! (everything is better with a little bling, what can I say?) We have been quite festive this year. Link is very into Halloween. I am still working on him when it comes to his costume though. He is going to be Buzz Lightyear but he hates to wear the dang thing. I got him an inflatable jet pack so I'm hoping that will help entice him to wear the costume. I also made him put it on and than gave him some candy as an incentive. I'm trying to reinforce the idea if you wear this ridiculous outfit you get candy! haha. Hopefully it works! I will try to get him on video saying Buzz's catch phrase, "to infinity and beyond." It is HILARIOUS when he says it! You can't understand a word he says but it is soo funny! He usually says it before taking a flying leap into the swimming pool, which makes it even funnier!

The little artists all at work. Look at that concentration! I don't think they moved for a good 20 minutes! Great project!

Here are the final products! Pretty good guys! I see an art profession in your future! ;)

Bay Area Discovery Museum

Last week Linkin and I went with our friends to the Bay Area Discovery Museum. This is one of my new FAVORITE places. It has a really cool set up. They have a bunch of different room/houses with different themes to them. We went to the train room/fishing room, the frog on a lilly pad room, the Smokey the Bear room, and we played in the fish pond (picture above. and yes they are fake fish :) There were still so many rooms we didn't get to go play in so we will have to go back soon! I am thinking this will be a great rainy day activity to go do this rain season. The best part about the museum is that it is 20 minutes away from my house and right by Doug's work! This place is a keeper!

Here is Linkin playing the "bells" as he calls them. Monterey and Alexandra have a cute little set from their music class and Linkin LOVES playing with their bells when he is playing at papa and nana's house. He knew just what to do with this toy! The only problem was he didn't really want other kids playing with them. We worked it out and he began sharing well with other kids. Good job Link!!!

Here is part of the train room. To the left of this picture is a huge boat that moves when you run around on it. It is way cute but Link thought it was kinda "scawry". Poor kiddo! ;) The boat is cool because you can "fish" off of it. I'll try to get Link to man up and fish next time so we can get some pictures. haha. :)

I am still obsessed with this bridge, so I will continue putting pics of the Golden Gate on my blog. IT'S MY BLOG AND I CAN BLOG IF I WANT TO!!!! haha. This is the view of the Bridge from the front of the Bay Area Discovery Museum. It was a little foggy the day we went but it wasn't really very cold. We got lucky because I didn't bring our jackets! I will learn to layer, layer, layer!!! You drive ten minutes north or south of our house and you can get a 10 degree change in weather! It's crazy!

Pumpkin Patch Cali Style

Last year we went to an awesome pumpkin patch in Arizona with our friends. I was really bummed because I wanted to do it again this year. Lucky for me our play day this week was at a pumpkin patch about 30 minutes north of us! It was so fun! It was an actual patch of pumpkins too! You walked through the patch and picked out which pumpkin you wanted. It was the traditional way to do it, not just a bunch of pumpkins sitting on hay and you pick one out. I was impressed! :) They also had animals you could feed and a whole thing on bees making honey. Pretty educational stuff! ;)

Mommy trying to get a picture with her cute little man and him doing everything in his power to NOT look at the camera. Come on Linkin! Help the mamma out!

Here are all of the kids at the pumpkin patch. We really gotta work on our photo skills. haha. Getting the kids to look was next to impossible, so we settled for just having them all in the same shot.

Here is Linkin chasing his little friend Margo. These two crack me up!

Here is Linkin feeding a pony. I couldn't believe he actually did it! He kinda fed the cow, but it was more like he took the hunk of food and threw it at the cow. He actually held out his hand like he was suppose to for the pony and let him eat it off his hands! Crazy! When the group of school kids came up to take a turn that didn't go over very well with Linkin. He pretty much told them it was his pony and back off. haha. I guess he had quite the bonding experience with the pony over a few pellets of food.

Blue Angels

Last week was fleet week in San Francisco. Doug got off work early on Friday and I had him meet us so he could watch the blue angels with us. It was a fun surprise to have Doug come meet up with us on our play day. Doug and I were completely amazed at how cool the blue angels were! We were so excited about what we were seeing and we would look down to show Linkin the airplanes and he was having to much fun playing with sticks with his friend Kaitlyn. Maybe next year he'll get it! haha.

This picture is amazing! I was trying to get a picture of when they flew right above us and you could see the US Navy painted underneath, but this is the closest we got. How cool are these guys!? Doug kept joking that he thinks these guys have absolutely no trouble getting dates. I think I'll have to agree with him. ;)

Watching them fly around the Golden Gate Bridge was really cool! I LOVE this bridge!!! How cool is this!? There is always so much fun stuff to do here in Cali. Such a fun family day!

Academy of Sciences

Linkin and I went to one of the funnest museums the other day with our friends Michael and Amberly. Linkin absolutely loves aquariums and this place was one of the coolest aquariums I think I've ever seen. He was running around the entire place dancing around so excited at what he was seeing! It was so cute to see how happy he was. They had all sorts of fish I had never seen before. Linkin had a great time!


This is when we first when down the elevator and Linkin saw the fish. He jumped out of his stroller and took off running! One of his favorite things to do with my dad at his house is to help him feed his fish. Whenever we go over to my parents house Linkin finds my dad and tells him "the fish are hungry papa!" Of course my dad lets him feed the fish and Linkin loves it. The whole time we were at the aquarium he kept saying "just like papas fish!" It was absolutely precious! He misses you papa! :)

Not only did the Academy of Sciences have an aquarium, but they also had an African Safari section. These are African Penguins. Never heard of them before, but it was really fun to watch them swim and eat their fish. They were standing on the rocks and Linkin kept yelling at them to jump in the water. He loved watching them swim!
Another cool thing about the museum is they have people who get in full on scuba gear and get in the exhibits with the animals/fish. They get in the tanks with them and give presentations and answer questions while in the water swimming with the fishes. It is pretty neat to watch them swimming around talking about the different fun facts.

Here is Linkin and Michael trying to climb in the African Safari with the zebras. I don't think you're suppose to do that boys! ;)

The play place at the museum was really fun. After the boys were done with the exhibits they let out the rest of their energy in the play place. Here is Linkin steering the ship. Ay ay captain! We didn't get to make it to the rainforest's part of the museum, but we will for sure go there another day! This place is a definite keeper! Thanks Amberly for the fun day!

Bunco Baby!

I can not believe it, but I have finally succumb to the pressure and went to play Bunco! I am now officially the total cliche of a Mormon mom! ;) It was sooo much fun! The girls I have met here in our new ward are way to0 much fun! This was the October Bunco so it was a costume party. This picture was taken at the end of the night, so a lot of the costumes had been removed by this point, but they were all fabulous! I actually won too! I had 13 wins! Must have been beginners luck or something. ( or I am just way skilled at rolling the dice. Did somebody say Vegas!!! ) Thanks girls for the fun night and can't wait to do it again sometime! Now I gotta come up with another costume for the Halloween party later this month. Any ideas????

Park Time

(I LOVE LOVE LOVE this picture of Link!)

I love the weather here in San Francisco! A few days ago Linkin and I met some friends of ours in the City to go to a way cute park there. It was actually 89 degrees in the City which was extremely hot for them!! I couldn't believe all the complaining about how hot the weather was. It just cracked me up since a month ago we were locked up in our houses because it was 116 outside! There are tons of parks everywhere and they are all so gorgeous and green. It's so weird not having brown everywhere, but it is definitely a change I am getting use to! :) Here are some fun pics of Link at the park with his friends.

Look at this ballar! He was definitely taking it to the hoop on the street court. Go Linkin!

They have some of the coolest toys at the parks here. This one was one of Links favorites.

Life in Cali

We are LOVING life in California. The weather is absolutely amazing out here. It is also a little random. I can go through 3 outfits in one day! I wake up and it's freezing so I wear a sweatshirt. A little later it warms up so I throw some shorts on and by afternoon we at are the pool! Weirdest thing ever but I am not going to fight it! :) I am so use to it just being so nasty hot all the time it's kinda nice to have good weather! The other thing I am not use to is fog. It is so cool looking though I can't get over it. :) I am in love with the Golden Gate bridge too. It's not really safe for me to drive across it because I can't seem to get over the amazing view. I should be looking at the road instead of the cool surroundings, but whatever. jk. Here are some fun pics of the things we love.
My obsession with the Golden Gate Bridge above! So cool how it looks! This day I couldn't get pics of the boats and stuff on the water cuz it was to foggy on the bridge. How cool is that though!?

Doug works in Sausalito. The picture above is us eating at a really cool place in Sausalito ON THE WATER!!!! The restaurants out here are amazing!! The food is so fresh because it's all grown local and the sea food is to die for! It also helps to have cool views like this while your eating. :)

Another cool thing about Cali is all of the farmers markets. There is a farmers market going on every single day here! They don't just sell food either. It's kinda like a huge swap meat party. It's awesome! This particular farmers market is next to a duck pond so Link wanted to go feed the ducks.

Here is Link in the bouncy house at the farmers market. He is obsessed with these now. He asks every day to go to a farmers market so we can do a bounce house. He doesn't really get that I go for the food, but I'm not complaining if he's happy while I grocery shop! (he is also obsessed with Toy Story and Cars. Everywhere we go he will have one of the toys from those movies with him. Woody is in his hands above.)

Linkin is so into doing jumping jacks. I have no idea where he learned to do them or why he thinks they are so fun, but it is hilarious!!! I'll try to get some video because this picture just doesn't do it justice. It's especially fun for him to do them at church on the benches during sacrament. Not so fun for me though. :)

This is a picture of the farmers market when we left. As you can see it's like a huge party! This one Doug came with us to. Doug likes them because he thinks it is fun to haggle with the farmers over price. I don't mind because he can get our food even cheaper and he thinks it's fun to do it. haha. With that said, I do walk away while he talks to the farmers. :) I think I'll take him with me from now on so we always get the good prices! Love you Dougie!

Bye Bye Arizona

I haven't blogged in like 7 months so let me start by saying...... WE MOVED TO SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA! Crazy, right?! Doug got an amazing job with a company called Glassdoor.com (check it out! :)) and we couldn't pass up the offer! We miss our family and friends so much but we are loving it out here in California too! Here is some pics from all of the fun we had to cram in because we decided to move and had 2 weeks to do it!!!

Every moving away party starts with a Girls Night Out baby!!

Krissie picked me up and the fun night started!

Here are all of the way cute, fun, amazing girls that came to dinner. Mindy, Jen, Tiffany, Dani, Me, Krissie, and Vanessa (who also moved to Cali and now lives 45 minutes from me! :)

The fun night continued for ice cream and other fun after dinner! Vanessa is hiding behind me in this pic. haha. Jen I love you in this pic!!!

Dani and Seth had a BBQ at his parents house with all of our friends and their kids. It was sooo much fun to get everybody together. We should have been doing this all along! It was tons of fun!

Here is a pic of the last playday that we had before we moved. It was a swimming party because Linkin is such a little fishy these days! (I will go back and do a post of that craziness that was swim lessons and Link swimming. It's so awesome!)

My parents had a family dinner at their house for all of the kids and grand kids to get together for one last time! Here is a pic of all of the kids. I love these little goobers!!!!! I will see you guys soon though and each of you get a huge hug from me so get ready!!!!

We are so blessed to have such an amazing family and group of friends in AZ. We love you all so much and were so glad we got to have so much fun together! Miss you lots!

You be the judge...

(Linkin is ready for his close up in this picture :)

So I got this really cute outfit for Linkin and my mom is totally making fun of me! She says I need to get over the fact that Linkin isn't a girl and not dress him in pink. I will say this is the only outfit that he has in pink, but I think it's a manly pink! Doug says real men wear pink and even has some ties that have pink in them. I wouldn't have him wear this shirt with pink pants, but since the pants are manly I think he totally pulls it off! What do you think? You be the judge.


This one is gonna bite me later cuz I let him sit on the table top. He was sooo excited though and I got a cute smile from it! :) Totally worth it!


Linkin striking a pose for the camera. haha. love it!

GOING PRIVATE!

Hey guys! I totally never thought I would do this, but it is time I go private. I put a tracker thingy on my blog to see who was looking at it, and there are way to many people I don't know checking it out! That freaks me out! If you want to continue looking at my amazing blog (haha) leave a comment with your email address. If you are not comfortable doing that, you can email me at hillarymatson@yahoo.com. That email is my junk email so don't send anything important there. I didn't wanna post my main email online. Thanks guys and please comment so we can keep in touch! =)

Splash Pad Already?

The other day was our 2nd splash pad party of the season. We actually did one a few weeks ago when it got really hot in February. That's right.... in FEBRUARY!!!! It cooled down for a few weeks after that and now it's starting to warm up again so back we go to the splash pad. We love going to Desert Ridge because there's lots of fun shops for the mommies and than you can bribe the kids to be good with the splash pad. It's a no brainer win win! The only thing that gets tricky is when you have a kid that's a runner (like mine) who gets away and can hide behind a palm tree and you freak out running around trying to find him. I'm not saying that this happened to me, but if you saw a crazy lady who looks similar to me running around Desert Ridge looking for her kid who was literally 5 feet from her it might have been me! ;) After wearing the kids out from having too much fun we had some lunch and went home for nap time. Way fun day girls! Definitely doing it again soon. =)

This picture is sooo stinkin' cute! Grace was just looking at him like, "can I have some pretzels?" and Linkin is like, "whatever, as long as you don't take my bouncy ball!" haha! Classic!

Something really funny must have happened over there boys!!! =)

Here is a picture of all of the kiddos who came to play: Sotera, Slade, Grace, Linkin, Haygen, Ainsley, Isaiah and Carter. This is after they were done playing and were freezing cold! The weather was hot, but there was a little breeze and the water was icy.

p.s.~ After we changed into our clean clothes and started to eat lunch, Linkin ran back through the water and got soaking wet. Luckily I had done a little shopping so we had an extra pair of clothes to change into. Naughty Linky! =)

Also, this is the same water fountain that Linkin ran through at 7 o'clock at night in December when Desert Ridge did the "snow fall" (bubbles).