Nine Months Already

   We've made it to nine months in a flash it seems.  Emery hasn't been to the doctor yet, so I have no baby stats at the moment.  I haven't even gotten on the scale with her to get an idea of how big she is.  She still hasn't begun to crawl on her hands and knees yet.  Emery just scoots around army style.  She has perfected her sitting up skill and has begun to try and pull herself up on the couch, but only to her knees.  She loves to eat whatever the family is eating at dinner time.  Don't try to leave her out of dinner time.  If you do she just crawls under the table and bugs you until you put her in her high chair.  That girl is a hearty eater.  

   I haven't gone out as much with Emery as I did with Avery and Harper because Emery doesn't like going to sleep anywhere but in her crib.  She doesn't even really sleep in the car.  Even if it is her nap time.  Fortunately she doesn't cry; preferring to hang out calmly.  We love Emery.  Avery and Harper still love Emery even if she does come into their room to mess up their Legos.  

Here she is with the monkey in the best shot I could get today.  She's holding an Angry Birds pig that is one of her favorite toys right now.

Emery's cousin, Tyler, was playing with her the other week and it was super cute.  

Here she is carefully inching her way to actually supporting herself on her feet instead of her knees.

Showing off her mad sitting up skills.

Crawling through the side table.

Seven Years Together

   The 29th will be mine and Daryl's seventh wedding anniversary.  We celebrated early last week by running away to Victoria B.C. over night.  We stayed in the Empress hotel and had a lovely time visiting Craigdarroch Castle, the Parliament Building, and Miniature World.  Our hotel hosts high teas several times a day, so we had high tea with hot chocolate.  Here are some pictures of our trip of course, and I snuck in a picture from our wedding.  I don't think I've ever actually put any of our wedding pictures on our blog before.

High tea at the Empress with dainty sandwiches and scones.

We didn't eat here, but this is the second restaurant I know that is named after a Nellie.  

Here we are on our wedding day.  We got really lucky and had gorgeous weather for our wedding.  We had our reception the next day and it was rainy as usual.

Happy Birthday Fox!

     Today is not only St. Patrick's day, but it is my cat Fox's 13th birthday.  He's my old man cat.  Despite his advanced years he's in pretty good shape.  He just moves a little slower when he takes the stairs.  

      We of course had to have a proper birthday party for him.  Avery was very excited about Fox's birthday and wanted to know what his present was, if we were going to blow out candles for him, and if we were going to have party hats.  I told her that Fox's present is living with us, that of course we would put a candle in our St. Patrick's day carrot cake cupcakes we got from Costco, and we dug out our party hats from New Years.  All these things were satisfactory to her. Avery really loves birthdays. She was sad that we didn't invite anyone to the party though. 

Avery really wanted to have her tongue sticking out.  

Emery was giving Daryl a look right after he put the hat on her that seemed to say, "What is this thing?"

Here she is looking at the camera now with a silly little face.  

The girls blowing out the birthday cupcake.

The birthday boy not very excited about the flash on the camera.

Sandwiches!

   Last week Avery and Harper put themselves between their floor cushions, and I asked them if they were sandwiches.  They jumped up on that and demanded that I eat them.  After several Avery and Harper sandwich servings I was able to convince them that I was full of sandwiches. They thought it was hilarious.

Harper on top of an Avery sandwich and Emery being a little ham for the camera.  She likes to be around her big sisters.

A Harper sandwich.

Emery's Eight Months Old

     Time is flying by. Our baby will be one in four months.  She is just so fun to have around.  Emery continues to be happy, and overall is just a delightful addition to our family.  The only time she is not happy is when it comes time to dress her. She really resists it, and will try to roll over especially when you are half way through a diaper change.  Avery and Harper were not this hard to dress. Emery gets up on her hands and knees to rock back and forth.  When she's ready to move forward though she gets back down and does her little army crawl.  She doesn't seem really interested in sitting up yet either.  We can get her to do it for a little while, but a lot of the time when we sit her up she immediately tries to lean back on something.  Emery did finally get her two bottom teeth in about two weeks ago.  As always here's some pictures.

Emery loves to crawl into her sisters' room.  Avery and Harper are already beginning to get mad about that.

Today Emery conquered our floor pouf and was very proud of herself.

A close up of her two new beautiful chompers.

Here she is with everyone's favorite monkey and mom's feet.

Too Much Snow

   Last night as we were on our way home from celebrating Erik's return home from his mission. It snowed all the way home, and we noticed that it was getting thicker as we were getting nearer to our home.  It's pretty unusual for us to get snow where we are at, so it was troubling.  We knew the worst roads would actually be right by our house.  We go up a hill and then take a right down a hill and from that road we have to turn onto the alley that leads to our house.  To get into the alley we go up a little hill, and then right before our house is another steep little we have to go down.  We turned into our alley and missed the telephone pole thankfully and bumped into the bamboo that lines the side.  We barely got up into the alley and when we got to where we had to go down the last hill into our driveway we decided to play it safe. The snow shovel was waiting for us by the front door, and we had some ice melt that had been languishing in our garage for the last two years.  After our quick ministrations to the alley we made it down without crashing into the front of our house.  Today was Sunday and our ward wasn't canceled.  When I went to check out our hills though it didn't seem terribly safe, so we stayed home.  The snow didn't start melting until well into the afternoon.  By tomorrow morning it should be gone and good riddance.

This is what our front alleyway looked last night. You can see where we laid the ice melt.  

This is what our alley looked like in the morning.  We got about three inches of snow.  

The girls were just dying to get outside and play in the snow.

They of course wanted to make a snowman which meant Daryl got to make a snowman.  The snow was perfect for it.

Avery put her scarf on the snowman, gave him a carrot nose, stick arms and antennae too I guess, gloves, and she poked holes where buttons should go. 

Avery wanted to hug the snowman since Olaf from Frozen likes warm hugs.

Harper also wanted to hug the snowman.

Hello Erik

  If you recall about two years ago there was a post entitled "Bye Erik" when Daryl's cousin left on his mission to Sacramento, California.  Now here we are with a "Hello Erik" post already.  The time has flown by.  Last night we gathered together to celebrate Erik's arrival back home with family at Aunt Debbie's.  We were especially excited to see Grandma Shirley who was been sick for too long and now is back to feeling better.  It was Emery's first time meeting her Great Grandma, and of course I don't have a picture of that because I am actually horrible at taking pictures.  Enjoy the pictures I did take. 

Harper really liked the good old Etch-a-Sketch.

Emery hanging out.  By the end of the night the children had destroyed that poor ball.

My sister-in-law Aimee turned the tables on me.

Grandma Shirley looking radiant.

Emery and Great Aunt Debbie

Tyler being silly.

Here's all the boys:  Erik, Karl, Scott, Kyle, and Daryl.

Just in case if you wondered what Avery was up to.  She's playing on the Leap Frog. I'm not sure who gave Scott the Mickey Mouse puppet.

One last picture of Aimee and Emery.