End of School

Emma has officially "graduated" from Preschool! Hooray! I can't believe how big she is getting. She is such a sweet girl and very obedient. We love her!

The last day of school before her program, they had a "Mommies and Muffins" get together at the park. She really liked the chocolate muffins.

This was the karate portion of her end of year program. We discovered this year that karate is not one of Emma's favorite activities. Oh well, she looked cute doing it. The top left picture shows her concentrating. You can't see it, but she has her hands resting on her knees, palms up with her middle finger and her thumb together and the other fingers out. I kept thinking, "OOOOHM!" She was darling. She had a little trouble breaking her board with her foot, but did finally break it. We were glad.

They did a jungle theme for their program this year. Emma got to be a tiger, which was great because she loves kitties. They did some musical and dance numbers. We also discovered this year that Emma is not very in to performing. I had heard her sing the songs previous to the program and she knew them well, but when she got up there, I think she was distracted and a little shy because she didn't do a whole lot. She sure looked cute though, and was very excited about it. After the program, they did a little graduation ceremony. She looked darling, and according to the evaluation results her teachers sent home, she is doing well.

I'm so glad we decided to send her to this preschool. She has come out of her shell so much. She is a lot more social and outgoing than she was two years ago, and is such a happy little girl. We love her!

Pictures!

We have such an exciting life, I know you were all waiting to see our pictures! :)

Jan's friend did a boutique at our dance studio and gave us a little puppet theater with puppets as a thank you. The kids love it, even though Bugsy doesn't get the idea that you stay behind the curtain. Oh well, as long as he gets to be the froggy, then he's happy.

Matthew loves helping daddy outside, especially when daddy has a tractor! I love the one of him shoveling.

We have had concrete forms set in our backyard for close to a year now. We finally poured the concrete yesterday. The kids thought it was the coolest thing. Matthew especially loved it because he got to ride on the tractor with uncle Adam for about an hour. Unfortunately, the concrete dried too fast and was very hard to work with towards the end, we are glad it is done though. And of course the kids ended up soaking wet with dirty water in the end. :)

These are just several random pics that I put into one collage. I think this is the only picture I have of Matthew sleeping because I am so happy when he does sleep that I don't dare wake him up!

It's A...

GIRL!

Yup, the doctor said he is 99% sure that we are having another little girl. Emma went with us to the ultrasound and was very excited when she found out that we were having a girl. The doctor also said that the she looks very good, he didn't see any birth defects or anything, so that is great! We are all very excited, and Emma has already decided that her name is going to be Isabella. We'll have to see if that ends up being her name or not. Things are going great with the pregnancy. I am very blessed to have pretty easy pregnancies, so that is very nice. He gave us some pics of the ultrasound that I was going to post, but I don't have a scanner, and I can't seem to figure out how to get one off the DVD either. Oh well, you've all seen ultrasound pics, imagine there is one here! :)

Other than that, not much is going on. Matthew has not been eating very well lately, but Emma went through a stage like this as well. Hopefully he will grow out of it soon as he seems to be a lot more grumpy than she was when he doesn't eat. We also think he might have a little bit of a sugar sensitivity as he gets pretty fussy when he eats sugar without eating regular food. He has been really cute regardless of these things though. The other day he said "Daddy is a big mazing!" That is one of his phrases for something that is really great or amazing - "big mazing." Also, as I was getting ready to rock him before bed the other night, he went to get his kitty from his bed. He said, "Daddy got it for me. He's a nice guy!" It was so darling. He is really such a sweet little boy despite the fact that he loves to tease his sister, a trait that he gets from his daddy.

Emma is about to finish up her 2nd year of preschool. She has enjoyed all of it except the karate part. She does not like karate, but she sure is cute when she does it. We found out last week that she has been accepted into the American Heritage School across the street from the Mt. Timpanogos Temple. We are very excited and LOVE the school. Now we just hope that we can afford it. :) She is such a sweet little girl and I think this school will be very good to help her as she develops in these young formative years. She loves spiritual things, and this school should be very good that way.

Hope things are good for all of you!

Playing Catch-up Again

It has been a while since I posted as usual. There haven't been any earth shattering events however, so I suppose it's not a big problem. Anyway, here is what we've been doing.

We built some boxes for our raised bed gardens that we are putting in. Matthew loved helping daddy with the tools. At least he loved it until daddy used a saw and Matthew started crying uncontrollably. He really doesn't like loud noises. It has been really nice to be getting outside more lately though. The kids both really like that!

Yes, Easter was several weeks ago and I am just getting to it. Unfortunately I didn't get any great pictures, but at least I got some. We had a hunt and BBQ at my parents house on Friday night so it didn't interfere with conference. It was pretty cold outside that night which is why you see the picture of Matthew trying to put his hood on. Then on Saturday, Emma went with grandma to an egg hunt with her cousins on Daniel's side. She loved it. Easter Sunday was pretty low key. We had a yummy Easter breakfast and then watched conference. It was nice.

Below are some cute pics of Matthew. He loves clippies! He found several in my bathroom drawer one day and insisted that I put them in his hair. It was darling. On the other hand he really likes his tools and hard hat play set. The picture of the glasses was one afternoon when we were playing doctor. The glasses are part of the set and he just looked too cute to pass up for a picture. He recently discovered that he likes scissors. Who knew that kids scissors could cut through fabric? I had only gone in the laundry room to put some clothes in the washer, but it was long enough for him to cut 4 or 5 fairly large holes in his shirt. Needless to say, I have not left him alone with the scissors again! :)

Emma had a lot of fun in the soil we got to fill our boxes for our raised bed gardens. It took a while to get all the dirt moved into the beds, so Emma and the neighbor girl decided it would be fun to burry themselves. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take off her light pink jacket. Most of the dirt came out, but it was still a little dingy in some of the seems. Oh well, she had fun. She also loves making cookies, especially the part where she gets to lick the beater. She always has a chocolate face when she's done. The bottom left picture is her favorite part of the doctor set. She loves to pretend that the person who is sick needs to throw-up in the little kidney shaped dish. That is what she is holding below her mouth. She's so funny.

That's what we've been up to lately. Not much, but at least it's recorded now!

Pink Polka Dots!

Emma's grandma Harshberger made her a new dress. She LOVED it, and of course looked darling.

Here she is spinning. She loves to spin and see her dress fly out.

THANK YOU GRANDMA!

In our house... and outside too!

Here are a couple of things we have been doing in our house lately, and outside our house as well.

Bugsy loves to grab Daniel's finger and pull him in the living room saying, "pleez play rosie?" It is so cute. I don't know why, but Daddy is the official Ring Around the Rosies and Tea Party player. They don't ask mommy, just daddy. It is darling!

We had snow again a week ago Friday. I could tell it was going to melt pretty quickly, so we went out and played that morning. Matthew helped a little with the snowman, but was mostly intent on shoveling the snow. Of course it had all but melted on the cement, so obviously he shoveled the grass. :)

Emma really wanted to build a snowman, so we did. The snow was so wet and heavy that when we got to the second ball, I almost was not able to get it on top of the first one. We tried 2 different angles, and broke several parts off the middle ball, but persevered and were finally able to get it up there.

After the snowman, shoveling, snow angels and a lovely temper tantrum from Bugsy when we had to come in, we enjoyed some hot chocolate together.

Yesterday was "crazy hair" day at Emma's preschool. I forgot until I looked at the calendar on the fridge. Fortunately, we had about 1/2 hour to do her hair, and even with that we were still a couple of minutes late. We braided different colored pipe cleaners all through the top and then curled the back and pinned it up. She loved it! She is getting so old!

"What [ye] shall say"

I had an interesting experience a little over a week ago. I had been asked to prepare a talk for Sunday Feb, 13th. It was supposed to be on the talk "Every Woman Needs Relief Society" by Sylvia Allred. I had a difficult time preparing the talk, especially the second half. Late Saturday night, I was reviewing what I had prepared and found that the last page of what I had printed had a lot of extra space on it. I had the thought that maybe I should print out the Relief Society Declaration on that page just in case. I didn't think I would really need it as I had a lot of material, but I did it and just did not expect to use it.

The next day durning church, I discovered that I was the last speaker. After the second speaker sat down. I saw that there was a special musical number. I ended up with about 7 minutes left in the meeting to give my talk. As instructed, I had prepared a 15 minute talk. During the musical number I had the thought that maybe I could give the first part of my talk and just use the Relief Society Declaration, discuss it for a minute and then close with my testimony. I could quickly see that there was no way to condense the second part of my talk without rushing through and not giving each point I had prepared adequate attention. I decided to use the Relief Society Declaration in place of the second half. I ended my talk right on time, but was still able to make the talk flow and not feel so rushed. It went just fine and I felt like the message that I was really trying to get across made it out and that perhaps if I had tried to give the second half, it would have made the first half less memorable. I think it turned out better that way as I felt more strongly about the first half anyway.

It was pretty incredible to see the promptings of the Spirit in my life in that way. It reminded me of the scripture in D&C 124:97. The second half says, "...let him be humble before me, and be without guile, and he shall receive of my Spirit, even the Comforter, which shall manifest unto him the truth of all things, and shall give him, in the very hour, what he shall say." I can definitely say that was the case for me. I definitely did not know the declaration by heart and would have had a very hard time cutting the talk down. It was very interesting to have those thoughts come into my mind. They were so subtle that I did not even realize until I sat down after finishing my talk that they must have been the whisperings of the Spirit. It is no wonder I miss those small promptings so often. I almost did not print up the declaration, it was late and I was tired. Yet, I am so glad I did so that the Lord could show me that He is guiding me. In fact, the first month I was in as Relief Society President, I had 2 separate occasions when I stood up after a lesson and bore testimony of what the teacher had been teaching. The words came easily and freely, they were not my own. I do not have the natural ability to stand and speak to a group with eloquence, yet both of those times, it came easily. What a blessing that the Lord guides us and that we have the opportunity to always have his Spirit if we live worthily.

That was a much longer post than I had planned, but I have had the thought several times since this experience that I needed to write about it. I kept putting it off until it occurred to me that perhaps that in and of itself was a prompting. Perhaps I will need to look back and read this later in my life and remember. Anyway, at least I did it!