Flat Emma

As a fun geography lesson in Emma's school a little over a month ago, they did flat people.  They read the story of Flat Stanley who got squashed by a white board one night and woke up flat.  He sent himself in the mail all over the world.  Each child in Emma's class made a flat person of themselves and sent them to relatives for a "visit."  Emma sent herself to Daniel's cousin, Becky who took her all over California.  Flat Emma came back with all this loot in the picture below!

Flat Emma's California Adventures

What a trip it has been Emma, we are so happy you came for a visit.  I just wanted to help you remember some of the fun things we did!


-On your first day here I took you to preschool with me.  I have 30 students and they loved you.  I'm glad you made it through day one here!
-On Monday nights I attend the local community college to further my studies in Early Childhood Education, so I took you with me to college!  My classmates loved you!
-Visited Great-Qunt Jill at work.  She is the Registrar of Voters for Sacramento County, a really big job since this is an election year for a new governor!  She introduced you to our current governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Aunt Jill gave you a tour of her building, showed you the precinct maps, let you VOTE and the "count' a few ballots!
- I had a pumpkin patch filed trip with my students and you went, too.  We took a hayride, ran through a corn maze, visited the haunted house and went down a big tower slide.  Before we went home we even picked a pumpkin!
-During you visit here, Great-Grandpa and Grandma Sperry came with Grandma Hashberger for a visit! They stayed at Aunt Jill and Uncle Doug's house.  We all had dinner together with LOTS of other cousins!
-Grandma Harshberger took you out shopping while she was here and stopped by the Jelly Belly Store...some fun goodies for you!
-Your cousin Kimberlee enjoyed having you here, too.  A few times you practiced piano with her and once even went to hula class with her.  She learns to dance, sing and play the ukulele there on Wednesday nights.
-Some friends stayed the weekend and while they were at our house we played some games, but what Joshua likes to do the most is pick strawberries at my house.  There are tons of plants in my front yard because it's always sunny there.
-After work one day we went out to lunch to visit a new BBQ restaurant.  Audrey, Tucker and Auntie April came, too.  Audrey was really fascinated by your flatness, you were lucky to make it through that!  You enjoyed the root beer the most with April.
-Last week Kimberlee celebrated Red Ribbon Week at school to remind kids to not do drugs.  She dressed many silly ways to represent that "Drugs are Ridiculous!"  She even wore a talking Sponge Bob t[shirt and a cup in her hair to make it stand so tall!
-A friend of ours visited Disneyland and brought back a treat for you.  It takes about  hours to drive there form our house so we have only visited there twice.  Maybe next time you come for a visit we can go!
-On the last night of you stay we carved pumpkins and Kim took you out to trick-or-treat and say good-bye to the neighbors.


We sure enjoyed your visit!  Thank yo for coming to stay with us in Antelope.  We live near Sacramento, but California is a big state with beach front and mountains.  Our weather has been ideal (70-90's) while you were here, lucky us!


We can't wait to visit you in Utah in a few weeks for Thanksgiving!


Love ,


Aunt Becky and family

Thanks so much Becky!

WE LOVE YOU!!!

It's Likely...

that I won't get around to sending out this birth announcement.  So I'll post it here.  For all 2 of you who read my blog, you already know that we had a new baby, but I made the announcement and it turned out alright, so I've got to put it somewhere.

You can click on it to see it larger.

Other things we've been up to:

Emma got her first school pictures taken and I think she looks darling.

She is doing well in school despite the fact that she really does not like homework.  She seems to be very good at the memorizations.  They worked on Psalm 100 in class and she had it all memorized 2 weeks before she had to recite it without any help at home.  It's 5 verses, so it's pretty long for a 5 year old, and we think she's pretty great!  

She also has a loose tooth as of Sunday and she is so excited.  It is likely that we will have pictures with a missing tooth soon, so stay tuned.

 Bella is getting bigger every day.  Here she is having her first tea party.  She is smiling and cooing now and I am loving it.   Hopefully I'll get around to taking more pics of her since she changes and grows so fast, but we'll see if that happens.  She is doing much better since she got on medicine for the reflux and even goes about 6 hours between feedings at night.  This is totally new for us since with both of the others it took at least 6 months to get to that point.  Hallelujah!

 Emma and Matthew love "horsey" rides!  Daddy loves his kidlets and is happy to oblige.  Emma and Matthew are doing surprisingly well with Bella.  This has been a much easier transition so far than when we brought Matthew home.  We put them both in Matthew's room and they were very excited about the bunk bed.  Other than the first night when Emma decided to wake Matthew up in the middle of the night to play, it has worked out quite well.  They are such good kids.  We are so blessed to have them.

Halloween Festivities

Yes, my name is Emilee and I am a procrastinator.  I am just getting around to a Halloween post!  :)

After Bella was born, Daniel had to go out of town for almost 3 weeks straight.  We promised Emma that when he got back we would go to the pumpkin patch.  We drove to 2 different pumpkin patches right after lunch on the Monday after he got back only to discover that they don't actually open until 4:00 pm.  As we already had plans that evening, we ended up having to go the next Monday.  That was the same day that Dave and Melis were going to Barnyard Boo at the Thanksgiving point farm so we decided to go to Cornbellyss and then meet them at the Barnyard Boo afterwards.  

They had a huge bunch a hay bales stacked up with slides coming down all around.  The middle picture shows them all going down the slide together.  I love Matthew's face.  Emma really liked the fast black slide (middle left) and Matthew was very happy with the very slow roller slide (middle right).

As it turned out, we needed a little while longer at Cornbelly's because Matthew was screaming when we left because he didn't get to do everything he wanted to.  However, he calmed down when we went and got a kitty painted on his and Emma's faces.  That was the highlight of the Barnyard Boo event, but he also really liked the ponies as well.

For Halloween, Emma decided she wanted to be a Firebird (a creature from her Little Einstein's movie).  I spent all day the Friday of our ward party making Firebird wings for her costume.  Unfortunately nobody knows what a Firebird is and therefore, they didn't get the costume.  Oh well, at least she was happy.

Matthew wanted to be a crocodile, however we did not discover that the costume we purchased for him did not fit until the day of our ward party.  Thus Daddy took him out and bought him a costume.  What else would you expect from him but a skateboarder?  Not what I would have picked, but Matthew seemed happy and he looked darling!

We went to the ward party on Friday night.  Then, on Saturday night we went to Dave and Melissa's ward Trunk or Treat and then went to a couple of houses around our neighborhood.  It was cold and rainy, but the rain let up just before the Trunk or Treat started and it turned out to be a fun evening.

5 Going on 16!

Emma told us the other night that she loves her friend in her kindergarten class named Zachary.  She then informed us that she is going to marry him.  


WHAT!!


I reminded her that she told us she had previously decided to marry daddy.  She flippantly declared that she was not going to marry daddy any more.  I guess Daniel has been replaced!


Than, last night, I asked her how her friend Zachary was.  She told us that he was not her friend any more and that now Roger was her friend.  I asked her if her seating arrangement had been changed so that she was no longer sitting by Zachary and was now sitting by Roger instead.  She told me that it had not changed so I asked why Roger was suddenly her friend.  She responded, "Because he carries my binder for me."  Daniel replied with, "Just remember you can't date until you're 16."  I suddenly got this image of the old movies showing the high school boys carrying the books of the girl they like in an attempt to win their favor.  It was so cute, but I must admit that I keep thinking, "SHE IS NOT OLD ENOUGH FOR THIS!"  


It looks like she is not going to follow in the footsteps of her mother in this aspect of her life, so that's good news!

Introducing...

Isabella Michelle!

She is finally here.  It seems like the year has flown by, but at the same time, this has seemed like the longest pregnancy.  However, now she is here safe and sound, and we are so happy to have her.  Now we can work towards getting more sleep and normalcy in our lives as we enjoy our new little one.

We went in last Thursday, the 16th, for an induction.  Unfortunately the labor took 8 hours this time.  We were hoping for a quicker labor, but oh well, it gave me a chance to work on my patience once again.

Emma was so excited when she finally got to meet Isabella.  She wanted to hold and look at her the whole time she was there.  Matthew sat for the one picture we have of him with her and then wasn't very interested in her after that.  They are both very good and gentle with her though and we are happy about that.

She is not sleeping much at night, obviously as is evidenced by the top right picture in the collage below.  However, she doesn't seem to have reflux yet, or if she does, it is not as bad as Matthew's was, so we are hopeful!

We love our new little one.  I forgot how much I love snuggling with a new little baby.  It is heavenly, even if I am falling asleep in the middle of the day!  :)  Now if only my swelling would go down, my feet are still huge and my fingers are constantly tingling and falling asleep.  Otherwise however, I have been doing very well so far.  I have bounced back from this one much quicker than the others.  That is probably due to the fact that Daniel has been able to be home a little more than he was after the other two were born.  He has been absolutely wonderful!  He has done so much and been so great, looking for things to do to help me.  I'm so grateful for him.

Below are a few pics.  Hopefully we'll get something more professional soon, but for now these will have to do.

Okay Jenn, I finally posted!  Now you can stop bugging me about it!  :)

I'm A Big Kid Now!

In anticipation of our upcoming arrival, we decided to transition Bugsy into a "big boy bed."  I was a little worried at first as he really liked the rocking chair.  However, we decided that it would be a good idea to do it a couple of weeks before she came so that he wouldn't think the new baby was the reason.  So, we decided to do it.  He did surprisingly well.  He has had only one night so far that he asked to rock in the rocking chair, but he got over it and went to sleep.  I am so glad it has not been to big an issue.  

The bed is the top part of the bunk bed that Emma has been using, so it has guard rails.  This is a very helpful since he falls out of bed easily.  Hopefully the transition of putting Bugsy and Emma in the same room will go as smoothly as this transition.  Fortunately we aren't planning on doing that for several months, and they are both already very excited about the idea of a bunk bed.  Hopefully they will be excited when it actually happens.

Now all we need is a new baby.  I am not due until the 20th.  However, as usual, Daniel has to go out of town after the baby is born.  That being the case, the doctor has set to induce labor on the 16th so that Daniel can be here for the birth.  That is next Thursday, less than 1 week!  Guess I'd better get my house clean and laundry done before then!  : )  Wish me luck!

P.S.  This is the 3rd post I've done today.  I know you were all waiting for more posts, (heavy on the sarcasm) so if you are bored and have nothing else to do, you can check out the other two posts below.  :)

The 1 1/2 hour project....

That took me 5 hours!!!

This is the project that was supposed to take me 1 1/2 hours.  

I found a tutorial here, and thought, how hard can that be?  Famous last words!  I ended up spending 5 hours making this.

Admittedly, it is not exactly the same as the tutorial picture.  I made several changes, which is part of the reason it took longer.  The fact that I am not a seamstress definitely added to the time as well.  At any rate, I was rather frustrated by the end of the whole ordeal.  Oh well, at least I like the way it turned out pretty well.  Now I had better have a girl!  :)