11 and a half months

If anyone even still reads this blog- I'm sorry- I'm really bad at blogging. But alas- I have PICTURES. Doesn't everyone know that they hardly read what you write, it's the pictures people come to look at? :)
I loved this picture, because Emma has a salt water taffy in her mouth, and all that you could see hanging out was one of the little tail ends.
A basketball fan like her daddy!


Just a beautiful little girl, who is about to turn 1! CRAZY! I'm trying to remember some things to share about her, oh yeah she loves to balance by herself. She has taken many steps, the most we've counted in a row is 12. She as you can tell by the pictures is in the phase of putting absolutely everything in her mouth- so we've had to keep an eye on her. She now has all four front teeth in. She especially loves emptying containers- like the laundry basket or the utensil holder in the dishwasher or any drawer. She has become quite the climber. She has started waving again. I think that's the most adorable little thing seeing that wrist flap up and down. She gives high fives. Oh but, of course only to people she's comfortable with. Most of all- she loves ELECTRONICS- phones, cameras, the laptop, you name it- she'd probably love to play with it as long as it lights up and does something when she presses buttons. She loves her daddy, especially when he comes home from a long day at school and she can hear him coming up the stairs- she gets really excited. Anyway, in just under 2 weeks we'll have a 1 year old and I can't believe it. Believe me we'll take lots of pictures and throw a fun birthday party for her and post all about it. Again- sorry for the long lapse in posts!

Amazing Song

So this is my cousin Karli, she's 16 and been singing all her life. This is a song she wrote and her performing it, everyone should watch it. She's so good!

We have a little walker

I haven't been able to get any of them on video, but today Emma has taken several sets of steps! YAY! I'm so excited for her, so much opens up to her now! What a great Valentine's gift! YAY EMMA!

10 Months (Picture Overload)

I know I'm including too many pictures, but I wanted to demonstrate Emma's constant mobility- plus a few cute ones interspersed!









Okay okay, I know I've been really bad about blogging. So if anyone actually still follows this blog, I'm sorry. Emma's 9 month check up went really well. She's just over 28 inches tall, putting her in the 70th percentile, her weight is at 18 pounds 15 ounces- dropping her to the 40th percentile for weight and her head was in the 45th percentile. So basically I've been trying to feed her a lot. I love chubby babies- because they run in my family, but Emma was never very chubby, and now that she's down to the 40th percentile- I'm trying to over feed her! We want to get that weight back up! On a more fun note- she's totally mobile- she prefers her feet, but she crawls to anything she can pull herself up on, and then walks around. I think we need to get her one of those push toys, cause the other day we found her pushing a kitchen chair (see picture with purple shirt) around so she could walk where there wasn't any furniture for her to hold herself up on. We love our little Emma, she likes to wave, splash, and turn pages of books. Her favorite toys are the piano, her maracas, and basically anything she can use to make noise. She loves knocking down anything we build out of cups or blocks. She's fed up with the carseat- I'm pretty sure it's because she has to face backwards, because she always turns her body to the side so she can watch me drive. So we're probably going to move her up to a forward facing as soon as she turns 20 pounds (when it's legal). I'm trying to think . . . I don't know I just can't believe we have a 10 month old. And that a year ago she was in my tummy, and we didn't even know her. And how we're so in love with her now! Oh also- everyone must see fish face picture- we LOVE this!

I guess to update you on James and I. James is in his last semester of his masters program. He'll be done the beginning of May! YAY! Which means right now we're in the midst of the job search. We're trying to stay positive despite the limited jobs right now. But, sometimes it can be easy to get down. I'm staying home with Emma, which can be quite the task. Anything I do takes at least twice as long now, and she's not much of a nap taker, so there isn't much time for other things. We're pretty sure we're moving this summer, we're just not sure where- so Emma's room has become my packing room. I'm going through basically everything- and selling what we can do without. Speaking of which- my services are available if anyone wants me to sell something for them on ebay. I'll only charge a small percentage. Or if you're looking to buy something more expensive, but don't have the time to wait for a better deal- I think I have buying things cheaper on ebay down to an art form. But, that has been a big part of my life lately- listing and selling on ebay- I've made a fairly good amount of money and will probably continue to do so for another few months. other than that. We're just trying to keep up with Emma! I'll try and post pics

$20 Amazon Gift Card for $10

Okay, I have really loved all of the deals that have been coming out, my favorite was nordstrom 50 dollar gift card for 25 dollars, but that's over. And now . . . you can buy a 20 amazon gift card for 10 dollars.

https://livingsocial.com/deals/21336?ref=conf-jp&rpi=4254423

I love Amazon, I buy lots of used books and movies from them for great deals. So I couldn't pass this up, also I think there are a lot of you that would also appreciate the great deal as well. So I hope this helps someone out there!

9 month old Emma

Well I made this onesie before Emma was born, since I knew we were planning on going to Disney World- these pants I found at a second hand store for a dollar. And ta da . . . a cute minnie mouse outfit. I liked this a lot better than buying Emma a souvenir- since this hardly costed anything- and was a lot cuter than anything they had in the stores!
I love this picture, I think my little girl is so adorable!

She's not so little anymore though, she pulls herself up on basically anything she can reach. And she likes to free stand now. She hasn't really tried taking steps though. But, she walks along edges of furniture, and has begun to start to whine until we put her down and grab her hands so she can walk. Quite the little independent girl she is. Oh another bit of news- Emma got her first tooth- actually on New Years eve.

We haven't gone to her 9 month appointment yet, that's actually scheduled for the beginning of this next week. So hopefully I'll be posting her stats soon!

Our little girl, we love her so much. We left her with my mom and sister Maddie to go out to lunch for our 3rd anniversary- and I worried the whole time. Not that I don't think my mom will take good care of her- of course I know she will. But, I don't agree with the whole forcing your child to do something they don't want to do- when it comes to going to other people. I don't think I'll be doing that anytime again soon. She may make it harder to eat when I hold her and make our trips out shorter, but I love having our little girl around.


Anyway, I couldn't fit everything into one post- so our Christmas break is down in the next one!

A much needed update

Well to say in the least this will be a longer blog- or at least one with a lot of pictures. Which I'm sad to say I used to take more of in general, now about 99 percent of the pictures of Emma- which I'm glad to say I have, but I wish I took more of other things, 'cause my family went on a really fun vacation, but I scarcely have any pictures to show for it. But, here are some of the ones I do have.


Gosh, my family sure has changed a lot since our last professional picture. I think that must've been at my wedding. Curt is now almost as tall as Chris- the girls are all about as tall as me. Oh yeah . . . and of course we have EMMA!
This is something we've done in my family. I have a picture of my dad doing this with Madelynne and Carter. We tried to get James to do it, but those pictures didn't turn out as well. And of course our precious Emma.
Since we were leaving for Florida on Christmas, we celebrated Christmas the day before- and well I don't have any pictures- but Emma got this doll- which she loves. Can you tell?Then our first day we went to Universal Studios- the island of adventure. Mainly for the Harry Potter park.

Here we were waiting in line to get into the ride that goes all through the castle. It wasn't a life size castle, but it was still very large.
As you can probably tell, it was really cold. But, well worth it, we beat the crowds, the Harry Potter section of the park reached it's limits by about 9 in the morning, and there was a two hour wait just to get into that section of the park.

But, I really did think the castle was cool. There were so many awesome things that they can do now. Like they had the paintings moving- but still looking like paintings. The sorting hat spoke and moved. The candlesticks from the ceiling, which weren't real- moved up and down. They had the triwizard cup- as evidenced from Curt trying to snatch it. Dumbledore's pensieve.
I took a lot more pictures than I'm posting so as not to overwhelm those of you who actually take the time to look through this. It was really quite authentic, other than I'm sure the castle is a lot bigger than what we saw. But, they had Hagrid's hut, the whomping willow, and the Weasley's car. They really went all out in designing the castle grounds- which made it all the more fun.
Oh yeah, and how can you forget Hogsmeade? Oh my goodness, that was amazing- all of the shops and stores you read about in the books were there. Some of our favorites were The Three Broomsticks, Zonko's- and the sweet shop. Everyone recommended getting frozen butterbeer, but as you can tell we were definitely not wanting to put anything that was frozen in our mouths. So we just got regular butterbeer. But, it was so good! A bunch of us got wands- which there was a huge line going into Olivander's shop- like a 2 hour long line- so we bought some at a stand. Oh as well as some scarves. Then we all got chocolate frogs, bertie bott's every flavour beans, and some other goodies. I think they really captured the essence of the world of Harry Potter. My family- who aren't big readers of the book, over all the parks said they wished they could spend more time there. Because it really was neat- and felt almost reminiscent- of the memories from the movies. It was so much fun! Oh yeah, and they had pumpkin juice too- we bought some, but it's in our fridge.



We went to all of the parks at Disney World except for Typhoon Lagoon because it was closed for construction. I still think the animal kingdom was our favorite because it had the best rides. Oh and also had the safari- we saw tons of animals and they were so close- elephants, giraffes, zebras, lions, hippos, rhinos-black and white, and took pictures of all of those- but those aren't worth the time it takes to post them :) Here we are on the safari. . .
Then we went to Disney's Hollywood Studios- which we also loved because it had the Rock'n' Rollercoaster and the Hollywood tower of terror, plus lots of shows. We got to see Beauty and the Beast there- it was really good too.

But, Emma's favorite park was by far Blizzard Beach, it warmed up, and we decided to go to the one water park that was open. And she LOVED IT! I think it probably reminded her of a really big bath tub, since she always takes baths with me and the water was pretty warm. Cause she kept splashing around in it. That was a fun park to go to, because no one was really there- so we kept going down slide after slide- with no one to really wait for.