Holy Cow!

Emmaline has just recently started drawing letters, and she's also been working on the computer quite a bit since we got her little station set up, and yesterday she drew her first letters on the computer in just a simple paint program, and she drew the word eat! It was really funny. Obviously just a coincidence, but still funny. And while she was drawing it she kept asking Royce to get her something to eat.

Royce's back has been pretty tight lately, so when he got home from work today he laid down so I could rub his back, and after a little while Emmaline came in and laid down beside him and snuggled up next to him, and about 30sec later they were both sound asleep. So cute.
As you can tell, Emmaline is built just like her Daddy. :)

Poor Royce. I forgot to put a pic with him in it too. It was a little harder to get all three of us to fit very well. :)Sorry to those of you who have me on blog and facebook...as you can tell, it's pretty much an exact repeat. :)

Waiting for the storm, and some more health stuff

Yesterday we had Enrichment at Church, and Royce was meeting someone there to go to a discussion, and we're getting ready and almost ready to leave, and we hear some thunder, then the power went out. Then it started pouring rain, and huge peals of thunder, and lightening, so we decided to kind of wait out the storm a little bit before we went outside (because they can get some scary storms out here. The wind was blowing really hard and shaking the huge lamp post outside, and then I decided we needed to stay away from the windows a little more), and since the power was out there wasn't much to do, so Emmaline started playing with the camera, and we just hung out taking pictures together. It was nice.

This might possibly be my favorite picture of Emmaline, because I finally got one where she's really smiling! Normally she makes all sorts of crazy faces, as you can tell below. :)





So I've been thinking about posting this next stuff for a long time, but have been kind of hesitant, and I'm not sure exactly why, but I've finally decided that I need to write at least a little bit about it, because we have been really blessed, and I want to show my gratitude. It's long; sorry. As some of you know I've had kind of a crazy couple of years as far as health goes; I have what's called mixed connective tissue disease which basically means that I have a few different forms of auto immune diseases, namely Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Antiphospholipid Syndrome. It all kind of started when one day in July, a few months before Emmaline turned 2, I got a headache. And after a week it didn't go away, so I went to the doctor, tried different stuff, then he ended up sending me to a neurologist. We'd also been trying to get pregnant for the last 3 or 4 months, and ended up getting pregnant a few weeks before my appointment with my neurologist; she said there wasn't much she could give me because I was pregnant, but after I was a little farther along she wanted to run some more tests. But then when I was about 9wks along, I had a miscarriage. (Really hard at the time, but also very necessary with diagnosis/treatment and a very important step in my spiritual development. Also the day that it happened was Royce's first day teaching high school at a brand new charter school, and for lots of reasons it was one of the hardest times of his life, and while he didn't want me to have a miscarriage either, the timing was such that it got him away from work and the huge emotional downward spiral he was starting, and he put all of that aside and focused on me, and helping me heal, which made it able for him to get through that huge challenge he was facing. Another blessing that comes with adversity.) Anyway, when I wasn't pregnant my doctor could put me on some medicine to make my headache stop while they tried to figure out what was going on. So she ran a bunch of blood tests, long story shorter, I ended up at a Rheumatologist and was diagnosed with the mixed connective tissue disease. My levels were kind of through the roof, so he put me on medicine to help that, and he also put me on an asprine a day, because the APS makes your blood clot more often than it should, and it gets worse with certain things like pregnancy, hormonal birth control, surgeries/injuries, stuff like that. (Which kind of freaked me out a little bit...it was like there was a stroke just waiting to happen.) APS also is often diagnosed when a woman has had frequent miscarriages, because tiny blood clots block the blood supply to the fetus. (Preeclampsia is also a symptom of APS, which is what I had when I was pregnant with Emmaline, and I also had a blood clot in my calf after the c-section. APS is usually diagnosed in women during their childbearing years. So if you have these symptoms you should check it out. :) )
So anyway, after I was diagnosed with all of this we felt like we needed to wait on getting pregnant again (now we think adoption is going to be the right way for us), and so the last couple of years we've kind of been getting into the swing of things, and figuring out my limitations and what not and kind of learning how to handle things, and throughout all of this I have learned so much, and I think even more I've been able to realize how truely blessed I have been. I admit that it was kind of hard to take at first, and has made us change some of our plans, mainly in regards to how many kids we can have/take care of, but it was a necessary step in my/our spiritual development, and has brought me/our family closer to the Lord, and has given me a precious testimony that I don't think I would have had without these experiences, especially with the miscarriage. But that's a story for another day.
It has been such a blessing to be able to know that I have this, so I can take the right medicine to treat it and take care of myself. It was pretty miraculous to be able to be diagnosed so easily. Everything seemed to fit into a perfect timeline, one month at a time, starting right about when Royce and I got married. :) But most people with autoimmune and other chronic diseases go for years with symptoms and can't find any kind of a solution, and I had a straightforward diagnosis in 6 months, without having hardly any of the symptoms or even knowing anything was wrong. And one of the reasons that I'm posting this now is that two days ago I had my six month check up with my rheumatologist, and I am doing extraordinarily well. My medicine has made all of my levels go back to normal, and it's something that's been used for years, it's inexpensive, and it's working! I don't have to be on any steroids, I don't have to be on blood thinners (only a baby asprine a day). Things are working out so great! We really have been so blessed, and so lucky for everything to be running so smoothly. Hehe...the only sad thing about my appointment was that my hair is still falling out, but my doctor said that's kind of to be expected and mine isn't that bad, but even that is another good thing, because it could be a lot worse, and that would be another sign that I would need to be on some heavier medications. So only my vanity is hurt. :) Okay, I think I'm done now. Whew.

Sunday Naps

When we come home from Church on Sunday, Royce and I hang out in the kitchen and cook lunch together (well, most of the time he cooks :) ) but today Emmaline was hanging out in the living room, playing with Royce's books, and when I came in to ask her if she wanted ranch on her salad, I found her like this. It was so funny. She slept for five hours! And when she woke up she crawled over and gave me loves, then she said, "is lunch ready yet?" So funny.

We went through her stuff to possibly piece together a Halloween costume, and this is how she ended up. I wanted to use her old dance costume, and bunny ears from Easter so she could be a bunny, but Royce pointed out that she kind of looked like the wrong kind of bunny. So we'll see. She does have a really cute University of Texas cheerleading outfit that might work.


She took this last picture, and I just thought it was really cute with her little toes sticking up there. (She's taking a picture of the little flowers on her nails.)

Oh! I totally forgot. Emmaline can draw letters now! It came really fast. One day she drew an E, and we got all excited; the next day she drew an A, and then the day after that she started drawing all of these letters. She draws them all in capitols except for the I. (I'm not sure why...maybe it just looks cooler. :) ) It was great. I was excited. :)

Halloween, Cupcakes, and Fireworks

I've decided I want to try and use colorflow (it's like royal icing that you thin down and pour into an outline then let harden to make little sugar shapes) so I'm starting to make little witches to put on top of cupcakes for halloween, and I wanted a cute little witch so that I could print it off, and use it for a guide to pipe my outline, and I couldn't find one that I liked, so I decided to make one! I've been having a lot of fun with fireworks (the program I used to make her) and hopefully she'll work for colorflow.
And I promise I still am taking care of Emmaline. I've got some pics that I need to post, but my batteries ran down, and I haven't gotten them replaced yet. :)

Cake

I really want to make a cake soon, to try out some new techniques, and play around with some things that I've seen, but I can't think of any reason to make a cake. Nothing. Still nothing. Somebody give me a good reason to make/decorate a cake!

IKEA tables

Emmaline's been wanting to work on the computer a lot, so Royce set up our old lap-top as her computer station, and she has had so much fun. She literally will sit there for an hour at a time, working on stuff. Since we'd decided to make her a station, I've been looking at small tables for her, and we found these small end tables at Ikea, and they're only $7.99. They're waferboard, which makes them really light, and are a great size for her, and there are other colors to choose from. (I wouldn't have picked red, but she's old enough now to have an opinion, and she wanted red.:) )
We got a white one too, to replace her food table, which had gotten really old and gross. Mainly gross. Old doesn't really matter that much to us at the stage. :) They're plain, but you could decorate them pretty easily if you wanted to. The flower and butterfly sitting on the red table are ones we pealed off of the old table, and they're just the 45cent wood cut-outs from Walmart. If you plan on having your kid eat at the table, though, I wouldn't recommend putting anything on the top, because food/milk gets in the little cracks and it gets really nasty. But maybe something on the side.


Since we've wanted to set her up a computer station, for some reason I got it into my head that she needed her own special mouse pad, so I played around with fireworks, (my first time really creating anything by myself. I still had to have Royce help me a little, though) and this is what I came up with. So hopefully it will work, and I'll get it made into a mouse pad from Wal-Mart. One really cool thing that Royce showed me was textures. (I guess the mouse can't have an image repeated over again because it can't separate the difference between the two.) So he showed me how to put it on the background. I think next time I'll have him show me how to put it all over, and make my picture look a little cooler. Although, now that her table is red, maybe I should go with more of a lady-bug theme. They also had round mouse pads at Ikea for 99cents.

Video

Here is a link to a short video made by the (LDS) Church, narrated by President Hinckley. What a wonderful thing to be able to listen to the words of a Prophet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkUwh1YUMtE

Gina and the Capitol

Aunty Gina came to stay with us two weeks ago, and we went to see the Capitol. The Texas state Capitol is even a few feet bigger than the United States Capitol. Silly Texas. (I don't know why I can't figure out how to rotate it.)

When we were growing up we rode horses, and my grandma was a riding instructor, and a horse show judge, so when we took this picture, Emmaline was holding onto the horn, and I was just joking around and I told her that if she held onto the horn Grandma would beat her, (because you're not supposed to hold onto the horn...I don't remember why; I think something about getting your hand wrapped around with a rope and cutting your fingers off or something) and as I was putting this picture up on the blog Emmaline said, "If I hold onto that thingy, Grandma will beat me?" It was pretty funny. (We really don't beat our children...I probably shouldn't joke around about stuff like that. :) )

It was a lot of fun, and Daddy ended up getting out of class early, and his building is only a block away, so he walked over and got to go through the last building with us.
Emmaline had a lot of fun with Aunty Gina, and it took a lot of convincing to let us giver her back to Nana and Papa. We still might have to kidnap her back sometime. :)

Emmaline also has decided that she likes to take pictures now, so I let her use the camera when we went, and it was pretty fun to see our visit through the eyes of a three year old. This was one of her favorite pictures...a picture of the Capitol and fireworks. :) She's camera crazy now; we might have to get her a little digital camera for her birthday. (But not the kid tough ones that you can throw down the stairs...they're $80! Besides we don't even have any stairs...)


Our last story of the day was pretty sad. I've been sick all last week, so Thursday I finally went to the doctor, and I had an ear infection, and a yucky cold, so I've been on my antibiotics so I thought I'd be okay to go to Church today, but by the middle of Sunday school I was feeling pretty yucky so we decided to go home, so we went to get Emmaline out of primary, and she was so sad she just starting crying because she didn't want to leave primary. I felt so bad. I almost talked Royce into staying the third hour, but he didn't want Mommy feeling sick, so we came home, and Emmaline and Royce made cookies together, and he cooked her top ramen noodles for lunch. (She loves them, but she doesn't get them very much because they don't have much nutritional value. :) ) Then we ended up playing together for the rest of the afternoon, so she ended up having a pretty good day after all.