Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Videos

Some recent videos...

The girls playing ring around the rosies at Emmy's party:


Emmy's swimming lessons:


Emmy singing in her new Dora microphone:


Zach enjoying Emmy's birthday balloons!:



Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Emmy turns 4!

This past week our little Emmy turned 4 years old! What a fun day! We had 2 family parties and a friend party. We celebrated with Matt's family the Sunday before her birthday and with my family the Sunday after. On her actual birthday she woke up to balloons all over the house. She got out of bed and came out and said, "Why are there balloons all over the floor?" And I yelled, "Cuz it's your birthday!!!!" She was so excited all day.


She got lots of fun presents from her grandmas and grandpas and aunties and uncles and cousins.

Including these new church shoes with heels from Grandma Lively. It's pretty funny to watch her wobble around in them. She often puts them on and walks around the house in them. She wanted to wear them to the park the other day and I said no, and she said, "but they're beautiful!" Ha!


This girl LOVES Dora. She got a bunch of Dora things from people.


She was very excited about waking up to balloons. (And so was Zach, by the way, it was like the greatest day of his life with all those balloons!)


Bubbles!



She really loves to do arts and crafts so we got her this little treasure chest to paint and decorate. She loved it!


I can't believe Emmy is 4! At 4 years old, Emmy weighs 37 pounds and is 40.5 inches tall (in the 65% for both). She loves Dora and Frozen. She loves to do crafts and projects. She loves to swim and play with her babies. She likes spaghetti and fruit and popsicles and cereal. She can be shy, but she also can be full of drama and adventure! She loves to go to Grandma's house and ride her scooter and her bike.

These past 4 years have sure been an adventure! I love my Emmy!

Emmy's Birthday Party

Emmy had her first "friend" birthday party this year. I kept asking her what she wanted to do for her birthday and she said she wanted to have a party at home with just me and her. Then a few days before her birthday she said she wanted her friends to come to her party. I was shocked! She usually only wants to play with one friend at a time. And it has to be at our house. So we kept it simple and only invited 3 girls from the neighborhood and her cousins.

We had a swimming party, so we made some Ariel cupcakes and invitations. She also had been saying for months that she wanted a starfish cake, so I found some little starfish candies to put on the cupcakes.

We set up the blowup pool and slip-n-slide out in the backyard for her party and the kids just played in the water the whole time. Easiest birthday party ever!

I told Emmy that if she invited all these friends that she was going to have to play with all of them at the same time. She did really well! She was so happy and excited to have them all there.

Their favorite part was playing ring around the rosies and falling down in the pool.

They had a ball!

Then we had cake and ice cream and opened presents and then swam some more!


She was so nice and polite and said thank you to her friends for the fun gifts they brought. And she picked out party favors (butterfly straws) to give to them as they were leaving. It was so fun to watch her be so nice and have fun with her friends! And the girls and Rivers were really cute too! Rivers was too busy swimming to get out for cake! Ha!

And then Emmy wanted spaghetti for dinner. With no sauce. And then she crashed after dinner from all the fun of her birthday, and went to bed. We sure do love that Emmy!


Summer fun

More summer happenings.... Matt is still looking for jobs. His company is moving to Florida early next year. So he either has to find a new job, or we move to Florida. We are looking at all the options...both in and out of state. So far he has offers in Florida, Boston, and Indiana. We're trying to open as many doors as possible right now. We are currently still undecided. Here is Zach "helping" Dad apply for jobs. :)

Emmy is a little silly. Here she is all dressed up in her swimsuit, a bunch of necklaces and bows, and her new church shoes.


She got this super annoying Dora microphone for her birthday. She loves to sing into it! Funny story...I had actually bought this for her too because even though it was annoying, I knew she would love it. But then her cousin gave it to her so I took the one I bought back to the store and got her something else.

I told her to go get dressed so we could go somewhere and she came back wearing this...a flowered shirt, paint-splattered shorts, 2 bracelets and 2 necklaces, and her snow boots (which are 4 sizes too small). Then she insisted on wearing that to the store.

We had our annual cousin party last weekend. My granny rented a big blowup slide and this year she got a little one for the little kids. They loved it!

Zach just loved playing with this awesome ball.

And the water table. The party was fun!

Emmy got this awesome book reader thing for her birthday and she loves it! It reads the books to her. Brilliant!

We are having a fun summer!

Swimming lessons

We put Emmy in swimming lessons this summer with our neighbors, Ms. Sally and Mr. Paul. It was quite the interesting experience. She was excited to go the first day, but would not get in the pool by herself. I had to carry her over to the edge and then run away and hide. After Ms. Sally helped her in, she was fine until she had to dunk her head under to do some bobs.

She did not want to do that, but Ms. Sally made her do it anyway. And then she said she never wanted to go back to swimming lessons ever again. So it was a struggle to get her there every day. She screamed and cried and I pretty much had to pry her out of the stroller or car and drag her in there and set her by the edge of the pool crying. Every day.

And then she would be fine after about 10 seconds. She still didn't like to dunk her head in, but Ms. Sally made her do it every time.

Doing the monkey crawl around the edge of the pool.
Anyway, even though it was a struggle to get her there, she improved SO MUCH! By the last day, she willingly went to swimming lessons and got in the pool by herself and did all the things really well. She even came home and was playing swimming lessons with her dolls and making them do kicks and bobs. It was hilarious!

Here she is "listening" to the dolphin!


Ms. Sally had "buddies" for them to use each day to practice stuff with and to "keep them safe". Emmy loved her buddy and wanted some for her birthday.

Now Emmy loves swimming and asks if we can go every day. She will willingly dunk her head under the water by herself and do bobs and go get her dive buddies.

Ms. Sally and Mr. Paul were awesome. They were so patient with her but made her do hard things. And then praised her through the roof when she did.

She was still reluctant to jump off the edge without help though.


But on the last day of class, she "sort of" went down the slide (with some help).

Anyway, I was so proud of her and the progress she made in swimming lessons this year.

Here she is riding her scooter to swimming lessons on the last day (the only day I didn't have to pry her off me to get there).

Now she loves the water and is so much braver. Thank you Ms. Sally and Mr. Paul!

Slurpees and snow cones

Of course we celebrated free slurpee day on July 11!

Emmy and I have been in search of the best shave ice this summer.  We've tried a lot of places and the winner is....
Lani's on 90th and about 1500W. It is by far the best! It's no Matsumotos, but in the absence of a trip to Hawaii, Lani's will do. :)


I do love my shave ice!

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Primary

I snuck a picture of the Sunbeams.

Photo: Snuck a picture of my cute Sunbeam in her sunny yellow dress.

I love watching Emmy in Primary. It's the best hour of her week. She is so good. She sings and listens and participates. She gave her very first talk today in Primary. She did so awesome! She didn't even bat an eye and spoke loud and clear into the microphone. She was so excited to give her talk. I was so proud of her.

I have to admit that I am actually enjoying Primary so much more than I thought I would. I really, really thought I would hate it. But for the most part, I like it. I have been so impressed by these kids. They are awesome!

Boating

Matt's parents got a new boat and we got to go on it last weekend. It was so nice! I love going out to the lake. Emmy had a ball. She even got out on the bumper tube with dad.

She loved the boat! When other people were on the tube, she loved watching them and laughing.

Zach, on the other hand, hated it. He did this the whole time...

Seriously, he cried 80% of the time on the boat. What a turkey! The other 20% he was trying to drive the boat or shove chips in people's faces. Next time he is staying home!

Good thing Emmy was so cute and had fun.

Hopefully we can go again soon and leave Zach home!

Happy 4th

Emmy and Zach looked so cute in their 4th of July outfits!


We went to the Riverton town days. Emmy had fun looking for prizes in the hay!

I was so proud of her for going in there all by herself with tons of other kids.

She got quite the haul of candy!

We let her pick one ride at the carnival and of course she picked the carousel!


Then we went and got ice cream cones. Zach enjoyed his very first one that we let him eat all by himself.

We had a BBQ at my parents and did some sparklers. Then we let Emmy stay up late and go to the big fireworks. She was beyond excited and kept saying, "I can't wait! I can't wait!" We watched some of the neighbors do their little fireworks and she loved them. She loved the sparklers too.

 Then of course the minute the big fireworks started at the park she covered her ears and said she wanted to go home. But then when they were over she said she liked them. She stayed up til 11:30 and was still up at 7! What a stinker!

But it was a fun 4th and it was the first time in 4 years we've gone to the fireworks. I have missed them!