Emily's Blessing

Today was Emily's baby blessing. Mike gave the blessing and did a very nice job. He said that he had to stop himself from laughing near the end of the blessing when he opened his eyes a bit to see Emily smiling up at him. We were happy to have my mom Jill and step-dad Sherwin, my brother James and his girl friend Tessie, my sister Julie and her husband Gene, and our college friend Juliet and her husband Mike and son Lincoln attend. About 4 years ago, I made a blessing dress for display at Hancock Fabrics. I wasn't even pregnant at the time, and then our first child was a boy. I was pleased with how the dress turned out, and hoped that someday we'd finally have a girl to wear it. Well, it looked great on Emily! So here are some pictures.

Emily looking happy as usual. She was cooing so contentedly as we snapped this picture.

My parents with Emily.

Jessica, Emily, Mike, and Hyrum.

The dress. It's kind of hard to see it in the picture, but this at least kind of gives you the basic idea. It's pink with two rows of ribbon at the waist and on the sleeves, two bows on the front with tails that run the length of the dress, and an embroidered organza overlay on the skirt.

I'm including this picture just because I think it's adorable!

My Turn!

It's about time Jay lets me write this blog. She'd been writing so much and holding me back whenever i have wanted to update. I had to explain to her who wears the pants and that's all it took. Here i am.

(for those of you who really know our family, you also know that i should also be writing my will)

So! boy, oh, boy.. that past 2 weeks have been emotionally up and down for me. I'm having difficulties w/ my job, particularly w/ my boss. We just aren't clicking well both regarding our personalities and our business practices. It's becoming a challenge to follow my rule for working w/ new supervisors: "The things you disagree w/ regarding them should only be creating opportunities and experience for you to learn from it." or some blah-blah inspirational phrase about it -- you know what i mean. It will all work out fine in the end... unfortunately, our moments come at times when i'm having other things in life that i have to deal with.
::sigh:: good ole Life. At least i get my raise soon :D .. in fact, today they let us know that in order to compete w/ the other companies hiring in the boise area, they are giving 80% of everyone raises. Essentially, they booted up the hiring wage a few cents, $.90 for entry level, $.50 for the level i'm at. then they looked at the previous raises you've gotten and based it on performance, etc etc. basically, anybody under the base entrance wage will at least be boosted up to that level. that already means i'll get a whopping $.04 increase. i'm hoping my performance evaluation last year and my 36th ranking in our call queue means much more than that. either way, i'll get another performance evaluation and another raise in march.

Other than work difficulties, life has been going happily for us. Main reasons below:

Finger Painting: Hyrum came in crying to Jessica one morning, she really wanted to comfort him but at the time, but was feeding Emily. Once he got closer to her, she had realized why he had been crying... The night before, we decided to take a break from frugality and order chinese food! We had Moo goo gai pan, crab rangoon, egg drop soup, i forgot the main course, shrimp, and beef sticks w/ sides of hot mustard, cocktail sauce, and sesame seeds. We hadn't used the hot mustard or cocktail sauce, and left them in their little containers out on the end table. Myson had gotten into the hot mustard and had gotten some in his mouth. Jay felt really bad for him --that is, until she went into the living room with him to go clean up the mess he had probably made. Instead of a mess, she found a work of art: he had finger painted w/ the hot mustard and cocktail sauce all over both couches, the floor, and Em's bouncy chair. He even added his own artistic flare and poured the sesame seeds over his paintings. After several times vacuuming in the wedges of the couches, we'll still find dome more seeds coming out of who knows where. I came home from work to hear the story of what happened and i couldn't help but laugh... Husbands: these are the things you don't do unless you want the evil stare from you're wife for the next several days -- or unless you want to do all diaper changes for the next week.

The Curse of Generations: The rash/baby acne/cradle cap that jay talked about last post had gotten worse. it began to gather down her forehead, past the cheeks and on her next one morning. We got pretty concerned and setup an appointment w/ the doc. Lucky, it wasn't anything serious. It turned out to be eczema (thanks, mom :P). Doc Rand said it could be hereditary, but also that sometimes it's only apparent in the infant stage. All we need to do is apply hydrocortizon to her every now and then and keep her skin moist. If this had happened to hyrum, he would have hated us his whole beginning months, but emily is sooo cute. She smiles (well, she always does that) and scrunches her neck when we apply it and coos like she wants to laugh when we put it on.

Charleston: We went dancing again last Friday night and again we enjoyed a night away from the offspring. This time they taught the waltz (well, we knew it already, so it refreshed us) and the swing. The swing was fantabulous to do again, however i had become really, really forgetful on all the moves i once knew. i give credit to the ones that taught it last week, but they also had a problem w/ rhythm. They'd teach all the moves, but once it was put to music, everybody would find themselves off the correct beat -- including us. Chalk up another curse that majoring in music does to you. The fun part of it all was learning the charleston. It is a FUN FUN thing to do, and really cute --that is, when you see other people doing it. We can do it and do it well, but my gawky frame makes it quite laughable if you were to see me. :D We're really excited for the actual formal dance they'll do on Feb. 16th. They're going to have a live band and refreshments ... oh! and music. James, jessica's brother did the pictures for it last year and it's apparently a very gussy-up experience. I'm all happy because i haven't worn my concert tux since i played in the Ricks symphonic band in ... 2000? That, a palmful of hairgel, an intensive 10 mins of mouthwash, and an overdose of cologne and i'll be that ladies man that night -- either that or i'll lose more hair, be drunk, and be emitting odor i'll empty out half the cultural hall!

Well, i know there's other things to talk about, but who knows what they are.

Em's baby blessing is this Sunday. I'm excited, however nervous... just hope i'm attuned to how the Lord wants her to be blessed. I'd just hate to say something like, "You will grow up to be a woman of the street" or something bad like that...

Well, that's all i can think about for now. Love you all!

Weekly Review

Mike and I went dancing at the stake activity on Friday and had a great time. We left our kids with 2 12 year olds in our ward who just passed a babysitting certification course. They did a great job and actually seemed to enjoy it. One of the girls said that she loved watching our kids because they are cute and that all she ever got to watch were her nieces and nephews who aren't all that good looking. I couldn't help laughing about that later after they left. They were good girls, and we'll probably use them again in the future.

It was fun to dance again, but boy am I out of practice! It all came back fairly quickly, but I'm not in as good of shape as I used to be. After 2 days, I'm still sore! There was a great turn-out. It seems the dance class idea was a good one because it drew a gym full of couples, both old and young. There was hardly room to dance without running into other people! I was glad to see so many show up. Mike and I will definitely be going next week!

Friday morning, my throat started feeling a little scratchy. By Friday night, I knew I was sick. I labored through Saturday with the kids while Mike worked, then made him watch them for most of the day today while I rested. I even had to miss church. I sure hope I get better soon. The kids are starting to show signs that they're feeling sick too, but so far, Mike is ok.

The kids are doing great. Hyrum is talking more and more every day and his speech is getting a little clearer. It would probably still sound like gibberish to anyone but me and Mike who have learned "Hyrum speak" over the past 3 years. Emily is as cute as a baby can be! It doesn't take much to get her to crack a huge smile, and she's started cooing a lot. She loves studying faces, and often cranes her neck around to look at you if you hold her in a position where she can't see you. She also loves lying on the floor kicking her legs and waving her arms like crazy. She doesn't even mind too much when a stray fist (her own, of course. I can already hear Mike making jokes..) hits her in the face. Unfortunately, her perfect skin couldn't last. She has a nice rash of baby acne now, and she's the only baby I know to ever get cradle cap in her eyebrows. Hopefully all that will clear up quickly so she's cute again when everyone shows up for the blessing.

The geek that i am...

So, i like technology ... if i had a theme song, it'd be the lyrics from Kip wedding song to La-fon-duh w/ the Robotech intro music. Many of you already know this-- and to confimr this, i'd like you to see all the dorky pictures i take day-to-day from my cell phone.

Here's the link:
www.t-mobilepictures.com/loque
Here's the password hint:
Myson's nickname
Here's the password:
goofball

The password will give you acces to pics, enjoy!

Nothing important... just stuff

First off, happy birthday in this past week to my dear friend Sandi, my sister Julie, my mother Jill, and my step-dad Sherwin! Whew! too many birthdays for one week.

In my last entry, I mentioned that Mike and I had been given callings to teach the CTR 5 class. Well, when the Primary President came over to drop off the manual, she extended a calling to Mike to teach the Sunbeam class instead since our son Hyrum is now a Sunbeam. Mike accepted the calling, so he gets to team teach the 3-4 year olds with another brother in the ward while I'm left to defend myself against the 4-5 year olds in my own class. It's not so bad though. I have only 3 kids in my class, and I only have one name that I have to try all that hard to remember since two of them have familiar names... Jessica and Hyrum. My first week of teaching went well enough except that I had planned activities that worked well with a class size of 3. When I got to church, one of the teachers didn't show up, so I had to take the next class up as well, giving me 7 kids. I had to cut some things out of the lesson, and it left me with a nice large gap before the end of the block. Lucky for me, 4-6 year olds love to color and I had brought some pictures that corresponded to the lesson.

Singing and sharing time was fun too. I was afraid that Hyrum would want to come sit with me when he saw me in the Primary room. But he was so well behaved and said "hi" to me from across the room when he walked in, then sat with his own class. He was so well behaved through it all, and got really involved in both the lesson and the singing. There was a bit of confusion when the teacher asked "Hyrum" to come pick cards for a matching game and both Hyrums answered the call. I never imagined that he'd have that problem with his name. During singing time, he was quick to blurt out the correct answer in the "What word comes next" game when his classmate was unable to answer. He seems to be loving Primary.

I got a nice break today when I got to go clothes shopping for my birthday (nearly a month late). Usually I hate to shop for clothes. But today, shopping meant that I left the kids at home with Mike and headed out on my own. As much as I love Hyrum and Emily, it was good to get away from them for a while. I should get at least a week long break from hearing about how Mike has to work so hard all day while I sit at home doing nothing. Maybe I'm slightly evil, but I think it does him good to have to see what it's like every now and then. Actually, Mike's really great with the kids, so I feel completely comfortable leaving him with them from time to time. It's nice to have a husband who I can rely on like that.

Our stake is doing something kind of cool. They've set up a Stake Date Night on Fridays where for four weeks, they're giving ballroom dance lessons. They teach four dances a night, and you can go to as many or as few as you like. On the week of Valentine's Day, they're having a "Sweetheart's Dance" with a live band and refreshments. Mike and I didn't make it to last week's lesson, but we plan to try to go to the next 3 and to the dance at the end. I'm really excited about it because I was really into ballroom dance in high school and even a little bit in college. Mike and I haven't been dancing since we got married. That's over 6 years. The lessons will be a nice refresher. The only problem is finding someone to watch the kids. They really should offer a nursery for these things.

Well, enough rambling. I think I need to make Mike write the next post since he's the one who started this blog, but I'm the one who always gets stuck updating it.

New Pictures

This one's for all of you who keep bugging us for new pictures of Emily. We've been putting off posting any because we can't quite get the right shot of her to show off how pretty she really is. She always either slouches down or has weird hair or a pacifier in her mouth.

For those of you who want to see her in living flesh, we're having her baby blessing on the 11th of February. Anyone who would like to come is welcome. We're looking forward to showing her off and also hope to show Mike's family around the Boise area a bit too. If you think you're going to come, please let us know so that we know who to plan for.

In other news, we received a calling in our new ward to teach the 5 year old Primary class. I think they call it CTR 5 now, but it's what used to be called Star A. I thought at first that we would be teaching my nephew Isaac's class, but he's in CTR 6, one class above ours.

Hyrum is the best big brother to Emily. He loves to hold her, tell her he loves her, and give her an endless supply of kisses. He likes to help out by burping her and tucking her in bed, and loves to watch her take her bath and get dressed. Sometimes when we put her down for a nap, he'll carry his chair into her room and set it beside the cradle so he can watch her sleep. We were afraid he'd get jealous of the attention she'd get, but the only thing he's jealous of is when one of us holds her or gives her kisses. He wants to be the one to do that. We're really so proud of him.

Well, this blog entry was supposed to be for new pictures of Emily. So without further ado...

Emily learned to smile when she was about 2 weeks old. She loves to smile up at us when we tickle her neck and chin and cheeks. We still haven't gotten any really great pictures of it yet. This was the best we could do, but it's the cutest thing when you see it in person!

Here is a very happy dad with his girl and his cat. We have a very similar picture with Mike, DeeDee, and Hyrum.

I love this picture! So cute!! She had been sleeping on Mike's chest, but lifted her head up to smile at Mike when he called out her name.

This one was almost perfect. If only I had gotten the pacifier out of her mouth. When I tried to duplicate it, she kept sliding down on the couch or slumping over. By the time I finally got her positioned right again, I had lost the lighting.

This is the dress that Grandma Sears gave Emily when she was born. In the last picture, you can see the Christmas tree in the background. I was trying to get a good picture of her to include in our Christmas post, but just couldn't get the right shot. I put Emily on the floor to let her rest a bit while I tried to get everything set up again for a better shot with the tree. However, by this time, I had been trying to get a picture for quite a while and Emily was fed up. She fell sound asleep on the floor, and I didn't dare move her. I do think this picture shows her face pretty well though.