Some new news

Well I can't believe that Emma is 2 years old. We went to her doctors appointment and her stats were pretty surprising- we have a little petite girl, she was in the 5th percentile for weight and 50th for height. She only weighed 22 pounds- so I'm determined to help plump her up. But celebrating her 2nd birthday was so much more fun than her first. She loved opening her presents!



Easter was also a lot of fun, after she opened her shopping cart, she wanted to take that in the backyard to collect the eggs.

And there she goes after the eggs . . . there is something precious about the excitement in this picture.

Emma was very particular about which eggs she would pick up, the ones that had dollar bills in them- she definitely didn't want. And she started out only picking up certain colors of eggs. That slowly changed when she realized that there were treats in all of the eggs.

But Emma's favorite treats were the colored fishy crackers! As you can tell she stuffed her face :)


It just feels weird to think that I have a little two year old. But, I guess even weirder than that is to think that in September I'll have 2 children.... That's right, we're pregnant! I'm 16 weeks along, we wanted to wait to announce it since we'd had a couple of miscarriages and didn't want to announce that we were and then have to retract what we'd said. But, we're so excited that we have another little baby joining our family in September. My due date is September 28th- Emma was almost 2 weeks early, but I'm trying not to plan on this baby being early in case that doesn't happen. But so far it has been a great pregnancy. I haven't thrown up once, and morning sickness was not even close to as intense as it was with Emma. And I'm at the point where I'm almost completely over it. Yay! We are so excited. We've already felt the baby moving around and it's starting to seem more real as my stomach is poking out a little. Emma is pretty excited too and knows where mommy's baby is. In a few weeks we'll be finding out the gender, so does anyone have any guesses?

February Update

Well February has been pretty fun, we went to a couple of the BYU basketball games- and got AWESOME seats, thanks to Jaren! And since we were in the front row, Emma and Halle got great seats too!

It is so fun to watch and cheer on the cougars especially when these little girls cooperate and cheer right along beside us :)


We drove down to Arizona one weekend because one of James' best friends (Nate) got married! Yay! He's the one in the middle. These 3 have been best friends for years, their history goes way back to elementary school.

And now, we're all married, although it was a long time coming....

Oh and the last picture I just have to share because I thought it was hilarious. Emma got this tent for Christmas, and she brings James into it to read her books at night. I love it, because it's the perfect size for her, but James clearly doesn't fit. Anyway- that's a little bit of our February.

My December Catch Up

Our little Emma is just adorable, I took this picture before church one Sunday, and I love it. She really is the cutest little girl.

We went up and saw Santa- but knew Emma wouldn't like him, so didn't force her to sit on his lap.

But Christmas was SO fun this year. It was way more exciting to watch Emma enjoying Christmas, and opening her presents than I think any other Christmas has ever been. I'm excited for her birthday in a couple of months!







Then Grandkids Retreat was partially at Disneyland. And many of you know- I love Disney. I know the strategy of when to go and rush to get the fast passes for the rides whose lines always are the longest. Because I had my list of rides that I always wanted to go on. But it was different this time . . . it was a lot more fun to watch Emma's excitement over seeing Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and the other characters- and seeing signs with them all over. And taking her on little kid rides- which I was always so impatient to go on.

Christmas was so fun, we ended up getting Emma a little laptop, a pop-up tent, some clothes, a couple of books, a mickey mouse clubhouse sticker book, and it was so fun!

Feeling a bit crafty

Well, one of the reasons I have taken a little hiatus is that I have become so interested in this website- pinterest- and I've found myself becoming more and more crafty. I've done a few things that I've found on it already. Like for instance- I finally found a way to organize Emma's hair bows.

Or making these hurricanes.
I also made a cupcake platter, and some curtains- but I haven't found where I packed the platter, and we haven't put up curtain rods yet- but their white and navy striped. I also made a bunch of Christmas glitter ball ornaments- which you'll probably see when I post our Christmas pictures. I also made these season blocks, they rotate to say spring, summer, and autumn too.

Oh and I added a bunch of pages to the quiet book I've been making Emma. . .

We also recently heard a story in our ward of a couple who the mother passed away leaving young children. Sad- I know, but it got me thinking about how I would still want to be a part of my children's lives so I started making a cd- which has taken quite a bit of time- mostly in figuring out how to record the songs- and then record songs from playing on the piano. It's mostly children's songs that I sing Emma, but then I decided to add pieces that I like to play on the piano. Oh and last but not least- I've been working on Emma's big Christmas present, that I'd been working on for a while and was putting on the finishing touches.



She has a couple of lights on the ceiling above the sink area, and a phone and chalkboard on the right side and an apron that hangs on the left side. It's not perfect, but I love it- I especially love the faux tile that I did for the counter top.

And I have many more projects on my to-do list- so I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep up the blog updates :)

November Catch Up

I had to go to Oregon in November, just before Thanksgiving- I had my crown break. Yikes! So we got to see my family a little bit, while my dad had his lab make another one.



For Thanksgiving my mom's extended family goes to Zion's National Park every other year, and so we got to see a lot of my cousins. It was so fun, this picture is of my cousin Landon and my sister Melissa holding Emma's hands while walking around the park. Emma loves my cousin Landon, who just left on his mission to Mexico.
While daddy went hiking up Angel's Landing, we took a shorter hike and found some squirrels that were extremely friendly. We were even a little worried about how close they were getting. But Emma loved them.We did more moving and one weekend when we stayed the night in Provo, we discovered Emma doing this- and we thought it was hilarious.

Catching Up

I know I haven't posted for such a long time. But, it has become such a hassle now to load the pictures and try to think up all of the exciting things that I should be sharing about our family and our life . . . but then it builds up and then I feel overwhelmed. So I think I'm just going to upload pictures and maybe write a caption to go with it. And I'll try to get an update on here later. But, here was our October ....

I just love Fall- Fall and Spring are my favorite seasons- I just wish Utah had them for longer than they do. . .


Emma was a kitty for Halloween. For those of you who don't know, Emma LOVES kitties!

She also loved helping carve our pumpkin.
Oh and this is fun news- for those of you who don't know, That BYU jersey that reads "Sweeney"- yeah that's James' little brother. He's redshirting this year, but we got to watch him play in pre-season games. That was fun! We look forward to 2 years from now when he'll be back from his mission and playing on the team!

Curt's Mission Farewell

Okay- so clearly this isn't a picture of Curt's farewell, but I'm trying to catch up on a number of things that I should blog about. This picture was taken at my cousin Claire's bridal shower, we kind of grew up in our group of four cousins. From left to right it's Claire, Shea, me, our second cousin Emily Groberg, and my cousin Rachel. All four of us cousins are married now! So fun!
At Curt's endowment. I'm glad I'm the oldest, I think it was so neat to go to Chris' and now Curt's. Curt is going to the Czech Prague mission- I don't know if I've mentioned that, he's in the MTC right now. Which was also interesting because my parents had me pick him up at the airport and drop him off at the MTC- it is really so different now, but so good! It significantly diminished the number of bawling mothers and changed the tone of saying goodbye from a sad to more of a joyful occasion. It was clearly inspired that they changed the drop off. James wasn't able to come since he got a job. I don't know if I've mentioned that, so our vacation pictures will now be pretty limited since we are now reduced to a certain number of days, but that's fine with us- we're just so grateful to have a job and be making money now!
Oh yeah, while I was in Oregon for his farewell, we went boating at our favorite Detroit Lake. This was a favorite pastime of mine when I grew up, we took the boat up almost every weekend. Well we usually kept our boat up there, so it wasn't as much of a hassle to unload and then load back up. But it was so fun to be there with my family all together for one last time for 2 years. It was so fun- the boys went waterskiing, and we pulled out the banana boat and went for a ride. Emma loved it! She would wave at the other boats we passed on the water, it was so cute!

It was a big success! We loved it!