Little Ado About Much

The past month has seemed to fly by.  Anytime you take your already busy day to day schedule, add one or two (or more) extra things that don't frequently come up, throw in 3 holidays, extra school stuff, and sickness, you get a very very busy month that flies by.  That was this past month for us.

I love holidays, and I like trying to do fun things with Emma.  Usually there are more things I would like to do than I actually accomplish, and this year was a definite bust.  We scraped by each holiday doing the bare minimum it seems.  Last year we were much better - week long celebrations of holidays and entire days filled with activities, but alas, this was not to be this year.  Luckily I don't beat myself up for missing the mark.  Actually, there is no mark for me.  Each year my expectations are a little different.  And this year the expectations became very low as the month progressed.  I don't even have pictures of most things we did.  Meh.

We had a lot of sickness in our home this month.  Usually it was Emma, and except for one longer bout  with illness (which I'll mention later), it was typically a one day thing.  And almost always on the weekend, either Saturday or Sunday.  I feel like I was hardly at church this month!  But sickness always changes your plans.

We don't usually have much time during the week between Emma's late school release time, homework, her taekwondo, Eric's meetings, and my meetings (I know all of you understand this - regular life is just so busy!), but this month we had several additional activities that were added to the calendar.  I'm not complaining mind you.  We choose to do most of the extras we do.  We agree to do what is needed for our church callings.  And most of the things we do are enjoyable, so it's not really a complaint.  More of a sigh or a phew kind of feeling after it's over when it all piles up like it did this month and we've come out the other end having survived.

Emma had a music program at school and sang Disney songs.  It  has been really fun listening to her sing Candle on the Water (her favorite that they learned) around the house.  Emma also had another belt test for taekwondo (which she passed, earning her purple belt).  It is always fun to see her learning and growing and enjoying school and sports.

Emma at her school music program

Emma prior to her belt test

Doing her form, which is just a series of kicks, punches, etc.  She is in the front on the left.  There was no time requirement for this.  It didn't matter if you were fast or slow.  Some kids race through it, but Emma likes being very deliberate with her moves and tries to be exact, so she enjoys taking her time.

This is the sparring.  There were several pairs sparring at a time.  

This is Eric's favorite thing to watch Emma do.  

This month was peppered with church things.  There were several conferences this month (stake, ward,  a women's conference at our stake center), I helped at a youth activity, and we had a Relief Society activity.  The RS activity was our birthday celebration, and it went really well.  There were several tables set up representing the different months of the year, and decorated fun as if for a party for that month.  People signed up to decorate the tables, providing everything for it (tablecloth, plates, cups, etc, centerpiece, and a cake).  I signed up for November.  I realized that I've never been able to decorate a Thanksgiving table before.  Not really nice anyway.  Most years we have been with family or friends, and haven't even been home.  And when we have been home, it's just been the three of us, so I haven't gone to great lengths for the tablescape.  It was fun creating my table, and I really like how it turned out.

I had fun making these paper pumpkins that I placed on each plate.

Here's how my table turned out

Then came St. Patrick's Day.  Emma set a trap, solved and followed the clues left by the leprechaun she almost caught, collected chocolate coins in 12 different colors (one for each clue), and found the pot of gold coins (chocolate of course) at the end.  Pictures?  Nope.  I didn't even start writing the clues until 11:30 pm the night before.  Pictures just weren't in the cards.

I was playing around with Emma's hair the day before the holiday and tried making a shamrock in her hair.  It's hard to see because her hair is almost too short for it, plus she wanted to wear the bow which hides it.

Emma's school was going to be filming a lip dub and needed help getting ready.  In case you're not familiar with what I mean, a lip dub is just a video with different people lip-syncing different lines to one or multiple songs.  This one would travel through Emma's school, going in and out of several rooms, with all the kids lining the hallways or doing other things, while some of the kids did the "speaking" parts - the actual lip-syncing, sort of being spotlighted in the process.  I helped get several props ready that the kids in Emma's class were going to be holding.  Emma was asked to do one of the "speaking" parts, and practiced at home and at school a ton to get ready.  Then Emma started getting sick, and when her fever didn't go away I took her to the doctor where we were told she had the flu.  Not the flu as in just a cough and a fever (I think people abuse the word 'flu' and use it too often), but the flu as in influenza.  She was highly contagious, and was told she absolutely could not go to school for 5 days (or anywhere really).  This was on Monday 25th, just two days before her school was going to actually film the lip dub.  Emma was going to miss it.  The first thing she said to me when the doctor told us was, "All that hard work, for nothing."  Broke my heart.  She was very very upset.  And there wasn't anything I could do about it.  I can't tell you how much I wanted to just take her the morning they were filming it, and let her do her part and then take her home, probably no more than an hour later.  But I just couldn't do it.  I couldn't be that parent who disregards sickness and allows their child to be around other kids risking them getting sick too.  And believe me it wasn't for lack of trying to figure a way out of it.  I just hate seeing Emma sad like that.  But it meant that she stayed home all week.

Emma asleep on the couch while feeling sick

This is one of the dress rehearsals for the lip dub.  The sound isn't great, especially at the beginning, but it was mostly just a walkthrough.  The filming is even being done by someone else than the final one.  BUT this version has Emma in it!  Which is why I wanted it.  Her part starts at 1:33.  The lines she is lip-syncing are: "There's nothing I can't achieve because in myself I believe in.  Oh"

The final lip dub by her school.  Emma's part would have started at 1:24.  You can see they didn't replace her with anyone else.  It turned out really cute I think.  I just wish Emma hadn't been sick so she could have been a part of it.

Easter.  Emma was feeling better for Easter, but I hadn't left the house all week to get anything.  The Easter Bunny managed to come, and we did an egg hunt for Emma.  There were puzzle pieces in each egg and the only way she'd know if she'd found all the eggs was if she could complete the puzzle.  She had a lot of fun doing it.  We didn't do ham, but decided to stick with pig as our meat source, and had pork schnitzel with spaetzle and veggies.  It was fabulous!  But again, no pictures.  Suffice it to say, Emma looked just great in her new dress.

We are getting excited for the Brewers season this year.  Emma had so much fun at the one game we managed to get to last year.  We plan on attending several more this year (fingers crossed!).  We watched the opening day game and were thrilled with their victory against the Rockies.

April Fools day is usually one we try to really play up.  We love playing tricks on Emma and I usually play a trick or two on Eric.  This year was a very mild one.  We barely managed the night before to come up with a couple things to do to Emma, but it was minimal.  We tied her door to the bathroom door so that she wouldn't be able to open her door very far in the morning.  It was tied with a slipknot though, so if she really pulled she could get out, but not without effort.  Also, we put some food coloring on her toothbrush (luckily it already had blue bristles so it disguised the food coloring) so her mouth turned blue when she brushed in the morning.

And finally, for your viewing pleasure, a fabulous picture of Emma.  Our camera has a fishbowl effect that we were playing around with, and I got this shot of her.  It makes me laugh every time I see it.  Maybe it's odd that I didn't get pictures of any of the holidays this month, but I did get this one of Emma.  Oh well.  That's just how we roll I guess.  =)

Recent Happenings

This will just be of some random things that have been going on.  Not really worthy of separate posts each.

We had fun decorating Emma's valentine's box for school.  All the kids were sent a plain brown box home to decorate however they wanted.  This is what we did.  Emma had a blast painting it.

With some wonderful snow recently, including two snow days, it seemed like the perfect time to go sledding.  Of course, Emma had a blast.  The faster the better.  The more jumps the better.  This child.  It's taken her seven years, but she's finally a daring kid.  Some might just call that normal.  =)  And I love it.

We also took Emma ice skating recently for the first time.  Can you believe it?  She's seven and has never been before.  She was hilarious to watch.  But she enjoyed it and can't wait to go back.

And finally there was a music program recently at Emma's school for the second graders.  They were singing a bunch of Disney songs.  Emma's favorite song was Candle on the Water.  It was really funny hearing her sing that at home as she played.  I started filming the first song when my battery light started flashing.  Typical.  So, I only took a couple pictures and filmed her singing her favorite song.  The rest of the time we just sat and enjoyed.  What's most important is that we were both able to be there for it.  Eric barely made it from work in time, so him just being there made Emma's night.

Brotherly Love

My brother came to visit us!  Well, actually he came to work near Chicago for a week, but he decided to stay for the weekend to see us.  Wasn't that nice?

We met up with him on Friday down at the Chicago Temple.  We didn't take the time to go inside this time, but it was a good place to meet up and he wanted to see it.  Plus, we had Emma with us, so it wouldn't have worked out.  John got in our car and we drove towards the lake.  One of the things John really wanted to do while here (and he told his kids he would take pictures for them to see - so we had to do it), was to see some of the shooting locations for Home Alone.  So we went and saw the house (just the outside, and I'm sure the people who live there just love that), the church where Kevin hides and talks with the old man, and the town square he runs across after inadvertently stealing a toothbrush.    We stopped for some Chicago style pizza on our way home.

Home Alone House

Home Alone Church

The next morning we showed him around town (didn't take too long), including our lighthouse and the lake, and then headed out to Lake Geneva.  While there we ate some lunch at the Sprecher restaurant.  Then headed to Woodstock, Illinois for some more movie locations.  John really wanted to see some of the Groundhog movie sights.  That night we went out to dinner with some dear friends, and even tried escargot.  Not bad, but it won't ever be a favorite of mine.

Emma being silly in the car.

Icy Lake Geneva.  So pretty.

Getting ready to do the Pennsylvania Polka

John pretending he's the old man from the movie here in the old man's alley (they were doing something further into the alley which is why the truck is there).

After church on Sunday (where my brother was thoroughly picked on by our friends, and even got to use some of his Tagalog from his mission days while speaking with a couple in our ward), we came home and prepared some brats.  Can't come here without having brats right?  Of course we let the Sprecher root beer flow freely, and Eric and John broke in a couple glasses Eric bought at the Sprecher restaurant.

Emma was a little cold.

Hmmm, hot chocolate.  Much better!

Excited for root beer in the new glasses.

Following dinner was games and then more sausage, this time it was of the summer variety, along with some cheese and crackers, and yes, more root beer.  Again, can't come here without sampling some of the cheeses.

Even though it was really short, it was so much fun seeing John and having him here.  Of course, I can only say that because I'll go six to twelve months without seeing him.  =)

Tis the Season

December was a whirlwind of crazy and busy.  But aren't the holidays always that way?  We started the month off planning our Ward's Christmas party.  We did it last year too, but wanted to do something different this year, so we had a hot chocolate bar.  There were muffins and donuts of every kind, and then hot chocolate with several add-in options.   We had raspberry, vanilla, caramel, and hazelnut flavoring syrups, crushed peppermint, candy canes, white marshmallows, red and green marshmallows, cinnamon, chili powder, chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, and of course, whipped cream.  We also had sugar-free hot chocolate and cold drinking water, just in case.  There were too many options to try them all.  But they were yummy!  We had homemade sugar cookies with red, green, and white buttercream frosting (all made by a lovely gal who is a master with all things in the kitchen), and sprinkles for the kids to decorate and take home.  And of course, we were lucky to have a visit from Santa Claus himself (what can I say, I have connections!).

Excuse the crummy blurry shot.

While out on some errands one day I saw this guy ringing a bell collecting money.  You see these guys all over the place, but this guy definitely went the extra mile.  It was great seeing his enthusiasm.  I bet he collected quite a bit that day.

Right before Christmas Eric took a trip to London.  When he returned, Emma got an early Christmas present.  Londoners are famous for their hats, so he bought her a beautiful hat.  It is seriously so cute on her.  These pictures don't do it justice.

For Christmas this year we went to Ohio to be with my brother, sister-in-law, and her family.  They were incredibly generous and nice to invite us.  We had a great time with them.  They have a lovely home, and it was decorated very festively.  And probably the best Italian food we have ever had!  A.Maz.Ing!  But that's what you get with recipes that have been passed down forever and skilled hands that have learned to make them.  Bravo!  We spent a few days there celebrating, ate very well (holy cow!), went to Church together, laughed a lot, and really enjoyed the company.

I loved the huge fireplace between the living room and the kitchen.

Hulk gloves for Christmas

Already putting the gloves to good use - beating up my brother!  

Eric put all his Bronco pride aside and sported this Browns ornament.  Ahh, what a good sport.

Emma being Emma while playing one of her new Lego games with Eric and Michael.

Then came home to finish up our Christmas celebrating.  Emma had a few more presents here at home that we didn't have room to take with us.  We brought as many as we could, but the rest were left behind for us to open when we got home.  It was kind of nice to have two Christmases in a way.

Doesn't she just look thrilled with all the stuff she got?  She wasn't quite ready for me to take the picture I think.

My Christmas Angel