A day at the Zoo!

Emma, Matthew and I went to Hogle Zoo last Friday with some of my family.  Emma had a wonderful time.  She loved the animals and most of all the carousel.  Matthew did very well and wasn't fussy until the very end.  His favorite part was a strap on Melissa stroller.  He played with it most of the time, at least it kept him happy.  I guess he isn't way excited about the zoo yet. 

It was nice for both me and the kids to get out, and we all had a nice time despite the bees that kept trying to attack us at lunch time!

Emma on the carousel!  She was so excited about the elephants this time.  She kept asking to see them and then was so excited to ride the elephant on the carousel.  

Here is Emma showing us how long her arms can go.  They aren't quite as long as an ape yet!

Here is a picture of most of the children in the group standing in front of the giraffes.  Emma is on the far right and Matthew is in the back seat of Melissa's stroller, playing with the strap of course.

Here is a close up of Matthew.  You can see his little hand grasping the strap that kept him occupied the entire time.  I love his expression in this picture.  It is so typical of how he often looks!

"He saved me!"

Emma had an experience a couple of days ago that I thought was interesting, and since I use this as a journal, I am going to post it here.

About a week ago, Emma went to Chuck-E-Cheese (a pizza/game place in Orem) with Jan, Jenn,  Seth and his kids.  After eating, Emma wanted to go on a large play set.  It was basically a bunch of tunnels that went all different ways with very few exits.  Emma went inside and after a couple of minutes, Jenn noticed that Emma had not come out.  Jenn went to make sure that Emma was okay.  The play set had little windows in several different spots and Jenn saw Emma looking out of one and crying.  Emma had become lost.  She could not find the way out and she was very scared and didn't know what to do.  Jenn asked Ethan (Seth's oldest son) to go in and help Emma.  He disappeared into the play place and after a few minutes emerged again with a very frightened little Emma.  She was very grateful to him and later told me, "he saved me."  I just thought that was so precious.

I have thought about Emma's little experience several times since then.  It occurs to me that this can be applied to our lives.  Doesn't each one of us know the heart ache of seeing our child lost, hurting or afraid just as Emma was?  Likewise, can't you just see our Father in Heaven looking down on us, just as Jenn looked at Emma?  Can't you just see His heart breaking for those who are alone and crying just as Emma was?  Can't you imagine His perfect love reaching out to each of those children?  Can't we all imagine the emotion He might feel as a parent at watching one of His children who is fortunate enough to know the way showing another of His precious children how to find the way?  Can't we all imagine His absolute happiness as one of us who knows the way brings another to His ever waiting embrace just as Ethan brought Emma to fill Jenn's worried arms?  Can we imagine the tears of joy that might fall from His eyes as one of His little ones who was once lost looks into His eyes and with so much relief exclaims, "he saved me"?  Mostly can't we all imagine ourselves looking into His eyes and speaking of our Savior, with the utmost humility and gratitude, and saying the words, "He saved me"?  Each of us needs to be saved at times in our lives by the Savior in order to return safely home.  Don't our brothers and sisters who don't know Him deserve to be saved every bit as much as we do?

Unfortunately, this is something that I struggle with.  I have never been very bold, but after pondering on this experience, I want to do better.  I want to reach out in whatever way the Lord needs me and help those around me to see and to feel and to know of His perfect love that for some reason I have been so blessed to enjoy in my life.  I hope anyone who reads this will feel His love and know that He is always waiting with outstretched arms.  There are days in my life that I know He is there waiting to encircle me in the arms of His love and that is what makes it possible for me to make it through.  I pray that I can be used as an instrument in His hands to help others know who it is that can save them.

I didn't really mean for this to be a testimony meeting, but as I said above, I use this as a journal, so sometimes it does get a little bit more serious.  :)

Ethan and Emma ~ "He saved me!"

The Pumpkin Patch

It has obviously been some time since I wrote, so this is actually a week old, but I thought I would write about it anyway.

We went to the Cornbellys Pumpkin Patch at Thanksgiving Point for FHE a little over a week ago.  We went with Dave & Melissa and Jan & Jenn.  The girls had a wonderful time.  They were so cute and just so excited to see everything and try all of the fun little things they had there. 

The first thing we saw was a little kids play area.  They had a cute little play house with a slide that Emma loved.

In the same area, they had princess dresses that the kids could dress up in and a pumpkin shaped coach like the one in Cinderella.  The girls like that a lot.

Here they are sitting in the driver seat of Cinderella's coach.

Emma dressed up like Cinderella and sat inside the coach like a princess.  The dress was very large, but she seemed to like it anyway.

After the children's play area we went through the children's corn maze, played a ducky racing game and plalyed on some toys and slides they had there.

Here is Emma coming out of a little black tunnel.

They also had a little "train" ride that the kids could ride on.

Here are Daniel and Emma in the "train" ride.  I guess Daniel is just a big kid.

Here's a picture in the pumkpin patch.

Here's Emma and Annika  sitting in all the pumpkins they had for sale.

This was at some point during the night.  Matthew looks a little board, but Mieka sure looks happy!  They were both very good the whole night to just stay in their strollers and be happy.

Matthew looks a little more excited here.  I guess the pumpkin must taste pretty good.

They had this enormous rocking chair there for taking photos on, so Daniel, Emma and Annika jumped up and got their pictures taken.

Just as we were getting ready to leave, they announced that they were going to start the pig races so we stayed for a little while to see that.  Unfortunately it wasn't very exciting and Matthew was getting pretty bugged.  As you can tell from the picture, Daniel was loving it!!  :)

I've been tagged... and I finally finished it!

Okay, so I was "tagged" by my sister Michelle.  She said the "rules" of the game were:

1. Post the rules on your blog.

2. Write 6 random things about yourself.

3. Tag 6 people at the end of your post.

4. If you're tagged, DO IT and pass on the tag.

I have seen it done a different way where you do 3 things most people know about you and 3 things people may not know about you, so that is how I am going to do it.

3 things that most people know about me:

1.  I love to dance and West Coast Swing is my favorite Dance.  We are opening a dance studio so we can dance whenever we want to.  (Well, whenever we can find the time at least.)

(The colors look really messed up  for some reason, but this is basically the logo for our studio)

2.  I love scrapbooking, card making or most anything creative and have recently started doing a lot of it digitally.

I made this and sent it out last year for our Christmas Cards.

This is a digital scrapbook page.  I didn't actually do the layout for this one, I just put all the paper and colors in.  However, I don't have the ones that I designed on this computer, so I guess this will have to do .

3.  I really enjoy cake decorating.

A 3d ducky cake I made for Emma's first birthday!

This Cinderella Cake was a trial using fondant. It was the first time I had ever used fondant and I wanted to try it before I used it to make the ducky cake (above) for Emma's party!

3 things that people may not know about me:

1.  I am really interested in learning photography.  I want to take a photography class at some point, but we'll see if that happens or not.

I never had professional pictures taken of Matthew in his blessing outfit, so I took this one.  Not very professional, but at least we've got pictures of him in his outfit.

This is a picture I took about 4 or 5 years ago of the Sacred Grove.  

These two are pretty much the extent of my photography experience which is why I really want to learn.

2.  I really enjoy putting together parties/events.  Yes, I do stress about them, but I really enjoy doing it.

This was a picture from Emma's 3rd birthday party.  It was a tea party!

3.  I really enjoy interior decorating.  I know nothing about it except what my tastes are, but I do enjoy doing it.

This is a picture of Emma helping us put vinyl lettering on the wall as we were frantically trying to finish some decorating before Matthew's baby blessing.  (Yes, frantically trying to finish because I am a procrastinator, obviously since I was tagged about a week ago to do this and am just getting to it now.  There's another thing about me.)

That's me in a nutshell!

K, so to follow the rules of this game, I am now supposed to "tag" 6 other people.  However, since there are only like 4 people who look at my blog, and Michelle already "tagged" them, or they have already done it previously, I am kind of at a loss.  So, here is my short list:

1.  I am going to re-tag Jenn since she never did it.  (Jenn, I know you look at these posts and are reading this right now, so you'd better do it this time.)  :)  

2.  I am also going to re-tag mither for the same reasons I retagged Jenn.  (Mither I know you are reading this too, so ditto to what I said about Jenn.)  :)

3.  I am also going to tag Amy, I don't know if she looks at this post very often, but if you do, Amy, then consider yourself tagged.  

Other than that I don't really know who else to tag.  If you have any ideas, comment and let me know.

Watch Out!

Matthew started to crawl a little last week, just a couple of little crawls.  However, he really started to understand it on Monday.  I think it finally clicked for him that he could move and get to where he wanted to go because he crawled all the way across the room on Monday to get to me.  It was really cute.

He isn't really fast yet (thank goodness) but he can get around a little.  Here is a little video of him crawling.

He was fairly tired and pretty bugged.  However, he finally made it to the toy!  Here are some pictures.

Almost there!

Finally I made it to the toy!

When I grow up, I want to be a mother...

Okay, if you are Jan or Jen, you are now singing "and have a family.  One little, two little, three little babies of my own." from the Janice Kapp Perry song that the title of this post came from.  If you are not Jan or Jen, You can pretend to know the song and make up your own tune.  Anyway, on to bigger and better things!

Today was picture day at Emma's preschool.  They wanted the children to dress up in the profession that they want to be when they grow up. 

When I asked Emma what she wanted to be, she told me that she wanted to be a mommy.  I thought that was sweet, but I also thought it might be hard to come up with an outfit to dress her in.  Thus, I suggested several other occupations she could dress as.  However, she kept telling me that she wanted to be a mommy, so that is what she dressed as.  The best I could come up with was putting her in the most "grown-up" looking outfit I could find and sending her with a baby doll and a purse, so that is what we did. 

 I don't actually know how the professional pictures turned out.  

Her teacher said she didn't smile, (which does not surprise me a bit) so I decided to take some pictures at home here. She was so good.  She did all the little poses that I told her to do and was really cute about the whole thing.  She loved holding the little baby dolls.  It was darling and I think she will be a wonderful mother.  

I hope she still wants to be a mother when she does grow up.

She also liked the little purse that I put together for her.  I put it together so that there were several things sticking out like a shopping list, money, a credit card, sunglasses, lipstick and a cell phone. 

I soon found out that the lipstick was one of her favorite things.  By the time we got home from preschool, she had put some on all by herself and had and nice red line coming from her lips and going across her cheek.  It was really cute though.

After the pictures I tried to get her to change, but she wanted to wear her little outfit all day.  I tried to discourage this since she was wearing a sweater and it was 80 degrees outside.  However, she seemed to like it despite getting quite warm.  

I am excited to see how the pictures turned out.  I hope they are cute!

I pray...

It was even better than an ordinary day last Sunday.  Daniel was with us all day. (A rare gift these days.) Life was good.  I was getting ready for church in my bathroom.  Emma came in holding her little pocket sized Book of Mormon which she has carried around and "read" so much that it looks a little beat up.  She then proceeded to tell me the following:

"I need to put my Scriptures of Mormon down because they are so heavy!

Now, this page says, 'I will go and do the things the Lord commands.'

And this page says, 'A-hold, my lov-ed Son.'

And this page says, (singing) 'The Lord has given this land to us, no need to fuss...' (from Veggie Tales)"

What a sweet moment, to realize that she loves the scriptures so much!  I just pray that she will love the scriptures as much when she grows up as she loves them now.