gobs and gobs of pictures

So, I finally have a moment to post all the pictures I've been taking for the last month. Here goes! (The captions are above the pictures)

Emilia in the first thing I bought when I found out we were having a girl. It was beautiful when we were at the Watts's that Sunday.

Emilia playing in her room. She's so cute! :)

Taking a bath in the big tub.

As promised, Mom and Dad. Emilia in her Valentine's Day dress that Nana Frohlich sewed for her. She looks like the Queen of Hearts, doesn't she? She was wearing her cute red dress shoes, too, but for some reason Steve decided they weren't going to be in ANY of the pictures he took. Oy.

My car the day after it snowed 12 inches in a matter of hours.
Some pictures I took trying to be artistic. meh.

Emilia looking out at the snow when we were down at the Watts's in February. I just thought she looked like I feel when I look at the ocean or the mountains.
And finally, some of my favorites from recent photo shoots. Let me know what you think.

So much to do, so little time!

So, I haven't blogged in like a month. I would have berated myself for not being more on top of things just a few short months ago...but a few short months ago, I had nothing to do while my daughter was sleeping ON me. Now she's taking naps in her crib and I feel like I'm finally FREE! Free as a little bird. Wheeeeeeeee!

Haha. Dramatic much? But in any case, I have all this time to work on other stuff and I have been taking full advantage of it. One of the things I've been working on is re-vamping my photography website. I've been teaching myself CSS and it makes websites look so much more professional than HTML alone, so I wanted to update mine. Hopefully it will be online soon so you can all see the hard work I've been doing. I also finished Peter and the Starcatchers and am almost done with Pendragon: Merchant of Death. Up next is the first book in the series by Jim Butcher (which was recommended by Aunt Amy-thanks!).

My photography business has also been picking up. Probably because it's getting on spring. I had two people call me in the last couple weeks to do shoots. One family and one girl who needed pics with her violin for an application. That was kinda fun. And now I have a one wedding in April, two in May, and one in June who have booked with me already. The one in June is on the shore of Beaver Lake. How cool is that? I'm excited.

I didn't get the job at the USDA. They "offered it to someone else." That's what they said when I called them to see if they'd made a decision. The guy said, "You were probably our second choice." Gee. How comforting. That makes it all better, don't you think?

We were kind of disappointed at the time, but I've gotten over it now. I've been working more hours at JCPenny, though. We've been getting more appointments and I have done thier photographer "training," so now I am eligible to work more because I don't have the be the second person on. I can be the only person there. My boss seems to be happy with the pictures I've been taking even though I don't like their mandates on the kind of pictures I have to take.

Emilia is getting bigger, of course. She isn't crawling yet, but she still jabbers up a storm and shes' getting better about tummy time. She isn't signing back to me, yet, but I hope she starts soon. It will make life so much easier when we can communicate with one another.

She is starting to take baths in the big tub. I took pictures the other day, but I don't have my camera with me, so I'll have to post those once I get home (we're at the Watts's this weekend). She has also started sleeping all the way through the night. She's only done it a couple times, but it's been amazing!! Yea! The first time was about 4 days ago. What a milestone, eh?

I've been working on family history lately. There was a class at church that I signed up for, and although I didn't learn much (I took a class at BYU that went way more in-depth), it got me in the mood for it again, so I've been working on it Sunday afternoons while Emilia is napping. I got all of the stuff my mom and dad have so I can scan it into the computer and verify what info we actually have documentation for. It's been really fun to look at the newspaper articles about my great grandparents. I also found a bio written by my grandfather's uncle (George Richau's brother Matthew) that gave the names of the cities they lived in in Russia and Europe before they came to America. I thought I'd have to go to Russia myself to get that info. What a find!

We came down to my parents' house a couple of weeks ago for the weekend, and this weekend we're down here at the Watts's. It's always good to visit family. I just feel bad about not doing our callings. We need to figure out a balance. I'm excited to finally meet Meg, though. Steve's youngest sister, Nicole, had a baby about a month ago and then left for Colorado before we could come down and meet her, but she's coming back this afternoon for a visit.

So. Needless to say, I've been busy. But now I've caught myself up and maybe I'll be more motivated to keep up. ;) We'll see.

7 Months!

Emi was 7 months old on the 17th. I still have a hard time remembering that. She's been growing and learning so quickly. She now sits up by herself and is learning what things do. She's figured out that she is supposed to push the buttons on her mobile, but I don't think she's figured out that that's what makes it go, yet. It's fun to watch her take things in.

Of course I took more pictures of her. Instead of individual pictures this time, though, I made collages. I'm uploading them at their full size, so you should be able to click on each one and it will show you the bigger image. Then if anyone wants to download them to their computer and print them they can. I wanted to get some of her with the blanket that Grandma Watts made for her because it's so pretty, so I used that as a background. I also wanted to get some with her blankie, her dragon, and her book--her favorite things right now. Enjoy!

Happy (Belated) Valentine's Day

We at the Steven Watts residence had a pretty good Valentine's Day. Probably partly because we weren't actually at the Steven Watts residence. We were at the Nick Watts residence visiting grandparents. We originally had taken time off to go down and see our new neice, but her parents decided to take her to Colorada a week early, so it ended up just be a vacation to see the grandparents.

I woke up Saturday morning to find a trail of Valentines (the kind that you get for the kids to take to school for their classmates--these were Winnie the Pooh and Transformers) to a box of chocolates. The best part, though, was that Steve had written something that he loved about me on each of the valentines. Isn't that sweet! I just got him a card and pre-ordered the new U2 cd. U2 is his favorite band, so that makes it a little better, but he definitely outdid me this year. :)

Steve's mom made a crumb cake for breakfast--yummy! But Emilia had pears and rice (of course!). She doesn't eat anything else. It looked kind of like she had a mustache and goatee after we were done. It was really funny:

Then for lunch Nick and Wilda took us out for lunch at Red Lobster. MMMmm! It was SO good! I had coconut shrimp and crab legs. Everyone else had steak and some sort of seafood. They also got calamari and fondue for appetizers. We were all stuffed by the time we left. Whew!

We drove home Saturday night and Nick and Wilda were kind enough to drive up, too, so we could bring our new washer home. Yea! No more hand-wringing our laundry! Not that I did that so much anyway. I stopped doing it after like the second load after our old washer stopped spinning the clothes out. Steve was more diligent and would do a couple loads a month. We took the rest to our parents' houses when we went to visit. It will be nice to do laundry at home again.

I also thought I would share this picture. I took it a few weeks ago and forgot about it. Emilia has started recognizing that there is someone in the mirror and she is facinated with babies, so she is of course facinated with herself when she sees herself in the mirror. There was a little mirror that came with the toy my parents bought her for Christmas and I took it off and set it by her the other morning. She didn't notice it right away, but then she caught her movement and leaned over and peeked in the mirror. Then she sat up and looked at me, and then leaned over and peeked in the mirror again. It was like she was playing hide-and-go-seek with herself. It was so funny! Here is a picture of her doing it.

littlelittle as promised

It's kinda long. sorry. I can't seem to delete my baby. ergh.

addendum to videos

I had to run off to work this morning and didn't have time to put the first video in the post. I just left the web browser open on the computer and ran. (I didn't work a single one of my three shifts last week, so I was never at work to get my schedule for this week and typical of me, I didn't even think to call before today to find out if I was supposed to be there at 10am. ) Steve was kind enough to run home to watch Emi after work called me and he saw the post up on the computer and just pushed "publish," not realizing I had another video to put in there. After work I went and helped that family again, then came home and made dinner and then went grocery shopping with Emi. Now I am exhausted and I'm going to bed. Maybe I'll have time to post the video tomorrow. At least you have one video to tide you over, right? :0)

videos

I haven't been posting as much lately because Emi doesn't eat long enough to do anything during a feeding. So I have to find spare time to do it, and it seems to be scarce lately.

I had a job interview on Friday for the USDA job I told you about a few posts ago. It seemed to go well and they told me they would make a decision this week.

I also helped out a family in our ward on Friday. They had triplets in December and their help went home Friday, so I went over and helped feed them and folded laundry and things like that. They are cute baby boys. (But I'm sure glad I just had one-Oy!)

My one has been doing cute things lately. She found a new sound she can make and it's extremely cute. It sounds kind of like little-little-little-little-little. But you can hear for yourself. Here is a video of her doing it.



She also has decided she loves to jump in her jumper. If it wasn't made she'd have broken it already. She really goes to town as you can see.