Happy Birthday Princess Emily!

Emily Turned 12 yesterday! Twelve years have gone by since our very first sweet baby girl was born. She was born a week early. The Friday before she was born, I went in for my doctor appointment. My blood pressure was high and I was starting to show signs of preeclampsia. My doctor suggested I go into the hospital on Monday morning to be induced.

My brother and sister just happened to have spring break that week and so my parents and two siblings were about to make their way from Dallas to Utah and were hoping a baby would be born before my dad had to take Sam and Lauren back to Dallas for school (my mom was staying for a few weeks). When I called them to tell them what my doctor suggested, they were so excited that not only would she be born and they would get to see her on their visit here, but that it was happening right at the beginning of their trip.

We woke up early Monday morning and Steve and my mom and I headed out for the hospital. It was snowing that morning. They induced me and several hours later, we were so happy to have our beautiful little baby girl with us! We didn't find out with any of our kids what they were before they were born, but we just knew she was going to be a girl. And she didn't disappoint! It took us a few hours to name her. We decided on Emily Lynne (Lynne after my mom Kay Lynne).

We were holding her and she would make the cutest little sighing sounds while she slept. What we thought was cute alarmed the nurses though. Apparently when babies sigh like that it means they aren't getting enough oxygen. They monitored her oxygen levels for a while and then decided that she needed to be moved to PICU. She spent a few days there before she was finally able to come home with us (I had to rent a room on the floor with terminally ill patients), and life has never been the same since. We love you Emily and are so glad you are a part of our family! Here are a few pictures of our Birthday girl.

Emily's 5th Princess Birthday Party

2005 Mini Drill at the High School where the girls performed at half time at a football game

Emily's 1st day of her 2nd year of Preschool

2005 Slumber party with her BFF'S Rylee and Kylee

(almost seems like we should have named her Emlee)

Emily at Tumbling Tigers 4th of July party. This was about an hour before she almost sliced her finger off and she had to get stitches.

Easter 2002

Emily and Aubrey Easter 2004

Cutie Patootie!

Her sister Addy makes this same exact face now. I knew I had seen it before.

Touchdown! 2006

Moab 2006

The Narrows At Zion's National Park

Easter March 2008

Happy Birthday Em! Her Birthday Week brings fun and exciting things for her. Tonight she goes to Jr. High Registration and tomorrow she goes with the Young Women for Temple Baptisms.

Monday Morning Musings - Plumbers Crack

A couple of days ago I went to check on Addy who was supposed to be sitting on this time out bench. This is what I found. She arranged some shoes under this blanket to make it look like she was under the blanket on the time out bench.

Aubrey has this obsession with clock math. It is this game she has made up in her head. Whenever she looks at a clock to see what time it is, she makes the time a math problem. And she can do it for any time. So say it is 6:17. She will say, "It's six seventeen. Seven minus one is six." Or if it is 5:15 she will say, "It's five fifteen. Five times one is five." She really literally does this every single time she looks at the clock.

So we watched Lord of the Rings (all 3 movies) with Zac and Emily a few months ago. They had never seen the movies. Well now they are obsessed. And they have Aubrey hooked on them too. Emily can do a near perfect Smeagol/Gollum imitation. You should ask her to do it for you. She does the part where he is arguing with himself. She's good.

And Aubrey, she is now in love with Legolas. Which I think is cute since she is quite elfish herself.

We have this spider book that we have had since Zac was in Kindergarten. It shows real pictures of spiders. I think it is an awesome book. Spiders can be really beautiful. But for some reason it totally freaks Zac and Addy out. Like FREAKS them out. The book had been stuck on a shelf for years but someone got it out a few weeks ago and for several days it just kinda floated around the house. If it was in a room, Addy would freak out and refuse to go into that room. I finally had to throw it away because it was making me so crazy.

So I was making smoothies the other day. Addy asked if she could push the buttons on the blender. I said sure. Emily got all huffy and said that last time I made a smoothie she had asked if she could push the buttons and I told her no because she was already pushing buttons. I have absolutely no recollection of this.

We celebrated Aubrey's Birthday a few weeks ago. We had balloons. I hate balloons. They freak me out. I fully blame it on my Bishop when I was like 5 years old who told a story of a boy who choked on a deflated balloon. So I pop them as soon as I can. I let the kids play with them after the party since they were still floating. But the next day when they were on the ground, I popped them and threw them in the trash. OK, really I didn't pop them because that could potentially send little pieces of chokable matter flying all about the place. So I rip a little hole by the base of the balloon with my teeth and let the air out and then stuff the empty shell way down in the trash where the kids can't see it. Well, I did this to the balloons from the party. Addy realized her balloon was missing. One of her older siblings, who is on to me and my balloon popping ways, told her that I had probably popped it and thrown it in the trash. Even though I tried to deny it, she wasn't buyin' it. Especially because her siblings were backing her up. So she says to me, "What would happen if you were a kid still and YOU had a balloon that you really liked and wanted to play with and what if I took your YOUR balloon and I popped it? How would you feel???" She paused to let me think it over, then continued, "Well, THAT'S how I feel!" About 10 minutes later she came back with her hands on her hips and said, "I'm seriously mad at you!" That's fine with me. One of these days she will thank me for all the times I saved her from choking on a balloon.

Zac. The kid has now outgrown 3 (T-H-R-E-E) sets of church clothes in the last year. I'm serious. I bought him a new white shirt and black dress pants right before we went out of town in November for Thanksgiving, and they don't fit him now. I think I am going to start some type of "Church Clothing Exchange For Teenage Boys" in our ward. It's crazy.

The other night we were watching American Idol. One of the songs that a contestant was singing has been sung by President Obama at some something or other. So they showed a clip of him singing it. Addy said, "DID YOU SEE THAT!?! The United States Government was singing that song!" She thought it was so funny.

So it's like this. My dishwasher is a piece of poo. We have lived in this house for 3 1/2 years (it is brand new to the house) and I have already had to have someone come out and replace the motor once. Thankfully it was still under warranty. Well, it stopped working again. Last summer. For real. We have been washing dishes by hand since. last. summer. Well, it's more like we have been letting dishes pile up on the counter until there is no more room, then we wash them, since last summer. Finally last week I had had enough. ENOUGH. I called a repairman out to fix it. I wasn't too awfully impressed with him.

First of all he told me that he couldn't determine what was wrong with the dishwasher. That it could either be the control panel or the motor. He said that they don't make this type of dishwasher where you can take apart the motor to see if it is bad, you just have to replace it. But it could be that we replace that and find out that it wasn't the motor, it was the control board and then we would have to replace that too. And for what it would cost to do both of those, we would be better off buying a new dishwasher. Then he told me that my garbage disposal has a crack and needs to be replaced. He said that for a smaller horse power disposal than what I have now, it would cost $350 to replace. (Let me just say again - This house is 3 1/2 years old! We have a dishwasher that has broken down twice, a disposal that is cracked, and a doorbell that we have replaced once already when it almost burned the house down and now the new one is not working. Can we not make anything to last nowadays???)(For reals!)

So I begrudgingly scheduled him to come two days later to replace the disposal. I told him I would have to think on the dishwasher. Since the dishwasher has been broken, I have had this hankerin' to take it apart and see if I could solve the problem myself. But I had no idea how to do it or if I would electrocute myself or what. So I haven't. Well, my mom was over for dinner that night and she said she had just watched a video on pintrest of a girl who took her dishwasher apart and fixed it when someone had told her she would have to get a new one. And I thought, "By golly! If some chick on the internet can take her dishwasher apart and fix it, so can I!" So I did! With the help of a five year old.

We took it apart, cleaned the motor (which I've heard isn't made to be taken apart) and all the other pieces. Amazingly we were able to put it all back together and didn't have any screws left over. (Next time I will take a picture of each layer as I take it apart). And it works! It makes a horrible noise and it leaks a little, but it works! I still don't use it because of the noise and the leakage, but I know now that it is NOT the control panel, it is the motor. I googled the brand of dishwasher and motor problems and found out that I can buy a new motor for about $70. And I can probably install it myself, seeing as how I took the other one apart.

I also got up under the sink and looked at the garbage disposal and saw that there were only 2 screws holding the thing up there. I was feelin' so handy I thought, By HECK! I can probably fix that there disposal myself. So I googled again and found that the type of disposal he was going to give me retails at Home Depot for $90. And I watched a video on Youtube of a guy replacing a disposal and it took him all of 5 minutes to remove the old and install the new. SAY WHA??? Yes, apparently this appliance repair man was charging me $250 for 5 minutes of labor.

So I called him up the next morning to cancel my appointment to fix the disposal. I was nice and just said we had changed our minds. What I really wanted to say was, "MY 5 YEAR OLD AND I TOOK THE DISHWASHER APART AND FIXED IT AND SINCE THAT WAS SOMETHING YOU COULDN'T HANDLE, I DON'T WANT YOU TOUCHIN' MY DANG GARBAGE DISPOSAL! THE 5 YEAR OLD AND I WILL HANDLE THAT AS WELL! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!"

Please Pass The Blogger Ketchup - January 2012

On January 30th the circus came to town. We had so much fun last year when we went that we decided to go again!

My dear friend April was there. I went over to have a little chat with her. She was sitting with her daughter and they were in between this older couple on one side and some other lady on the other. When I came up it looked to me like they were all together and I thought maybe they were her in-laws. So I asked her and she said no she wasn't with them. But then she changed her story to say that the guy next to her was her boyfriend and they were on a date. April, I knew you were hiding something! I am glad you finally came clean and confessed. Here she is with her are around him.

And then he said, "DAGNABIT APRIL!!! I TOLD YOU NO MORE PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION!!! ESPECIALLY WHEN MY WIFE IS SITTING RIGHT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF ME!"

If you're bored and need to kill more time, you can check out all my other Ketchup posts by clicking

HERE.

Please Pass The Blogger Ketchup - February 2012

So way back when, I made an attempt to catch up on all my blogging I had missed last year. Well, I didn't do a very good job. So here is my new attempt to catch up. One Saturday Emily was at a Birthday party that lasted 26 hours. I'm not kidding. I had the opportunity to go to a Women's Conference and hear TC Christensen speak. It was fabulous. I came home to the above sight. I won't tell you what game they were playing because then you would judge me, and we can't have that now can we?

My Great Uncle Ronald passed away and my Grandmother came from Dallas for the funeral. She was here for about 10 days at the beginning of February. We enjoyed her visit. The day before she left we had her and my mom and Lauren over for dinner. Since Valentines day was only two days away we had a little valentine celebration too, as you can see by the cupcakes pictured above. Then we played a little game I like to call, "How many different pictures can we take with one person". This is demonstrated below:

I made that game up right after my father passed away. Less than a month before he passed away our whole family had been together for Christmas (minus Sam who was in Mexico on a mission) and we don't have one picture of him with his grandkids or all of us girls with him or anything. Pretty much sucks. So now I make it my mission to never let a photo op moment pass by without taking full advantage of it.

Aubrey had to make a Complex Machine for the 3rd Grade Complex Machine Fair. She made a balloon popping machine.

Emily helped with balloon characterization

Getting ready for the big bang

YAY! It worked!

At the fair

Addy and I were doing a little shopping one day and she got all dressed up in the store said "Here mom, take my picture!"

Addy dressed Steve up one day after church.

I swear the kids are never in school. We have so many days off it is pretty ridiculous if you ask me. On one of their many four day weekends that they have had so far this year, I let Aubrey have a party with some of her crazy friends.

You remember our big wind storm? It blew our fireplace cap off. So we got a new one. Finally! We had an ugly green tarp covering it for months. This cap won't be going anywhere anytime soon. Although I'm now afraid if we have an earthquake it is going to fall into the house and crush us all. It was a pretty major event to install it. I wanted to ask to ride in the cap while it was being hoisted up, but I was pretty sure they would say no.

Almost there

TA DA!

And that about does it for February folks! Stay tuned for January....

Allyson's Chinese Sweatshop That Cranked Out 200 Meals In One Day

On Thursday my mom and I drove to Brigham City to go to a class Chef Tess was teaching about her 52 week meal in a jar plan. She uses freeze dried food and puts it in canning jars and adds all the spices and ingredients you need to make a meal. When you are ready to eat it you just add water and cook for about 20 minutes and eat. We decided we wanted to do it so we gathered all the supplies Thursday and Friday. We enlisted our dear friend Carla to do it with us. And since Sam and Teresa came down from Idaho for a visit, well, we enlisted them too! We were like, oh yeah, it will just take a few hours on Saturday for all of us to put the meals together. HA! More like a few 12 hours.

I did get a little sweatshopish on them. My mom and I have two totally opposite ways of doing things and I had to put my foot down when she just wanted to jump in and start throwing stuff in the bags all willy-nilly like. (we decided to put our meals in mylar bags instead of jars) I insisted on some organization. My mom sent Emily to turn on some music and I nixed that idea. So yes, my mom did say something about my sweatshop overlord ways. A few times. Oh well, it got the job done. Eventually. We were all dead tired when we finally finished up the last of the clean up at 9 pm that night, after starting at 9 am. I can't tell you how excited we were when we realized we had to set the clocks up one hour.

We had an assembly line where we each had our ingredient for each recipe and we put the right amount in the bag and passed it down to the next person.

Here's a picture of my mom writing on the bags. This is what I know she is thinking:


-I can't believe Allyson is making me divide my meals in half instead of putting enough food to feed 6 people in a bag when it is just me and Lauren at home to eat it.... (FYI: She did call me today and tell me that she and Lauren ate one of their 1/2 meals last night and there was plenty left over and she was glad she only did half meals.)(mmmhhhmmmm....)

-I can't believe Allyson is making me put my meals in these practical mylar bags when the jars would be so much cuter on my shelves.

-This would be so much better if we could turn the music back on. Dang overlord. Who does she think she is?

About 6 hours into the whole long process Lauren had pretty much had it.

We borrowed the mylar bag sealer from our church dry pack cannery. Sam was in charge of sealing the bags. Addy was in charge of bag transport.

Our meals that we ended up with. I have 40 complete meals (just add water) to feed my family. Carla and my mom (since they have less people eating at their house and since my mom has a bossy daughter who thinks she is in charge of everything and everybody) went home with 80, yes EIGHT-EEE meals each! Each! My mom sent half of her meals home with Sam and Teresa so she has 40 and they have 40. Pretty good haul for a days work, I'd say. The meals packaged the way they are will last 4-5 years (Yes I know mother, they would last 5-7 in the jars. That can break in an earthquake. Or in a kitchen with 200 glass jars and kids running around. And that are hard to transport.) I plan on throwing a few in our 72 hour kits.

We did take a short break in the early evening. Emily went to a Birthday party. Sam and Teresa and Lauren took Zac, Aubrey and Addy to see The Lorax. I worked on stuff I had to do for church and my poor sweet dear mother finished the meals and started the clean up. Then we grilled hamburgers and did a little Kinect Zumba. I have a picture of Zac and me doing Zumba but that is a picture that I will not be posting. So you will have to make due with this one of Sam and Teresa.

Never A Dull Moment - Bread Interrupted

Oh the drama of living on a dead end street in the middle of nowhere. There truly never is a dull moment....

I had just put my apron on and was standing at my kitchen counter to start making the bread we are having with our soup for dinner. That's when I had to stop the bread making and call the police (for the second time in three days)(they are on my speed dial, thank you very much). Then I had to go find my binoculars. Then I had to go upstairs to get a better view. Then I had to sit for like 20 minutes looking out the window with my binoculars to see what was going to happen.

Nothing real exciting happened. Now the bread isn't going to have time to rise and be ready to have dinner at the time I wanted it. Dang dead end street...

I LOVE IT!

Here is a picture of me with some of my fellow hood mommas/gang members. Yes. We have our own gang. And gang sign. And initiation. That's how awesome we are. And we are besties with the cops in our town, because we talk to them on such a regular basis.

This was my first time in a police car and we were just driving down to the end of the street to show the police officer some "items" that we had found. We all three got in the back seat and it was pretty darn claustrophobic back there. I was handling it OK until the officer said, "Does it freak you out to know that now that you closed that door, you can't open it?" Ohhhhh yes. Yes it does. Thankfully Lori was next to me and offered me her hand to hold and had me look into her eyes and take deep breaths. That's why I got upgraded to the front seat. It was awesome.

Double A's Par-tAy

As you read in my last post, Aubrey (who has the most awesome birth date of 03/03/03), turned 9 years old on Saturday. Her friend Maddie had a birthday earlier in the week and had her party at a fun trampoline park on Saturday, so Aubrey was able to spend the day of her Birthday with her friend Maddie having fun. She came home that evening and we had a party for her with our family and my mom and sister Lauren and 3 of Aubrey's friends (I decided that Birthday's in our house this year are going to be low key).

The girls played Fruit Ninja on the Kinect
And they played Just Dance 3

And ate pizza and root beer floats

And opened presents

And sang Happy Birthday and ate cupcakes and tried in vain to blow out the trick candles

Happy Birthday Silly Girl