Oregon Vaughns

It has been a while since I have blogged, but here are some quick updates:

• Lily burnt her hand pretty badly by slipping and catching herself on the glass fireplace a few days ago.  Big hand blister with a little blister on each finger.  Over an hour of screaming and crying in pain before falling asleep due to exhaustion.  It is almost healed now, thank goodness.
• Lily is doing great at going to the Kid’s Club (the play room at the gym, so Andy and I can work out)
• I am 16.5 weeks pregnant (due July 6th).  We will find out the sex of our next child on February 7th and we are trying to think of some fun way to reveal it to ourselves and others
• Lily has a Disneyland OBSESSION.  We told her we would take her when she was 5.  So, she spends the majority of every day talking about how she will go to Disneyland when she is 5.  She lists all of the characters that she wants to see, etc…
• Lily also has a Mary Poppins obsession.  That has been the movie of choice for a month.  When she realized that Burt and Mary Poppins live at Disneyland too, her world was complete.
• The other day Lily told me she “was the sad girl in the whole world.”  (because she missed her dad)
• I am almost half-way through this school year.
• Crazy snow / rain / sunshine here in Bend.  Can’t make up its mind.
• Lily will be going with my mom (for a week) to Connecticut to see Shauna and Winter this April for Winter’s 2nd birthday.  Lily is very excited, but tells me that she will miss me.  And, we will miss her terribly, but will probably enjoy a little rest as I become even more pregnant.

Pictures coming soon.

Lily gets so excited about doing math (since Mom teaches math to kids at school). She gets very giddy and a little crazy. But, she is doing well.

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YouTube Direkt- Lily and Math1

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YouTube Direkt- Lily and Math2

It has finally arrived… Winter break is here. I never thought I’d make it: 2 weeks off from work. The plans?

*My parents house remodel here in Bend just finished today. What a change! At some point I will post before and after pictures.

*Shauna, Colin and Winter come to visit for a week this Wednesday. It will be great to celebrate Christmas in Bnd with Lily and Winter together.

*Chelsea is coming to visit for Christmas, as well as Andy’s dad. (My parents will be here too). We will have our entire immediate family in Bend for Xmas. Super excited!

About two weeks ago, we decided to take Lily out of diapers. She was always good about number 1 in the toilet when we were proactive parents, but number 2 in the toilet was not going to happen…. So, we took of the diapers (only one for night). She did great peeing in the toilet but still refused to poop. When she needed to poop, she would ask us for a diaper. This went on for about a week. However, we were getting no closer to pooping in the toilet.

So, last Sunday, I made the decision that she was going to poop in the toilet, period. Without providing too many details, I fibered her up and she sat on the toilet for over an hour (willing). Nothing happened, though I know she had to go. Then, she realized it was about to happen and got terrified. I had to be a mean mom for three minutes and hold her to the toilet through her protest (to put it mildly). I didn’t want this to be the way, but my instincts told me it was going to be the only way o achieve breakthrough and that it was definitely just more traumatic for me than for her….

Well, as soon as she actually started to go, the tears and screams stopped. “it doesn’t hurt Mom! I’m not scared Mom!”. She was so proud of herself.

Breakthrough.

Tuesday, she pooped again in the toilet, willingly, but it took sone time sitting and waiting…. Fast forward to both yesterday and today: she told us it was time to poop, she sat on the toilet, and went. Easy. Tada!

Glad to say: only a diaper at night now. We made it.

As of October 8, Lily is now 3 years old. She is growing so quickly! Here are some quick/fun facts about Lily:

• She is obsessed with dresses.  And, the dresses must “spin.”  If she puts on a dress that doesn’t have a good twirl to it, she gets teary-eyed and says “That’s not a dress, that is just clothes!”
• She has started calling Nana “Your mom” when speaking to Andy or calling my parent’s “Your mom” or “Your dad” when speaking to me.  She is exploring all of the relationships.
• She now sleeps in a Full Size “Big Girl Bed” that my mom bought her for her birthday.  Her bed is just as high off of the ground, if not higher, than mine!  She is such a big girl, and has Hello Kitty Sheets, which she loves.
• We bought some wall decals and decorated her room (and did a little re-arranging), super cute, I think.
• She is about 50 pounds, 40.5 inches (doctor said she was average weight for an 8 year old and average height for a 5 year old).
• She is completely anti- pooping in the toilet. *Sigh*
• She has a great bedtime routine which she loves to do by herself, and with help as needed:  potty in the toilet, wash hands, brush teeth, wash face.
• She likes to pretend that she is Donkey, I am Fiona, and Andy is Shrek.
• Lily LOVES building with legos.  We build parks, weddings, stores, libraries, you name it.
• She likes to ask if people are girls, boys, ladies or men (distinguishing sex and age).
• She knows my phone number and our house address.
• Andy made her a mixed CD for her birthday, which include her favorite songs:  DJ Got Us Falling In-Love Again (Usher), Rhythm of Love (Plain White T’s), Move Like Jagger (Maroon 5), Forget You (Ceelo Green) Pumped Up Kicks (Foster the People), Just the Way You Are (Bruno Mars) and Rolling in the Deep (Adele)

Some photos, more to come:

Getting Winter and Shauna from the airport late at night.  They are both so tired, but happy to see each other!

Matching PJs:

Lily and her baby have matching dresses too:

Lily’s cupcake:  Vanilla with sprinkles, gummy bears and coconut (her favorite snacks).  The cake in the background is for my Aunt Dianne’s 60th bday, for which we had a mini family reunion!  Very fun!

My mom, with her 3 siblings (plus an uncle)

There are many, many blog updates below.  Scroll down to check out what we have been doing this summer.  Since I fell behind in blogging, I am sure there are times I left out details and I am sure there are times I repeated myself.  I was just trying to catch everyone up with what has been happening and post some pictures.

Why am I so motivated?  Summer ends for me on Monday.  Back to work!  Well, I am only teaching part time at Summit High School this year.  My schedule will be from 11am-3pm or so, pretty great considering I like to sleep in.  Summer has been fantastic, as you can see from the posts below.  I am sure there is so much more to share that I have forgotten.

My goal, as always, is to continue to blog regularly to keep an online journal, for you to follow, and for us to reflect upon (and for Lily to have when she is older).  Hopefully I will not fall behind like that again!

Andy and I were able to re-charge our batteries during our last week of summer vacation.  Lily stay in Corvallis with my mom and dad from Sunday afternoon until today (Thursday afternoon).  We had many days to be “young and child-free.”  We missed Lily terrible and spend much of our time without her actually talking about her.  But, the time to re-charge was nice.  It involved sleeping in, riding bikes for 4 hours around Sun River (seeing Benham Falls, and riding around town), going to the gym, reading books, playing poker, watching movies, staying up late… and a big one: doing our taxes (hey, we applied for an extension!).  But, they are done and submitted.  Also, our car now has new brakes.

We accomplished a lot in a child-free 4 days.

Lily also had a great time with Papa during the days (while Nama was at work).  She enjoyed trips to the park and the jumping place, snow cones, ice cream, and popsicles — and that all happened in just one day!!!

So, catch up on our blog by reading below.  Enjoy!

One of the best parts about living in Bend is that everyone wants to come visit you (same thing was true when we were in Vegas).  We have had non-stop visitors this summer (family and friends) and it has been wonderful.  Bend has so much to offer: shopping, food, recreation, beautiful weather, scenery, outdoor festival/music, farmer’s markets… We have it all.

The Medina’s came to visit (a few times).  We were down at Munch N’ Music in Drake Park waiting to hear Big Bad Voodoo Daddy perform, when all of the sudden, an ominous cloud appeared out of nowhere delivering half-dollar sized hail!  It was the most insane surprise storm that I have ever been in.  And, the hail hurt!  (This was in August, too!)  Then, the hail turned to rain and we were soaked.  It was a flash flood and the water could not drain fast enough.  Andy ran to get the car and by the time we all got in it, we were drenched.  We were able to laugh about it when we got home, of course, safe and dry.

Here is a picture before the flukey storm:

Munch N’ Music is one of our free Thursday night concerts.  The week prior we had listened to Cherry Poppin’ Daddies play.

Another visitor of the summer was Auntie Chelsea.  Lily sure had a great time with her.  On one of the evenings, we climbed Pilot Butte (one of my favorite this to do with visitors, or just Lily).  Here are some pictures from atop the butte.

We have had many more visitors (and we welcome anyone wanting to come).  These are just a few that I happened to catch on film!

We went to Las Vegas for a second time this summer in July.  We went with the intent of playing some WSOP Events and maybe even the Main Event.  The goal was to satellite into the tournament (win seats by playing smaller tournaments).  We had made the decision that we would play the Main Event if we could win 2 seats.  However, we only won 1 seat… I shouldn’t say we, I should say Andy!  Andy won a seat into the Main Event and we were able to sell it for full value and come home with cash in hand.  So, even though we didn’t get to play the Main Event this year, it was still a successful run.

And, we of course took my dad to China Poblano (see from Vegas, Take 1) to have the 20 Vegetable Fried Rice and the Guacamole!

I should not that this trip was about a week long!  We were able to fly Shauna and Winter out from Connecticut to babysit.  Expensive babysitter, but well worth it.  Lily and Winter had a great time playing together for the week, and Shauna got to juggle two children.

This is a post that is overdue from last May.

Well, my dad’s nickname has evolved to Papa.  That is what he is called around here thanks to Lily.

Back toward the end of May we celebrated his birthday with a “not-so-surprise” party that we throw him every year.  Thanks to the dollar store, there were some funny gifts and some good laughs.

Crazy hats and fake teeth?

Let me first start with this modest and honest assessment:

Andy is, hands down, the best tournament poker player that I know (for Hold ‘Em).  In all seriousness, he is.  I would put my money on him over anyone I have ever seen…. and, we have played with very high level / experienced professionals.  I would still pick Andy, not just because I married him, but because he would be the best bet financially.

So, there was a 4-week tournament series called the Central Oregon Poker Championship.  There were 4 total tournaments (2 Texas Hold ‘Em, 1 Omaha, 1 Heads-Up Hold ‘Em).  Andy took second place in Texas Hold ‘Em Bounty event and took first place in the Texas Hold ‘Em Heads-Up tournament.  He did great!

Here is a picture of the “bracket” from the heads-up tournament.  It might be hard to see:

He won some money and his first ever POKER TROPHY (sitting so smugly on our mantel) for winning the Heads-Up Event.