Snow & Icicles

Right after we first moved into our new house (almost a month ago) we had a fairly big snow storm which left our neighborhood covered in about a foot of snow and icicles all over the house. It was a difficult time for us to have snow, as we were just moving and had wood we needed to get covered in the front yard, groceries to buy and just plain craziness, but it was very pretty!! Here are a few pictures:

An Emma Update!

Well, it's been awhile since I've updated everyone on Emma's life, so here goes. My last update was after her 9 month appointment, and she has had a couple since then. Emma is doing very well!! At her 12 month appointment she weighed 19 pounds, 5 ounces and she was 28.5 inches & at her 15 month appointment she weighed 23 pounds and she was 30.5 inches. She is growing, growing, growing!! She is no longer underweight and she is right in the normal range for height and weight.

She had to get several shots at her 12 month appointment and for once Dave was there to witness it. It was very sad!! But she didn't have to get any at her 15 month appointment so that was nice for Mommy and Emma! :)

She is very healthy except for her eczema that we are still trying to deal with. We've been trying oatmeal baths and lotions but the poor thing can still get very itchy around her ankles. The Dr. gave us some new medicine at her 15 month checkup that seems to have cleared it up. Hopefully it will stay cleared up! We have also been referred to an allergist to find out what she may be allergic to. She seems to have outbreaks every once in awhile and we can't always figure out what it was that bothered her. Hopefully we will get that appointment in soon.

She took her first steps 2 weeks after her 1st birthday and after a couple of months of slowly getting better at it, she is now an expert walker. She has one pair of shoes that can sometimes fall off when we are outside and she gets very upset when that happens. She picks it up and brings it right over to Dave or I to put it back on.

She also finally got some teeth! Her first tooth appeared on September 3 just before she turned 13 months and she now has 3 teeth in with a couple more on the way. She has been enjoying discovering her new chompers and loving being able to eat a few new things.

Emma has been a very healthy child her whole life, but she did finally get her first cold a couple of weeks ago. It was very sad to see her sneeze and sneeze and have snot come shooting out her nose. And for such an active child, it was sad to see her just sitting around. It lasted for several days, but she is doing well now (after passing it onto Mommy & Daddy of course).

She is a wonderful, wonderful girl and we love watching her learn new things. She seems to be learning things at such a rapid pace now. She picks up new words every day and she is becoming quite the little copy cat - we have to watch ourselves a bit more now. ;) She has her next Dr.'s appointment at 18 months and hopefully it won't take me so long to update everyone on how she is doing.

Thanksgiving & Visit to Seattle

This year we went to Seattle for Thanksgiving. We were up there for about a week and it was a very nice relaxing time. We had been so busy and stressed with getting ready for the move, that it was very good to have some forced resting time.

While we were up there Emma got to do a couple of fun fall outdoor things. She dug up potatoes with Grandpa, picked herbs with Grandma, played PIG, found some flowers and splashed in puddles. It was all very cute. She loved playing outside and we are happy to now live in a place where we can do that everyday! :)

On the actual Thanksgiving day she really enjoyed her breakfast of monkey bread and blueberries, but wasn't too fond of Thanksgiving dinner. It was actually very amusing looking back on it. My mom made all kinds of things that she normally likes but she wouldn't even try any of it. Well, she did eat cranberry sauce and candied apples. She also liked pumpkin pie the next day. I suppose she is getting a bit of a sweet tooth! :)

I also got to celebrate my birthday while we were up there. It was soooo fun to be able to spend my birthday with my family and go out to dinner at my favorite restaurant! I've been going there for my birthday ever since I can remember so it was very special.

It was a wonderful trip and we really had a great time!

Emma Meets Tigger!

The second weekend in November my entire family came down for a quick visit. It was kind of a last minute thing, but it was really fun because it has been a LONG time since all 5 (Mom, Dad, Emily, Jake & I) of us, plus Dave & Emma have been able to do a vacation type thing. My parents treated us to the Husky/UCLA football game and then Disneyland the next day. Although Emma had been to Disneyland before, this trip was special because she got to meet Tigger for the first time. She wore her Tigger costume from Halloween and we waited in line. She was a bit hesitant, but she warmed up quickly and really enjoyed getting kisses and hugs from Tigger. He spent a lot of time with her which was very nice! So, here she is:

October

We began October with a trip to the South. Dave had a good friend from Westmont that was marrying a girl from Mississippi so we headed down there for that. We flew into New Orleans and stayed there for a couple of days before we drove up to Mississippi for the wedding. As a lot of you know Dave & I had been to New Orleans a couple of years ago with our church to help with some rebuilding efforts. It was interesting to see how far the city had come since we were there. It definitely looked much better, but there is still work to be done. We still saw a lot of abandoned places with the "X"s on the front that rescuers had used after Katrina to mark what/who they had found in the house. And then there is a lot of improvement too, as the picture below shows. It is a part of the Lower Ninth where Habitat for Humanity is building places for musicians in the area.

(Dave is going to write about the rest of the trip - here he goes):

The wedding was a lot of fun and it was good to see a lot of good friends we hadn't seen in a couple years. Emma enjoyed playing outside at the mansion the wedding was at until we were advised not to let her play in the grass because of the chiggers. Just ask Jenn how fun getting bitten all over by those guys was! While in Mississippi we went to Vicksburg National Military Park and drove through the park. We also went to the Coca Cola Museum where the first bottle of Coke was bottled (A lot less interesting than we thought).

Pictures of the mansion where the wedding was (the cannon ball was shot into the house during a battle many years ago and there it remains):

Emma dancing with Daddy at the wedding:

Emma shooting the canon that was on a recovered sunken ship in the military museum:

Then we drove back to New Orleans in time for me to miss going to the Saints game and just hung out in the city. The flight back was pretty miserable since we didn't get back to Ontario until after midnight New Orleans time and Emma decided not to sleep at all on the flights. All in all though, it was a wonderful trip and Emma had a lot of fun too!

All of us at Cafe Du Monde for beignets & iced coffee:

And then we ended October with Halloween. Emma got to be Tigger this year ('cause she loves him so much)!! The day before Halloween she got dressed up and went trick-or-treating at Dave's office. She had so much fun and was sooooo cute. She walked around to all the offices with her bucket and collected all the candy she could get.

Our new house up in Idyllwild was ready for us a few days before Halloween, so we headed up there to participate in some festivities and spend our first night in our new house. The whole town shuts down and all the kids parade down the street and collect candy. Emma has fun, but it was a bit overwhelming with all the people. She was still really cute though. :)

It was a fun month and now we're onto November - yeah I'm almost caught up!! :)

September

Well, I didn't get the blog updated like I had hoped to last month so I am going to do it now. We have been amazingly busy lately and there just hasn't been time for it. But we are in Seattle now for Thanksgiving and I have some extra time so I am going to get it caught up. I figure I'll just post one update for each month and be sure and give you guys all of the details of our life lately. :)

Labor Day: As I am sitting her trying to think what we did for Labor Day, nothing comes to mind. If I remember correctly, we just had a relaxing time around the house. We haven't had too many of those weekends the last several months, so I'm sure it was some much needed down time.

Sometime in the middle of September (I think) we decided that we were going to make a move up to the mountains. The lease on our house is up at the end of November, and with Dave's pay cuts we can't afford to live where we are currently. We also despise the desert for 5/6 months out of the year when it is miserably hot and we thought it might be fun to make the move to somewhere a bit cooler - where Emma can play outside! :) Here are a couple pictures of the new house:

We are very excited about our new house but it has made the last several months very busy! It's a lot of fun trying to pack a house with a little toddler running around. :) We moved all of our furniture up there a couple of weeks ago, but we are far from being our of our house in the desert. When we get back from Seattle we are expecting a couple of VERY busy days before we have to be out of the house on Dec. 1.

I think those are the main highlights for September so we will move onto Oct...

Emma's 2nd First Birthday Party!

Well I know it's been awhile again, but I'm going to try to catch up!! :) We have lots of stuff coming up so I can't get too behind. :)

On August 22nd Emma had her 2nd First Birthday Party for all of our CA friends & Family. It was very similar to her Seattle party - we swam in the pool, ate some BBQ and of course had cake and presents. Emma loved every moment! Thank you everyone for making this time so special for both Emma and her parents.

Getting her first taste of her cake:

Everyone else got to have this cake. It has Tigger on it (Emma's favorite guy)! :)

And then she got to open some presents. She LOVED everything - she is a very blessed little girl! :)

Emma's First Birthday!

The day before we left Seattle was Emma's 1st Birthday! Wow!! Dave & I cannot believe how fast the time has gone. Our little baby is growing up so fast!! She has been such a wonderful addition to our family and has brought more joy to us than we ever could have imagined! :) God really has blessed us!!!!

We celebrated her birthday with a party! We invited over lots of family and friends to celebrate Emma's special day with us. We really enjoyed getting to share this with them and we want to thank you all so much for making Emma's 1st birthday so memorable!

Of course the two things that Emma loved most about her party were cake and presents! :)

She didn't realize at first that she was supposed to eat it, so she just squished it around in her hands for a little while.

She soon figured it out! :)

She LOVED it!!

Then it was time for presents. Emma with all of her loot:

She had so much fun opening her presents!

Her two favorites of the day (although she really loves them all) were her Fridge Farm and her Cheerios! :)

We look forward to celebrating Emma's birthday with all our California friends next week! :)

Seattle Trip - Taco Time

So every time we go to Seattle, Dave I eat at one of our favorite fast food places - Taco Time. We usually end up eating it several times on each trip because it is sooooo good. Well this time Emma was old enough to have some Taco Time so here is a picture of her eating her first Taco Time meal. She really liked it. :)

Seattle Trip - Visit to Uncle Dick and Aunt Jan's

On the 4th & 5th we headed down to Longview to visit my Aunt & Uncle. We had a really good time visiting with them and getting to do some more fun things. It was about a 2 hour ride in the car so we had to keep Emma entertained.

Emma really loved their dog Gipper! He loved to lick her and she loved to be licked (for some weird reason).

My Uncle Dick LOVES his boat so he was more than happy to take us out both days that we were there. It was Emma's very first time on a boat - how fun for her! :)

We stopped at a beach while we were out one of the afternoons. There was nobody else there so it was like our own private beach. Emma had a lot of fun playing in the sand. It was a very nice relaxing time! :)