Fun in the Sun!

We went to California last month on a little vacation. Daniel and I had a dance competition the weekend of the 17th so we decided to take the kids earlier that week and go to Sea World. Emma loves Shamu and was SO excited to go. We started our trip on Monday afternoon.

We drove about 6 hours on Monday and 6 more on Tuesday. Matthew definitely did not enjoy it, but considering his age he did quite well.

On Wednesday we went to Sea World to see Shamu. We were lucky enough to be able to sit on the very front row. Emma was so excited to get splashed and boy did we ever get wet. It was awesome to be able to sit so close and see Shamu so close and Emma loved getting soaked.

Matthew on the other hand had no idea what was happening. He spent the first half of the show trying to escape over and under the rail in front of us. Then he spent the second half screaming and crying because he was a lot less excited about getting splashed. However, since he wouldn't let me put him under the poncho, he got soaked and was definitely not excited about it. I thought I had lost some of my hearing after he screamed in my ear for about 2 minutes straight.

However, Matthew did not mind getting soaked by the little splash pad they had there. He loved it. Then we went back again for a little while on Thursday. We saw Shamu again, but sat further away this time so we didn't get wet.

Thursday morning before we left to go to the dance event, we went to the beach for a little while. The kids did not care for the water very much but LOVED the sand! It was beautiful, but the water sure was cold!

That weekend, we went to the dance event near LA. The kids got a little board watching us dance, but we had a fun time and we even did pretty well.

It was a lot of fun and we were lucky that Melissa's parents let us stay at their house for a night on the way there and on the way back. It was so nice of them and they were so hospitable. It was especially nice to be able to save money since this was a very low budget trip.

It was great!

You Are A Strawberry

Conversation between Daniel and Emma about 1 hour ago.

Emma: "Daddy, you're a strawberry."

Daddy: "Why do you say that?"

Emma: "Because, you have pokies all over your face." (He didn't shave this morning.)

Precious Moments!

We had a very precious moment on Sunday. We were trying to get Matthew to eat breakfast so he wouldn't be quite as fussy during the conference sessions. He was being his charming self and screaming about everything we offered him. He wouldn't eat a bite! Emma suddenly jumped down, went over and grabbed "grey kitty" (the most coveted toy to Matthew because Emma does not have to share it) and her blankie and walked over and gave it to Matthew. She said she wanted him to feel happier so he would eat. It may seem a small thing, but to have Emma do that without any prompting whatsoever was amazing. Matthew always wants her kitty, and I don't think she has ever shared it with him. It was PRECIOUS! We gave her so much praise that she has done it 4 or 5 times since then and is always so sweet when she does it. I don't know if it was listening to all the conference talks the day before or what, but it was fabulous.

Another precious moment took place the night before the above mentioned one. Daniel's grandparents had come to visit that night. Emma was wonderful! She read stories with them, and showed them all of her favorite toys. She got up and sat right in between them both and was just such a doll. This was especially wonderful considering her previous shyness. She used to hide behind me and act very scared whenever most people came to visit, but she has blossomed so much, and it was the icing on the cake to see her be so sweet with grandma and grandpa!

Matthew was not quite as excited about grandma and grandpa at first. However we did have a precious moment with him as well when he ran around the room giving everyone hugs, including grandma and grandpa! Then he sat on grandpa's lap for a couple of minutes. It was so darling! He can be so sweet when he wants to be. :) He really does have such a sweet personality.

We got some great pictures, I will post them when I get them!

I'm so grateful for these precious moments! It really makes it all worth it. (As if it wasn't anyway!)

Here are the pictures!

Canning, Cross-dressing and Cookie Cutters!

I am going with a "C" theme today as you can see from the title of this post. Let's start with canning.

Mither would be proud!!! I remember mom doing spotlights on me for young women activities several times while I was growing up. Each time I remember her bringing up the time that I canned peaches all day long with her at 8 years of age. I suppose it must have been such an incredible experience that I did not do it again for 21 years. :) So, the day after my 29th birthday I decided to try my hand at it again, with a little help of course.

Jenn and I each had a small box of peaches and I had a box of pears. We started with the peaches last Saturday. Tamara was kind enough to let us use her steam canner and teach us what to do. She was very helpful and the tips and tricks she gave us were invaluable. Finally about 3 hours after we began, we had 18 quarts of lovely peaches and a very messy kitchen. It was GREAT! It was so great in fact that we did it again last night and ended up with 15 quarts of pears and 4 more quarts of peaches. I was surprised at how much I actually enjoyed it. Not that I loved pealing the slimy fruit or working over a hot stove, but I loved looking at the bottles all lined up and filled with beautiful fruit and knowing that I had accomplished something. It was awesome!

The second of my "C's" is cross-dressing. Not that I have taken up the habit, but my son certainly has. For the last several months he has wanted me to put the sparkly lip gloss on his lips like I do for Emma. Likewise, whenever he finds a hair clip he won't rest until I put it in his hair for him. He had donned both of these very manly things this morning, so of course he had to have a shirt to go with it. We were going through some clothes a friend of Janice's gave us and he saw a pink shirt with a kitty on it and had to wear it. That wass it, his cross-dressing career had officially started. I suppose however, the outfit would have been somewhat more complete had he been wearing his sister's sparkly pink shoes as he was in the previous post. Fortunately those were put away, so he didn't have the option. At any rate, here are some pictures. I love his hair falling in his eyes.

Speaking of hair falling in eyes, that brings me to my last "C" for this post, Cookie Cutters. This is a child's hair cutting place. After looking at the pictures above of Matthew's long hair, I decided to call and get an appointment to have both him and Emma get their hair cut. Emma's hair turned out about the same, just a little trim for her. However, I have not often had the opportunity of explaining what I want done with Matthew's hair. I told him I wanted the sides very short and that I liked to comb the top over. Here are some pictures of what we ended up with.

Here is Emma's "cheese" smile again! Her hair looks pretty standard.

Here she is showing her pink balloon that she got from Cookie Cutters.

Matthew on the other hand had his hair butchered! When I went to tell the lady what I wanted done with Emma's hair, I cam back and the gentleman cutting Matthew's hair had cut the top so short! It was not a good length, so he asked if I wanted it shorter. NO!!! I did not want it shorter, but it looked dumb the way it was, so I told him to go ahead and cut it shorter.

Matthew ended up with basically the same haircut that the guy who cut it had as did the little boy who had his hair cut before Matthew. Maybe that guy just liked this particular hair cut. Or maybe I just didn't communicate what my preference was very well. At any rate, his hair is quite short now. Oh well, at least it grows fast. :)

Preschool and random pics!

It's been a while, so I decided to just throw a bunch of random pictures all together in one post. Here goes!

First off, Emma started preschool last Wednesday. She was so excited to start school again this year. She was especially excited that she would be doing karate this year, which is interesting since she has no idea what karate is.

I totally spaced things for her first day of school. We were all ready to go to get there early and I suddenly realized that I hadn't purchased a single piece of school supplies, nor had I put anything in her "All about me" bag for show and tell. Don't ask me where my brain was, but it definitely was not anywhere near at the time. I ran frantically around gathering things for show and tell and we ended up in her classroom 5 minutes late. I was glad that at least I had remembered the camera until I went to take a picture and realized I had not remembered to put the memory card back in the camera. So, these pictures were taken after her first class.

Emma was lucky enough to get a pink pencil with her name on it. Pink is her favorite color! And here she is with her "cheese" smile. It's a little difficult at this point to get a normal smile out of her. :)

Here she is at her table. Unlike her shyness last year, she was quite excited and not the least bit sad to see me go this year! *sigh* I guess that's a good thing!

Here she is at home after school. She had a great first day!

Here's a picture of Emma throwing a fit! She gets in these moods sometimes where she is so bugged, but she doesn't want to loose a privilege by yelling at us, so this time, she ran and buried her head in the chair. I couldn't help but snap a picture of her cute little bummie in the air! :)

Oh what a manly little guy! He's got footballs on his PJs and he's playing with a train, both very boyish things. However, take a look at his choice in footwear. He loves to wear Emma's pink sparkly shoes. At least he is secure in his manhood.

Here's another shot of the fancy shoes. He also loves to say "cheese" when anyone points the camera at him, and this is the face he makes.

I don't know if it's the bows, the sparkles or the color of the shoes, but they sure do get him in touch with his feminine side. Or perhaps it is just his sweet little personality and lovingness. Either way, he loves his teddy. Here he is at the breakfast table giving his teddy "loves."

He also loves his "baby." His little spotted kitty that he originally called "kitty," but changed the name to "baby" when he heard Emma calling her kitty, "baby." His spotted kitty has been "baby" ever since. He enjoys giving loves to "baby" at the breakfast table as well.

I don't have a picture, but he has recently started asking for "bacon" as well. He started asking for bacon every time I got him up in the morning, an odd request since he didn't like bacon very much. It took me about a week to realize that "bacon" was his word for "blankie." Now we all refer to it as "bacon" because he is just so cute when he asks for it!

Summer Vacation...a little late!

Or maybe a lot late!!

We went on a little vacation July 29th to August 1st this year. We went up to a cabin near Yellowstone with Dave, Melissa, Annika, Mieka and Jan & Jen. We had 1 day of travel there and 1 day back which left 2 full days there. It was a lot of fun and the traveling wasn't even too bad for the kids. Matthew did get a little bugged towards the end of each driving day, but he did pretty well.

Here are some pictures of our breakfast times. I took my blender and made smoothies so I could still be a little bit healthy. The picture in the bottom right corner is showing the first day making a smoothie. The berries had melted and refrozen so were stuck together. However, I did finally get them blended up and a smoothie made out of them. The kids enjoyed waking up and having their cousins right there to play with and have breakfast with. They were nice leisurely mornings with plenty of time to get everyone ready. That was very nice since I'm always late. :)

There was a small backyard at the cabin that basically melted into the golf course behind. We really enjoyed playing back there and enjoying the nice temperature. There was a little wild flower patch with trees growing around on one side and the kids loved to go in there. There were always birds there and Matthew wanted to hold one so bad. He would walk in there and very earnestly say "brty, brty, BRTY!" while pointing up at the little chirping birds. He got rather bugged a couple of times because he could not hold them. I think ever since we got to go and feed some birds and they landed on our hands, he thinks all birds are supposed to do that.

On the last night there, we had little races. It started out with the girls who raced around and around. They would start with their hand on Dave's hand as he said, "On your mark, get set, go!" They would race off and around the trees and come back and start all over again. After a while, Jan, Jenn and I raced at which point I got a beating from Janice. She elbowed me in the nose as we rounded the last corner and I was out. Never realized she was so competitive. We sure had a good laugh about that one. After that, Daniel challenged Janice to a race and totally whipped her. Then he ran backwards and still beat her by a fair amount. That was pretty funny. By that time, Mieka and Matthew decided they wanted in, so we did a couple with them while holding their hands. They were so cute waddling along as fast as they could. After all was said and done, we were pretty tired.

For one of the days we walked to the park in the morning and the kids really enjoyed themselves. Matthew especially loved the tire swing. It sure made me sick pretty quick though.

Later that day we rented ATVs and went out riding. The only picture we got was one with Matthew and Daniel while they were on it for about 1 minute together. Then Jan, Daniel, Emma and I went out. It was fun and the scenery was beautiful. We didn't go very fast because we had Emma. After that Dave, Melissa, Annika and Jenn went. I think they must have gone a little faster because they got back with about 1 hour before we had to return the ATVs so Daniel and I went by ourselves It was awesome. We were able to go really fast and it was so fun! I think next time though, I will invest in some goggles. I had so much sand in my eyes by the time we were done! It sure was a good time though.

The last day there, we went to Yellowstone. (According to Emma however, it was called "Yellowstones" and we were staying in a "cavin" not a cabin. :) Unfortunately Matthew had a blowout while we were driving there so we had to find some new pants for him. At the gift shop the only thing they had that was his size were these funny brown pajamas, so he looks a little silly in the pictures. Looking on the bright side, at least we were able to sit down and have some lunch at the gift shop and then see a really cool dog outside. I think the dog was Matthew's favorite thing that day!

Emma was really excited about seeing the geysers and had fun doing their Young Ranger program. She was able to fill out a booklet (with help from mommy) about the things that we saw as we walked around. Then when she was done, we showed it to the ranger and he gave her a keychain with a Young Ranger picture on it. She seemed to like it.

Matthew on the other hand was less than excited about it. He wanted to climb down off the walkway into the water and didn't really care when we told him that he would get an owie because the water was hot. :) Needless to say, he was a bit of a handful!

We went to a bear and wolf exhibit next. Fortunately, Matthew loved it and was much easier to handle since he couldn't climb the fence to get in and see touch the animals. It was pretty cool to see them close up and the children really loved it.

We had a great time on our little vacation!

Thanksgiving Point Farm

Sorry, I thought I had already posted this, so this is pretty old. Oh well, that's pretty normal for me. :)

For another Summer field trip we went to the farm at Thanksgiving Point on July 22 and had a wonderful time! The kids loved the animals and we even got to feed them this time, which both of them, but especially Matthew loved. We saw them washing a cow and they also brought a little pony out for the kids to pet. It was so cute!

Petting/feeding the pony, looking at the ducks and feeding the goats. Matthew kept trying to feed the pony's side. I don't think he understood that it had to go in the mouth.

Here are the pony rides. Emma was so excited and loved the whole thing. Matthew was less than excited and I basically had to hold him on the pony. I didn't think he really liked it, but then when I took him off he said "gin" (again) so I guess he must have liked it some. Or else he just doesn't ever want to do what I want him to do which is really quite likely.

We had a great time! Thanks Melis for planning all of these wonderful Summer field trips!