Aprons and Cookies

Emma found the apron that Granmda Sperry made for her for Christmas 2 years ago.  She decided she wanted to wear it and asked if we could make some cookies.  In unusual fashion for me, I agreed.  When I put the apron on Emma, Matthew decided that he needed one too.  Fortunately, Grandma Sperry had also made one for Daniel and I as well, and I was able to make one of them fit on Matthew.  They both looked darling, and you can't even tell in the picture that Matthew has no pants on.  :)  We had fun making cookies and they turned out tasting pretty good too!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Pretty well!  It's getting pretty large.  This was our garden on August 5th.

Here is Emma in front of the tomatoes, squash, and pumpkin plants.  I didn't know that tomatoes got so big!

And here she is in front of our giant pumpkins and corn.

This is a zucchini that I didn't see and it grew pretty enormous.  I gave some to Jenn and it still took several days of smoothies to get through the rest of it.

Unfortunately on August 4th we had this...

which led to this, (yes that is hail in Utah in August)...

which led to this!

Many of the leaves on our larger plants were shredded by the hail storm.  However, the garden has done alright despite the hail and some bugs that killed most of our smaller pumpkins.  We have had corn a couple of times and it is delicious.  We have a couple of bags of veggies in our fridge right now that need to be used and more growing in the garden.  Now I just need to learn to like veggies.  It has been a good trial year though.  I think it will take us a couple of tries to figure out how to get larger yields, and less leafage.  However, it has gone well for our first try.

Summer Field Trips 2010

We've been going on our Summer field trips again this year and we've been having a wonderful time!

First we went to Temple Square in Salt Lake.  In the collage below you can see the kids watching some movies (top and middle pictures)  There is a new area in the north visitors center basement with all kinds of new exhibits.  It is really cool.

The bottom right picture is of the girls touching the temple.  Matthew of course did not want to.  Two of the top pictures are from the top of the Administration building where Jen works.  We went there for lunch and then went to the top to see the view.

We also went to Moyle Park again this year.  The kids loved it just as much this year as they did last year.  Emma was very good at washing clothes and the lady there said that would have been her job if she had been a pioneer girl.  Matthew was not as excited about washing the clothes.  You can see in the picture where he is supposed to rinse them, he barely has a hold of it because he didn't want to get his fingers wet.

They also made candles and helped churn butter again this year.  This year they put a little sugar on top of the butter with the bread.  The kids liked that.

They also got to go inside the fort this year which they didn't get to do last year.  The bottom two right pictures are showing a little toy that helped the pioneer kids learn how to milk a cow correctly.  If you pulled the strings the right way then the little doll figure would go to the tops of the rope.   Emma got it and Matthew almost got it.

We went to Tracy Aviary again as well.  Daddy got to come on this one with us and we were so excited about that.

We were all so excited to feed the birds again, but for some reason there was a role reversal this year.  Emma was pretty scared, but Matthew wasn't scared at all.  Emma did finally let a bird sit on her arm, but not till the very end.  I love the top right picture of Matthew trying to feed the birds on the branch.  He wasn't holding the apple high enough, so the birds would go right to the end of the branch to try and get the apple, then they would fall off and fly away. 

We also let Emma ride some rides at the little fairgrounds they had right by the aviary.  She loved it!

We have had a lot of fun on these field trips.  Thanks for setting them up Melis!

My Little 5 Year Old

Emma is 5 already!  How the time flies!  She turned 5 last Tuesday, and yes I am just getting to the post now on Sunday night.  Here goes:

Emma wanted the big castle slide again this year.  She asks frequently if we can bring it home, but it is so much work that we only do it for her birthday, so she was pretty excited about it this year.  Since it won't fit in our backyard, my parents were kind enough to let us use their backyard.  Thus, we decided to just to a cousin party this year.  It was pretty low key.  We just had the slide and then we brought the snow cone machine from the rental center as well.  That was a big hit and all the kids were running around with blue lips!  Emma had a GREAT time and that was the best part.  Thanks to everyone who came!  Here are some pics:

The kids had a lot of fun on the slide and surprisingly did not seem to get board with it.

I made a birthday present cake this year as it was easier than the castle slide that I made last year.  Fortunately Emma liked the cake this year, even though it wasn't as exciting as last year's cake.  The other kids seemed to enjoy it too, but they were most excited about the snow cones.  Notice Emma's blue lips in the middle picture.

Emma was really excited about opening her presents this year, probably because she had been to her cousins party the week before and got excited there.  She was really excited about the presents she got.  Thanks again for bringing them.

Emma had a great time and it was fun to see her having fun!  She is such a sweet little princess.  She is getting so helpful lately.  She is so excited to have a little sister, and I know that she will be a big help with this next little one.  We love her sweetness and her gentleness.  She is such a good little girl and we are so grateful she is ours!

So Sweet!

A little background for this story. I ran out of my Thyroid medication. "No worries," I thought, "It doesn't really do anything for me anyway." So, I kept forgetting to pick it up since I didn't think it made a big difference. Boy was I wrong. By the time I finally got it, I had gone without it for about 7 days, and I can tell you I was seriously grouchy. My poor little kidlets had to deal with monster mom for several days until it started kicking in again. That is when the following event took place.

It is still difficult to get Bugsy to eat. I don't know if I've posted it before, but he is a lot like Jenn. When he doesn't eat, he gets REALLY fussy. I don't know if he has low blood sugar or what, but there is no reasoning with him when he hasn't eaten.

Anyway, it had been a long day and I was grumpy because of lack of medication (at least that is what I am blaming it on.) AFter checking my email, I ventured into the kitchen to shovel some food into my little boys mouth before he started freaking out from lack of nutrition. I found him "fixing" our banister with the pliers. Unfortunately that consisted of getting them as far around a dowel as he could and then closing them together creating a large scratch each time. He had done it about 10 times before I found him. In my oh so calm and unmedicated mood, I got just a little upset and tried to take the pliers away before he could cause any more damage. Unfortunately, little Bugsy has quite a grip and didn't like the fact that I wouldn't let him "fix" any more. This led to a pretty bad pinch of my hand since I was on the working end of the pliers. It made me just a little more upset ... okay, maybe a lot. I took the pliers and tossed them on the counter as Bugsy screamed in dismay. So much for getting him fed before he freaked out.

As I began getting my screaming 2 year old some food, Emma asked in about 6 different ways what was wrong with me. I finally told her (not very calmly I might add) that I didn't want to talk about it because I didn't want to get mad at her. However, it was a little too late for that, but at least I hadn't yelled at her yet. I then proceeded to feed Bugsy, which was only possible by threatening to put him in his room if he didn't eat. Not very good for teaching good eating habits, but I don't have a whole lot of options at this point.

Emma watched my attempt at stuffing food into a toddlers mouth for a minute. She then quietly got up and went into the office. The next thing I heard were some piano notes playing, not a tune exactly, but with a lot of love and the words, "Emma loves mommy, yes she does..." She said some other things in her song, but I'm not sure what they were because I was in the kitchen crying. She soon came back and asked if I had liked her song. I assured her that I loved it and she told me it was so that I would feel better. What a sweet little girl she is. I've got to remember to take my thyroid medication so I don't forget so easily how much I am blessed by these precious little ones!

Gardening

Well this post is long overdue, but better late than never I guess. Daniel and I have decided to do a garden this year. We are trying the square foot gardening method and it has actually turned out to be a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. I can definitely say that when I was young and pulling weeds I never thought I would say that gardening was fun, but maybe I've matured since then ... no probably not. :)

Anyway, the Spring this year was very cold and we did not get much of a crop at all. The lettuce has been growing well lately and we have some carrots, but other than that, the spring crop did not really produce. The Summer garden, however, is a different story. It is going really well. We've got a lot growth and several of the plants are fruiting now. It is so fun to see them grow. I didn't enjoy the watering very much at first, but now I love going out and spending time watering and looking at the plants to see their progress. Hopefully we will get a good harvest as well to make all the time worth it. :)

Here is a collage of our garden. The left side is from June 25th before we had very much growth. It was fun to see the little seedlings break through the ground, but still, there was not a whole lot going on at this point. The right side are some pics I took today, so you can see how much growth has happened in the last couple of weeks.

We also have another section back by Daniel's skateboard ramp, but I don't have pictures of those. We did 2 boxes with corn and the corn is starting to get pretty large. Then we have one smaller box that we planted giant pumpkin plants. I don't know how well those will work because we got them in a little late, but I guess we'll see. Anyway, it's a lot of fun!

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!