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!

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!