Emmy Update

Emmy is about 8 months - on Sunday. 8 months - am I serious!? I can't believe she is that old. She is still a darling little babe and is such a happy, good-natured little girl. The past week and a half she has been more cranky, but it's still nothing. I'm convinced that any day she will be popping out teeth - but I have been saying that for the past 6 weeks. Seriously. But this time I really, really think that in the next week she'll have some teeth. My boys got their first teeth right around 7 months, so she is a little later. I hope she doesn't bite me when she does get those teeth. She already pulls my hair, scratches my hands, and pinches me everywhere while I am nursing her. It's rather unpleasant. (What's that saying? Don't bit the hand that feeds ya. ?)

She has been scooting for 2 months now and has, in the past week, progressed to crawling. She doesn't do it all the time - probably 1/2 the time is spent crawling and the other 1/2 scooting. She's very efficient both ways.

She likes all her baby food - peaches, pears, apples, banana, green beans, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, and squash. She loves to drink water. Today I gave her the bottom of an orange and she loved it (good thing she doesn't have teeth yet and so she could just suck it). I need to start finger-foods, like cheerios, but I absolutely hate the finger-food stage. My biggest fear with babies is choking and all babies gag and choke when they start finger foods. I hate it. I know I have 2 other kids, but I can't remember when or what I feed them as babies. I think Miles and Jonas were probably eating a lot more than just pureed stuff at this point. I don't know. I don't care.

She says "dada" very well and gets very excited when her "dada" comes home from work. She likes to stand herself up on the little kids' chair - she can amuse herself for a good 30 minutes there.

She is now crying and so I think I'll grab her and feed her before the boys get up from nap. Here are some pictures and a video of her crawling (it's kind of long, sorry!):

Guess what I did this morning?

Did I. . .

play with play-dough for hours and hours? No.

color with crayons? No.

drive trucks all over the house? No.

get dressed for the day? No.

get my kids out of their pajamas and in day-clothes? No.

shower? No.

I did none of these things because I spent the whole morning on a sewing project - fun for ME. But that is the problem with me and projects - I just like to work, work, work on them until they are done. And there are 2 problems with this: 1. I probably rush things and, thus, my "quality" is rushed and 2. I ignore my kids. Well as much as you can ignore kids who demand your attention every 2 minutes. :)

Here are a bunch of pictures of the finished product (it's a smock):

It's cute on her, but not for her (a little big anyways)

Silly boys.

Notice: the boys are still in the PJs (remember, I did not get them dressed)

This is just to show the back.

I like how it turned out - from far away. I've got a lot to practice on - but am excited to practice. Fun, fun, fun.

Fishing Derby, Take 3

This was our third year at the annual Rotary Club's Fishing Derby. We actually had decided on Thursday to go fishing Saturday at the local pond south of town, and then realized that it was probably the Fishing Derby. We were right. So for the 3rd year we made it to the derby. And, yes, for the third year I was the one and only one that reeled in a fish. (My husband, however, has probably been the one to bait the hook and cast out the pole all three years.)

Miles, once again, was completely giddy and excited when we caught the fish. He loves holding the fish. He seemed a little worried that we were going to kill it and gut it; however, he did eat half of it (Ben eating the other half) that night for dinner. However. . . the next night in our family dinner prayer he prayed for something like this: "And bless that the fish won't die."

Jonas was pretty excited, too - at first. Then the dang fish kept wiggling and he Hated that. It was so darn funny. He held it once and then it started wiggling on him and he just threw it to the ground and started whining. He didn't eat one bite of the fish.

Ben did great in managing the whole family, poles, worms, etc. I hated the wind, but otherwise had a great time. Emmy was mildly cranky the whole time. The boys liked their hot dogs. The end.

A Swingin' Good Time

I took the kids to the park on a very windy day this week. Very windy. Like 50 mph gusts. The boys didn't seem to mind it too much (I only heard an occasional "Grrrrr wind."), but I didn't like it - I hate the wind! And I had Emmy with me, too, and so I kept her in the stroller for the most part of it. She didn't seem to mind:
She also had a First - First Time in a Swing. She enjoyed it!

On Thursday Ben was off from work and so I took Jonas out on a "date." I told him the night before that we were going on a date and the boy had no clue what that meant. He kept pointing to things on the wall asking if that was the "date." Our date was walking on the nice path close to our home to the coffee shop. I had a free-coupon and so we went and had a HUGE hot-chocolate. Luckily it was a brisk morning. It took forever to cool down the cocoa (thank goodness there was a huge heaping of whipped cream to pacify Jonas while we waited), but it was really good. The two of us together, however, didn't even finish half of it. It was a lot of fun just walkin' and a talkin' with Jonas.

Just for the Hay of It

Okay, really it's straw, but whatever. They look the same to me.

So we bought some straw bales for Phase II of our yard - grass seeding. This is our 3rd time doing seeding - 3rd times the charm, right? When we bought our yard, it had no grass at all. The grass seeds have grown both times, but our grass goes dead by mid-summer and is still only in patches. So we bought some hardier grass and will hope for a nice luscious lawn. Or close.

But we did get some fun pics of the kiddos. Ben wants to keep bales at our house because then he feels like we're on a farm - his dream is a farmlet, remember.

Emmy just loved the straw. She was having such a great time playing with it. So perhaps if our grass doesn't turn out great, we'll just dump on tons of straw.

Jonas was so cute. We told him we wanted to take his picture so he came over and posed for us. Gotta love him.Miles is so adorable; unfortunately he doesn't pose so well for pictures. When you ask him to smile it just turns out. . . well, a little awkward. It's either a full-out cheese smile with the eyes closed or this - a half smile. I love it when we can capture a truly happy-smile. It melts my heart.

Quote of the Week

The Quote:

"Everyone, the pie is yucky."
~Miles

The background:

We had the missionaries over tonite and our neighbor had dropped off some key-lime pie. So we served that. Miles came back to the table for dessert, took a bite, and then announced: "Everyone, the pie is yucky." I was laughing. It was great. Once I explained what the pie was, that it was a lime pie, he practically finished it off.

Ahhhh, kids are so funny to have around.

emmYum

So I think Emmy really enjoyed the tastes she got of her brothers' Blueberry Smoothies. . .

Yoga Kids

I got the Yoga Kids DVD as a Christmas present (as requested). We've had a lot of fun doing it together. Since there is just one yoga session, thus always the same, we usually do yoga about once a week, or every other week. The kids really do enjoy it. Since our bedroom is now our bedroom, office room, computer room, TV room, sewing room, etc., there really isn't much room for the kids to do Yoga. So they got to do it on my bed. How fun for them. See for yourselves:

F is for flowers.

I is for Iguana. (I had to show this one since it is Miles' favorite.)

Q is for quails. This is to show that, yes, my boys will do Yoga. But, alas, my boys will also be . . . boys.

random

Just a few random pictures.



Yes, he looks so sweet. And he is. But he doesn't let me forget that he is also TWO. But I love him so much. I was out feeding Emmy on the couch and the boys were in the kitchen eating lunch. Ben told Jonas to come out and tell me that I am pretty. So Jonas came out and said, instead, "Mom you are happy." (I didn't know he was suppose to say "pretty." But that is so typical of Jonas. He mixes up words all the time. Love it) "Yes, Jonas, I am happy. Are you happy, too?" "No, I'm frustrated." Hehe. (I wonder where he gets that from?)

Oh no. We've got a Flasher in the family.

My handsome men going off to conference. Ben and I split sessions - I go in the morning, he goes in the afternoon, and I go to Priesthood. Haha. Kidding. I suggested Ben take Miles this afternoon and Ben agreed. They are such cute boys and I love them both. I am lucky to live with such a great man and such great little men. I'm even luckier to be loved by them. We'll see how conference goes. . .

As a side note, I put up Miles' quote last week but never made reference to it. But as we were talking one night before bed he just randomly told me what he wanted to name his babies. He stated, "Jonas Table, Mount Rushmore, Emily Coat, and Furnance Chair." I'll be sure to let his fiance know this one day. If she agrees to it, I just might agree in letting her steal away the 2nd love of my life.

Built Ford Tough

So, yeah. I've used this title, "Built Ford Tough," before. But I couldn't think of any other title, other than "Fence." And that's pretty boring.

Our backyard had a chain-linked fence that we didn't like for 2 reasons. 1. We don't like chain-linked fences, duh. 2. It cut off our yard and didn't enclose our shed. So it needed to come down fast. Fast turned out to be 2 years later. Not bad.

Ben's folks came out so that Jim could help - help, as in A Ton of Help. Diana came so that she could help me - help as in entertaining kiddos, cleaning up, cooking meals, and even sewing an adorable dress for Emmy. Poor Ben's folks - whenever they come out we keep them pretty busy; it's not a restful "break" for them. But we love it!

Anyways, here are pictures of mostly the boys and men working on the fence:

Miles helping lift a 2x4 (or something like that).

Building it "Ford Tough." (jonas' middle name is Ford)

Making progress. . .

Ben and his crew.

Jim with the same crew.

Emmy helped by. . . looking cute? I did help a little by measuring each plank of wood so we'd know where to use it (since our yard sloped in different areas).

The Final Fence:

Yeah, and thanks to Jim and Diana again for all their help.

Phase 1 of our Yard Improvement is now complete. Now we'll move on to Phase 2 - putting out grass seed (again). I'm not sure how many phases our Yard Improvement project has, but it's got to be somewhere close to . . . 100?

p.s. who knew i'd post so many pictures of our fence being built!? sheesh.