BYU
Saturday was Emma’s 2nd Birthday! I can’t believe she’s two!! It has been a great 2 years getting to know her and her personality. We planned a water party with friends…unfortunately only one showed up but she didn’t know any difference. She had a lot of fun with her friend Sophia as well as family that came. Afterward we had a little BBQ and visited during the afternoon. Our Realtor and friend made Emma her cake. She just loves Emma and thinks she is the cutest so she willingly made her her cake. Isn’t it amazing! Emma loves Nemo and Dory and so we did the water theme and had everything orange and blue. She juts loved the cake and would look at it and say “Nemo” “Dory” “Emma” “Turtle”, needless to say it was a HUGE success…THANKS Colleen!!
In the evening we went over to John’s parents and went swimming. Emma loved it! She kept saying “self”, so we put the arm floats on her in addition to the body float and she had so much fun. I think she’s going to be quite the swimmer! So I took a TON of pictures and I only included a small handful here but there are still a lot because I know some of my family are wanting pictures…so hopefully you’ll enjoy! Thanks to all that came and helped us celebrate Emma’s birthday.
So we had a snow fall that started Friday afternoon and didn’t stop snowing until Saturday at about 5 pm. It was an amazing storm, made me feel like I was in Idaho again. The airport that is about 10 miles from our house registered just over 32” of snow fall in about 30 hours. Anyway here are some fun pictures of the storm and of course how cute Emma is in her snow outfit. She kept saying”now” and pointing I think she’s adorable!
This past weekend we where able to make a trip to Utah for John’s graduation. He was able to go to Commencement and his Graduation. While we where there we were able to spend some time with both John and Amber’s side of the family. It was great to see everyone and spend time with family and friends. By the time we got back to the East Coast we where tired and ready to get back on a schedule. Emma did so good on the trip. She got dragged around for 4 days (including travel days) and was such an angel during the whole thing. We are so lucky to have such a perfect little girl!!
Emma loved playing with her cousins while we where in Utah.
The SWKT where John spent the majority of his time.
Us with John’s Aunt Marilyn and Uncle JohSo I finally finished our 2008 book. I’ve been working on it for a while…well I worked really hard on it for a couple of weeks and then as we got ready to move and the year ended I kind of put it on the back burner…but I finished it this past week and sent it in to get published. YEAH! If you want to take a look at what our family did in 2008 just click on the link below!
If you’re interested in making your own books let me know! I do my books through Heritage Makers and I LOVE IT! I’ve had so much fun making books/cards/posters…most of my gifts I now do through them. I’m even more excited now…they’re introducting a cookbook…I can’t wait to do one of all the recipes I have floating around the kitchen! YEAH!! Anyway you can take a look at my website www.scanyourheritage.com or you can go to www.hertiagemakers.com to look at everything they have to offer. Let me know if you want to get started on something! (By the way…if you want to do a cookbook…they are having a speical till the 26th of February…)
A couple of Sunday’s ago the weather was so nice that we decided to take Emma on a walk in her stroller. It’s the first time it’s been nice enough outside since she got big enough to ride in it so we had a lot of fun watching her look around and enjoy the walk. Of course she loved it and I imagine that we’ll do a lot of walks once the weather gets consistently warm.
In light of the New Year I decided that I would set a goal…not a New Year’s Resolution because lets face it those never last more than a month…but a goal that hopefully will last longer than that. Since we are currently far away from the majority of our family and friends I hope to be able to update everyone on the our happenings (and lets be honest it will mostly be about Emma) at least once a month in not more frequently. This post will cover the last couple of months since I’ve slacked and not posted since the beginning of November. So it will be longer than needed but also just a summary of the most important events of the end of 2008.
November seemed to fly by as John’s sister Rachel came out and visited us the second week of November. We had a fun time visiting with her and were even able to go to a football game together. Then on the 20th of November we flew out to Maryland to spend Thanksgiving with John’s family and look for a house. We were successful in finding a house that we wanted to purchase however there were a couple of people that liked the house as well and so we waited for about a month before hearing that someone’s offer beat ours and they were keeping ours as a back-up offer. We are however currently looking for a place and hope to find one as soon as possible. We’ll keep you updated on the house hunt…
We flew back to Utah on the 30th of November only to see December fly by quicker than November. The first weekend we spent in St. George with Amber’s Grandparents. It was so much fun to spend time with them and to relax for the weekend…even if John had to take some time to write a paper…he did get some golfing in with Grandma and Amber’s Uncle Wade & Aunt Cindy…Thanks guys! Our only regret is that we didn’t go down for more weekends as John really enjoyed golfing and we would have loved to spend some time in the National Parks down there…not to mention it was great just spending time with Grandma and Grandpa. We love you and miss you guys!
The next week Amber went up during the week to Idaho to visit her friend from high school, Julie, who had her baby on November 25th. It was great to spend the day with her and to see her little girl. Amber couldn’t believe that Emma used to be that small only 4 months ago. They say that babies grow fast but until you have your own you never realize how fast they really do grow. That weekend John was able to use his ski passes to Snow Bird that Amber had given him for his birthday. He enjoyed spending his last weekend in Utah on the slopes and will miss the west for that reason.
On the 16th of December the movers came and packed up all of our belongings minus what we were taking to California. On the 17th the truck came and they loaded all of our stuff into the truck and off it went to Virignia where it will stay in a warehouse till we find a place to live. The rest of that week, while John finished with finals, we stayed at Amber’s sister’s, Dan & Amy’s, place in Springville (THANKS you guys for letting us crash!), and on Friday the 19th we picked John up from his last final ever…well at least as an undergrad, and headed to California.
Our trip to California was a memorable one, as it took us 3 hours to get to Tooele and we ended up having to put chains on the van which later when trying to remove them they got stuck and we thought we would spend the night in the middle of nowhere in Nevada. Luckily Heavenly Father heard our prayers and we got the chains off and made it to the next town where stopped for the night. We continued on to California the next day and made it safely without any more incident.
We spent the week of Christmas in California with all of Amber’s family, minus Randy wh.o is on his mission in Oklahoma and doing great! It was great for Amber to spend time with her family, especially her parents, who are serving a mission in the Oakland Mission, working at the Concord Employment Center. Since they are working at the Employment Center it was closed from Wed.-Sun. so we all got to spend the majority of the week together. It was a very special time for Amber and she wants to thank her family for the fun memories! While we were in California we also celebrated two wonderful years of marriage. It’s hard to believe that we’ve been married for two years. Time has flown… It was great to spend the day together and not have anything to worry about. (See the previous post for our Christmas Card)
On Sunday the 28th we got on the airplane and made the six hour journey across the country to Maryland where we spend this past week up at John’s family’s lake house with his whole family. It has been so fun to be surrounded by family these past couple of weeks. We were able to just enjoy his family and with their help babysitting we were able to get a few days of skiing in. THANKS! New Years Eve was an eventful night, espeically for John and Rachel. At the stroke of midnight they ran from the hot tub to the lake and tried to submerge themselves into the water, having to first break through the ice. After which they ran to the yard and made snow angels long enough to get pictures of them before making it back to the hot tub. They were successfully the first people in the lake in 2009…I know crazy…but you know John.
Now to the update that I’m sure everyone has been reading for…or maybe you just skimmed till you saw EMMA. 
Emma is doing great, she couldn’t be a better baby. Don’t get me wrong…she’s still a baby but she has to be the happiest baby there ever was. You don’t have to look at her long to have her face light up in a smile. She’s almost sitting up by herself and has successfully rolled from her back to her tummy only to roll right back again. She’s getting more and more mobile everyday. We still speculate that she’ll skip the whole crawling thing and go straight to walking as she’s rather be standing than sitting. She’s got it so she can suck and gnaw on her thumb which is helping because she is starting to teeth and we expect that she’ll be getting her first tooth anytime now. We’ve loved watching her grow and to see her personality show through more and more everyday. She’s the cutest and happiest girl ever!
So I believe that you are now all caught up on our lives. Enjoy the pictures that go along with our upadate!
A late Happy Halloween to all! We had a lot of fun on Halloween, we actually had a lot of kids come to our place so that was fun. We also finally craved our pumpkins. We kind of cheated and got some help off the internet since neither one of us are artists. We had a lot of fun doing it this way and will probably do it again in the future.
Emma keeps growing and is definitely getting more active and interacting. She loves to smile at everyone and if you try really hard she might even “talk” to you. We’ve enjoyed introducing her to the game of football as she’s accompanied us to the BYU football games. She’s done really well and can even sleep through the cannon.
We’re looking forward to the holidays, especially going out to Maryland during Thanksgiving to try and find a place to live in Virginia.
School has started and with that comes the start of BYU Sports. Of course we got All Sports Passes this year. We couldn’t be in Provo and not attend the Football games. Emma witnessed her first football game on Saturday and did really well. While it was hot and we had to spend the majority of the first half in the shade, until Aunt Amy saved us and brought some sunscreen…we’re still trying to get the hang of this whole parent thing…Emma only jumped a few times when the cannon went off after we scored and slept for about half the game. John and Amber both enjoyed the game and can’t wait to follow the Cougars this season, hopefully they continue to win.
