Growing up, up, up

We've had some big moments in the Godin household over the past week: Grace is finally interested in taking care of her business on the potty. If I looked on the calendar, I would never have planned for potty training to happen now (with a newborn and only 1 month left in the US, that is.) I know that at some point she might regress with all the life changes about to happen again. But, this week things have really clicked for Grace, and we are thrilled. The last couple of days she has been dry all day and has even taken care of her "big business" in the potty the last 2 days. (Kudos to Granna for being the first one to get Grace to do that last week!) We have used rewards and incentives shamelessly. The sticker chart didn't do much for Grace but those cheap little frogs from the dollar store really get her going. The next step is to wean her off of the rewards, I suppose. Any suggestions? Last week Grace saw a girl flying a kite at the park. The little girl even let her fly it, and Grace now thinks kites are the coolest things ever. We told her if she did her big business in the potty she'd get a kite. So, after yesterday's success, Grace and Daddy went to pick one up. Winnie the Pooh was the kite of choice One nice thing about living in a West Texas city is you can always count on some good wind for a kite! Grace still loves being a big sister. Yesterday I was about to take a picture of Trinity, so Grace had to line her baby doll next to sister for a picture, too. This was after dressing her baby doll Keely in one of Trinity's onesies, of course.

Trinity has been giving us great smiles lately, especially in the morning. But, doggone it if I can't catch a good one on the camera. It's usually because I'm trying to make her smile while I have a camera in her face. Somehow that doesn't work well. She's growing so fast and is somewhere between 11-12 pounds already. She's outgrowing some of her 0-3 month clothes. Seriously!

sweet little face: baby acne and all

7 weeks old already!

Egghunt fun

Here's a video from one of the 3 egghunts Grace participated in last week. This one was at Granna and Papa Jim's house. Granna had hidden eggs all over the house. Did I mention Grace REALLY loves to hunt eggs now?! (And, apparently we are very kind to animals.)

Easter week in review

Warning: this post is pretty long and contains a bunch of pictures! It seems not long ago we began the "hi agains" in America, but now we are starting our final round of goodbyes. Maybe I'll just call them "see-you-laters" because that sounds much better. Last week we had fun times with friends and family, beginning on Monday with our last visit with Kevin's sister for a while. Nana, Pappaw, and "Aunt Kimmy" came up for one final trip before Kimberly heads back overseas at the end of the month. It was her first time to meet Trinity. Here she is holding her niece (#4!) for the first time. Bless their hearts, every time Nana and Pappaw have driven up to Lubbock the wind has been fierce. Here we are at the park, only we didn't stay very long because we were about to blow away!

Trinity seems to really enjoy sleeping on her Pappaw. One afternoon right after Trinity was born, Pappaw held her for nearly 3 hours while I took a big nap!

Of course she loves her Nana too!

Grace soaked up all the attention she got between Nana, Pappaw, and Aunt Kimmy. As you can imagine, she was sad when they left.

After we said goodbye to family, we had a reunion with some dear friends. The 4 girls you see here called ourselves BEAK in college, as in Brigitte, Elisabeth, Amy, and Kristen. (Clever, ain't it?) We had a blast doing all kinds of silly things together our freshman year at good ole' Hardin-Simmons. Now we are all married with 2 kids each and living in 4 different locations. But Bill and Elisabeth drove up from Houston, while Steve and Amy came in from Clovis. We had a fun and relaxed evening, catching up and talking about old times. Kristen and Mike, thank you for all the work you did to host us!

We love to line up for pictures in correct BEAK order.

Here are our BEAK boys. We all met our wonderful husbands at HSU. Is it unusual that they all have goatees?

The kiddos played well together and loved having a picnic outside!

Steve and Amy headed back to Clovis, but the next day we had a fun Easter party with the kids. Kristen prepared 4 dozen hard-boiled eggs, and we all dyed them surprisingly quickly!

Right after the outdoor hunt...

And right after the indoor hunt with the plastic candy-filled eggs! (It was way too cold to spend much time outdoors!)

Uncle Mike told the Easter story using the Resurrection eggs.

An Easter Sunday pic...That morning, I told her, "Happy Easter Grace. Jesus is alive!" To which she replied, "You're right, mommy. He IS alive!"

Daddy and his girls.

One fun thing I remember about Easter this year is that we got our first BIG smiles from Trinity that day. Technically she's given us some half-smiles recently, but Sunday morning we got the first real ones.

I'm so thankful for the fun memories we got to make over the past week. It truly helps us savor the time knowing we are leaving soon.

snow day

Today the temperature outside reached 80 degrees, but LAST Friday we had a little winter weather make a brief appearance. Since we live in tropical Asia and Grace has NEVER in her life seen snow, I had been hopeful for at least one snowfall while we were here in the States. We've had an unusually warm winter here in West Texas, and I had given up hope altogether until last week. There wasn't a ton of snow and it was gone by the afternoon, but it was enough for Grace to see. We talked it up and Grace was all excited to go stomp in the snow...and then we went outside. My not-too-adventurous 2 year old decided it would be better to have Daddy hold her. She wanted nothing to do with it. It probably didn't help that the West Texas wind was blowing in her face and she was freezing. Oh well, at least Mom got a few photos. It's probably best that Grace lives where it's hot. Blistering hot. No, really Dad, I don't want to get down and walk!

You can tell how excited she was at this point!

But it was warm inside. There is always time to hug sister.

Here's Trinity wearing Evyn's panda bear outfit. I think it's pretty fitting for a made-in-Ch!na baby, don't you? In these photos she's 3 weeks old. I can't believe she will be a month old this coming Sunday. I'll have to post more pictures soon because she has really seemed to pork-up in the last week. I have forgotten how quickly newborns change!

I love "stretchy-face." It's my favorite. Trinity's still such a calm baby! Many thanks have gone up for this fact!