Easter Cuteness

Easter was a great day.  The weather was beautiful!  We just happened to arrive at the Savior's resurrection in our scripture reading this week, so it's been fun all week long to talk with Emma about it and hear her show her understanding of why we really celebrate.  That said though, Emma was really excited to see her basket and everything that the Easter Bunny had brought in the morning.  She couldn't wait to get home from church to really dig into it.  She looked so cute.  She wanted her hair curly, and we just HAD to do her finger and toenails the night before.  After investigating her basket she hunted down a bunch of eggs we had hidden.  Some were very tricky, but she eventually found them all.  Since the weather was so nice she wanted to ride her bike.  She loves doing that.  I can't wait to go further with her this summer and do some exploring.  We had a lovely mini Thanksgiving style dinner late in the afternoon, and then spent the evening playing games and just enjoying one another's company, while of course stuffing ourselves with candy!  Emma is such a sweet girl, and I just love spending holidays with her.  She always makes them feel sunny and warm.

Fun Gift

If you know me or anyone in my family, then you know that we bleed red.  And by that I mean that we are U of U fans.  And that means that we are most definitely NOT BYU fans.  Nope.  I do not want BYU to win.  Not even when they play Notre Dame.  But I have always enjoyed a friendly rivalry with several people who are Y fans.  I don't like the mean, rude, and quite often unbelievably ignorant people from each school (and yes, there are these people at BOTH schools) who ruin the fun for the rest of us.  And in the spirit of this friendly rivalry I recently made a gift for my brother, sister-in-law, and their new baby Paul.  They have received the gift, so I can now share it on here.  I hope if you're a Y fan you have a sense of humor and can laugh about this.  If not, then too bad for you.  =)  I made a stencil and stenciled the back of some diapers for them.   Here is a picture of the card and the diapers I made and the poem I wrote inside the card.

Here is a gift

in honor of Paul.

We wish we were there

to see him so cute and small.

With three kids already

and now boy number two,

we figured you'd have

most things needed, old and new.

So we thought: something practical.

That's what we'd do,

but funny as well

for our gift to you.

And although they're not red,

but actually blue,

we thought they could hold

all of Paul's BYPooh.

We thought it'd be funny

(trying not to be crass)

for these logos to cover

Paul's cute tiny ... bum.

So pull one on out

and look at the back

then sit Paul on down

for a nice little chat.

When you look at this symbol

please do not fume.

We know you don't want it

in your new son's room.

Here it's hidden from view

in an appropriate place.

Hopefully the thought of it there

puts a smile on your face.

So congratulations again!

We wish you happiness and more

for your cute little family

with kids now numbered four.

Recent Goings On

We've just been going along in our little groove, trying to get used to life here in the midwest.  Sometimes it feels completely normal, and other times I'm still shocked we're here.  There hasn't been anything super exciting happen to us recently, but I thought I would share some random pictures and their correlating explanations.

This is one of the things Emma did/made during conference.  It was really funny, because she tried to match up their ties with what they were wearing, and then as they spoke she would place them inside the pulpit.

This is a recent sunset from our balcony.  So pretty.

Emma has wanted to watch Star Wars again recently.  She was playing with Eric's old Lego star wars sets the entire time, grabbing the appropriate ones depending on what was happening.  When this picture was taken, the movie was almost over.  Han Solo had just flown in and fired on Darth Vader so that Luke could destroy the Death Star, which is why she's holding the millennium falcon and a TIE fighter (even though it's not technically Darth Vader's TIE fighter).  You can even see her making sound effects! 

The kindergarten and first grade at Emma's school is doing a barnyard musical thing.  A couple other moms and myself ended up doing the background for it.  We did this not because we really wanted to (we're more than happy to help of course), but mostly because there was no communication going on between the music teacher and the kindergarten and first grade teachers.  Emma's teacher had asked if we'd help make some animals.  Her understanding was that the first grade would be taking care of the background and we'd just need to put a few animals up.  One of the art teachers had a big painted barn (the barn and silos pictured were provided by the art teacher - you can tell the blue sky behind the barn and the rainbow thing next to the silos don't quite match up with the blue sky on the sides), and someone from the first grade apparently decided to just use this one instead of trying to make another one.  But they didn't do anything else for a background.  So we had to take care of the sky, the grass, clouds, haystack, flowers, fence, corn stalks, and all the animals.  We spent so many hours doing this, both during the day at our homes, and after school in the gym.  Again, we were basically happy to help, but then it turned into such a headache.  The janitors were ridiculous and didn't want to get ladders out for us or pull out the stage thing (which seriously only takes about 30 seconds to do), and some first grade moms thought we slighted them by doing it all ourselves.  Um, we did what we were asked to do, and only did more because we were told the first grade was simply using the donated barn and not doing anything else.  Where were we supposed to put our animals?  We were only asked to help out a week before the first grade performance!  Ugh!  I like how it turned out, and I always love helping Emma's class and her teacher (she's so wonderful, and was not at all at fault for any of the problems we faced - she was there helping us at the school for several hours, which none of the other teachers even volunteered to do) but I don't understand why so many people have to get so upset about something so stupid instead of just being happy and grateful it was done.  We had been trying to get more people to help us!  The communication regarding this project was just terrible.  But none of that should matter because it's all about the kids.  At least it should be.  That's certainly all I care about.  The other two moms and myself who worked on this don't care if anyone involved knows we did it.  We just wanted it to be nice for the kids.  And it was frustrating that we would be accused of anything else.  I'm glad it's done, and that it turned out so nice.  I'm looking forward to the Kindergarten performance next week!!  (Sorry about the bad picture quality!  The lighting was bad and I didn't have my nice camera with me.)

If you're on Facebook, you probably heard about Emma falling at school yesterday.  If not, here's the story.  I had just dropped Emma off.  I always wait until she gets into her line (they line up outside) and wave before leaving.  I was pulling forward a little to make more room for the cars behind me, and then noticed Emma was walking a little weird.  The principle was outside the next thing I know he's ushering Emma inside.  One of the other moms was there and ran over to tell me what happened.  Emma had fallen (tripped I guess?) and had a bloody nose.  I parked my car (admittedly where I'm not supposed to leave my car, but I didn't care - my child was hurt) and ran into the office to the nurse's room.  I was not thrilled in the least about having to go into the school.  It is not possible to be less ready to be seen in public than I was that morning.  I was not planning on needing to get out of the car, so I hadn't gotten ready for the day yet.  I was wearing some ratty shorts, my hair was an unholy mess, no make-up on of course, and I hadn't even brushed my teeth yet!  But I had to go in of course.  Emma was a mess!  When she fell she scraped up her hands really bad and hadn't been able to stop her face from hitting the ground.  Her forehead and nose were scraped up, and her nose hitting the ground gave her the bloody nose.  There was blood all over her face and hands and quite a bit on her coat.  It took awhile to clean her up.  We put a couple bandages on her and gave her an ice pack.  Then I walked her to class.  She said she wanted to stay at school (I would have been more than happy taking her home with me for the day), so I told her to tell her teacher if she decided she needed or wanted to come home so her her teacher could call me.  I felt so bad for her!  She was quite shaken up by it.  This is the 3rd time in 2 weeks that she's fallen with no apparent reason.  The other two times she just bruised her knees (really bad, but just her knees).  I think she must be growing and it's throwing her balance off.  I hope she doesn't fall again any time soon!  These pictures were taken last night, after removing the bandage from her nose.  It already looked better than it had in the morning right after it happened.  I hope it doesn't leave a scar.  She has such perfect porcelain skin - I hate for it to have a blemish from something as dumb as falling!  Poor thing!

New Bike

Emma finally has a bike!! She is so excited! She hasn't stopped jumping up and down since we told her a few days ago we were going to get one. This is the kind of thing I would love to get more mileage out of - you know like giving it as a birthday present or something. But for Emma that wouldn't work. Her birthday is too late for an outdoor gift. How mean would that be? Here's a bike, but we'll probably only have a few weeks before you can't use it anymore. This way she'll have all spring and summer and fall. This is something I feel is long overdue. Well, maybe not long overdue, but overdue at least a little. It's just never been right or worked out before. A lot of it was based on where we lived (never in a house, which cramps the outdoor bike riding style a little). And now I'm almost more excited than she is. I've already had my eye on an amazing looking bike path in town that I'm dying to try out. And her helmet makes me happy. As I sit here I realize I don't have any good shots of her helmet, but you'll just have to take my word for it. It has flowers and butterflies on it (which normally I don't really love) in such a cute way, and the top is a bright fun blue with a pink bottom - and it just makes me happy! It's a smile inducing helmet! I'll admit to not liking the bag on the front of her bike though. It came with it, and there was a bad selection at the store of baskets. So hopefully soon we'll be able to find a more suitable & much cuter basket. Either way, Emma's thrilled and can't wait to get out and practice more after today attempt. It was a little windy and chilly today despite being gloriously sunny. So here's to a fabulous spring and summer hopefully spent in large part on our bikes.