Kimmons Family

Few Updates

2012-02-02T19:23:00.000-08:00

Marta with Daddy's portable hard drive. He left it on the table a little too close to her crib. I went to get her from her nap and found her like this,

Emmaline and Daddy having "creative play time" (cough...Dungeons and Dragons...cough cough) with Daddy's toys. (For the record, Royce doesn't play D&D)

Marta loves this elephant!!

...and chicken noodle soup.

Emmaline wanted to make a cake by herself, so we got her a cake mix and she did! I helped her take the pan in and out of the oven, and put the bowl on the mixing stand, and she did the rest.

Daddy coming home from a late night meeting at Church, getting mauled by the girls.

At the Houston Temple.

Rube Goldberg Machines

2012-01-24T15:14:00.000-08:00

My mom had her students at school make Rube Goldberg Machines (A Rube Goldberg machine, contraption, device, or apparatus is a deliberately over-engineered or overdone machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction. Thanks Wikipedia.) and we thought that would be a fun thing to do with Emmaline for school today. We started out by watching some videos on youtube; it was pretty awesome. This one was especially cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdPDn1KUz_A There are some other really fun ones if you just type in Rube Goldberg Machines. Anyway, we watched the videos and then I sent her in her room and told her to find things she could use to make a basic machine and this is what she came up with. (Again, another post that is mainly for my Mom.)

Attempt #1.

#2- She decided the ball was too heavy.

#3-Again, different ball.

Success!! (I did finally show her that where the domino hits the ball is important, and maybe if she spaced them out a little more it would give it a little more power, but I really wanted her to come up with her ideas and fix the problems on her own.)

Second machine idea.

Bloopers

Lol...

2012-01-09T17:14:00.000-08:00

I'm not even going to pay attention to the fact that they're eating on the floor and sharing germs.

Emmaline's First Track Meet

2012-01-07T13:44:00.000-08:00

Emmaline had her first track meet today. It was pretty cute, and fun to watch. She even ran the 800 (2 laps) and Royce and I would run to different parts of the inside of the track to encourage her, and she got around the first lap and said, okay, I give up, but we told her she could make it, and she kept going and ran the whole way!

Cheerleaders!! (It was really cold this morning. Well, Texas cold. Marta's hands are inside Royce's gloves.)

Marta

2012-01-01T18:13:00.000-08:00

Just a few Christmas pics

2011-12-29T18:29:00.000-08:00

Name that baby...

2011-11-13T17:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, you really don't have to, but how similar do these girls look! It's crazy. I think one of them is a little older than the other, but I'm not positive.

Random Pics

2011-11-13T17:05:00.000-08:00

This Sunday was Emmaline's Primary presentation so we got all dressed up. And it's close enough to Christmas to bust out the Christmas dresses!
We also got Emmaline some new clothes which she really needed. This is her favorite new shirt and she wanted me to take a picture of it. (Also notice my messy living room. The sad thing is that this is nothing compared to what it is sometimes.)
Should I be proud or embarrassed that my 6yr old walks around quoting the Simpsons? We really are selective of the ones we let her watch, I promise. Today's quote: "Ahh! A bear is eating my father." (Brownie points if you know what she's talking about.

Poor Royce; I didn't mean for this picture to be at the bottom of my post. He just got back from a conference in Florida last night, and he and his professor wrote a paper together that they presented, and they won the best conference proposal for the whole conference! It was really exciting. Frink out.

New Cake

2011-11-07T19:59:00.000-08:00

This is a cake that I made for the Young Women in Excellence program. (Or maybe New Beginnings? I'm not sure.) Anyway, it's for a program for the girls in our Church 12-18. It was my first time trying to make these flowers, and at first I wasn't so sure about them, but I think they kind of fit the style of the cake. The color doesn't look that great in the picture, but I used antique white fondant, and then just plain white for the flowers and side decorations and I really liked the contrast. Anyway, that's all!

Halloween

2011-10-31T23:19:00.000-07:00

It has been so long since I've put anything up on blogger, and after these pictures I'm still not even close to caught up(trip to Oregon, Emmaline's birthday, etc), but I guess I'll just do a little bit at a time. These are mainly Halloween and the ward trunk-or-treat last Wednesday.

This is Royce at a conference in Park City while we were at the trunk-or-treat. We missed him, but his conference went really well.
This is Emmaline's play-dough Earth that she made for school time. (We were working on identifying the continents. South America is not quite to scale.:))
So cute.

"Look, Daddy's graduating!" (But not really.:))

Quality Time

2011-08-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

This looks so bad, but I swear I don't let the baby watch TV. She just happened to get herself rolled around so she was facing it. After I took the picture I moved her again. :)

Just another day in paradise

2011-08-04T18:24:00.000-07:00

Marta is really good at rolling from her back to front, but lately has been getting stuck on her tummy, but has been using the time wisely. (She used to be better rolling from front to back, but apparently it depends on the week.:)

Emmaline and I have been learning how to make cheese, ice cream, and butter, etc on-line, so we tried to make our own butter, but I'm starting to think that you have to have cream, not just whole milk. But she's shaking the crud out of that jar anyway. :)

Pics of the Family

2011-07-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

What do you do when you're poor college students and you don't have a picture of your whole family together? That's right, you sit in front of the web-cam and take pictures that way. :)

Ode to the Cupcake Wrapper

2011-07-24T21:32:00.000-07:00

I love these cupcake wrappers. They're foil on the inside so when you bake them the colors stay true and they hold their shape. The colors are really cute and they're only $2.24 for like 36 of them at Wal-Mart. Anyway, they're wonderful. That is all. (Don't mind whatever that gross mystery spot is next to the cupcake.)

Emmaline's Talk

2011-07-10T22:03:00.000-07:00

So Emmaline gave a talk a few weeks ago in Church, and it was supposed to be about the Restoration, and I thought it would be fun to save, so here's her talk. She wrote all of it by herself (she was very specific about the wording) except I made her put in the scripture, and I wouldn't let her say that the other Churches were bad. (We had to explain that that the other Churches have good parts to them, but we believe that they don't have the full Gospel of Jesus Christ.)

"Joseph Smith was working hard in a field. All of the people in the Churches wanted Joseph Smith to go to their Churches. Everyone was fighting and arguing. Joseph Smith was wondering if he could go to any of the Churches or not. So Joseph Smith looked in the scriptures to see if any of the Churches were right or wrong. The scripture said, 'If any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.' That means if you have a question you can ask Heavenly Father and He'll give you the answer. Joseph Smith went into the forest to pray so nobody could see him pray. He saw something dark, then he saw something light. The light was Heavenly Father and Jesus. They told Joseph Smith not to go to any of the Churches. Joseph Smith was supposed to start a new Church. Then he knew that Heavenly Father and Jesus were watching him and that they would always be there for him. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

Giggles

2011-07-07T14:34:00.000-07:00

I found batteries for my camera

2011-07-03T17:11:00.000-07:00

Happy baby!

Emmaline set up this little photo shoot.

Really Mommy? Tummy time again?

Friends and 4mo Stats!

2011-06-28T17:39:00.000-07:00

This is Emmaline's little friend *cough-future husband-cough* Jarom. Normally she has a couple of other friends over at the same time, but last Friday everyone was out of town, so it was just Jarom and Emmaline so I had to steal a pic. He and his wonderful family are moving tomorrow, and we're so sad, but happy that they get to move forward.

In this pic are more of the cute little friends that Emmaline has, who are moving at the end of the summer! We're so sad to be missing all of these sweet little boys, but are glad that we've gotten to have so much fun with everyone.
I have a deal with Emmaline that for every serious picture that I get, she gets to have a silly one.

And here's our cute little Marta girl. I keep getting in trouble because I don't have more pictures of Marta, but the batteries in my camera are dying, and I have just enough time to get one picture before the battery dies, so this is it for now. :) She was sitting up so cute and smiling at me, and I'm just awful at getting good pictures. But she had her 4mo check-up today, and she's doing great. She was 90% for weight, 90% for head circumference, off the chart for height, but is the same height as an average(50%) 8mo old. Yikes! She's doing great though, and her heart murmur might be gone, she rolled over for the first time this weekend, and has started solid food and loves it!

More Pics!

2011-05-31T12:39:00.000-07:00

Such a cutie pie!

I cut 14 1/2" off for Locks-o-Love.
Royce found a really good deal online and got me a Cricut Cake for my birthday!!! It was awesome. This was the first cake I decorated with it.
Lol...I have no words.
Emmaline wanted to take a pic of Daddy while we were Skyping. Royce had a networking conference in Virginia that turned out to be a really good thing.
Sweet little girls!

I let Emmaline sleep with me while Royce was gone; can you guess where I slept?
Hanging out with Daddy!

Stuff!

2011-05-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a busy few weeks. Royce's birthday, Easter at Nana and Papa's, egg hunt with friends around the apt complex, Grandpa visiting, Marta's blessing, Mother's day, and even a video of smiles from Marta's new toy. Here's the pics; I'm sure you can figure out what pic goes with each event. (I find that I type much less when I only have one hand.)

These are my beautiful Mother's day flowers. They accompanied danishes for breakfast, a gallon of BlueBell chocolate brownie fudge ice cream, and a clean kitchen and living room! It was awesome.

Emmaline took this picture.

This is what Emmaline does to my hair at night when I'm not paying attention. Maybe that's why I just cut 14 1/2" off!

I really did get another picture of Grandpa, but it's on the other computer right now.

Emmaline has some serious issues with taking pictures in the sun.

I gave Emmaline the cake below and she spent a ton of time piping it. The top row of her piping is a bunch of tiny dots.

Jammies!

Just a Few Updates

2011-04-18T23:32:00.000-07:00

Our first trip to Church!
She's started making eye contact and smiling at us now, which is so much fun. Royce can get the best smiles out of her, and she smiles a little bit at Mommy, but Emmaline is really frustrated that she can't get her to smile yet. :) I could not get a good picture of her smiling...Mommy's just too slow with the trigger button, but these are kind of close.

I was making Emmaline clean her room this time while Marta had tummy time, so Emmaline decided that she needed a toy to look at instead of her. (Normally she's always down on the floor with her during tummy time, along with Mommy or Daddy or sometimes both.)

Tired little girls

2011-04-12T19:54:00.000-07:00

More Pics

2011-03-24T17:03:00.000-07:00

Emmaline is so funny listening to music on the mp3 player. When did she grow up so much!

I tried to fix the red-eye with photoshop, but I'm not very good so her eyes look a little weird.

I think Marta had a big chunk of Emmaline's hair in her hand. :)

Look at how skinny our poor little girl got! She dropped a lot of weight the first day in the hospital (this picture is after we were home, after she was about a week old), and more the second, and by the third she had lost 9.9% of her body weight, and so we had to supplement with some formula, but we were still aggressively trying to breast feed, and by her two week check-up she still wasn't back up to birth weight, and so we focused a lot more on formula, and she did so much better. By her third week at her cardiologist appointment she had gained more than a pound, and has been doing really well since, as you can tell by the fact that her little cheeks are getting chubbier! So like with Emmaline, the breastfeeding didn't really work, but she's doing really well now, and I'm happy with the feeding situation now.

The Girls!

2011-03-06T13:00:00.000-08:00

Have I mentioned how much Emmaline loves her baby sister? Multiple times a day she talks about how glad she is that Marta is out now. The pic on the bottom, I put Marta in her swing, and Emmaline pulled up her chair, and just sat there and watched her for a while. She is loving this so much.

Marta Ruth Kimmons

2011-02-27T17:35:00.000-08:00

Our sweet little baby is here! She was born on Monday, February 21st at 7:47am. She was 7lb 8.6oz, and 20 1/2 inches long.

This is one of the cute blankets that Aunt Marissa made for her. I wish I would have gotten a picture of the other one; she used it on her first car ride home from the hospital!

Such a sweet little face!

Wonderful, wonderful Daddy. She spent the majority of the first three days of life asleep on Daddy's chest, and Royce has just been beyond incredible throughout all of this. I tear up every time I think about how great he's been.

Emmaline loves little Marta so much. She loves to kiss her, and hold her, and she checks on her all the time, and makes sure Grandma changes her diaper right. She has been so good, and such a sweetheart. I knew she would do a good job, but I was still impressed with how great she's done, and just how mature she's been, and really selfless. We have been blessed with two sweet little girls!

This was in the hospital at 5am when we were waiting to fill out paperwork before they did the c-section. We didn't get a ton of sleep the night before despite the fact that everything was planned in advanced.
Here she is snuggling with Nana the day she was born. My mom flew in on the Saturday before, and Royce's parents and youngest sister Gina came out Sunday night, so they all got to be there when Marta was born, and Royce's family spent the day with us in the hospital on Monday, and Grandma's here until next Saturday, and it was really nice to be able to have everyone there.
After they got her out, they checked her a little and then cleaned her up, then I got to snuggle her face for just a little bit before they had to take her to the nursery, and then it was a couple of hours before I got to see her again because the operating room is too cold for the babies, and I had to spend at least an hour in the recovery room before I could be taken to my room, but Royce came back to check on me, and showed me a bunch of pictures.
They did cut her finger a little bit when they were doing the c-section, but it's healing really well.

The story! This is going to be really long, because I'm just going to write down everything I remember, mainly just so I have it down, and blogging seems to be my justification for not writing in a journal. :) So our c-section was scheduled for Monday morning at 7am, so we had to be there at 5, so we went up and got checked in, and Emmaline was not looking forward to Mommy and Daddy staying in the hospital for a few days, so she kind of had a hard time when we left her with Grandma in the parking lot, but we left her with hugs and kisses and told her that she'd get to hold her new baby sister soon, and then we had to leave. So we got there and got all of the paperwork filled out, and they took us upstairs and started to get us ready for the surgery. The nurse started my IV (and she got it the first time which was awesome because when I had Emmaline it took them 12 tries to try and get 2 IV's in. I'm not even exaggerating. It was insane.) And they asked me a ton of questions, and drew some blood, and checked all of my vitals and stuff, and about this point I was absolutely freaking out. It wasn't any kind of rational fear, and there wasn't anything specific I was afraid of, but I was just absolutely losing it, and there were multiple silent prayers said in my head for help to get through this next little while, and all this time Royce was just sitting beside me stroking my arm so I wouldn't completely break down. So then they took me into the operating room, and Royce had to wait in the hall while they got things ready, and once I got in there they worked really fast, so it was a little harder to freak out because I had to really focus to do what they were asking me. They put me up on the table, and then they started the spinal thing, and then they moved even faster, and got me laid down, and started my catheter and they kept putting all of these warm blankets on me, and hooked up these hoses that blew warm air into my gown. With Emmaline I got really sick from the anesthesia, which I guess is pretty common, but the Anesthesiologist told me that if I got sick at all to tell him right away, and as I was laying there I started getting sick, and my teeth started chattering, and my arms were shaking pretty bad, and I told him I was feeling sick, and he was there and in like two seconds he had a medicine shot into my IV, and the nausea totally went away, and I didn't get sick the whole rest of the time! It was awesome. Then around that time they let Royce came in, and he sat at a chair at my head, and the doctors came in and went to work. One thing that did make me relax a lot, is that while the doctors/nurses were working they were just chatting about random things, and talking about their weekend, and it just made it a lot more like a common thing, and not such a big deal. Anyway, they worked for a while, and then they said, okay Daddy, come on up, it's time to get a picture of this, at which point Royce's eyes got really big and he kind of froze. I learned while we were in the hospital with Emmaline that Royce does not like to watch medical procedures being done on me. (It's not so much that he's afraid of blood or needles or anything, but he doesn't like to watch that being done to me.) When they were trying to put the IV's in, he almost passed out, and for that reason didn't cut Emmaline's umbilical cord because he did not want to see any of that because he was afraid he was going to pass out. So with Marta again Royce planned on not cutting the umbilical cord, because he knew that I would completely freak out if he wasn't right there with me, and if he looked at anything, there was a good chance he'd end up passed out on the floor. So the doctor had to ask him again to stand up, and reluctantly he did, and he got a picture of just her head coming out, and then another one with the rest of her halfway out, and then he came back and sat down by my head until they got her all the way out, and they took her over to the scale and weighed her and cleaned her up a little, and she let out a few tiny little cries when she was first born, and then she just kind of laid there looking around, not really fussing or crying or anything. I was surprised at how much hair she had, and how dark it was, because Emmaline had a tiny bit of hair, and it was reddish/blonde. Anyway, they got her cleaned up and wrapped up a little, and then they brought her over and put her by my face, and I got to snuggle her face a little bit, and then they had to take her to the nursery, so Royce went with her, and the doctor finished sewing me up, and he said that I didn't have any scar tissue so we should be okay c-section wise to have more babies in the future. So then they took me to the recovery room, and at this point I was feeling pretty good; I mean, obviously pretty out of it, but so much better than last time, and we got there and they put more warm blankets on me and another heating thing, because I guess my temperature had gotten kind of low, but I wasn't feeling too bad, and was just kind of relaxed and resting, and after a while Royce came in to check on me, and he sat with me for a while, and showed me pictures that he had gotten of Marta. Apparently she was still just really calm in the nursery, until they gave her a bath, and that was when she started crying. So after about an hour and a half in the recovery room they took me to my room and I got to hold her, and try and nurse her and stuff. Anyway, she's such a sweet little girl and is so calm. Again we've had some troubles nuring, and she dropped a lot of weight in the first two days, so right now I nurse her, then we supplement with some formula, and I pump to get more milk. She's had a couple of rough nights, but has done a little better on soy formula, but is still such a sweetheart. And Emmaline is so excited and doing so well and we're all just excited to have her here now!

Feb

2011-02-04T20:20:00.000-08:00

Snow day!

School day.
"I can't wait!"

Random January and More Christmas

2011-01-23T19:56:00.000-08:00

These are just some random pictures that we've taken lately. (Mainly Emmaline. :)) Not too much new is happening...Royce is working on his last semester of coursework before he starts his dissertation. Emmaline and I are just hanging out and waiting for this baby to come. Four more weeks from tomorrow! I think we're all ready, but I seem to be going in manic cleaning modes lately. Well, as manic as I can be right now. Anyway, I guess that's all. Frink out.

Finally getting rid of our poor gingerbread house that has been sitting on our table for the last 2 1/2 months.

Dancing with the doll she got for Christmas from Sharon and Carlos.

My poor little slave worker girl; my Mom says I work her too much. But she's such a cheerful little thing, and loves to help. She already unloads the dishwasher (along with other chores), but lately she's wanted to help me wash the dishes too, so we each have our own sink and I wash the pots and pans and she rinses the dishes before they go into the dishwasher. It's actually really helpful, not just something you let them do because they want to help. She's such a sweetheart.

Emmaline's creation. (And picture.)
Emmaline's picture of Daddy losing his mind. We're pretty sure he won't go postal before he's finished with school, but not positive. :)

My Sister also put some more pictures up on her blog from Christmastime, and she takes much cuter pictures, so I'll put some up here too so you can see some good pictures.

This is our whole family minus poor Uncle Mike. He was taking the picture, and this was the morning before we opened presents and Lea got Mike a tripod for his camera for Christmas, so we were going to take another picture after we opened presents with his tripod, and we just never got it done. One of these days we'll get a picture with everyone. (My sister Lea is also pregnant...she's due one week after I am.)

Aunty Lea, Mazy and Grandpa.

Uncle Mike and Mazy.

Christmas in New Braunfels

2011-01-09T19:13:00.001-08:00

Here are some pictures from Christmas. My family all came out to Texas and we stayed at a timeshare my parents have that is about 45min away from where we were. It was really fun, and a good week, but these seem to be the only pictures that I have. Most of them are from when we went to the children's museum, and then some that Royce took while we were opening presents, but I didn't get any of the rest of the week, and it was a VERY busy week. All really fun things, and super cool, but I was so exhausted every night. I don't seem to have very much strength/stamina/energy. It seems to be getting worse, I can't do anything, I'm feeling pretty yucky, and I've decided I'm ready to be done. :) But, only 6 more weeks, and then we get to have little fingers and toes, and cute little bundles to snuggle. February 21st at 7:00am! And Emmaline is just about to spontaneously combust waiting for the baby to come. She loves watching the baby shows on TLC, and every time she sees a picture of a baby she just goes nuts and says I can't wait for the baby to get out!

He's so stinking cute. And wonderful. I don't talk about Royce very much on my blog, and I think he might prefer it that way, but he's so wonderful! He takes such good care of us, and is so sweet and wonderful.

The big present that my parents got Emmaline was a bike, and she was really nervous to ride it at first, but once we got her on there and convinced that she wasn't going to fall off, she had a lot of fun. We even talked her into riding down a little hill the other night. :)

I'm Wesley! (And pregnancy stuff.)

2010-12-14T22:18:00.000-08:00

It's official! Emmaline loves Princess Bride now. It was on the other night, and Royce told her that Buttercup was the princess, and Wesley was going to go save her, and she was completely mesmerized, and wants to watch that movie all the time now, and last night she popped out from behind the couch like this and said, "I'm Wesley!" Now she's making Wesley masks for everyone to wear at Christmas, so watch out family, get ready to wear some masks. She specifically mentioned Grandma first, and said she wanted to get a picture with her (she?) and Grandma wearing their masks. She's also made all of us adventure books for when we go to the zoo. :)

At my last check-up they tested me for gestational diabetes as is routine at that visit, and a normal glucose level is 140 or below, and mine was 215, so they started me on the gestational diabetic diet, and I had to do the 3hr fasting test. Surprisingly, it wasn't as bad as the doctor thought it would be. They draw your blood 4 times, and if you get 190 or higher on at least 2 of the tests you're considered to have gestational diabetes, and two of mine were normal, and one was 194, and one was 188, so my doctor said I have borderline gestational diabetes, which means I don't have to go to the endocrinologist, but they have started me on some medicine and I stick with the diet, and I'll do a fasting blood test with every appointment from here on out. But all things considering I thought that was a pretty good outcome, because the doctor thought for sure I'd have it pretty bad, and this is much more manageable. And the medicine I started I take gradually because it takes your body a while to adjust to it, and it's supposed to give me horrible diarrhea, but even that can't stop my constipated colon. Muhahahahha. So that's nice that that's not happening. The diet has been a bit of a struggle; I'm realizing that I'm such an emotional eater, and I seem to need that occasional binge on sweet stuff to handle stress or worry, but I can't, so I've noticed that I'll start crying over the dumbest things, but I think it's just because my emotions are all bottled up. Hmmm...I might have to work on that. Anyway, I guess that's all. The baby is doing well and looks healthy, so that's the point of all of this craziness anyway! Unfortunately I think I've decided I'm done being pregnant now, though. It's good Christmas is coming because I think I'm going to need some major distractions for the next couple of months.

Here are some belly pictures...this one is like 4 or 5 months? I don't remember when I took it. Oops. :)

This one I took this morning, so about 7 1/2ish months? I'm not sure why I didn't put my face in...I didn't think about that until after I put them on the computer. Oh well!

Sunday Afternoon Naps

2010-11-22T11:58:00.000-08:00

I was sitting working on Royce's laptop and Royce fell asleep on my shoulder first, then Emmaline crawled up and fell asleep on my chest, and I thought, man, someone should take a picture of this! And then I remembered, I have the lap top, I can! I love my sweet sweet babies!

Merry Christmas to us!

2010-11-07T14:54:00.000-08:00

We decided that since we have insanely hard, asbestos filled tile floor all throughout our apartment, before the new baby comes we should get a bigger rug to go in the living room, so she can have tummy time and all crawl and what not without giving herself a concussion. (Royce said the thought of the baby's head hitting this floor when she's laying on the ground in tummy time makes him sick to his stomach. :)) So my parents were awesome enough to buy us a rug for Christmas, and even generous enough to let us get it early, so here is our cool new rug for our apartment. Emmaline loves it. When we got home from Church today, she walked through the door, took her shoes off, and went and started rolling around on the carpet. It is really nice, and Royce even decided to do a little manic re-arranging of furniture in our apartment last night after we got it home, so we've got a nice new living space!

We barely got the carpet rolled out and Emmaline had to give it a try.
This was right before we went out to get our carpet, and we also took Emmaline to the dollar store so she could spend the money that Grammy Cookie gave her for her birthday. It finally started getting a little colder out here, and we realized that she only has one pair of pants left that fit her, so we went and got her a few new things, and this is one of her new outfits.

I forgot, Emmaline also had her 5yr check-up last week. She's in the 90% for her height, and the 20% for her weight. But the doctor says that she's really healthy, and is doing really well. She was even able to get the flu-mist so she didn't have to have any shots, which she was really excited about, but we still went and got ice cream after her check-up anyway. I took a really cute picture of her eating her ice cream on my phone, but since I'm retarded and don't know how to get the pictures from my phone to my computer, they will just have to stay there for a while. That would make for a pretty fun post when I actually get them off, and then we can see the progression. :)

Halloween!

2010-11-01T09:58:00.000-07:00

Emmaline was a princess this year for Halloween. Her costume is actually one of her dress-up clothes that she got for her birthday, and she said she wanted to wear it for Halloween, so I thought, hey, that's awesome. So all we had to buy for halloween was the crown, and she was set. We just made the ward trunk-or-treat our official Halloween day since real Halloween was on a Sunday, and it was a lot of fun, and she got a ton of candy. She also rations it really well. She says, okay, I'm going to eat this candy, and then no more for today. She also decided that her candy needed to be sorted by colors, so each color is in its own bag, but she kept leaving the bags out all over the floor, and Royce and I don't have as much self control, so we finally had to tell her that if she didn't want Mommy and Daddy eating all of her candy, she can't leave it out all the time, so now she puts it away in her room. But she's still really good about sharing, and give us candy whenever we ask her for some. :)

Royce's Reunion

2010-10-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

These are a couple of pictures from Royce's 10yr high school reunion. But I forgot my camera in the car, so one is in the car right after dinner, and the others are at Royce's parent's house.

(This picture is the cute little kiddos that are in Emmaline's "school." I'll have school at our house for the next 3wks. But just once a week...that sounds scary when you say it like that. :))

Emmaline's Birthday!!!

2010-10-07T19:38:00.000-07:00

Our sweet little Emmaline turned 5!! Her birthday was on Thursday, and it turned out to be a pretty good day. We started out by taking her out to breakfast; she picked McDonald's. Then we dropped Daddy off at work and she and I went to the playground for playgroup for a couple of hours. Then we rented her a movie from RedBox, came home and watched cartoons together, got ready, picked Daddy up from work, at Macaroni and Cheese for dinner, then got ready for her party. This is the first year that we had a party for her with friends and not just family, and it was really fun. We went out to the little playground by the apartment complex, and we ate cake and ice cream, and the kids played with bubbles and played on the playground, and it was just a nice quiet little evening. Then we came home and she opened presents and she and I watched her movie while Daddy did homework, then the power went out so we went to bed. :) But it was still really fun, and we only missed a little bit of the end of the movie. All in all she had a really good birthday, and is such a happy, sweet little girl!

Right after she blew out her candles.

Blowing out her candles. Haha...you can see a little bit of my belly bump in the pic. I just noticed that.

Hanging out with Daddy waiting for Mommy to finish wrapping presents. (I know, I didn't get them wrapped until after her party. It was a crazy week. :) )

Playing at the playground with some of her friends. It was hard to get a good picture; the sun was almost set and they were not holding still. :) But I think they had lots of fun together.

This is the cake that she decorated for her birthday. She had a lot of fun and did everything by herself.

This is her Rapunzel cake for this year. It definitely took some time, but surprisingly it didn't take as much time/effort as her Monsters Inc cake last year. But she liked it, and I was happy with how it turned out, so all in all it went well. My purple fondant did dry out so the ruffles in the front are cracked a little, but at that point I didn't really care too much. The colors are backwards too for the Rapunzel dress, but Emmaline wanted it pink instead of purple, so there ya go.

Aunty Lea got her some princess Uno cards, and Mazy colored her a picture, and both were great. It surprised me how cute Emmaline thought it was that Mazy colored her the picture, and Uno was perfect because she just learned how to play Uno the other day at "school" and has loved it ever since, so it was really great.

This is her new dress-up dress that Royce and I got her. As an added bonus she said she wanted to wear it for Halloween, so that's cool. I've been going a little crazy trying to find her a good costume, and here this one came out of the blue. We also got her some playdough and spongebob games.

My parents spoiled her like crazy again this year, and I actually video taped it this time, and I uploaded it to youtube because it was too big for blogger, so if you want to watch her open her gifts you can go to the link. (Sorry Aunty Lea, I didn't think about recording it until after she had already opened your gift.) And next weekend we're going to Nana and Papa's and she'll get to have another little party there, so she's a lucky little girl!

Okay, here's the link for the video, assuming that I uploaded it right, and didn't mess something else up. But you know what assumptions do. :)

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

Get ready for matching dresses come Easter...

2010-09-16T11:26:00.000-07:00

...because it's a girl!! Emmaline has gotten her wish, and we will be having another little girl in February. We're all really excited! The baby is healthy and doing well, and according to her measurements she's exactly on for the due date of the 26th. I'm still feeling pretty awful, but the doctor gave me some new things to try, so hopefully that will help. Other than that things are just going pretty well, and the doctor even told me to start looking at my schedule to see when a good day would be for us to have the baby. (One good thing about a c-section.) He said they would do the c-section about a week before the due date, so pretty cool! I really do want to start feeling better so I can actually enjoy the pregnancy a little bit instead of just holding on one week at a time and not being able to wait until I'm done being pregnant. :) But, the baby's healthy, and things are going really well so far, so I'll try not to complain too much. Poor Royce has to hear the brunt of it anyway.

The second thing I wanted to post about was Emmaline's new bed. When my parents came out in August, they bought Emmaline a new bed (they didn't seem to like their first grandchild sleeping on food storage cans :)) but they ordered it online so it didn't come until after they left, and they've been waiting and waiting for me to put a picture up on the blog, but I wanted to get some cute material to go around the bottom to cover up all of the storage that I have underneath, but it's half way through September and I still haven't bought the material, let alone put it up, so this will have to do for now. But Emmaline loves her new bed and it's really nice to have so much storage space underneath. I've got all of the baby stuff under there, and some food storage stuff, and even some of Emmaline's toys. It's awesome.

I put this second picture in because she was so funny. I wasn't looking at her face, but after I took the picture she was like, oh wait, I forgot to smile! So we took another one. :)

Royce made this!

2010-08-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

This is a picture that Royce made last night (he seriously only worked on it for 2 hours, and it was done) for an educational game that he's been helping with for a couple of years, and I thought it was so incredible! Part of it is that it looks fantastic, but also I watched him through some of the stages of this process, and he started with a stone texture from on-line and a circle, and this is how the picture ended up. It's so cool.

Parenting: Touching the Hearts of Our Youth

2010-08-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

Parenting: Touching the Hearts of Our Youth

Stake Relief Society Blog

2010-08-07T11:38:00.000-07:00

For once I actually checked my yahoo account for the relief society information for our ward, and they said that the web-site is up from the last stake Relief Society conference, which I thought was pretty cool that they put everything up on a blog. (Including recipes from the luncheon.) So here's the link if you haven't seen it yet.

http://austinoakhillsrs.blogspot.com/

We've Almost Made It!

2010-08-06T13:19:00.000-07:00

So we've almost made it through the first trimester! My progesterone level was low and so I had to take some replacement hormones, and that was awful. I was so sick all the time. All I did was go to Church, buy groceries, and sort the laundry and Royce and Emmaline did all of the rest. Royce was amazing. He did all of the cooking, the cleaning, washing the laundry, and he waited on me hand and foot, and was just always so happy to help, and tried to help me feel better. (On top of working 30hrs a week and going to school and all of the projects his professors have him doing.) He made Edward look like an insensitive jerk. :) And Emmaline picked up a lot more responsibilities, and did really well and enjoyed helping so now she's got her own little chore chart, with stickers, and ice cream rewards.
Anyway, this last week I've been able to slowly taper off my medicine, and my doctor called today and said that my levels look good, so I can stop taking the medicine! It's awesome. I'm already feeling so much better just being on less medicine. I'm still feeling a little sick, but it's totally manageable. So yeah! And I'll be 11 weeks tomorrow, so we're about to say goodbye (and good riddance) to the first trimester, and I'm starting to feel happy and excited about being pregnant again. And a special thanks to everyone who helped watch Emmaline too, and get her out of the house, and thanks for all of the offers too. Even if we didn't take you up on it, we really appreciate it, and are so glad that we have such a great support system here, and some great friends!

And these pictures don't really have much to do with the post, but I thought they were pretty cute. I'm still undecided about how I feel about her playing video games, but Royce is careful with what she plays, and it's a fun thing for them to do together, and they're just so cute!

Free Piano Music Download

2010-08-05T12:10:00.000-07:00

I found a really neat blog where you can download some hymns that this guy plays on the piano, or he has sheet music available for some of the songs, and they're really pretty, and everything is free. Check it out!
http://www.hymnarrangements.blogspot.com

Chicken Little

2010-07-27T13:29:00.001-07:00

My mom got us these hair towels for Christmas, but Emmaline's bath towel is an elephant with a hood, so she hasn't used it much, but last night she did a horrible job getting all of the shampoo rinsed out of her hair, so I had to help her rinse it out in the bathroom sink, and we used Emmaline's turbie, and she looked pretty cute. Silly little goof ball. (And it's a monkey wrapped around her neck.)

Oregon Trip

2010-07-20T18:37:00.000-07:00

So we went to Oregon in June, and I'm just now getting a post up about it. I brought my camera, I really did, but this is the only picture that we got from Oregon. Emmaline took it of the living room from the upstairs balcony, but I was so paranoid about her dropping the camera off the edge I made her hurry really fast so it's all blurry. Luckily my sister brought her camera, and actually took pictures, so I stole the rest of the pictures from her blog. She also has a couple of cute videos from our trip too, one of Emmaline feeding a calf. Here's here blog if you would like to see them: Mike and Lea

This is almost all of the family. My mom is taking the picture, and obviously Royce isn't there, but this is the rest of us. This was the day that we decided to go hiking. My mom has a spot that she likes to hike to a lot, but it was still snowed in too much for us to get on the trail, so this is just a little trail that started off behind a rest stop off 140. (Meadow Lake)Blah, that's so annoying. I don't know why it's blue and underlined. Anyway, this is Uncle Will and Aunt Marissa with Emmaline. You have to admit, it's some beautiful scenery!

This is my Aunt Gabbie helping Emmaline feed one of the calves on their ranch. It's where I learned how to ride horses when I was little, and everything else that goes with that. This was a box that my mom had saved for the grandkids for 6 months waiting for them to come. I think it was probably worth the effort.
Little stinker. We were nearing the end of our hike (I guess it was kind of a long hike for little legs) and Emmaline wanted a little ride, and Mazy was done being carried, so Lea decided it would be easiest if she put Emmaline in Mazy's pack. Silly girl.
This is Aunty Lea and Uncle Mike and Mazy.
Uncle Mike and Mazy!

Mazy "trying" to ride my mom's Great Pyrenees Dali.
Mazy was not shy around the horses. We had to be careful because Gabbie said that some of them might want to bite little fingers. We couldn't even get Emmaline to touch a horse. (Before Gabbie even said anything about biting horses.) Poor little thing gets pretty nervous around some things. But that's okay. Baby steps to the bus.

It's a baby!

2010-07-07T20:57:00.000-07:00

So after all of our thoughts and planning and decisions regarding adoption our minds have totally turned around, and we've decided to have a baby instead! We were watching conference in April, and just really felt like this was something we needed to try, and we found out a few weeks ago that we're pregnant! It's going to be a really high risk pregnancy, so we're going to be carefully watched by our doctor (2 ultrasounds and 3 blood draws by 6wks!), but he's a really good OB that specializes in my kind of high risk pregnancies, and is really optimistic about everything, so we're pretty excited! I'm 6wks 4days, and today we were able to see the little baby's heartbeat on the ultrasound. It was pretty cute. I'm due on Feb 26, and we're really happy. (Feeling pretty awful, but still happy.)

The picture's not great, but I can't really tell what things are anyway. It turns out the round circle on the left is just he yolk sack, but I thought it was the head at first. The little bean on the right is the baby, and it's little heart is beating strong in there!

Emmaline

2010-06-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

I just told Emmaline that the people upstairs moved out and they didn't live there any more, and she got sad for a second, and then really concerned, and asked, "Did Jarom move out too?"

Lol...it's so funny and so cute. I swear I'm being good and not encouraging it, or let her know how stinking cute I think it is. In case you didn't notice Jarom is one of her cute little friends that she's been fond of for quite some time. Any time anyone talks about marriage she informs us that she and Jarom are getting married. She also says that Hannah is going to marry Ben. So cute. Anyway, that's all. I just thought that was pretty funny.

Updates

2010-06-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

It's been a really long time since I've put any pictures up. I haven't been taking a lot of pictures lately. I'm kind of in a phase that I want to live in the moment, and not have to mess with a camera, and just enjoy those family times. Maybe that's not the right attitude, but that's where I'm at right now. That being said, I went through my camera a little bit and got some pictures that have been there forever. This is the first one. I work with the Young Women at Church (12-14yr old girls) and we work on a program called Personal Progress which gives the girls goals, and helps them learn new skills and improve themselves, and part of that is basic homemaking skills and as leaders we work on that with the girls too, and one project is to learn a new skill and make an item for your home, so I learned how to applique and sewed a blanket for Emmaline's room. The project is supposed to take at least 10hrs, and after I'd worked on it for 14hrs, I stopped counting and just finished it.

These are some super cute pictures of little cousins when we went to see Rocky and Carol's brand new beautiful house! We went to dinner, and the girls were playing int he back of Nana and Papa's truck.

This is Emmaline and one of our little neighbor boys from South Korea.
This is when we went to Corpus Christi. This is the aquarium.
Emmaline reading stories to her babies.
This is from Easter at Nana and Papa's house. It's been a really long time since I've put up picures.

This is a little sugar egg we made for Nana for Easter. She found a Wilton cake book from 1971 and let me borrow it for a while, and it showed how to make these sugar eggs, and I thought they were pretty cute so we tried it out.

Good Cake Decorating Links-Revised!

2010-06-25T22:58:00.001-07:00

Okay, so here's the right link. And Royce took me through the web-site to make the link shorter, and it's really easy. You go to bit.ly and then paste the long site and it gives you a new short site.
Here you go! (Man, I say so a lot.)

http://bit.ly/aFerKA

So after taking a break from cake/gumpaste/etc, I think I'm ready to get practicing again. I've been looking for a while to learn how to make a plumeria, (for you Kelda!) and I found a really great tutorial, and it's pretty basic and I thought I'd post my findings more in case anyone else out there would like to play around with gum paste a little, because everything I know I've learned from watching Ace of Cakes, Cake Boss, and research on-line.

Here's the link for the gumpaste plumeria. (Frangipani? I don't know what the difference is, if there is one.)

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_FoKnuiv59YU/Sdm1uLg2OvI/AAAAAAAAAUM/MbHLnmUHcOc/s400/Satin%2BIce%2Bvs%2BWilton%2B031A.jpg&imgrefurl=http://acupcakeproject.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html&usg=__Zo-_0I8VGCTfuyAetwPe0YfN5Y4=&h=300&w=400&sz=12&hl=en&start=37&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=Xn2EmuvbLVYdaM:&tbnh=93&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgum%2Bpaste%2Bplumeria%26start%3D20%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DNqO%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26ndsp%3D20%26tbs%3Disch:1

Wow, sorry, that's ginormous. I'm sure I could turn around and ask Royce how to make that smaller, but, eh. (Darnit, it's the wrong link. But it takes you to her page, and at the bottom is the link for the plumerias.)

Another resource that's been really great is a woman named Edna, and she has great short tutorials on YouTube, that are step by step. Her web-site is:

www.designmeacake.com, or you can search on YouTube for Edna's Cakes.

As I keep finding good sights I'll post them, and have fun!

Home!

2010-06-20T15:41:00.000-07:00

It is so good to be home. It was really fun to see everyone, and do so many fun things, but it's just too long to be away from Royce, and it's so good to be home. I also think I have strep throat.

PJ's

2010-05-17T17:32:00.000-07:00

Here's Emmaline's new monkey pajamas that I made for her. You can't see the brown ruffle at the bottom very well because it blends into the carpet, but that's my favorite part. The cap sleeve is a little funky looking, but oh well! Hopefully they will survive the washing machine!

Surgery and Emmaline's Outfit

2010-05-08T13:58:00.000-07:00

So lately I've been having some bowel problems, long/gross story short on Tuesday I had to go in and have part of a muscle cut out so things could work the way that they're supposed to, and it was just a minor surgery so I thought, I should be fine, not a big deal. So on Wednesday Emmaline and I were home alone together, and it was a lot harder of a recovery than I thought it would be, and Royce is completely swamped because it's the end of the semester and Thursday was his long day so he'd be gone all day long, so Wednesday night we called Nana, and she came Thursday morning and saved the day! She stayed through Friday evening until Royce got home from work. I only got up when I had to go to the bathroom, and she cleaned our house, and did the laundry and took Emmaline to the playground, and I was able to rest and recover very comfortably because she was there. And it was nice to be able to just talk, also. So thanks Nana!

Since I was sitting for a few days straight, I decided to try out another project. I've kind of been on a sewing kick lately, and I thought it might be fun to try and make Emmaline a little outfit (another Personal Progress thing) and here is how it turned out. Her little shirt I made from the material of a pair of exercise pants that got torn in the washer, and her skirt was all made out of some scrap material I'd already had. But it's not too bad for my first attempt at making clothes, but again, there are no pictures of the back, and it's good that the shirt is a little long. :) I did want the skirt a little puffier, but I think I just made it too long, and it would have puffed out a little more if it was shorter, but I wasn't sure how much I would mess up so I gave myself too much extra material at the top. She doesn't look super thrilled in the picture because I kept making her try them on over and over again as I kept sewing different parts, but I told her if she would put it on one last time for the picture I wouldn't make her put it on again until she wanted to wear it.

Aunty Lea and Mazy

2010-05-06T18:39:00.000-07:00

My sister and her almost 1yr old Mazy came and stayed with us for a few days while Mike was at a conference in Washington DC, and we had so much fun. Again, I was irresponsible and made Lea take all of the pictures, then I forgot to get them off of her camera before she left, so I just stole these from her blog. She also put up a couple of cute videos, and I'll send a link if you guys want to watch them.

My parents sent the girls a box with books and dresses and toys, so they got to open it together. Emmaline is figuring out that it's her name on the box.

Emmaline

2010-04-23T19:57:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of Emmaline from Ronald and Alci's wedding. Her poor little eyes were so red. This is when she had pneumonia, and this was after her big antibiotic shot, and five days of being on her antibiotic medicine. Poor little thing!

(I also told my dad I'd put more pictures of Emmaline up. :) )

These are a couple of pics a friend took from our little "school" field trip. Again I'm glad someone is responsible and brought a camera. I obviously didn't. :)

An Easter message about Jesus the Christ from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

2010-04-04T17:52:00.000-07:00

He Lives (Link to the video on YouTube.)

Halo from Divine Comedy

2010-03-10T13:07:00.000-08:00

At BYU they have something called Divine Comedy, which is kind of like Saturday Night Live, but obviously much cleaner because it's at BYU, but they made this video and it is so so so funny. I watch it all of the time because it cracks me up. I wish I knew how to put the video right on my blog, but I just don't know how, and I don't want to take the time to learn how. But here's the link; it's just on You Tube. It's awesome, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRgyhu0KLyI

"My favorite part is where the mommy robot pushes the daddy robot off and she 'busts him in the face.'"-Emmaline. Word for word.

Crowe's Nest Farm

2010-03-05T12:05:00.000-08:00

Emmaline's "school" took a little field trip up to a kids farm just outside of Austin, and it was really fun! We went up there this morning, and since I'm procrastinating cleaning my apartment, I decided to put the pictures up on the blog.

I think the sun was in her eyes here, but these little goats were the cutest things I've seen in a long time. They were so tiny, and I swear their little "baa" sounded just like a real baby. They were so cute! I wish I had gotten the perspective better. (Haha...I just realized not only had I spelled that wrong, I put in the wrong word completely. I swear I'm losing my ability to spell. And think. :) ) Oh well.

Emmaline was the only girl there, but she didn't seem to mind. There were even a couple of times when we were walking that she tried to hold some of the little boys hands. :)

As soon as we got back I just sat down and crashed, but she wanted to play DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) on the Wii, and after "dancing" to one song, she ended up like this. She didn't fall asleep, she just kind of laid there.

Austin KLRU open-house is on Saturday!

2010-03-04T14:32:00.000-08:00

I saw an ad for this on TV, and didn't know if anyone with kids in the Austin area would be interested. It's an open-house and "Miss Rosa" from PBS will be reading stories, and Clifford will also be there. (That's what got my attention...Emmaline really likes Clifford. Well, she used to. It's been a while since she's watched it.) Anyway, it's this Saturday and here's the link for more information.

http://www.klru.org/blog/2010/02/klru-open-house/

More Randomness

2010-02-28T17:02:00.000-08:00

I found Royce and Emmaline watching The Prince of Egypt last Sunday like this.

Emmaline printed off this little mustache from the Sesame Street website yesterday, and wanted me to cut it out for her, so I did, and then she came back with her cowboy hat on, and she had gotten some tape and taped the mustache on. I thought it was pretty funny.

We also got a portable dishwasher last week! I love it so much, and so does Emmaline. She loves to unload and load the dishes. It's awesome. But right now she just came in and said, "I just finished unloading the whole thing and you didn't help me! You said it was only going to take you two minute." Hehe. Yikes. I'd better go help her load. :)

I also found this last picture on a friend's blog just a second ago. It snowed last week! It was right at the end of Emmaline's little "school" so all of the kids went outside and played around a little bit. I'm glad that I have friends that are responsible and actually take pictures. :) (Thanks Amanda!)

.

2010-02-14T20:11:00.000-08:00

Just a couple of pics from a Sunday afternoon.

It took a little convincing to persuade him to let me put these pictures up.

I really like this one. I was trying to get a better profile picture for him for his blog, and this one was my favorite.

(We celebrated Valentine's Day yesterday, and it was a really great day. The three of us got each other little gifts, then went to dinner at Macaroni Grill; it was so so good. Mmmmmm. Emmaline also can spell her name by herself now, because she filled out so many little valentines for her little friends and her primary class. They were Spongebob valentines. I hope nobody has a problem with Spongebob. :) )

We're Not Dead

2010-02-11T11:01:00.000-08:00

So my little brother called a couple of days ago and said, we hadn't talked to you on the phone in a while, and you haven't posted anything on your blog lately, so we thought we'd call and make sure you're not dead. So no, I'm not dead. Just resting peacefully and glad that there's nothing too big going on to blog about. Well, I have been re-decorating Emmaline's room, but I'm not done so I haven't put any pictures up yet, but I'm trying to just work on it slowly and not go crazy. That's another thing that I'm working on right now is not going crazy and stressing out about projects that I work on, but getting the stuff done that I need to slowly and calmly, and it's been really nice to just kind of relax and do the day to day stuff, and hang out with Royce and Emmaline.
So today I'm posting about a few things that Emmaline has been working on lately. She loves to color, and she loves to draw, and she will spend literally hours working on a picture. She's really meticulous and careful about her drawings. So here are a few that she's done lately.

I love this little picture...it's Emmaline and Mommy, and she told me that the flowers along the bottom are dandelions, and the little brown rectangle by the pink flowers is a garbage can, and the other one is a tree. She can almost spell her name by herself, and only needs help with the last 3 or 4 letters. Sometimes she gets all the right letters, they're just not in the right order. She also puts a smiley face at the end of almost anything she writes. It's so cute.

She did such a good job with the colors on this one, and then she decided to draw fire, and informed me that the little girl's foot was in the fire. That's a little disturbing. And the gray circles are smoke. She's kind of been nervous about fire lately, because a few months ago the smoke alarm went off, and it freaked her out so much, (she hates loud noises) so we tried to explain to her what the smoke alarm was and what it was for, but we obviously did a bad job explaining because a few weeks later she told me that she thought flames would come out of the smoke alarm. The red circle on the left with the line through it was where she tried to draw the fire at first, and then didn't like it, and she got really frustrated with it, and circled it and drew a slash through it.

She made some flowers out of her fruit loops one morning. She comes up with all of this stuff on her own. She can make things that I would never have even thought of.

She also likes to take pictures, and as I was going through the camera I found some fun ones that she'd taken, that I didn't even know were on there. So here are some of those.

Honestly, this little guy creeps me out a little. I think his teeth and nose are mini marshmallows, but I don't remember.

More fruit loops.

Daddy

This is one that she took while Royce was doing his homework. He is so funny when he's focused. We could seriously light a fire on his feet and he wouldn't notice. When I have to tell him something important I have to make sure he really heard me. He gets really embarrassed and apologetic when he realizes that he's been zoning out, but I really do love it. He has some really cute little quirks that I really like. :)

Also, Emmaline's favorite song right now is "Breaking the Habit" by Linkin Park. Also a little disturbing, but she says that she likes it because it sounds like the song on Veggie Tales. I've yet to figure out which song that is.

Christmas and Wedding

2010-01-11T18:15:00.000-08:00

So here is my post from Christmas and Ron and Alci's wedding. I was going through my pictures and thought, why do I not have any pictures from Christmas? And then I remembered, we were in the ER on Christmas eve! We opened presents from my parents and ones that we got each other on Monday night before Christmas, and we made a video of that that we're going to send to my parents, and then at 5am Tuesday morning Emmaline woke up (well, she woke Ronda up who was staying with us for a few days to help get stuff ready for the wedding) throwing up, with a fever of 103. I freaked out a little and called the doctor, and the nurse said to bring her in once the office opens. So we went there, they checked her for strep and influenza; both were negative so he said it was probably just a virus, and by Christmas she should be feeling a lot better. So we loaded her up in the car and drove to Nana and Papa's that evening. The next couple of days she was just feeling awful, with a pretty high fever, so I called the nurse again on Wednesday, and she said that if her fever is still high on Thursday we should bring her back in. When we woke up on Thursday she still had a fever, but it had gone down quite a bit, so we thought that she was on the mend, so we relaxed a little bit. Then that night we started opening presents with Nana and Papa and family, and we hadn't taken her temperature in a few hours because it had gone down for a while, but around 11:30 she was feeling pretty yucky again and getting pretty warm, so we took her temperature and it was 104.3. So I totally freaked out and lost it, and said, I don't know how to treat this! We're going to the emergency room! So we bundled up and hauled her in; long story a little shorter, a urine test and some x-rays and we discover that she had pneumonia. It was so crazy. But the hospital we went to was really great, and the doctor was even in Royce's parents ward when they lived in Madisonville. Anyway, he was going to admit her into the hospital that night, but he said since it was Christmas eve, if we watched her really closely, and if she had any signs of trouble we would need to bring her in right away, then we could take her home so she could still have a little bit of a Christmas. Anyway, a shot of antibiotics and a constant dose of Tylenol/Motrin and within a couple of days she was doing a ton better. We had to go back into the ER Christmas day for a re-check, but they didn't even have to take any x-rays she was doing so much better. Which was so good! We were excited to have our little monkey feeling better, and much happier. And it was good timing, because then we had to get everything ready for the wedding on Tuesday! Which was also very fun and rewarding. A lot of work, and a pretty crazy couple of days, but really great to be able to be a part of Ronald and Alci's wedding, and it was so special to be able to go to the Temple with them when they got married. So I guess that's all...there are a few random pictures that I took from the last couple of weeks, because I thought they were pretty cute, but sadly this is all for pictures for Christmas this year.

Wedding Cake

2009-12-31T15:30:00.000-08:00

Here's the wedding cake I made for Ronald and Alci's wedding. I have more pictures and more stories, but I told my mom I'd put up a picture for her to see the cake.
This is poor tired Royce after being on his feet for 2 days straight setting stuff up for the reception. This was about a half an hour before the reception started.

Head Band

2009-12-14T21:18:00.000-08:00

Here is a little head band that I made for Emmaline to go with her Christmas dress. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing, and it came together pretty easily. I got all of the stuff from Hobby Lobby. (Their floral stuff is 50% off right now.) I just got a flower that had a yellow center, and glued the center and put black glitter on it. The headband I found in the wedding section, by the veils, and it was only $1, but it was white, so I took a black permanent marker and colored it. (Royce laughed at me a little when I did this part. :) ) Then I glued the headband and glittered it, and hot glued the flower on. I also trimmed down some of the green part on the bottom of the flower, because it was sticking up a little too much. But for a craft project that I made it turned out pretty well. Emmaline was a patient model for me while I made it and took the picture, so I didn't make her put her Christmas dress on when I took the picture, so that's why she's holding it up.

This last one is just another way Emmaline "organizes" stuff. Silly goose.

On other side notes, she's started giving her toys names, and she named her puppy sprinkles, and her baby Peaches. And she tells me that Peaches is my cousin. Random.

Frink out.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-29T15:48:00.000-08:00

We went to Nana and Papa's for thanksgiving. It was so much fun, and sadly these are the only pictures I took! The kids played really well together. It was really neat to see. We had everyone there except Ross (on his mission) and Ronald and Alci (school at BYU, but we got to skype with them to figure out some more details for the wedding, and to give Alci a chance to meet the rest of the family. We had "met" her on skype a few days before we went down there). It was really fun to see everybody, and do lots of cool things, including planning a wedding reception! It was awesome. Carol and I were like two kids in a candy store. But that's coming up on the 29th (I think?) of December, which is the day before Royce and my anniversary. And I get to make a cake! I'm nervous, because I really want it to look nice. I'm also nervous because I had to order some special fondant cutters to make some of the flowers, and if it takes it a week to get here, then I only have a couple of weeks to make flowers I've never tried before. So hopefully it works! And I need to go do the dishes, then start making some roses!

Haha...this is Daddy trying to deflate the air mattress.

I had to take two of these pictures, because I couldn't get back far enough in the kitchen to get all of the kids in, but this is all of the grandkids on the Kimmons side, minus Lyla, who is just over a year old.

Katie did such a good job taking care of Lyla. She just followed her around and kept her out of trouble.

I took Gina's cake out last week and when we got there for Thanksgiving, she still hadn't cut it! I think part of that might be Papa, but before we left I gave her a little more inspiration to cut open the cake and eat it. I hope it still tasted okay. I've never let a cake sit for a week without eating it!

Finally, today we decorated our apartment for Christmas. Yeah! It was really fun. I love our fake little Christmas tree. :) But here is Emmaline with a couple of her own decorations.

Emmaline's First Cake!

2009-11-20T10:23:00.001-08:00

This is the first cake that Emmaline has decorated by herself. I baked it, (obviously :) ) and she put the buttercream frosting on, then I put the white fondant layer on, and rolled out the fondant colors, and she did the rest! She cut them all out, and put them on the cake. I wasn't even in the room, I was washing the dishes. :)I really liked the little flower boarder she put around it. We're taking it with us, because she made it for Gina for her birthday.

Twilight Cake

2009-11-19T16:18:00.000-08:00

Alright, here is my Twilight cake. Royce's sister Gina had a birthday at the beginning of the month, and she loves Twilight, so I forced myself to make a Twilight cake. (Hehe.) We were actually going to bring it out a different week, but then schedules changed a little bit, and it just happened to be this weekend, and I thought that was cool. It's a surprise, so hopefully Gina doesn't look at my blog . :)

Lea wanted me to make a video so she could see the back of it too, so hopefully I can get it uploaded. It was giving me problems before.

I find myself personally offended when they compare Twilight to Titanic. Hehe.

2009-11-18T14:17:00.000-08:00

Random Stories

2009-11-17T11:05:00.000-08:00

Emmaline found my stethoscope the other day, and was checking everyone's heart, and then I found her doing this, and I thought it was really funny, so I took a picture.
Then when I was putting the groceries away yesterday I noticed something funny.

Royce was here like this:

and about 20 feet over in her room, Emmaline was like this:

and I thought to myself, hmm, I'd probably better get used to this. :)

These last pictures are a blanket I made for Royce's brother, who is on his mission in Tacoma, Washington. He said he wanted a warmer blanket for Christmas, so I made him a fleece blanket, and here is Royce and Emmaline testing it to see if it would be warm enough, or if I needed to add another layer. (I really did make them sit down on the couch and put the unfinished blanket on them to see if it would be warm enough.)
I ended up adding a third layer of fleece, and it just sounded like a hassle to tie three layers together, and I had to patch together the front anyway, I decided to just sew it up. I had to patch the front because they only had one yard left in the nice woods print, and they just don't make very much variety for boys in fleece. It was either this or High School Musical. (Okay, there were a few others, but I thought this one looked the nicest, especially with the brown back.) So hopefully he likes it, and it keeps him a little warmer.

I almost forgot. I had the craziest conversation with Emmaline the other day. She had some plastic baby turtles, and sea lions and stuff, and while she was playing this conversation came about.

Me: Emmaline, what are you doing?
Emmaline: I'm cooking babies.
Me: Why are you cooking babies? (With a bit of a shocked tone in my voice)
Emmaline: Don't worry mommy, I'm not going to eat them all; I'm going to share them with my moose.

Yikes! We had watched the Disney movie about the earth the other night, but when it came time for the polar bear/shark/wolf, etc to start hunting the baby animals, we changed the channel so she couldn't see it, but I guess she picked up a little more than we realized. Apparently it wasn't too traumatic for her. That's good...I guess.

More Cake

2009-11-03T15:16:00.000-08:00

So I made a cake about a month ago for the food contest among the UT married student housing apartment complexes, and it's this big party, and last year they had a bounce house, and ponies, and all sorts of booths and stuff, but the day it was supposed to happen a big storm came, and they had to cancel because of the rain, so they re-scheduled the event for tomorrow, so I got the chance to try out another decoration idea for my cakes and submit it into the cooking contest. (That was a really long sentance.) Anyway, here is my cake. I want to practice my piping some more. For some reason it's really hard for me to do. And it kills my hands after too long. I think I'm just coming up with excuses so I don't have to pipe any more. :)

Halloween Night!

2009-11-03T14:43:00.000-08:00

Here's our cute little witch. We went to the ward trunk-or-treat party, then went to Randalls and got a pizza, more candy, and a movie to watch. It was a pretty good Halloween. I didn't get very many good pictures, but we were too busy having fun.

Here she is with some of her friends from "school." Sorry, not a very good picture.

Halloweeeeeeeen!

2009-10-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

Here's some of the stuff that we did to kick off Halloween. I was happy with how the bats and spiders turned out, but I wanted it to be a fun project that Emmaline and I did together,
but it was a little trickier than I had expected, mainly because I ended up using hot glue, so she couldn't/didn't want to do very much. But she still had fun, so I guess it's okay. I got the ideas from family fun, and they've got other cute ideas there too. Here's the link to that web-site. It's where we got the idea for the window decoration too, but we made it a little easier and just used construction paper. Overall it was a pretty cheap craft; I already had the eyes and construction paper, but the rest was just $6. (Obviously there were multiple bats and spiders. :) )

http://familyfun.go.com/halloween/halloween-crafts/

I guess the spiders weren't on the web-site, but they're not hard either. I just used the same amount of feather boa as the bats, and took a pipe cleaner and kept folding it in half until there were eight legs, and glued the boa and eyes on.

This one was a little bit more simple, and Emmaline could glue the eyes on herself, but she still didn't want to cut any out, which surprised me, because she normally likes to cut stuff out.

When I went to take the picture, it wasn't the best time of day, so I just took a different picture for each half.

Here's Emmaline and Daddy carving our pumpkin. I wonder why I can never get a straight face from Emmaline when I'm taking a picture of her. :)

Here are my little Halloween cookies this year. They didn't exactly turn out. It was a different royal icing recipe, and it was really thin, and in combination with trying to frost my cookies when they were still too warm, my little spider webs all fanned out and melted into each other. But, Emmaline liked them and had a lot of fun decorating, so that's what's important. (Even though they frustrate me for not turning out :) )

This was just kind of a random picture. Royce was working on his homework, and eating chips and salsa, so Emmaline pulled her chair up beside him, and they ate chips and salsa together. :) So sweet.

Emmaline Turns 4!!

2009-10-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

So Emmaline turned 4 last Wednesday, so we had a little party then with the three of us and my parents via the computer, and then on Sunday we had a party with Nana and Papa, Gina, Ronda, Rocky, Carol, and Chloe and Lyla, two of Emmaline's cousins. (Which was a pretty good turnout. 4 of the 9 Kimmons kids were there, and the ones that weren't live too far away to come for just
one day.) But it was a pretty fun party, and I think Emmaline had a pretty good week.

This is the main present that my parents bought for Emmaline, and they even called before they bought it to see if Royce would be kind enough to set it up for her. :)
This is what it looked like this first night after an hour and a half and 25 out of 60 pages of set-up instruction.
This is the finished product. It really is pretty fun to watch, and the kids really like playing with it. It really can hold Emmaline's attention span for a long time.

On Wednesday she also opened Aunty Lea's present, and she made her this cute little decoration, and all of the bows. I can't imagine how much time it took her to make the bows. I tried to make one when we went to her house this summer, and not only did mine look like poop, but it took me forever. Lea definately has the crafting gene of the three of us.

This is another present my parents sent her. It's a pony that you can color on, and then wash in the washing machine and color on it again. Emmaline colored all of the flowers by herself, and I thought she did a pretty good job. (The bow is another one that Lea made, and my mom also sent her the new clothes she was wearing, and a new little dress. They miss her a lot, and I think it makes them feel better to buy her tons of stuff. :) )

This is the last present my parents sent Emmaline. I'm not sure if you remember or not (whoever "you" may be that I'm talking to) but my parents sent Emmaline a jumping, singing bunny for Easter, and it scared Emmaline to death. Well, we learned enough to warn her ahead of time that her puppy moves and makes noise, but she has still been pretty hesitant with this guy. She won't let us turn him on unless she's up on the couch, and he has a pretty sensitive sensor on him, so she wouldn't go in her room if he was in there. I have to take him out of her room, and put him on the kitchen table before she'll go in her room. But I think with time she'll get used to him, just like she did her Easter bunny. :)

So then we had our fun little party on Sunday, and she opened her presents from us, and from Royce's side of the family. She ended up with a lot of stuff for just one little girl. :)

This is one of the movies that Nana and Papa got her, (they got her a few movies, with lots of cool singing, so we're excited about that) and she wanted to watch it just as soon as everyone left, and I swear it wasn't more than a minute and a half of watching it, and I looked over and she was like this:

This is the Lightening McQueen car that Rocky and Carol and the girls got Emmaline. Chloe's birthday was just about a week before Emmaline, and she had a cool Mater cake, and got some little cars, and Emmaline just loved them, so they were nice enough to get her Lightning McQueen and Doc, and now she carries both of them around in her purse, everywhere we go. :)

These last two presents are ones that Royce and I got her. We got her the camera because she loves taking pictures lately, and she's had fun with her new camera, but unfortunately the pictures come out awful. I'm kind of sad about that, and am tempted to get her a new camera, because even when I'm taking the picture it doesn't come out at all.

We also got her some rings and a necklace, because she loves wearing Royce's and my wedding rings, so we told her we'd get her her own ring for her birthday. They were a little too big, but we could moosh them enough so they'd work.

Oh, and Royce's grandma sent Emmaline 5 dollars for her birthday, so we took her to the dollar store to pick out some fun stuff, and she ended up getting a sword, a car, balls, and a horse. She's been playing with a lot of boys in her little school lately. :)

The rest of these pictures are just mainly the girls having fun together. Emmaline came in to blow out her candles, then they went into her room to play, and we couldn't even get them to come out for cake and ice cream. It was pretty cute.
This is Chloe and Lyla (sisters), and Papa.

Here's cute little Chloe!

So I guess that's it, and thanks for everyone who helped Emmaline have a wonderful birthday!

Monsters Incorporated Cake (for Emmaline's birthday)

2009-10-10T17:18:00.000-07:00

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Emmaline's birthday was Wednesday, so we had just a little family party with the three of us, and she opened her presents from my parents and Lea, (my parents watched via the computer) and then tomorrow we're going to have another little party at our apartment, and Nana and Papa are coming, and Ronda and Gina, and Rocky and Carol and Chloe and Lyla. So I made her monster cake for the party on Sunday, and I just finished it. It took so long and now my fingers are numb, but it's finally done! (Hmmm, maybe cake decorating isn't a good hobby for someone with Rheumatoid Arthritis. :) ) So here are just a couple of pictures from Wednesday (in her new outfit from Grandma and hair bow from Aunty Lea) and I'll make an official birthday post after her party tomorrow. (The last picture is what my table looks like after I finish a cake. And I cleaned it off twice during the middle of decorating the cake.)

Emmaline

2009-10-05T12:30:00.000-07:00

Emmaline made these letters out of crayons today. She's so much more creative than I am. Again, I think I'm going to be in some real trouble in a few years. :)

More Cake

2009-10-02T16:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a cake I made for a cooking contest amongst the married student housing complexes. Mainly I just wanted to try out a new idea that I had. The fondant gave me a lot of trouble, and I had to change my design around to cover up some problem areas, but it's done, and now I can relax. Until I make Emmaline's birthday cake next week...

Camping

2009-09-25T16:05:00.000-07:00

We went camping last weekend with Rocky (Royce's brother) and Carol for Rocky's birthday. It was a lot of fun, and so good to get outdoors again. The girls had a really good time together, and Royce went the whole time without a computer! It was a big step for him, and he said it was so nice to be able to step back and relax a little bit. :)

This is Chloe our little niece. By the end of our hike both girls got really tired, and Rocky was carrying Lyla, Carol had the big backpack with all of the bottles/water, so Royce took Chloe on his shoulders, and I carried Emmaline on mine, and by the end both girls fell asleep.

Bath time!

I love Edna!

2009-09-15T21:36:00.000-07:00

I love Edna! There is an amazing cake decorator/sugar artist, and she makes beautiful cakes, but she also teaches a lot, and she has put a ton of videos on You Tube teaching how to make flowers, and all sorts of things. They're really easy to follow, and they're made so that even a beginner can make stuff. Here is a rose that I made after watching her videos! Her name is Edna and her web-site is www.designmeacake.com. She's great. (It was also better before I accidentally smooshed the center. :) )

Really good Bacon and Macaroni and Cheese Recipe

2009-09-13T21:21:00.000-07:00

I found this recipe in my magazine that my mom got me for Christmas, and luckily it's up on their web-site right now. We made it for dinner tonight, and it was really, really good. It's pretty easy, and really tasty. (When you add your bacon, we just used the real bacon crumbles from Costco-lots easier and really good still.) It's also a good warm comfort food meal, for when the weather get a little colder. (As I hear it still does outside of Texas. This is when I miss Oregon...when it's supposed to be fall. :) )

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1918488

Fudge and Mississippi Mud Brownies

2009-09-13T13:55:00.000-07:00

A link for a fudge recipe, and Mississippi Mud Brownies recipe on my cooking blog. Mmmm.

http://youcanttrustaskinnycook.blogspot.com/

Emmaline

2009-09-08T12:18:00.000-07:00

We "checked out" these blocks from a place called family connections, and I was in the kitchen making us lunch after we got home, and when I came out I found this. I thought she did a pretty good job.

This is at Nana and Papa's house; we went there for the 3 day weekend, and had lots of fun.

These are some shapes I cut out for our little preschool thing we're doing, and I didn't expect Emmaline to like them so much. She's been playing with them a lot.

Holy Cow!

2009-08-31T22:04:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-28T14:41:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-23T16:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-16T18:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-09T15:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-07T15:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-02T19:55:00.001-07:00

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.

More Pics from St. Louis

2009-07-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

Here are some more pictures from our trip. Good thing Aunty Lea was responsible and took some pictures.

Baby Mazy. Her little bow is so cute. Lea made it.
Mazy on the day of her blessing.
Emmaline followed Lea everywhere, trying to help take care of Mazy. She'd run to get her her binky, and she'd follow them up the stairs and "help" Lea change her diaper. And we found that sometimes when Mazy would cry, Emmaline would mew like a kitty, and that sound would make her stop crying a look around a little, so everytime she cried, Emmaline would run over and start mewing at her. It was cute.
Grandpa

Cake Stuff

2009-07-19T20:06:00.000-07:00

This is my lemon cake that I made today. I was going to make more daisies for the top, but I just ran out of time. I also ran out of my glaze so I couldn't frost the outside of my cake before I put the fondant on, so you can see the different layers. But it tasted pretty good, so I think that will make up for some of the decorating flaws. :)

I've started working on Emmaline's birthday cake. Hopefully you can tell, but she wants to have a Monsters Incorporated cake this year, so I thought I'd give myself plenty of time, and start to make the little figurines first. Hopefully she doesn't change her mind in the next three months. :)

Royce had a big package sent this last week, and Emmaline loves the box; she even convinced Daddy to give it a try.

St. Louis Preview

2009-06-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

We (Emmaline, my parents and I) are in St. Louis visiting Lea and Mike and baby Mazy. Here are just a couple of pictures from our trip so far. It's been a lot of fun, except for missing Daddy so so much.

Tornadoes!

2009-06-12T10:30:00.001-07:00

Last night there was a really big storm just north of us, and I guess it's not confirmed yet, but they think there were two tornado touchdowns just north of us. I have to admit, it made me a little bit nervous, so we camped out in the bathroom for a little while. Our county was under tornado warning, which means you need to go to your shelter, but the tornadoes were in the northern part of the county, and by the time the storm got to us, the warnings were off, and it was just a severe thunderstorm warning. That part was pretty cool, because there was tons of lightening, and after a couple of minutes the power went out, so we hung out in our room watching the lightening. There was some damage to the north, but nothing down where we are, so that was really good. It made for a bit of a crazy evening!
Here we are, camped out in the shower. :)
These are just some random pictures of Emmaline's bath time.

She came out of our room looking like this one Sunday after Church. Oh, one other thing. Emmaline has learned the Happy Birthday song from Primary, (which I'm pretty impressed...way to go Primary leaders.) and she loves it, and she sings it all the time. And since my birthday is coming up, she sings it to me a lot, and it's the cutest thing I've ever seen. I tear up a little every time she does. She's so cute! (And she knows her mommy well. A little too well. Lately when I ask her to clean up something, or do something she doesn't want to do, she says, "but I want to sit on the couch with you and snuggle." She's dangerous.)

Sunburn

2009-06-03T15:03:00.000-07:00

We went to a little water-fountain park today (I don't know what they're really called :)), and now I have a big sunburn on the left side of my neck, and down my left arm. Anyone else?
It's actually kind of funny, because Emmaline and I went swimming last week, and I put sunblock on, but I couldn't reach parts of my back, so I didn't worry about it because it seemed kind of overcast, and I got a crazy sunburn right on my back where I can't reach, and this last week it has been so itchy, and I can't reach it! So maybe next time I will ask a stranger mom to help me put my sunblock on. No, no, probably not. :)

Almond Roca copy-cat recipe on cooking blog...

2009-05-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

I know that I put this recipe up before, but I made it again for FHE treats last night, and it's so good! I just made half a batch, and we ate it all, really fast. Mmmm. I want more. :) (This picture is from the Christmas batch too...last night it was all gone by the time I even thought of a picture.)

http://youcanttrustaskinnycook.blogspot.com/2008/12/almond-roca-kind-of.html

Geico?

2009-05-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

Today we got a flyer in the mail from the Geico car insurance company, and it had the stack of money with the eyes on top, and Emmaline picked it up and said, "This is the money you could be saving with Geico." I thought it was so so funny. I wanted her to take it to Royce, and tell him the same thing, but I was laughing so much it embarrased her, and she didn't want to do it, so I had to bribe her with chocolate chips. I still don't think she did, but somehow she ended up with chocolate chips anyway. How did that happen?

Mazy May McEwan!

2009-05-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

See more at: http://leaandmikemcewan.blogspot.com/

.

2009-05-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

"Remember, it is as wrong to do things just to be seen of women as it is to do things to be seen of men. Great women and men are always more anxious to serve than to have dominion."
-Spencer W. Kimball

Mother's Day!

2009-05-11T11:27:00.000-07:00

We decided to make Nana a mother's day cake this year, and here it is. Her favourite color is purple, so I made some purple roses for the top of it, but by the time we got to their house (2 1/2 hrs later) the flowers had turned blue! It was really weird. So we finished the cake at their house, which was actually really fun, because Ronda and Gina helped me, and they made some really pretty flowers! (The unfinished picture is just as we were leaving our apartment.)
It was really fun to visit for the weekend, and we even got to take Nana to see the new Star Trek movie. (She loves Star Trek.)

"Healthier" Cinnamon Rolls on cooking blog. (Also Olive Garden Copy Cat Alfredo Sauce, Dinner Rolls, and Cameo Cake)

2009-05-11T09:58:00.000-07:00

Random

2009-05-11T09:53:00.000-07:00

Potato and Green Onion Soup on cooking blog...

2009-04-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

www.youcanttrustaskinnycook.blogspot.com/

I love Royce so much.

2009-04-26T20:03:00.000-07:00

(This is poor Daddy after Church when he gets three hours of sleep the night before.)