Oh the Joy to Have a Girl!

 I saw an idea for tying the hair with fabric and then letting it down in the morning and Emi is simply in heaven!

 I used an old shirt of Phil's and Emi thought I'd lost my mind when I began to cut it into strips. She started yelling, "Dad, Mom just cut your pajama shirt into pieces." So I handed it to her to show him and they all started laughing as it was now a half-shirt with holes.

 She slept in them all night and then...

 Her joy is evidenced in the mirror shot!

 Noah had to have a picture too. He wanted to see what he looked like too! ;)

 Then she decided she wanted pigtails. SOOOO CUTE!

I wish these weren't so blurry. I sure love you Emi! :) I must to do this with a sprained ankle!

Encore Elijah!

Every year John Gill has a performance (they are a performing arts school) and we are privileged to go and watch. It really is adorable and so much fun to watch. It never ceases to amaze me that they can get that many children to learn to sing and dance in unison. 

Oompa Loompas

 My personal favorites of the night were the costumes for the oompa loompas. So clever and funny.

The entire K-2 of John Gill

 And the most fun dances to watch and listen to the music were Golden Ticket (which just happened to be Elijah's class :)) and the Gummy Bear Song. Oh my goodness. That song never ceases to make me laugh and my kids start dancing!

There's Elijah on the bottom right and Ella Fraser right in the middle

After the Evening Performance

Elijah's favorite teacher (and ours), Mr. Thomas came to watch his former students and Elijah was so excited to see him. It's so nice to have people influence the lives of your children for good. So much so that they are truly better because of them and he is one of those people. We miss him dearly at John Gill!

Grandpa and Grandma came at night

Anyway, Grandma saved the day by bringing a whole bag of mini lollipops which is how we were able to keep Isaiah in his seat for about 30 minutes. HE LIKES TO MOVE! All in all it was a great night and we all left happy. We came home and had ice-cream sundaes to celebrate a great night!

There's our whole family! :)

Great job, Elijah! We love you tons and are so proud of the person you are becoming! Thank you for letting us be so privileged to be your parents.

Some thoughts on Parenting

I can't be the only one who feels like they are a maid, cook, washer (of too many things to name!) and never getting everything done! Well, I'm reading this great book and I'm excited to start seeing the changes and positive experiences promised. I just need to get the hubby on board 100% and get myself to stick to it. The basic idea is to teach one aspect of responsibility each month and there's 12 total so voila, a whole year! The promise is a whole lot more help from the little people in the house and whole lot less begging, pleading and bribing from the big people in the house!
Here's where it gets tricky, though. Phil and I were both the last children and therefore we were both a bit spoiled (okay, he was WAY spoiled, but whatever!) so neither of us are good at expecting our kids to work for things. I am HIGHLY motivated because I am constantly doing the work of 6 people in this house, but I find it difficult to keep fighting the kids to do their "chores" (I even found this awesome sight to help them be in charge of their jobs) so I end up doing it most of the time. I will be implementing strategy number one from the book this month which is simply obedience to parent's and laws. I just hope it helps. If anyone actually reads this post and has something that works like no one's business PLEASE SHARE IT! :)
It's the best job in the world, parenting. It is difficult but filled with surprise and true joy and happiness. It is something that I think both of our parents did great at and I want to build from their and do even better and I hope my children will do even better that we do with them!
Okay, that's it here we go and hopefully by March I won't be doing ALL the work! It can happen, right?!

Hooray, Hooray, We're on Our Way!!!

Yes, it is only 10:30 am and YES, he is having a Blow-Pop! Because....

 Without me asking, he went number two (oo-oo as he calls it) in the TOILET!!!! I think this may be as exciting as winning a small lottery (a big one would be a whole different story :))! If we continue on this road we will have only ONE in diapers. Hallelujah! This sure made my very busy, stressful, frustrating day a WHOLE LOT BETTER!

Little Miss Emi

It seems impossible that she's gotten so big. This was back when Phil and I came home from Church, Grami had Eli and we would all take a nap! WHAT HAPPENED!?

 Lately Emi has been saying some super funny things! She blames all things naughty on the fact that her tonsils were taken out (NO JOKE!). Just the other day I asked her why she couldn't clean up her messes so her room and the living room and the hallways wouldn't be so messy and she said, "Ever since my tonsils I just can't." We just laugh and roll our eyes. She is so full of life and I just love how much she loves to have fun and yet she'll cuddle on the couch with you too. We definitely hit the jackpot on girls when we were blessed with Emi June! Love you stinker booty! :) Love, Mom

A trip or family get together without a fort would not be complete for Elijah. He LOVES making forts and is actually becoming a pro. He doesn't even ask for help, but he does love to have his work photographed! :)

 Inside the fort...

 They're all gathered around watching my little

 tiny, way too small for all of them to see

 iPod! Go figure! You see the TV on, but it's not in the fort therefore it's not nearly as much fun!

 We took them to the play center at the Worldmark one night (once we found out the front office wouldn't see us ALL at once since we weren't supposed to have that many people in one unit (shhh).

 It's pretty funny to see us all coming (not to mention the noise of it all)!

 Isaiah quickly found lots of fun things to do. Plugs prevent crying and they also help with preventing putting things in the mouth!

 This was a discussion about how much Megan wanted a quarter to get some candy from a machine. I just love how intent they both look. One pleading, the other trying to patiently say it was not going to happen.

 Emi barbecuing something or other

 How sweet is that?!

 Josh couldn't wait to get out of the room and into the games. In fact, I think he was only in the room for about 45 seconds before he made a dash for the games! :)

 Isaiah and Carina enjoyed a fun book with Auntie/Mommy. Don't you love Isaiah boots?! They were GREAT!

 There's that cutie-pie Carina!

 Leave it to Eli to find a place to hide!

 We made it to church in the sticks. We doubled the ward size (almost) and were definitely pretty noisy. It was an experience to take them all to church, but worth every noisy, difficult moment because they all wanted to stay. If they hadn't all been hacking and wiping their noses we might have stayed, but we decided to spare their little congregation our germs and left after Sacrament meeting.

 All in all it a was a GREAT trip and I'm so glad we were all able to be there! We missed Debbie, but maybe next time. Happy New Year!

A trip to the trains in the rain...

 Elijah climbing a car to look inside

 then Josh

 and of course Emi...

 Grami and Pap even got in on the fun!

 Noah and Phil had fun checking out how the trains connected

 Elijah even tried to climb up ONTO the train to see in the hole. We quickly told him to get down before he slips on the wet and slippery train and breaks his leg or worse!

 Guess Megan and Josh weren't ready for this photo op! ;)

 Megan was very worried about getting dirty. In fact, she asked cousin Emi to carry her rock in HER pocket so she wouldn't get dirt on her jacket! :) HAHA she kills me. So much like Sharma that way! :)

 Anthing Elijah does Emi must also try!

 Here we come in the rain down the tracks. Man, I wish we'd taken a family shot. Isn't that so pretty?!

 Phil tried a new hairdo that day. Can you tell? It's brushed to the side. I couldn't stop laughing. He looked cute (as always) but he desperately needed a haircut before we left but we were too busy and thus he was starting to have a fro of hair.

 Elijah and Phil wanted to inspect the rock formation on the hill...

 which of course meant that Noah and Emi had to go too, but not until the were already all the way up!  Turns out the rocks were the original bridge that used to pass over the river before it became a lake. Cool, huh? I love iPhones so you can learn stuff while you're right there!

I guess that's it for this round of photos! PS Elijah came down the hill, Phil, Emi and Noah disappeared over the top leaving me nursing Isaiah in the car with Eli throwing rocks in the lake with a bunch of fisherman probably wishing we'd all just get in our van and drive AWAY! :)