Now Playing **Emma-the dancer**

Emma had her Christmas Showcase the day after her birthday. It was soo fun to watch her perform. She was a little nervous though. When we were going to the dress rehearsal Saturday afternoon she asked if she could quit dance. I was thought to myself...are you kidding me? I asked her multiple times before we signed up if she really wanted to do dance again. She assured me she did, so imagine my surprise when right before her performance she wanted to quit. Luckily I had the sense not to bite her head off and instead asked if maybe she was just a little bit nervous. She said she was. Her words, "I'm uncomfortable with the dance because we struggle with the lines". I assured her that she was going to be just fine and LOVE the performance. Guess who was right?

Doesn't she just have the cutest little hip shake? (Yes, that is Emma and her little friend as the center of attention in the ending pose. I thought that was pretty funny.)

This year she was in two classes. (Luckily, we get to trade with the studio owners.)

These videos aren't the best quality after being uploaded...but hopefully you can spot her!

She was born to be on Stage...She loved every second!

Uh Oh...busted leg Meg

The picture says it all. Poor little thing broke her leg while trying to reach the light switch from her crib (she likes to turn it on and off). She usually is quite adept at defying gravity, but not this particular Sunday...almost two weeks until Christmas, great timing!

She broke her leg on the 13th, and earned the honor of having the first broken bone in our family. (I know some will be thinking, "surely Isaac has already broken a bone before". I know it is hard to believe but he hasn't yet. ) I guess it is common procedure to splint the broken bone for awhile before you actually put a cast on. The above picture is her with her temporary splint. on the 18th she got a real cast. Thanks to our wonderful doctor for making her look like our little Christmas Elf!

She has gotten very good at getting around with her cast and just recently started acutally walking with it. Before that crawling was her preferred method of travel and she has a well worn cast to prove it.

Time to dust of the old blog....

So I have been in a non-posting phase for most of this year with out really a good reason. I have decided to jump back on the horse. I am not even going to think about all the posting that would be involved with trying to catch up. So I will just start now and try to keep on top of my on going struggle to keep a scrapbook and journal.

This is our family Christmas card picture that was taken by a good friend.

A Very Happy Un-Birthday...

We celebrated Emma's 1/2 birthday this year. Her real birthday falls too close to Christmas and it is always a crazy time of year. So I thought we would have one in the summer instead. The original idea was to do something outdoorsy that would be difficult to do in December...but Emma had other ideas. She wanted to do crafts, most of the activities were done indoors...oh well.

She decided on a polka dot theme...I suggested a few ideas and she really like the polka dot idea. These are the invitations, (two color choices).

We tried to keep the food, decor and activities in harmony with the polka dot theme.

Our first activity was to decorate bags with circle shaped sponges and paint. Here is how Emma's Bag turned out.

After that we made "Button Baubles" for the Girls hair. You can see the buttons all over the table. I sewed on the base button and let the girls pick which ones they wanted and build their own. Emma is modeling the ones she made. I think they turned out pretty well.

After that we made some glass pebble magnets

We also played "Don't eat Pete", had Polka dot snacks, and then painted all their nails with nail polish that changes color in the sun. We had cake and ice cream, opened presents and then let them jump on the trampoline and admire their nails while they changed colors.

I love that a few of the girls wore their polka dot dresses. Emma's dress has polka dots too they are just very tiny. She loved it and had great time!

Happy 1/2 Birthday Emma!

Sushi

One of our friends here was willing to teach us how to make sushi, so we decided to make the most of it and had a few families from our ward over.

The sushi was VERY good, but in order to make it taste really good you have to have all sorts of specialized ingredients...the most important lesson I learned was just to get sushi at a restaurant or have Danette make it.

Here are some of the preparations that took place before we actually began to roll the sushi:

Cutting very thin pieces of tuna, salmon, avocado and cucumber. You have to fan the rice to get it to the perfect level of stickiness and while fanning pour in a heated mixture of rice vinegar, sugar, and Hawaiian Salt; this also adds to the stickiness. There were other things that needed to be prepared as well as illustrated by the pictures, (not to mention the stuff that Danette prepared at home):

Here is the step by step process of actually rolling the sushi.

Now it was Eric's turn to try it out....

Not quite up to par with Danette, but still pretty good.

It was fun and Danette was so nice to teach a houseful of people to make sushi!

Livin' the good life...for 11 years!

I can hardly believe that it has been 11 years since I married my best friend. Life couldn't be any better and I have felt like that for the past 11 years. Eric is appreciative, complimentary, affectionate, loyal, and a million other things that make him the perfect man for me. I love you like crazy.

Par for the course with Eric...he planned us a little romantic get-a-way. It was sooo perfect. We left on Thursday after Eric got done with work and made it to the temple for the 8:00pm session. Then we headed a little further north to our Bed and Breakfast. It was a very nice place and the owners did a fantastic job. We ate a yummy breakfast and then headed out to see the tulips.

It was just sooo much fun and so fantastic to be with Eric for the weekend!

On our way home we stopped by Pikes Place Market to pick some fresh tuna for a little a sushi rolling shin-dig we were having on Sunday...

Then it was home again. We had a 3:00 showing of "Walking with the Dinosaurs" to go to with the older kids.

What a weekend with the love of my life!

Ski Season 2009

Eric was able to get quite a bit of skiing in this season. There were some Friday ski trips with Tyler, taking Gabe out of school for a day, and a couple more Saturday trips with the kids. I even decided to try it out (I haven't been skiing since before we were married).

Eric-- rippin' it up.

Gabe and Eric skipping out on school and work. Way to set your priorities!

I thought I was going to be a good sport but I enjoyed it so much that we went up again 2 weeks later and I purchased my own season pass! Crazy.

1st day ever for some, 1st day in a looong time for others

Jan. 17th, 2009

Eric was really excited this year to start up skiing again after a long hiatus. He bought himself some gear and hit the slopes with some friends. I think he had been skiing once in our almost 11 years of marriage. He loved it and went a ton this season.

Eric decided that ski school would be the best way to get the kids good at skiing.

They loved it...especially the hot chocolate the ski school provided.

Eric really wants the kids to love skiing so for the first trip out he was shooting for a non miserable experience...he just wants them to WANT to try it again.

Using that criteria the ski trip was a smashing success.

Climbing Mt Hood

Eric hiked Mt Hood on Friday night/Saturday morning with Evan, Ryan (friends from high school) and Evan's uncle Steve.

They started at midnight so the snow is harder and there are less people. Here they are after putting on crampons.

Sunrise.


This is halfway up the "hogsback", you can see steam on the right from the fumaroles and the parking lot on the far left of Timberline ski resort where they started.


Posing at the top looking northward. Mt St. Helens is to the left of Eric, Rainier nearest his axe and Mt Adams to the right.


Going back down. There was a couple feet of new powder so it was slow going, especially up. Overall a fantastic climb with perfect weather.

Meg's walking

On Easter Sunday Meg decided it was time to try out her legs. She has been pulling her self up for a long time and she has even been letting go and just standing there for a while but would only walk when she was supported by something. But no longer...

I know this clip doesn't show too much. Those were some of her very first steps! Way to show off for Grandma and Grandpa. She has taken about 5 or 6 steps together, so when I say "Meg's Walking" that doesn't mean all over, it means in short little bursts with lots of encouragement. She still prefers crawling, but it is an exciting milestone.

Easter Weekend

We were so lucky this year to have my Mom and Dad come and stay with us over Easter. They arrived in just before the kids got home from school and as soon as they got home we colored easter eggs.

We got a baby sitter for that evening and we took them out for a night on the town. We went out to eat at a nice place and went to see "The Curious Savage". We had a great time and really enjoyed the show. (I highly recommend seeing it...it is playing the next two weekends!)

Saturday was filled with more fun. The Easter bunny visited our house Friday night so the kids were up really early to find their baskets. Then we made a fun breakfast with "Easter egg" pancakes (basically just putting food coloring in the batter and pouring it in the shape of an egg--notice we didn't make Easter bunny pancakes!)

At 9am went to an Easter egg hunt at a friends house. It was so fun to see Elijah enjoying the egg hunt.

After the Easter egg hunt, we headed home to do some planting...

After most of the planting was done we headed off to Gabe and Isaac's last soccer game of the season...YIPPEE! They played really well and Grandma was a great cheerleader! It was really handy that the soccer Games were both at 1 pm and the fields were right by each other. We basically had to turn around to see the other field. It worked out very nicely, if only all our soccer games were that well coordinated.

After that we went to the Arbor Festival at the Arboretum. There was only a 1/2 hour left by the time we got there, but it was nice to see it. That was our first trip to the arboretum.

We had dinner at home and played Ticket to Ride with the kids, they loved it.

Sunday morning my kids got to wear their new Sunday Easter outfits, probably more exciting for me than for them.

We weren't quite able to get the perfect group shot...

After church we did another Easter egg hunt that Grandma and Grandpa brought. More fun and more candy!