She's ONE!

Emeree turned one last week!  Here are the photos from her party. 

I woke up at 3:30 that morning with the realization that I hadn't made her a special birthday shirt yet!!!  I know, the horror!  So of course I had to whip one up instead of sleep.  Here's her special shirt.  Oh, and she started walking last week on her own!  Exciting!

Becky made her this adorable hat - Max also got one for his birthday in blue.  But she said this pom-pom yarn was horrible to work with.  So these were probably the last she'll make.

Here is Ethan helping her open her presents

She got a rocking horse, and she actually rocks back and forth on it.  I love that it's so close to the ground because she can get off it by herself safely!

This picture was literally seconds after sitting down the cupcake.  She didn't waste a second and dug right in.

I made a cupcake cake - the picture is hard to tell how big they are, but the center cake took 1 1/2 cake mixes and the 8 cupcakes took the other box and a half.  Even the small cupcakes were bigger than the standard ones - they are 2 piece (a top and a bottom). 

Cupcakes!

Michael took 186 pictures of Emeree's b-day party, so it will take me a while to sift through them to find a couple good ones to post.  But in the meantime, here is a sneaky cupcake eater.

Letter to my Children

Dear Ethan and Emeree,

I love being your mother and am lucky to be a stay at home mom.  But . . .

Must we poop just minutes after getting a diaper change?  Contrary to what you might think, I do not enjoy changing your diapers.  And is there some rotation game this week that I'm not aware of?  Is it a race to see who can do it fastest?  You two seem to take turns so that I end up changing 4 diapers in less than an hour.  Diapers don't grow on trees and the garbage man told us on Tuesday we have been over the garbage weight limit the last couple weeks - due to your many diapers. 

Ethan, your little sister is not a nail.  The toy hammers are not meant to hammer the baby's head.  And when the toy hammers go in toy time out, we don't use the funnel as a hammer either.

Emeree, the measuring cups, teaspoons, and tablespoons are not pacifiers.  And if you're going to empty out all the drawers in the kitchen, can you at least give me a timeline of when you'll be able to put them away too?

Despite the dirty diapers, time outs and days with no naps, I still love you.

P.S. you have my permission (and your dad's too) to scratch up, chew on, and destroy the Alvin and The Chipmunks DVD.

THE 'Stache

Halloween 2010

This year, Ethan was a Pirate and Emeree was Raggedy Ann

We had fun at the Trunk-or-Treat at the Ward Party and Ethan was fabulous at saying "Thank you" to everyone.  I had to prompt him for it the first set of cars, but he did it on his own after that.  And he really got into it this year.

And Mom made the costumes!  Thank you, Mom!

Neither of them were smiling or looking at the camera at the same time, so I don't have a great "group" shot of them.  And in this one, Ethan had just finished eating a blue sucker, so his teeth are blue :)

Here's a great shot of Emeree!

And a cheesy pirate!

How do you keep your little sister out of your Halloween candy?

Well, Ethan will show you how in case you weren't sure.  If you want to protect your "Trunk-or-Treat" loot, you sit on it.

This used to be Ethan's felt pumpkin candy basket - now it's a squished basket, but it is well protected from Emeree.

Pumpkin Patch

This ended up being a great day, but the trip there was another story. . .

We went to Portland to visit Nathan and Kari.  After visiting for a while, we decided to go to a pumpkin patch.  So we looked online and picked out one that looked okay - they are new to Portland, so they didn't have a favorite pumpkin patch yet.  It should have taken 35 minutes to get there according to the directions we got online.  It ended up taking about an hour and a half.  The last 4 miles or so was stop and go (but mostly stop).  It turned out this was one of the popular pumpkin patches and it was on a little island of sorts, so there was only one way there and no way to change your mind to turn around.

Anyway, after the unexpected, long drive, we finally got out of the car and had fun.

For some reason, neither of my children wanted to look at the camera at all that day.  Grrr...  We took over 250 pictures at the patch and only ended up with a couple of them smiling for the camera.  Thank goodness for digital cameras :)

How to look cool in your uncle's aviator sunglasses . . . serious?

 . . . or smiling?

 All Ethan was focused on this trip was rolling pumpkins.

 He looked at the camera just briefly and I caught it!!!

 Little Miss Emeree didn't like posing in a pile of pumpkins.

 We took a hay ride out to the pumpkin field . . . Kari got hay in her contacts and I looked bad, so you only get a picture of Nathan - he was the only camera ready person on the ride.

 She looked!  Just ignore my arm holding her steady.

 Someone found a frog - can't remember if it was Michael or Nathan, but Kari was brave and held it.

 Emeree even touched it . . .

 But Ethan wanted nothing to do with it and kept backing away.

 I thought the background of this picture looked cool - and of couse Michael does too.  :)  And another one of Ethan looking off in the distance.

Graham Cracker Cuteness

While Ethan was still taking his nap, Emeree decided to be cute while eating a snack.

This is a face she makes when she copies me.  I close my eyes and smile at her and this is what she does back . . .

Strange Children

When Emeree drinks her water, she reminds me of a gerbil or hampster. . . since she holds the bottle straight up and doesn't tip her head back. Why should she have to work for it? I was on the computer checking my email and I heard Ethan digging through his room for something - and since the baby is taking her nap, I rushed into his room to help him before he woke her up. When I came into the living room, he had set up these wood blocks as a fence and had been looking for his horse to put in the fence. How does he know horses get fenced in? Smart boy.

Oh, and the boy knows how to count to 10 . . . he was outside helping Michael work on the back yard and he counted the nails on the ground. How did he learn to count? I haven't worked with him on numbers yet and all the shows he watches just do letters. If he lines his toys up, I count them for him, but that's really the only exposure he's had. He's a quick learner. And just now, he is playing with my phone and one of the apps is a puzzle and he ran over to me to show me and said "four, mommy, four" and sure enough . . . the puzzle he finished was the number four. I guess I breed smart children :)

I guess I raise criminals...

So I guess I raised a couple of criminal children. Ethan ripped out the tag from the bottom of the chair in Sunday School when he was 10 months old...you know, the one that says it's illegal to remove. And today, Emeree (9 months) decided to join her brother in a life of crime and rip out a tag as well. I guess girls are more advanced than boys. I'll blame this mischievousness on their father.

Such Good Manners

So Ethan is eating his breakfast slow today . . . this is our conversation a few minutes ago:

Me: Eat your kiwi
Ethan: No
Me: Yes, please
Ethan: No, please

How can I help but not smile when he's so politely declining my request?

Mt Rainier 2010

We go to Mt. Rainier every summer - since I was a baby (except the 5 years we were in Nebraska). Part of the tradition is we've always taken a picture of us 4 siblings on this log bench. Our family has grown quite a bit since it was jus the 4 of us kids.
We put this child leash thing on Ethan so he doesn't run off the cliff when we are at the top of our hike. And Michael wrapped it around his head so it looks like a sweat band.Here's my little family of 4 . . .
Another tradition pose is this one at the top of our hike with Mt. Rainier in the background. This one has always had the whole family (with Mom and Dad).

The weather was beautiful that day. We got a great shot of Mt. Rainier.

Cousin Photos

We had all 5 cousins in the same place . . . so we decided to take that opportunity to get photos of them. It was tricky getting all 5 of them to look/smile at the camera at the same time, but I think we got some good shots.

Here are all 5 . . . Emma, Lorelai, Max, Ethan, EmereeI absolutely love this one of my kids . . . Emeree has been in a "stick your tongue out" mood lately, so this was a fun face for her. She had a cold, so she was fussy and hard to get to smile. She smiles the best for Michael and Emma, so I credit any smiles she gave us to Emma that day. Here are the girls . . .

Here are the boys . . . we only got one shot of them cause Max kept trying to lay back and Ethan kept looking at the tv where the photos showed up, so we didn't get more than one shot of them. But we didn't need it since this one turned out so good.