Crazy life

Life gets so crazy sometimes. Well, sometimes meaning I have a week that isn't crazy about every 4 weeks. ;)

Not last week, but the week before, I went to a teacher development class for two days. My amazing awsome wonderful parents babysat Emi for 8 hours each day so I could go. My dad even watched her for most of one day by himself! I was impressed. And grateful to both of them, of course. I think Emi and Pampa (that's how Grandpa comes out when she says it) bonded that day.

The course was on how to use Adobe Flash CS4. It counts toward keeping my teaching certificate valid, but the real reason I wanted to take it was because I want to do a flash website for my photography. I think I learned enough to do it, too. I'm really excited. I had to do some homework, though--a project that was related to teaching. So I decided to make a game for Emilia that would teach her her letter names. She's been pointing to letters on EVERYTHING lately and making up names for them until I say their real names. I mean, she points to bulletin boards, trucks advertising whatever, my t-shirts, real-estate signs, license plates, diaper boxes, etc. You get the picture. I've done through the letter J so far, but I'll put it up here when it's finished so you can see how cool I am. :)

I also had 3 photography jobs this month, so I've been working on those pictures, and Steve's boss's wife is starting a kids' clothing business and I'm going tomorrow to show her some of my bows and my fairy costume I made to see if she'll sell them at her store.

Oh, I also made Emilia's halloween costume. She's going to be Princess Leia. It's going to be so CUTE! I'll post pictures if I can get Emi to leave the hat on long enough to take one. Haha.

Here are some more pictures of the cuteness:

She loves her daddy! She crawled up and cuddled into his shoulder after I changed her diaper in the morning.

Emi in her warm PJs. The top part fits her pretty well, but the legs are way too long. haha

You can see her third tooth really well in this one, even though it's not a great picture of her.

A typical Emi face. Especially when Momma is telling her something she doesn' t like. It is usually followed by "No!" "Don!" (Don't) or "Dop!" (Stop).The other night we had olives with our dinner, and Emi didn't want to try them until I put them on my fingers. Then she wanted to try it too and would eat them off her fingers. She didn't like daddy taking a picture of it though! :)

And last, but not least, we were at my parents' house yesterday to celebrate Alison's and Steve's birthdays, and Emi saw that Daddy got a sucker (from Ariana). She really wanted it, so we let her try it. It happened to be blue raspberry flavored. She loved it, if you can't tell.

I hereby proclaim us the League of Benevolent Goodness

Steve and I were discussing my book the other day and we decided that the good guys are going to be mockingly called the League of Benevolent Goodness. Haha. (I am giggling at my own humor because I am like my father.) The name came about mostly because of the show I mention below. Keep reading!!

This morning Emilia and I played Frogg Rocket at Cartoon Network. Our high score was 305,400. Beat that Ah-ahahahah! Have I mentioned that League of Super Evil is a stinkin hilarious cartoon? You should check it out. They have episodes for free online.

Emilia and I also figured out our DJ names the other day. Steve's box of Reeses Cereal had a DJ name mixer on the back. Emi was Megatron J and I was Division Jack.

Also, I finally have a new video of my amazing daughter. Here you go:

Apparently ducks like Cheerios

As I think I've told you before, there is a canal that runs in front of our house that has a number of ducks that live in it. This spring, we got to see at least three families of ducks with the tiny little ducklings swimming in the water. It was amazing.

Well those little ducklings are all grown up now and we can't tell the difference between them and their mother. And now that they're big, they're not nearly as afraid of us as they once were. They saw us (Emi and me) as they were swimming by the other day, and they got out of the canal and walked over to us expecting us to feed them something tasty. I didn't have any bread heels at the time, so I grabbed a box of Cheerios to feed them. They loved them! And Emi liked eating them, too.

Let me just say, that I found it a little forward of the ducks to come to us demanding food! Sheesh.

Steve's parents were nice enough to give us tickets to the BYU/CSU football game last Saturday, PLUS they offered to babysit, so we hightailed our butts down there and watched some football. It was definitely warmer down there than up here. We roasted during the first half of the game. I get heat exhaustion easily, and I was feeling pretty ill by half-time. Some time spend under the bleachers (haha! there were about 40,000 other people under the bleachers with us too, so you just do what you want with that one.) in the shade and on the cold pavement helped, and after that the sun was going down. My gallant husband (and tall!) also let me stand in his shadow, so the rest of the game was much better. We won ( :p to Aunt Amy), so the game was way better than last week's, thank goodness!

Sometime during the rest of the weekend, Wilda mentioned to me that she had a whole bunch of extra tulle from one of Nicoletta's old prom dresses that she wanted to make into a tutu. Coincidentally, I had been doing some research on how to make those, so I decided to make it for her while Emi was napping on Sunday. It was really cute!

Other than that, not much new going on. Steve is working the same job and teaching one section of sophomore writing as well as taking one class. I have a few photography jobs lined up. I had one today and one last Saturday for the same person (bridals and wedding), and I have a family shoot and an individual next week and the first week of November. Things are pretty swell at the moment. :0)

Love you all!
Brina

funny lunch story

Emilia just did the cutest thing, and I was at the computer so I wanted to share. I made fish sticks for her for lunch (they're her favorite). While she ate--she's really good at using a fork!--I was working on other things. When I turned to check on her, she was almost done with the fish sticks: just two pieces left. But when I turned to look, she signed "more." I said, "But you have two pieces left, right there." And I pointed to them. She looked at me, looked at the fish stick pieces, and then took one in each hand and shoved them both in her mouth. Then she looked at the plate scouring it for any more pieces I could accuse her of having and shook her head "no" at me. Isn't that funny?

14 months

Emilia is 14 months old today. She is getting so big. And she is such a joy to have around! Except when she's not--but all kids are that way, right? :) She really is happy almost all the time. She's easy on me. She is still reading up a storm. I probably read at least 25 minutes a day to her and that's only because I get tired of reading the same books over and over and stop her! If I let her, she will go and get every board book off the shelf and bring it to me to read. It's great that she loves reading so much. I just wish we had a magic shelf that rotated my old books out for new ones once a day. She is getting to be a bugger about watching television, too. I'm trying to be good and not let the TV babysit her, but she has two shows that she LOVES and wants to watch them every day. She knows how to push my buttons, too, so that I let her watch them. Oy.

We had a busy Labor Day weekend. On Saturday, Steve and I decided to do a hike in Logan Canyon. I had tried putting Emi in the hiking backpack that we have and she seemed to like it pretty well, but we still had some concerns since she's never done a long hike before. It wasn't actually that long. About 4 miles round trip. It was difficult for us out-of-shape old fogies, though. We did the Wind Caves hike and there is about a 900 foot elevation change in two miles. We huffed and puffed a lot, but we made it. And Emilia did AMAZING. She loved being outdoors and next to Daddy or Mommy the whole time. It was a little hard on us that she wanted to see ahead, so she would lean to one side the WHOLE time in order to see around our heads, and made the backpack lopsided on our shoulders. Other than that, though, she was an angel. We might even do it again before she's too big to carry around on our backs.

Then Sunday, Steve's sister and her family came to visit. We were glad to see them and we were happy that we could give Cindy a place to sleep. She was sick the whole time they were here. I heard she's feeling better now, so that's good. :)

Monday we spent the day with my family down in Kearns. We had a big lunch and played games together. It was a good way to spend a vacation day. :)

This last week, we all took turns getting sick. I think Steve and Emi had it easy compared to me, but we are all feeling better now and ready to face another trip this weekend. Steve and I are celebrating our anniversary this weekend. A little late, but better than never.

Now for the pictures:
I saw my neighbor out mowing the lawn like this the other day and I found it hilarious so I snapped a picture and decided to share.

Emilia was outside giving us a lecture yesterday. She would walk back and forth in front of our door just jabbering away and waving her arms around. It was so funny, and so typically Emilia.




This is the (normally cream-colored) bunny that Emilia took with on the hike. I had taken it out of the wash that morning. Poor thing had to go right back in! :)

Emilia helping her daddy beat aunt Alison at Mario Tennis on Labor Day. The two adults started playing, so Emilia picked up an extra remote and started waving it around like she owned the place. She is so entertaining.

I have more pictures from the hike, but they are currently downloading and may take another half hour or so to finish. And I want to go to bed because I'm tired (I canned 4 quarts and 1 pint--which broke--of tomato soup and two pints of applesauce since Emilia went to bed, did the dishes twice, made dinner, tookEmilia to playgroup, did a quick grocery trip, made plans for our anniversary outing, and more stuff I'm sure I don't remember today), so you'll get them another time.

North Dakota Trip

These are pictures taken by both me and Steve. North Dakota is beautiful, isn't it? Unfortunately, we didn't take a single picture with our camera of Emilia. He took some with our phones, but since we had to cancel the internet on our phones, we can't get them off. I know you all would prefer to see pictures of my sweet adorable daughter, but you'll have to live with these.

If you click on any of the pictures (and for all of the pictures on the blog for that matter) you can make it larger so you can see it better.

Lots of random stuff

I finally decided to get some of the pictures up on the blog. These are sort of in random order because I'm too lazy to move them around. The pictures from our North Dakota trip will be in a separate post.

Our neighbor gave Emilia a cloth toy made out of different textured cloths and around the seam had lots of different ribbons. She thought it was great to haul around with her and the other day I set it on her head and said, "What a pretty hat!" She then walked around with it for 10 minutes like she was the prettiest thing on the block. It was so cute! I had to take a picture.

The pretty flowers Steve gave me for our 3 year anniversary. I love you, Steve!

On August 8th, Grandpa and Grandma Watts came to visit us and we went to Tony Grove. Here are some pictures from the trip.

A kind of blurry picture of a sampling of my produce. Pretty, huh?

I took Emilia to DI (thrift store) and she found this toy. She proceeded to push it around the entire store for the next 10 minutes. Then she pushed it out through the parking lot and to the car. Then she made me set it next to her in the car as we drove home. When we got home she pushed it around the sidewalk and parking lot of the apartment complex. She still thinks it's great. And I only paid 3 bucks for it. Ha ha!

Emilia playing outside with her daddy. :)

I'll post the pictures from the ND trip next. Thanks!