Happy Birthday & California Trip

On Emma's birthday we headed out to California to see everyone for a week.


It's hard to believe that she's already a year old! She's walking very well now, and has been trying to say more and more words.

Emma wasn't sure exactly what to make of the whole birthday thing. She was intrigued by the candle.

She tried some of the frosting.


But, in the end, she decided that she didn't want the cupcake at all, and ended up with a birthday cookie instead.

The presents part was pretty easy for her to figure out though.


We got to have all of the little cousins together. They all had a lot of fun playing together.


They even built a "snowman" out of the balls in the backyard.

We got to play at a few parks, and relax a bit. It did rain on us once, but the weather was beautiful overall.
Emma enjoyed climbing on the stairs, since we don't have any at home.


We got the kids some new clothes for church. They clean up pretty well don't they?


While there, we got to go the aquarium. It was kind of a long day, but we all enjoyed it.


Ezra had to make sure and show us how "big" the fish were.

Walking...

The last few weeks have been good. It was great to see everyone when they were out last week. Ezra was glad to have more people to do puzzles with him, and Emma liked all of the attention. She also liked chasing grandma & grandpa's dog, so that kept us on our toes.



We didn't put the air mattress away for a few days. It became a favorite place to sit for both Ezra and Emma.


The weather has been good, and most of the trees and stuff have been coming back pretty well. Our garden has quite a bit growing in it, and the citrus trees are covered in blooms, so we should be able to get some good stuff out of the yard this year.

Ezra continues his love of puzzles. We've finally got some 60 piece puzzles for him that keep him occupied at least for a while.


The time continues to just fly by. Another 2 weeks and Emma will be a year old.


Emma has decided that she doesn't like people feeding her now that she has figured out how to feed herself. We've been trying her on a few different things. She wasn't quite so sure about Chex the first time she had them though, and pulled a couple of funny faces.


She does pretty well though. She lets you know that she's done by either throwing what's left on the floor, or by slamming her cup down on the table.

Emma has also finally started walking around by herself. She's so proud that she can walk around that she gets a big smile on her face and giggles as she walks.

Long Lost Post

Yeah, I know, it has been a while since we've posted. Time has a tendency to just slip away.

The weather has finally decided that it is going to be warm and stay that way, so we'll see.

Ezra's most recent obsession has been puzzles. He will sit and do puzzles all day.
He's up to doing 24 piece puzzles by himself, and we've ordered him a 48 piece, so we'll see how he does with that. He's as active as ever, always running around doing something. He always tries to haggle with you when you tell him how much of anything that he can have. Ezra has also started asking things like, "But, why?" a lot of times.


Emma is still working on her upper teeth. You would think that they would have come in by now, but it has been a fairly slow process. She stands on her own, and will take a couple of steps at a time when she wants to. We're just waiting for the day where she just starts running around all at once.


She got her first cookie about a week ago. She did really well with it, and seemed to really like it.


Emma finds herself in interesting situations sometimes. The other day she knocked over her laundry basket full of clean clothes and crawled in. We had to rescue her though, because she couldn't figure out how to get out. She's just full of energy too.

We put some of that energy to work though:


(okay, so she really just got into the clean laundry pile)


Susan has her hands full with the two of them during the day, but it is definitely worth the joy that they bring.


Random picture of a flower from one of our spider plants. Who knew that they flowered?

Happy Valentines Day.

Hi!

So posting has turned into a bi-weekly occurrence, we'll have to work on that.

The weather has finally turned nice. Windows open in the evenings again, that's the Arizona that we love.

Emma and Ezra are continuing to grow like crazy. They like to empty out the plastic cabinet. Emma decided that one of the bigger pieces made a neat hat.

Ezra saw that she was getting some attention for it, so he figured that he'd try it too.


Ezra finally started eating with silverware, sometimes. It's not that he hasn't been able to, just that he would refuse. Wonder where he gets the stubborn streak from.... hmmmm... couldn't be both of his parents, could it?


After bath time on Friday, we messed with the kids' wet hair. Ezra's didn't stay for very long. It kind of just does whatever it wants.


Emma's hair, on the other hand, stayed stuck up, and still sticks up a bit in the front two days later. It's been cute though.


We got our garden planted yesterday. Hopefully we'll have some nice produce from it before the summer heat scorches it. We're excited for it. Ezra loved helping with it, and Emma liked crawling around on the grass, even if we did have to keep taking leaves away from her so that she didn't eat them.


A little tired giggling for your enjoyment...

Second post, not bad huh?

The month of January has been relatively busy for all of us.


We've been passing colds around, and it looks we're almost done with that finally *knock on wood*
Emma has figured out how to drink from a sippy cup, though she still just takes water from it. She even holds it herself. Now if we could only get her to hold her bottles herself, we'd be in business.

She's been teething off and on, but still just has the two bottom ones. Emma overall is a really happy, really busy little girl. We had finally got to a point where most everything that she wasn't supposed to get in to was out of her reach. Then she hit a growth spurt and figured out that she can go up onto her toes for some extra reach. Things are starting to have to be moved again.

She found out that if she stood on the keyboard, it is just enough for her to see out of the window.


This is a classic one of her looks. A lot of times she'll go around with her bottom lip stuck out a bit like this, not sure why. It's cute though.

Every now and then Emma decides that she needs a rest, and will put her head down on a pillow or blanket and lay there for a few seconds, and then off she goes again.


Ezra continues to keep us busy. He has an almost endless supply of energy, and gets even more hyper right before he finally falls asleep.

He has loved being able to go outside so much, since the weather has been nice. The other day we went for a walk, and he army crawled across the entire field by the park. He thought it was great.
We also finally got our planter boxes built for our garden. It only took three weekends, one to buy everything, one to build everything, and a third to fill them.

Ezra had a blast digging in the backyard, and he made sure to help every chance that he got.

They turned out pretty well, so this next weekend we'll have to see what we can get planted. Hopefully, we will be able to get a lot of good food out of the garden. Regardless, we'll have fun working on it together, and that's probably more important.


On a completely different note: Isn't it great when shrimp is on sale?


Emma likes to growl a bit, and can be quite loud about it at times. Here, take a look:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2010 brought us a very nice Christmas with family. Emma had a good time seeing everyone, and Ezra was excited the whole time, since this time he really has started to understand what was all going on.

Emma is still our happy little girl, even though she's been teething. She still has just the two teeth, but is working on the others.

They both clean up pretty well, don't they?

The weather has been interesting to say the least. Over the course of the last month we've had everything from highs in the 80's to snow flurries this last few days. I know, snow flurries, crazy stuff. The sunrises and sunsets are still to die for, that's always a plus to living in the desert.

We spent Christmas in New Mexico, visiting Shawn's parents. It was good to see everyone. The kids loved having more people to play with them. Ezra even minded Lori better than he minds both of us, weird huh?

Ezra enjoyed making cookies with grandma.


On Christmas morning, both of the kids made out like bandits. Funny how the little ones always get spoiled. We all enjoyed it though. Emma liked having so many new things to play with.



Ezra did too, though funnily enough, he probably played with Emma's new stuff as much as his own that morning.






Emma enjoyed playing with the bags and paper as much as anything though. Ezra thought that it was great to have 3 different present opening sessions: one at grandma & grandpa's, one at great-grandma and great-grandpa's, and one at Mandy's house.

Emma is cruising along all of the furniture now, and is trying to walk early. That will add a whole new dimension of interesting to our lives, since she's considerably more curious about everything than Ezra ever was, and that's saying something.


Both of the kids enjoyed all of the play time they got with family. Nights were interesting, getting them to sleep in a new place, but it was a good time overall.

We had the adventure of driving through a very large storm on the way home, and were all quite happy to finally get home.


Kelly and Cameron came over today and we exchanged presents and had dinner together. It was nice to have seen them as well.