Makenna & Caleb

Makenna and Caleb have been friends from birth. They were born two weeks apart and Caleb's mom is one of my good friends. It's so much fun watching these two grow up together and play together. They follow each other around and just copy what the other one does, they laugh and talk to one another. It's so cute!!!

Look who got into the sunscreen

This is what happens when Brett and I ignore our child. We did laugh pretty hard though.

Summer Fun with the cousin's!

I just returned from a trip to Peoria to see my sister's. We had a great time! My sister just moved to a new house with a pool. So we pretty much swam everyday. Makenna did so well. She is wearing her muscles and swimming all by herself. The last day she was swimming across the pool and jumping in by herself. I'm so proud of her.

Grandpa Lee and Alexa

The cousin's put on a little show for us.

Mason and Alexa look like they could be siblings.

Eating snow cones by the pool. Yummy!

My cousin Jason and his wife Lindsey adopted a baby boy who was born four days after Alexa. It was so great to meet Jonah. He is already bigger than Alexa.

Grandma Pat and Alexa. She got Alexa to take a bottle for the first time. Way to go Mom!

Flooding

These pictures may look like we normally have a pond outside our house, but we don't. That water is from one day of non-stop rain. Where the water is, should all be open grassy areas. Places where Makenna usually plays since we live in townhouses and don't have our own yard. It rained so much that the drains couldn't keep up with the amount of flooding and therefore we ended up with a pond outside our house. The water was about 3 ft deep.

Brett is showing how deep the water is, and he is 6'4 inches.

We are so in shock to walk outside and see all this water!!!

There is a dog swimming in the flooded waters behind our place. That should be open grass, not water.

McHenry Weekend

The Lilly family as a cottage on the Fox River up in McHenry, IL and every summer we try to spend a couple weekends there. We love the laid back atmosphere and boat rides.

She's a big girl!

I'm so excited to share that Makenna is potty trained. I have to thank all my moms on Facebook that shared their stories and advice with me on what I should do. And it all payed off. I immediately started with underwear and we had lots of accidents, but I took the advice of no pull-ups except for naps and bedtime and it worked. And she has been doing excellent. We bought princess underwear which we talked about how it made the princess sad is she got wet, plus she couldn't wear her princess underwear anymore when it got wet. Also, the Elmo potty seat worked wonders. We also have Dora in the other bathroom. She was never scared to sit on the BIG potty. She had no desire for the little potties that sit on the floor so I was glad we didn't have to do any transitions. We also used a Dora Potty training chart. So after she would go potty or try, she got a sticker. She was very excited about getting Dora stickers. Also, the bribing helped. Eveytime she went potty, she got a piece of candy. Overall, it took less than a week for her to do it. It was so hard for me to stay home all day, and to be patient enough to sit her on the potty and wait for her to go. Sometimes it took an hour. But, it was all worth it. And at least I can say I successfully potty trained her.