Do you see this pretty girl here? This big girl?

Well as you’ve probably already heard, she finally FINALLY went potty on the toilet yesterday! I had an art class from 11am-4pm (more about that later!) and Chris decided she was gonna spend the day commando in hopes of making some progress on that whole potty-training thing. And it worked. Mad props to him! But he wasn’t the one promised all the goodies when she finally went on the potty. His mistake. We now own Erin ballet lessons, enrollment in pre-school, and a Nintendo DS!

dayum. That girl was holding out for the big ticket items.

Now that the site I’ve been working on night and day is for the most part finished, I actually have some time to catch up on my photo editing. I’ve barely made a dent into the pictures I took over the summer, so I’m now working backwards. Yes, it does feel wrong. I starting going through the shots taken on our last visit to Santa Cruz over Labor Day weekend and found some photos of Erin that had me shaking my head.

My dad has said on more than one occasion that I was spoiled rotten. That might have been true when I was little, but I’m pretty sure that tap was shut off when I hit double digits. And I am always quick to point out that you can’t spoil yourself and he needs to turn that finger around and point it at the spoiler not the spoiled. Anyways, it seems it is time for the next generation to take the lead. Erin is my in-law’s (the ubers) only grandchild. And Chris certainly made them wait for her. So as you can image, they like her, a lot, and have years of pent-up grandparent spoiling to work through. (And please note that they are also great to Kyle, but he was 7 when Chris and I got together. They still manage to spoil him too, but a baby – that’s the stuff grandparents live for.)

When Kyle started school in August, Erin became obsessed with having a backpack like her big brother. Kyle gave her his old backpack, but it was way too big on her and made her look like a turtle. We mentioned that we needed to get Erin a toddler-sized backpack to grandma and off to Toys’R'Us we went. Erin not only got a backpack – she got TWO! Matching Barbie backpacks to make it even more wonderful.

Yeah, that baby knows how to work it.

And this is how she left Santa Cruz. Lions and tigers and tiaras oh my…

Talking finances with Chris. Here, look at these while I go stick my head in clean the oven…

who is this handsome young man?!