New Yorkers

I still call my brother Spen and his family the "New Yorkers" even though they recently moved to Texas. They came to visit for a week and we had all sorts of adventures with their four darling, wildly fun children. Here is Emmie and her cousin Owen on a blow up toy at this crazy Kangaroo place Rachael took us to. Was it called the Kangaroo Zoo? I can't remember. It was a place where you can let kids run wild and they don't get hurt because everything there is some sort of a blow up animal, toy or slide. Pretty cool. I just love the way Em is admiring Obie.











Just ask my nephew Shem.....he could have lived at this place! (see videos below!)

















My wonderful sister-in-law Diana and her sweet twins, Owen and Hudson. It was hilarious to watch these twins dart off in opposite directions. It was hard to keep up with them. Just ask Diana what it is like to be on a trampoline with them by yourself and trying to somehow keep them both within arm's reach. Pretty tricky!

















Marissa has such a fun sense of humor. She keeps me laughing. One time she told me..."I just love to grow. When I keep getting bigger, I can do so many more things. I love growing!" She loves to pull crazy faces and amazing poses!
















It took forever to get all 6 grandchildren in a picture. You can barely see Shem's head poking out behind Marissa's, but he is there. Emmeline just loved having all these kids around. Charley of course is her little second mom making sure she has her binky and also that she isn't taking any of Charley's toys! So cute.
















Spenie Honna himself. He has Texan written all over that pose, doesn't he?
















Cute Diana. I just love her! I made them pose for these pictures so I could make a book for Emmie with all of the aunts/uncles/cousins and then start teaching her their names. So far she can't even say Mommy or Daddy!


















Owen having fun in Grannie Jyl's backyard. They were fascinated by the Beagle dog, Daisy.


















Hudson laughing at the dog. Sorry I don't like taking pictures of the dog!!



















Shemmers on the slide



Rach having fun with the kiddies too!

10 Months Old!

Here is our little sweetie. I have a feeling this blog will be a bit sentimental....kids tend to do that to us! Today Em is 10 months old. She came into our family as fast as she could. Jon says he got his 2 girls at the same time! What a little angel she is. How the time flies, I have no idea. All I know is that there isn't a day that has gone by where Emmeline hasn't gotten me to smile, laugh and wonder how I got so lucky. One thing she does lately that melts my heart is snuggle her little head into my shoulder and then quickly jerk her head up with a HUGE grin and look at me for a few seconds. Those moments remind me that the greatest gift our kids give us is their love. I'm sure if you are still reading all this mushy stuff it is because you love Emmeline, Jon and maybe even me too! Thanks for all YOUR help in making the last 10 months a wonderful, exciting time for us. We couldn't have done it alone!









Okay, enough of that mushy talk. Here is a little girl "mushing" some banana bread. Besides playing with the bread and getting it all over the floor, she actually does eat some. She is the noisiest eater I have ever heard. She REALLY enjoys her food!

Life On The Lake

We went to Lake Powell with my family and my Uncle's family a couple of weeks ago. It was the greatest vacation. I thought it would be more work having to deal with Emmeline at a new place, sand everywhere and too much sun. Let me tell you why it was such an amazing vacation....















First of all, my cute cousin Olivia (6 yrs old) was Emmeline's little buddy. Talk about constant entertainment for Emmie! Emmeline always had a smile or laugh on her face. It was great. It worked both ways too. Olivia LOVES dolls and was having the time of her life dressing up, putting bows on and playing games with a "Real Doll!"


















Cousin Charley and Olivia. It was so cute because Charlotte would call Oliva "ee aa"


















If you can believe it or not, the second thing that made life easy at Lake Powell was a beach ball. That thing entertained her from the moment she woke up. Actually, it was her first word too! Thanks to her friend Max for giving her this ball at his beach party. She LOVES it. After only having it for a few days, she learned to say "ba"

















She also understands the word "clap." One of the first time she got it was looking at this picture book I have of a little girl putting her hands together. Em was trying to figure it out by looking at the girl in the picture. It was way cute. Babies are so smart!



















It was a little difficult to get a picture of all three girls with their sunglasses ON. Charley wasn't too happy about it! The red glasses on Em are killer!

















Fishie, Fishie who wants a fishie........YEW!!! My brothers and husband like to "spear" catfish at Lake Powell. It was a huge feat when anyone actually caught one. They would spend a long time hanging off the side of the houseboat waiting for a fish to approach them. Oh man, I'll never understand the mind of a boy!

















Too many cute pictures of these girls. I swear they could be sisters.


















Em liked this little floatie device for pretty much this picture only! She started getting nervous being so close to the water and having her feet dangling into the "unknown" below. I don't blame her!

















So precious.


















Olivia was a little fireball and made us all laugh. She is really good at impersonating people. The voice she imitated so well on this trip was from the Disney movie Wall-E. She would come up and say "Wall-E" or "EeeeeVaaa" in the robotic voice so perfectly. It was great!

















Thanks to Rachael, Emmeline had her own little "Lake" on the beach. It was perfect for her. We even gave the girls baths in it at night.

















What a hunk! Here's my honey "surfing" behind the boat. It is pretty crazy how they can use the wake of the skiboat to produce a wave to surf on. Again, gotta be the mind of a boy who came up with this one! It was fun to watch him because he got really good and could stay out for a long time. This was the perfect week for Jon. So really, to sum it up, Lake Powell made life easier for me because I had babysitters all around me (thanks guys!), Em loved the water, she could nap in an air-conditioned houseboat, she slept a TON I think because she was so over-stimulated, and Jon and I had some great times on the boat, swimming, relaxing and taking in all the gorgeous surroundings. I just made sure we didn't get too much sun. I think all three of us came back whiter than when we left. I like it that way!

Emmeline can crawl!!!

Emmeline took her first "all four baby steps" today! She has been prepping for this for about two weeks. We were with her "GraMare" today and she started going after some animal crackers. It was the cutest thing ever. Emmie and I both couldn't believe it was really happening. I'm sure in a few days I will be wishing it hadn't happened when she gets into the toilet, garbadge, etc., but for now I can just enjoy it! The thing I love about her crawl is how deliberate she is about every step and how determined she is to do it right. She has never scooted or dragged her feet behind her. I think she wanted to wait until she could do the crawl thing right.....and she did! Go Emmeline!! Oh and notice the object I get her to crawl to. Probably not a good thing to get her comfortable around.....woops!


These are just a couple random pictures I have taken of Emmeline lately. She is way into books now and it is fun to watch her look at them by herself (when I mean way into books I guess I mostly mean chewing them and ripping them apart....but it's a start!)













She sleeps like her daddy does!















Okay, so I don't know why I posted this today but I was laughing way hard when I came across this video of Em. I think she was about 4 months when we took the video, but I could be way off. The past 10 months are a blur and now I look at my little angel and can't believe how much she has changed. Every minute has made me laugh, cry, pray and smile at this miracle in my life!!

Smirkey Smile

Em has this new thing....its called her overly excited fang smile. I have been wanting to get it on camera since it first developed a couple weeks ago. Here it is!! I seriously love it. It has been my favorite face she has made so far (even more than her newborn "poop" face which was pretty stinkin hilarious!----no pun inteded)













She got her top fang teeth first and it kills me when she does her vampire smile! If you look close you can barely see them poking down.

















I love this girl. She was being so good for the photo shoot that day!


















This is probably one of my favorite outfits I have put on her as well. Pink, pink, pink! I don't remember who gave it to me but THANK YOU!


















My baby has such a funny sense of humor (you can tell by the vampire smile). She is also very very busy. She keeps me on my toes all day and she is not even crawling yet....uh oh...I don't know what I'm in for! By the end of the day she is knackered (good thing because so am I). I find her in all sorts of positions that don't look even remotely comfortable. Either way she saws logs (literally) and I now get a full nights sleep. That is the greatest thing in my life right now---we all get sleep in our household! It wasn't easy getting to this point and so now that it is here I am appreciating ever moment of it in case it decides to leave again! Emmie is definitely the joy of my life (coupled with my sweet husband). We never thought life could get any better after we got married. Well, it certainly did and I would never ever change any part of it!

Twins

Here is Emmie's twin, Maggie. They were born 3 weeks apart, they both look exactly like their dads, they both have blue eyes and they even have matching summer dresses (not planned by the moms!) Charlie is Maggie's older brother and so very handsome!















However, Adair and I did plan to dress them on the same day for pictures.




















This was Em later that day on her bike! She looks pretty comfortable on it, eh?



















We went to Jon's cousin Sam's mission farewell. This is Aunt Kate and Emmeline. She LOVES her aunt Kate! Who wouldn't....she is a babe!


















I think Emmie is in love with this good looking young man. Too bad they are related. This is Carter Featherstone, Jon's cousin. I love the name Carter. We even call my Parker "Carter" as a nickname. I don't even know where that one started!

The Swing Again

I just had to post another swing video. I love the way Emmie kicks those little legs!