Waiting on Baby

My due date has come and gone...and still no baby. I'm trying not to be too disappointed, but it's hard. My friend just had twin boys (and oh my heavens, they are ADORABLE). While i am completely thrilled for her, I have to admit, I'm also a little jealous lol. She's got TWO sweet babies to love and I can't even convince my one to make an appearance. Kind of frustrating, but oh well. Not much I can do about it I suppose. Just keep waiting...

In the meantime, I realized yesterday that I don't have a single belly picture from this pregnancy.  I figured if I did go into labor, it's be nice to have at least one pic pre-baby. 

People ask all the time how this pregnancy differs from my 1st and if I'm carrying differently. I honestly didn't have a clue.But looking back at pics...I think this baby is smaller and maybe higher than Emerson? The pic below was taken right before we left to be induced at the hospital with Emerson. I dunno...what do you think?? Does the belly look different to you?

Here's hoping baby dos comes soon!

Lovey Dovey Day

I know lots of people hate Valentine's Day, but I am NOT one of them. I think it's a fun way to show all the people you care about a little extra love. It's doesn't have to be all about significant others and romance - growing up my daddy always got each of us a special valentine - not just my mom - and it made me feel so special! He's not a real verbal "I love you" guy, so the little gestures meant a lot. That being said, now that Emerson is getting older, I wanted to start some fun  holiday traditions for him and his future siblings. Nothing over the top, just some fun little things to make it special for him (and a few extras for Brady too).

First, we got busy cutting out hearts from some scrapbook paper I had laying around. He loved sitting on my lap to help and had even more fun taping them up on the walls. I had found some dangly little heart things at the dollar store so we put those up too and then I made a few little picture things to place around the house. Like I said, nothing major, but I thought it was fun and Emerson loved pointing out all the hearts to everyone that stopped by.

The tree has the words to the song of our first dance at our wedding.

Our initials are in the hearts hanging from the branch.

Valentine's Day Countdown

I had Hershey's kisses attached to the frame to pull off one each day, but they kept falling off.

V-Day was on Tuesday this year, but Brady doesn't get home until 6:30 or 7, and then he had a bball game at 8:30 so we decided to celebrate on Monday since that's his day off anyways. For dinner, we had heart-shaped meatloaf, red mashed potatoes, and sauteed squash.

Brady got me some BEAUTIFUL flowers - orange roses and gerbera daisies (my favorite!) - a giant bag of Skittles (yum!) and of course a box of mystery chocolates and a very sweet card.



Emerson loved getting his own box of chocolates!

For Brady, I wanted to do something fun and kind of different. I liked the idea of making coupons for different things, but instead of just making them into a booklet, I decided to make it into a decoration. I made 14 little coupons with things like "Good for one late night soda run," "Good for one sleep as long as you want Monday morning," "Good for one game of golf" etc.

Then I made some little envelopes for each one and strung them across a pink ribbon.

 ta-da!

I also made Brady this fun basket...101 Reasons I Love You

 I typed up a list of 101 things I love about him, and then filled the basket with 20 or so things that went along with them: Work gloves - because he's my "mr. fix-it", RingPop - cus he married me for time & eternity, SlimJim Dare - cus he dares me to try new things, etc.

Anyhoo, that was our super fun day. We had a blast - hope you enjoyed yours as well!



 HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

Smookies!

 So last week Brady and I stumbled upon something fantastic on Pinterest. We named it...the "smookie". Prepare yourselves, it's mind-blowing, and huge, and completely delicious. First, you build a typical s'more. We broke the graham crackers into quarters and cut the marshmallows in half and layered them each with 3 squares of a Hershey's bar. We made a double batch to share with some other families in our ward.

 Here's the cookie batter. It barely fit in the mixer there was so much of it!

I don't have a picture of the next step. But, you take two giant globs of the cookie dough and wrap them around the s'more until it's completely covered. The final product is HUGE. We cooked one all by itself first to make sure the batter was the right consistency. Here it is all ready to pop in the oven.

  

They're so big i could only fit 5 per cookie sheet. When it's done, the marshmallow gets all gooey and the chocolate is melted and delicious. mmmm - so yummy!

  

The final product!

Here's link and recipe for anyone that wants it: smore-stuffed-chocolate-chip-cookies

He Talks!

When Emerson was a baby, we taught him to sign - not all the time, just a few basic ones - and it was amazing! It's really nice when you can communicate with your baby even though they can't talk yet. Now that he's older though, he knows and uses plenty of words. He plays shy when we're out and about around other people  though, so you probably don't believe us when we say he talks, but come hang out at our house and he'll talk your ear off in seconds. Here's some signs and words/phrases he uses regularly:

He signs...

"more"
"please"
"sorry"
"all done"
"out"

He says...

"mommy"

"daddy"

"kitty"

"puppy"

"out"
"done"
"more"
"go"

"ball"
"meow"
"uh-oh"
"wow"
"hi kitty kitty"
"where'd it go?"
"i don't know"
"i did it"
"oh no"
"NO!" (his favorite word)

"what is it?"
"c'mon guys"
"where is it?"
"all gone"
"i found it!"
"i got it"
"you got me"
"there it is"
"who's that?"
"it bonked me" (whenever he hits his head)
and lots and lots of gibberish 

I know there's more...but I can't think of them at the moment. It's funny how fast he picks things up. At least once a day he surprises me with a new word or phrase. Makes me think twice before I say anything because I know it's only a matter of time before he's repeating everything. 

Catch Up

Okay, so I'm officially horrible at keeping up-to-date with the blog, but over the next few days I'm going to try and rectify that. So for any of you that care to know what goes on in our hectic happy little lives, stay tuned :) There are months of posts to come...

Costumes and Such

Halloween is just around the corner and while it's not my absolute favorite holiday, it's definitely up there on the list. I'm not a fan of the creepy creepy aspect of the holiday, but I love the dressing up,  decorating, trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns, and having pumpkin pie and my favorite...pumpkin chocolate chip cookies! yum!
Brady and I couldn't decide what to do for Halloween this year. I thought it would be fun to all dress up together. I was thinking Brady could be obi-wan, i'd be the princess chick, and emerson could be yoda, or we could do the Wizard of Oz with the tin man, dorothy, and the lion. Unfortunately, life has been insanely busy these last couple of months so I've had ZERO time to sew and I got the feeling Brady was less than thrilled with the idea. So instead, we're taking advantage of our little munchkins baldness and dressing him as Charlie Brown. 

I looked at costumes online but couldn't justify spending $25-$30 for a toddler's outfit for one night! So I got to looking around and found this yellow t-shirt and a pair of black shorts on clearance at Walmart for $2.50. I grabbed some black fabric for a whopping 74 cents, and some felt to make his snoopy bag for an additional 60 cents.

I am so glad my mom taught me how to sew when I was little.

Before:

After

Here's a close-up of his snoopy bag. I wanted it small enough he could carry it around by himself without it dragging on the ground. I love how it turned out :)

More pictures to come next week of him actually wearing it.
He's going to be the cutest little trick-or-treater!

On a more random note, I found these cute little animal pieces in a magazine. Stick em in some mini pumpkins and they make an adorable little centerpiece. Only problem is Emerson thinks they're toys and keeps scaling the table to play with them lol.

Hope you're all having a wonderful October!

Fall Family Fun

I love Fall. The changing leaves, the crisp cool air, all the family time and fun holidays. Yesterday, was the first day it actually felt like Fall though. The temperature finally dropped from the 100s to 68. It was fabulous. When Brady got home from work, we took Emerson in search of a pumpkin patch. I had my heart set on something like The Red Barn in Idaho Falls, but seeing as we live in Las Vegas, there were no such places to be found. We stopped by a carnival set up in the mall parking lot only to leave 3 minutes later when we realized Emerson was ONE inch too short for any of the rides and they would only let him ride the ferris wheel if Brady and I both rode with him for a grand total of $13...for a 90 second ride! I was feeling pretty discouraged, but then we happened upon this cute little place...Stu Miller's Pumpkin patch. It's no Red Barn, but it was pretty fun.

Riding the spinning bowls with daddy

He won this at one of the games...he was so excited!

Picking out a pumpkin

They had a super cute little petting zoo with sheep, goats, chickens, bunnies, & ducks. He loved the baby goats - they were just his size :)

All in all, it was a really fun day as a family, and a great way to celebrate the season.

Life on the Farm

On Saturday, Brady called me from work and asked if I wanted to go Utah for the weekend. Since it was Conference, he didn't have to be at meetings for church and he has Mondays off so it seemed like perfect timing. I hurried and cleaned the house and packed up the car and we left as soon as he got home.
My grandparents live in Hatch - this itty bitty blink and you miss it kind of town in southern Utah. Just outside of town, they've got a 100-acre farm & ranch complete with cows and yaks. They've recently started selling the yak meat and I've been in the process of making a nice little brochure for people that might be interested in buying it. Brady had been to the farm a couple of times, but we had always just gone up to the cabin and back and I wanted some pictures of the yaks for the brochure so we all hopped on an ATV and went exploring.

 

 He LOVED throwing rocks in the pond and watching them splash.

 Exploring the farm

Ringing the dinner bell with daddy

 

Walking through the hay fields to find Grandpa Riggs

Brady really wanted to take a boat out on the pond but I refused to try a canoe with Emerson so we rode a paddle boat but it didn't last very long. There was a leak in the bottom and then it started to rain. It was a fun 2 minute ride though.

 

Yakkety Yak

Peek-a-boo in the hay

Trying out Uncle Robert's Red Buggy

Coming home, the trees on Cedar Mountain were BEAUTIFUL.
We miss out on all the fabulous fall colors here in the desert.

 It was definitely a short trip, but lots of fun! Can't wait till we can go back. There's just something about slow-paced family-based life on the farm that is absolutely perfect :)

Our Little Monkey

I left Emerson playing with his toys on the floor in our room while I ran to the other room to grab something. Came back to find him sitting on the dresser eating Pretzels lol

 I asked him what he was doing and he just smiled and grabbed another one.

I don't know what we're going to do with this little monkey. My best guess is that he grabbed onto his crib and climbed up the side of it using the bars to make it to the top of the dresser, but I honestly have no clue how he got up there lol. little stinker.