Temple lights

We decided we wanted to take the kids to see the temple lights since they love the temple and they love Christmas lights.  We kept putting if off because it has been so cold here, but we decided we just needed to do it so we went last Sunday.  We invited Luke and Taylor to come with us.  Everything is more fun with Aunts and Uncles around!!!

Emery fell asleep in the car on the way there and we forgot the stroller.  Good thing she woke up pretty happy when we got there.  We started walking around.  I forgot how many people would be there.  I don't really like crowds much especially when we have three little ones to keep track of!  But we managed not to lose anyone thanks to Luke and Taylor's help.  Thanks guys! 

We loved looking at the nativities and all the beautiful lights.  Emery kept pointing up in the sky and yelling "trumpet!"  I finally figured out she was talking about Angel Moroni's horn.  :)  She is a little obsessed with Little Einsteins (a show) right now.  They play classical music and one of the characters from the show has a trumpet.  If you ever see her, ask her to play her trumpet.  It's pretty cute!

 Uncle Luke was great at giving the kids' legs a break.  

 Our attempt at a family photo in the dark and with a not so good camera.  Turned out ok.  

 Sadie wanted me to take this.  :)

 I love the way the temple looks when it is all lit up at night.  So pretty.

 We went into the old tabernacle to check it out.  It is amazing to me at how small it is compared to the new one!  To think only a select few could attend conference before the new one was built.  Crazy.

 We hung out inside for a while to get warm.  

I'm glad we got to go see the lights.  It is a much different experience with young children because you kind of have to rush through and make sure no one is lost, but I still enjoyed it and I know the kids did too.

As we were heading back to where we parked we were kind of spread out.  Rob was holding one of the kids and Luke had another I think and Rob and Luke were a little ahead of me and Zac.  All of a sudden I look up to see Rob taking off across the street because the don't walk signal was flashing.  I didn't want to get separated so I told Zac to run.  We were a little ways away from the corner but we made it into the street with about 5 seconds left.  I thought we were good until Zac fell down right in the middle of the street on the train tracks.  I tried to pick him up and keep running, but he is getting heavy.  So I helped him to his feet and we ran across the rest of the way.  The nice cars didn't even hank at me.  ha ha.  I'm sure they were too busy laughing.  ha ha  Funny stuff.

Daddy daughter skate date

 Sadie's school sometimes has family nights.  They've had a math and science night, and a movie night at the school, and a few weeks ago they had a family night at the skating rink.  We could all get in for free and rent skates for one dollar.  I thought it would be fun to go together as a family....in a few years.  ha ha.  Emery and Zac are a little young for that.  So I told Rob he should take Sadie on a date.  They had a blast.  Rob had to hold her hand pretty much the whole time and his back was killing him from holding her up, but he said it was a blast.  Sadie came home with blisters on her shins because we didn't have any long socks for her, but she still loved it. 

I made Rob take the camera to take pictures.  :)

 This is Sadie and her friend London from school and church.  They are in the same class and we carpool together.  Such cuties! See how they had to be holding on to the table so they didn't fall?  ha ha

 Apparently Santa showed up.  She loved it, although it doesn't quite look that way in the picture.  :)  She said she told Santa she wanted a Jack in the Box for Christmas and she told me that she gave him some ideas for Zac too.  So thoughtful!

 Here they are on the rink.  

That little boy photo bombing the picture is London's little brother.  I'm glad Rob and Sadie had a great time.  Sadie said it wasn't as slippery as ice skating which she has done once about a year ago.  WE will have to take the whole family when they can all hold themselves up.  :)

Emery is 2!

 Emery had a birthday a couple weeks ago.  It was fun.  She was practicing holding up two fingers for a few weeks prior to her birthday so when someone asked her how old she was she could say 2 with her fingers.  She is still working on it.  It is pretty tricky.  The night before Emery's birthday Crys and Alan came over and gave her a present.  She was so excited to open it and kept gasping and saying "oooo".  Then when she actually saw what it was, she was really excited!

 A cute sweater dress!  And  blue and white striped sweater.  So cute!  Thanks!

 She was especially excited that her dress had pockets.  Whenever she wears it she points out the pockets to everyone that will listen.  :)

 This was on her actual birthday.  She was dressed and ready to go to church and then she sat in this box and couldnt get out.  Of course I had to take a picture before I helped her out.  ha ha.

 All the kids right before church.  

 Emery blowing out her two candles.  It took a couple tries, but she got them out all by herself.  I'm just glad the candles were on a cupcake and not on a big cake.  That way, she got all of her slobber on her own cupcake and we all could enjoy our own slobber free cupcakes.  :)

 Zac enjoying his cupcake.

 And this is what Emery got for her birthday from us.  Little People stuff.  She loves it.

 She played with it for a long time.

She loves it.  I hope she doesn't get tired of it since she is getting more for Christmas.  

Emery is such a cute little two year old.  Here are some things that I don't want to forget:

-She calls me "Momia."  Like a mix of mama mia.  Like from the ABBA song.  It is pretty funny.

-She is so sweet.  She has started giving compliments.  She will come up to me randomly and say "ooo, I love your scarp!" (scarf)  Or I love your toenails.  :)  

-She can scream!  If Zac says something that offends her she will just look at him and scream until she runs out of breath.  

-It takes her about 5 minutes to choose which pair of shoes she wants to wear for the day.  She only has like 2 pairs to chose from, but she sometimes likes to choose Sadie's shoes or Zac's boots.  Silly girl.

-She still loves her pacifier, but only gets it at bedtime.  And pretty soon I think they will disappear.  :)

-She gives great cuddles.  Especially when she is tired, but she will give them out whenever you ask.  

Anyway, we love our Emery and our family wouldn't be complete without her! 

Typical evening

 I really love the kitchen in our new house.  I love that it has a wrap around counter that we can put chairs on the other side.  And I love that I can see the living room from the kitchen.  It really has everything I was looking for when we were looking at houses.  When we moved in, there was one white swivel type chair attached to the counter.  I thought it was annoying and always in the way.  But Sadie loved to sit there and color or read or whatever.  So about a month ago I told Rob that I thought I saw some more chairs like that that attach to the counter in our furnace room.  I asked him to put them in thinking I would hate it, but so far I have loved it!  The chairs themselves are pretty annoying because they are in the way a lot, but eventually I would like to replace them with bar stools. Until then, the kids love sitting in them and coloring.  This is what a typical afternoon/evening looks like at our house:

 Sadie is usually working on homework and Zac has started doing color by numbers.  

 He is finally getting excited about learning letters and he is great with his numbers.  He is always counting things.

 Sadie is always there to help if he needs it.  And Emery likes to color up there too.  It is pretty fun.

 And I usually don't let the kids eat there but on the occasional evening they get to enjoy a yummy bowl of ice cream in their counter seats.  Notice Rob in the background clearing the table.  He is awesome.  :)

These guys are great!

Big girl bed

 A few weeks ago I decided one day that I would take the side off of the crib and make it into a toddler bed.  I have no idea why.  I just did it.  She wasn't quite two yet, but I just decided to do it.  She loved it the rest of the day.  She would run down the hall and jump right in.  Then I remembered that Rob had something that evening and I would be putting the kids down to bed on my own.  That's when I started second guessing my decision to make the switch to a big girl bed.  I began thinking back to when Sadie made the switch. 

Sadie had learned how to crawl out of her crib and it was a little bit dangerous so we switched her at about the same age.  but she would get out of bed ALL the time. 

If you want a little glimpse into our normal evening back then...just go here.  pretty funny stuff.

Although I was very nervous that our bedtimes would be just like when Sadie was young, Emery has done very well.  The first week was awesome.  For some reason she sleeps much better than she did in her crib.  One night she wandered out around 10pm and then 11pm thinking it was morning time.  But we just took her right back to bed and she went to sleep.  She sometimes doesn't stay in bed at naptime, but that is only once or twice a week.  So I'm ok with that.  She is just such a big girl!  WE love her!

 Pretending to be asleep.

Standing on her big girl bed.  She loves it! 

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving this year.  We invited Rob's aunt and uncle and their kids, his Grandma, and his brother Duncan.  Rob's aunt invited her friends and their three daughters.  It was a lot of people, but tons of fun!  The kids were in heaven with all of the people to show off to and get attention from.  Sadie learned how to play Uno with them so we have already played two games of it this morning...and I'm sure there will be more later.  :)

We had tons of food so that wasn't a problem.  It was all delicious too!  Then after dinner we played speed scrabble (so fun!) and Uno and the friend of Aunt Bonita played us some violin pieces.  He is very talented and it was so fun to listen to.  Although, Emery might disagree...more on that later.

I really need a new camera!  I just looked at all these pictures and every one of them is blurry!

 This was from Sadie's kindergarten class.  They made those vests out of paper!  They had a feast and got to dress up like this.  So fun.  She loves school!

 Here are Sadie and Zac chowing down on their drumsticks.  Rob was pretty sad that they got these since he loves the dark meat.  :)  When Zac was done with his he tried to snag it to finish it off, but Sadie wanted it.  Poor Rob...

 We had three tables:  kids table, my craft table and our regular dinner table.  It was a little bit of a tight squeeze, but we made it work.  :)

 Full house!  I should have taken a picture of all of the food...it was so yummy!

 Zac finished eating and patiently waited for Rob to finish eating so he could play chess.  Rob is so proud that Zac is interested in chess!

 Speed scrabble.

 Enjoying some beautiful violin music.

 The violinist.  He was really really good.

 This is Emery being comforted by Rob after the first song he played scared her half to death.  We didn't really warn her that he was going to play the violin and it was pretty loud.  She was over playing in the corner by herself and when he was done playing the fiddler on the roof we heard her making some sounds and she was hiding and had a huge frown on her face.  She was holding in her tears.  Poor girl.  I bet if she was sitting with one of us when he started playing she would have been fine.  But now when we ask her about it she says "violin plays beautiful music."  ha ha.

 Sadie sitting with Aunt Bonita enjoying the music.

 Emery loved great grandma!  

 She did dances for her and showed her tons of toys.  

All the kids with great grandma.  We really should get together more than we do.  They don't live too far away.  

This is the song that freaked Emery out.  ha ha.

We had a great Thanksgiving and we are so glad everyone could come.  It was so fun.  We are so thankful for all of our blessings.  We have a wonderful family, awesome friends, a beautiful home, Rob likes his job....I could go on and on.  Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Snow!

 This was way back when Sadie had the flu, but it snowed one morning and Zac was so excited!  He insisted that it was Christmas because there was snow.  I tried to explain to him when Christmas was but I gave up after he kept telling me I was wrong.  :)  The whole morning (from about 7 am on...) Zac was telling me to get his snow suit out so he could go play in the snow.  So I finally gave in and at about 8:00 they were in their snow suits and ready to play. 

 See how little snow there was?  ha ha  I think he will be in heaven when the real snow gets here!  He has always been the only kid that will stay outside for a long time playing in the snow.  Like an hour.  He will just throw the snow at the wall over and over.  It is pretty cute.

 Emery had fun too...I guess she probably doesn't really remember snow very much.  So she had fun...

 Until her hands got cold.  Then we went inside and found some gloves and she lasted a little bit longer.

 Her and Zac are such good buddies these days.

 This was after playing in the snow.  Cute red cheeks and nose!  And check out Zac cleaning the windows in the background.  Nice huh?!

I love these guys!

Poor Sadie wanted to go outside and play too...so I got out her snow suit and she went outside for about 5 minutes.  She was NOT feeling well.  Next time hopefully all the kids are healthy so we can play in the snow together!

Shaving cream

 My kids love to play with shaving cream.  It had been a while since we had any (Rob ran out and i always forgot to buy more at the store) but Sadie reminded me the other day while we were at Walmart and I bought three cans of it.  So we are well stocked on shaving cream now.  :)  The kids will sit and play with this stuff for 30 minutes or so. 

 Sadie loves to spread it all out and draw pictures in it.

 This was Emery's first time playing with it since I was always afraid she would eat it.  She did pretty well.

 She wiped it all over her arms up to her shoulders practically.  

 Zac likes to take his shirt off because if he doesn't it will be covered in shaving cream.  

 She didn't quite know what to do with this at first. 

She gave Zac a play by play.  "Look!  It sticking to my hands!  ha ha ha  wow this is messy!!"  etc.

So if i find myself needing a few minutes to clean the kitchen or the living room, I pull out the shaving cream and let them go at it!