The First Day of Christmas - Twice!

As we were getting pj's on last night, we heard a knock at the door.  When we opened it, we were excited to see this on the porch.

The tag says "On the First Day of Christmas, Santa gave to me:   One Matching Game"

The kids were so excited and wanted to play right then.  However, it was bedtime so we waited and played it today.  

Daniel said something about yesterday being the first day depending on how you count it.  I suppose I should have caught on at that point, but I didn't.  Then this morning, I was surprised to get into the car and see this behind the steering wheel...

The note says, "On the first day of Christmas, my true love* gave to me... One pound of chocolates from sees!"  Then at the bottom it says "*You better not have any other True Loves!" 

I was so excited, I smiled the whole way to Emma's school and back.  I love my husband, he is the best!  

The next 11 days should be exciting!

P.S.  I did another post today below.  It's pretty long though, so beware. :)

A Monstrously Long Post

Okay, I haven't gotten around to posting for a while and around the holidays there is always a lot to post.  Here goes:

The week before Thanksgiving we headed up to good old Idaho to visit grandma and grandpa Sperry.  We had a good visit.  We all got to ride grandpa's ATV which the kids loved.  We also got to take home some caramels and licorice caramels that grandma made.  They were fabulous!  The kids even did great in the car the whole time (with the help of the DVD player).  It was great!

We were at my parents house for Thanksgiving this year.  Jan, Jen and I of course spent several hours the night before making too many desserts and being teased by Daniel for always making way too much.  Then we had fun the next day eating them all and making ourselves sick.  We decided to set up mither's Christmas tree that night so that we would have time to get hers, Jan's and mine all set up that weekend.  It was fun.

Thanksgiving night while Emma was brushing her teeth, her loose tooth that we had been hearing about for a full week finally popped out.  If you can't tell, it is the bottom left front tooth.  She was so excited about the tooth fairy coming.  She told us that her friend got a dollar and a candy bar.  The "tooth fairy" didn't realize that inflation had gone so high, but fortunately had a dollar and was able to find a sucker as well.  She was so excited to find them when she woke up the next morning.  She is getting so old!

Friday morning after the tooth fairy came, we went over to Jan and Jen's house to decorate their tree.  I didn't get any good pics of this, but the one of Emma above is in front of Jan's tree.  We then came back home to decorate our tree.  Matthew found the infamous "Christmas horn" given to Daniel as a joke by Jen last year.  When played the sound is not the most glorious to say the least as it is just meant to be a decoration.  However, Matthew sure had fun playing it.  They both had fun putting the ornaments on.   Emma is getting good at spreading them around on the tree.  Matthew on the other hand took every one to the same spot and kept saying, "What a lucky tree!"  The picture of his "lucky branch" below has about 8 ornaments on it while the rest of the branches around it are quite loaded as well.  I still don't have a picture of the completed project, but it looks exactly the same as it did last year.

That night was the boys sleepover at Jan and Jen's house.  Emma had informed me the week before that she was so excited about the boys sleepover because that meant we would go on a girls night out.  I hadn't exactly planned on it until then, but decided it would be a good idea.  We went to the movie, "Legend of the Guardians."  I thought it was a little scary for a 5 year old, but she liked it and didn't have any bad dreams afterwards, so I guess it's all good.  AFter the movie we went to Pizza Hut to redeem her free personal pizza from her month of reading in October.  We had fun together.  This is a picture in the theater after the movie.  No, not the most flattering for me, but at least it is photographic evidence that we did fun things when she was young.

When we went to pick Matthew up from the boys sleepover, we discovered that he was very upset that he didn't have pj's so Jan and Jen had put one of Daniel's shirts they had borrowed on him.  He didn't seem to think it fair that he had to leave and so we let him stay.  Fortunately he slept pretty well for his first sleepover and was not too much trouble.  He had a great time, but was definitely a bit of a handful the next day after going to bed late.

November 29th was a snowy day.  Emma and Matthew waited patiently all day while I kept trying to get Bella to sleep longer than 10 minutes so we could go out and play.  She finally slept for a little while and we went out.  It was too dry to make a snowman, but we had fun anyway.  As you an see in the finished picture below, Bugsy didn't exactly get the whole snow angel thing, but he sure looked cute doing it

Friday, December 3rd Emma and I went with Jan, Jen, Melis, Annika and Mieka up to the Festival of Trees.  They always have such creative ideas for decorating there and i love looking at the ginger bread houses as well.

Sunday, the 5th we had our annual Sinterklaas party.  Sinterklaas is the name for Santa Clause in the Netherlands where Melis served her mission.  It was fun!  Dave and Melis made a delicious dinner, along with some fabulous spudnuts that I ate too many of.  The kids had fun listening to the Sinterklaas story and getting pressies, and the adults had fun exchanging funny gifts as we do each year.  Thanks to Dave and Melis for always making this tradition so wonderful!

Thursday, the 9th, was Emma's Kindergarten Christmas Devotional.  It was so darling.  She was supposed to dress in a costume from another country.  Melissa's sister was nice enough to let us borrow her little costume from Mexico and Emma looked so cute!  She was quite distracted the whole program though and forgot to sing much of the time.  However, when I asked the music teacher about it, she assured me that Emma knows the songs and does great in class.  She did great on her line and seemed to have a really good time.  In the top right picture, you can see that she was sitting next to Zachary, one of the boys in the running for marriage!  :)

Later that day, my cute little sister had her baby girl.  I don't have any pictures as we have not actually seen her yet because she was in the NICU.  Fortunately she is fine and will come home soon.

The next day, Friday, we got together at our house and made ginger bread houses.  I think more candy went into Matthew's mouth than went on his house, but we all had fun.

The next day, Emma and Matthew had a fun time arm wrestling with daddy.  They each tried to beat daddy individually and then both at the same time.  It still didn't work, so they tried it with each other but that ended in rolling on the floor laughing.

If you've made it this far, congratulations.  You get the award for perseverance!  You are finally done!

The End

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!  :)