Six Flags

Presiden't Nelson's challenge to post about gratitude on social media the week leading up to Thanksgiving showed me how wonderful gratitude is. It also made me think about this little blog I used to use as my journal. Today I decided I wanted to get on and write a little something. And I discovered this post I had written 2/20/2020 but never published. I'm not sure why I didn't hit publish almost a year ago, but I thought this was so great. I'm going to add a few things at the end.

Back around Black Friday we got Six Flags season passes. We are LOVING our trips to Six Flags and have probably gone 15 times already. We have gone most weekends, and several times over Christmas break. This week on Monday Emma had the day off from school for Presidents Day, so we found ourselves at Six Flags. The park was basically empty and we had so much fun.

One of our favorite rides is the Bugs Bunny White Water Rapids ride, but one of the best parts is the things you see as you walk throughout the line. Emma thought the stocks (below) were hilarious, so we stopped to take a picture.

Emma loves Kidzopolis, the kids area, at our Six Flags. One of the rides she loves is Krazy Kars. On this particular day she said she was driving us to Orlando to go on a Disney Cruise. The ride is super slow and along the way there are signs saying the speed limit is 5 MPH. She kept saying she was speeding, so I snapped a picture of her driving and sent it to my highway patrol friend, letting her know we had a speeder. We laughed about it all day. 

December 4, 2020 addition to this post:

I am so grateful we used our Six Flags passes so much between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We ended up not going all summer because of Covid, but we used our passes SO much when we first got them. We had a blast at Six Flags and look forward to getting to go back regularly again someday!

I've learned not to promise I'm going to do better at blogging. Sometimes I forget about blogging and journaling, but I really want to do better at it during the rest of 2020 and during 2021.

More December --post Christmas.

My pictures didn't load in the order I expected them to... I haven't done this in a while!

Emma was SO excited to get these two stuffed unicorns for Christmas! She has slept with them every night since and always asks if she can take them places!

On Christmas Day we saw that Sea World was going to be open in the afternoon. The weather was perfect so we headed out after we had lunch! They had reindeer! Emma was in heaven and announced that it was Vixen that we saw!

One of Emma's favorite things about school has been learning how to read and write. She was so excited to tell me that last week she read a "level c" book to her teacher and did really well. She loves to write notes to people, and her favorite thing to write is I love you. We find love notes from Emma all over the house. She loved when mom & dad were her sight words a few weeks ago so now she totally knows how to spell them!

Right around Christmas our washer started tripping the breaker every time we ran a load. It was pretty annoying and our clothes were not getting so clean. SO... we did a few things to try to fix it before realizing it was time to just replace our washer and dryer. They were 8.5 years old and the dryer wasn't drying very well anyway... these beauties were delivered a few weeks ago and oh my goodness, they are fabulous! Our clothes get cleaner and dryer in less time now!

I guess this should've been at the top. The day of Emma's Christmas party I went back to the foot doctor and got this awesome boot. I've been wearing it most of the day most days since getting it. It's a little annoying, but my foot doesn't hurt. It's almost time for me to get back to the doctor and see if I'm ready to start physical therapy. I am looking forward to being able to walk without pain and without the boot.

This was the funniest. As we were cleaning up our Christmas decor Emma took the Christmas tree skirt and ran to her room. She came back out to the playroom wearing it like a dress. She thought she was so funny, and so did we!

December Highlights for Emma

Emma had such a fun month in December-- minus when she had strep and missed 3 days of school. Her teacher did so many fun things in their classroom for the holidays. They had an Elf on the Shelf, a pickle that was moved around the classroom, a big Christmas breakfast with all the kinder classes and some cute songs that they performed. They made these cute reindeer shirts that they got to wear to their Christmas party.

A year or two ago we got this fabulous advent calendar that was a labor of love from Chris's mom, sister and grandma. I *think* they said grandma did most of the work, but I honestly don't remember so we'll give credit to all of them.

On Christmas Eve we went to the movies and saw The Grinch! Emma LOVED it and Chris fell asleep during it. Emma loves to go to the movies and was pretty excited that we got popcorn! She's already asked if the movie is out yet so we can watch it again at home. 

Journey!

Every December USAA (where Chris works) has a huge Christmas party for all of their employees. There is normally some great performer (we've seen Earth Wind & Fire, Huey Lewis and the News, Train) and this year... the headliner was JOURNEY! We were SO excited to go this year! Chris was able to get a killer parking spot since he has a permanent handicapped spot at work so we got to go through a special side entrance and were some of the first people into the room at the Convention Center. We had a great meal and loved when Journey came out. I don't know if they will ever be able to top Journey, but I can't wait to see what happens this year!

2018

I can't believe it's been more than a year since I've blogged. 2018 has been quite the year for us (so was 2017, which also was not documented very well) and here is one of our most recent family photos! 

I'm going through the camera on my phone to see what the highlights of each month were.

Back in January Emma got a new big girl bed! She really should've gotten it way before then, but Ikea is so far away (until February when our San Antonio Ikea opens!!) that it took some time before we could get there! Emma was also busy doing swim lessons still back in January! I also got hooked on Family History work. I have found hundreds of names needing temple work done and am working really hard on one particular family line! I'm so glad I was able to find Jennigje and her husband Jan and their 14 children!

In February we had a lot of karaoke and dance parties in the kitchen! Emma loved holding a "microphone" while we sang!

In March I ordered fabric to make a new quilt for Emma's bed. I got super excited to lay it all out and start sewing. It's still not finished... even though it is now December... but I'm hoping it will be done soon!  I thought I would get it done quickly once Emma started school, but that just hasn't happened. It was supposed to be my November project, but then my ankle injury (you'll hear more of that later) brought more doctors appointments and I couldn't do the stairs very easily for a while. It's now become my big January 2019 project.

We also hit up Sea World a bunch after it opened at the beginning of March. Here we were waiting for the big Shamu show to start! We have been to Sea World a ton this year! 

April was mostly trips to Sea World and getting ready for the big trip we took in May! These are the magnets we made to put on our door for our Disney Cruise! 

On May 1st we loaded up into our car and started driving towards Florida! We spent 1.5 days in Pensacola visiting friends and going out on their boat. Then we headed to Sea World Orlando where we enjoyed their different shows, roller coasters and their dining pass. On May 5 we boarded the Disney Fantasy to head on a cruise to St. Thomas, St. Maarten and Disney's Castaway Cay. We swam a lot, met all the important characters, went on a trolley ride, explored the islands, did some water slides, ate more than our fair share of ice cream, saw all the shows and took a million photos. Here is Emma's favorite! We got to meet Pluto!

We wish we could have brought I Nyoman and Jossette home with us! I Nyoman was our server and Jossette was our assistant server (so she was in charge of all our drinks!). I Nyoman recommended the best desserts every night, often brining us way more than we even ordered! Jossette kept the diet coke flowing for me as the water was a little choppier than I could handle and I discovered that coke helped soothe my stomach during the choppiness. 

Emma got super lucky and got to use a set of character sheets on our cruise! She was so excited when we came back to our room and her bed had princess sheets! Tre, our room attendant, always set her stuffed animals and blanket up in fun ways, sometimes with other things he found around the room. One day we came back and Mickey was reading a book to Pluto! 

 Here are some of our favorite shots we took just around the ship. I could go on and on about how much we loved this trip. Let's just say.... we are anxiously waiting to book another Disney Cruise. In the meantime, Chris and I are looking forward to a couples cruise with some friends on a Royal Caribbean ship.

We got home from our cruise right in time to celebrate Emma's 5th birthday! Can't believe this munchkin is 5 now!

We spent a lot of June, July and August going to Sea World, the YMCA pool, the neighborhood pool and the free summer movies at our local movie theater! 

Emma and I flew up to Washington in June for my family reunion and had so much fun playing with cousins! Emma sang karaoke with her cousin Katie, got most of her cousins to play Go Fish with her, and went to a petting zoo with her cousin Teddy! We hot tubbed often and played in Teddy's little kiddie pool too! Emma LOVED her cousin time! Our already long layover in Denver ended up being about 7 hours because our plane got caught in a storm somewhere else. That was the longest day of my life. 

On August 24th we got to go meet Emma's kindergarten teacher and explore her new school! We fell in love with her teacher and with the library! The picture book area is a castle and they have a throne! Emma loves the library and the librarian, and so do I! I find myself volunteering in the school library multiple times a week. It breaks my heart that no other parent volunteers help out in the library. 

Emma had her first day of school on August 27th. Here in San Antonio Kindergarten is full day, so quite the long day! Here she is in the morning on her first day!

And giving me a thumbs up after she got home! 

Emma has LOVED school and is learning so much. Her teacher is the best and she has some great new friends in her class! She's learning how to read right now and loves that she can read some BOB Books on her own now! Reading is the one thing she really wanted to learn at school.

Today she is home for a second sick day as she and I are both fighting fevers. She really wishes she was at school (and lets be real -- I do too).

As for the rest of us... well, Chris still works at USAA and he loves it. He's on their mobile team and I don't really know exactly how to describe what he does, but since he uses his phone and ipad for work testing purposes, work pays for them and that is just fine with me! :) He serves as the Ward Clerk in our ward and finds himself really busy right now with tithing settlement and end of year stuff. His health has its ups and downs still, this summer he had a second sinus surgery to help correct a problem that we hope will help him sleep better. 

I'm adjusting to being a stay at home mom who has no kids at home with her most of the day! I was going to the gym regularly but hurt my ankle the day before I turned 30 and had to rest for a while. An MRI showed some strains and evidence of some past injuries so I had a "no running, limited exercise" month for the last month. I volunteer a few mornings a week at the school, mostly shelving books in the library and just completed a huge project for the librarian getting 600+ books pulled off the shelves to be removed from the library collection. I'm still the First Counselor in the Primary Presidency of our ward, but ask me again what I'm doing in a few months! Our Primary President is moving soon (so is our YW president) so the women in our ward are anxious to see who gets put where! 

We all are looking forward to 2 hour church and a more structured family scripture study and family home evening plan from the church! 

For 2019 we don't have any big plans, except to finally finish that quilt for Emma's bed! We hope to get Six Flags passes and go ride roller coasters a bunch! 

I won't promise to update often in 2019, but I can probably do more than 1 blog post in that year... I really would like to go back and do a few blog posts specifically about our big May trip to help document that. We have so many pictures and stories to go along with that trip that it really does deserve a few posts of its own! 

Swimming!

Emma started swim lessons back in September. When she first started, she was VERY reluctant to put her face in the water at all. She was okay doing some things, as long as her face didn't get wet. We got her some goggles, and then holy cow. She just took off! She's just about to finish her second session of lessons and is signed up for her third session. She LOVES her teacher, Miss Kamille. 

She has really struggled with jumping in on her own. She was okay jumping in if someone was catching her. But in the last week or so she something just clicked. Here she is jumping towards Miss Kamille.

She also was super excited to figure out how to swim all by herself, like a big kid. She wants to swim like her friend Savannah (who is 2 or 3 years older than her) who was on swim team last summer. This video was from one of the first times they started using their arms, which then also made her focus less on her kicking, but you can see that she no longer is afraid to get her face in the water :)

We're alive!

I keep putting "blog" on my to-do list. I've been wanting to update more, but things keep getting crazy! Does life ever calm down? I'm starting to think it won't....

1. After I was all recovered from my surgery, Chris found out he needed surgery on his sinuses. His was a much simpler procedure, it only took about 25 minutes, and he was able to work again the next day. However, it's taken a little longer for the internal healing to be complete. He's had several follow-ups with his doctor and tried several other medicines to help heal him. I think he's mostly done with that now. But yikes, sinus surgery can be a little nasty.

2. We went to Michigan for 10 days to visit Chris's family. His little brother and his wife also came (it was a surprise to their dad and little sister) and we all had a blast together. We ate a ton of good food, played a ton of games and just had a great time! Coming home and getting back into a routine was hard.

3. Emma and I LOVE going to the gym again. Because of the company Chris works for, we got a free upgrade to the "citywide" YMCA pass, so instead of access to just one gym we can go to any of them! It's a sweet upgrade, as some have indoor pools, some have splash pads, some have different types of classes, and some have racquetball courts (Chris likes that, although so far he hasn't used them). We mostly go to the new one, but sometimes we go to a different one.

4. At the gym I discovered I love the Les Mills Bodyflow class, a combination of yoga, tai-chi and pilates. It's my favorite, and I try to go 3 times a week. I even found an instructor that I really like. I feel like it's really strengthening my back and improving my balance. Plus, who can turn down that 5-10 minutes of meditation at the end of each class???

5. Emma is starting swimming lessons tomorrow. She is so excited, but is also a little bit nervous. I hope she doesn't throw major fits when her face gets wet, but that's what swim lessons are for... someone else to teach her. Hopefully she listens well!

6. I've been put in charge of our Primary Program this year. This morning I finally got my "final copy" sent off to the bishopric for approval. Hopefully I hear back from them soon so I can start sending out everyones parts. Our program is Oct 22, so it's coming up WAY fast. I've spent a toooon of time working on writing, rewriting, and rewriting again for this program; it will be nice to have this off my plate!

7. I really need to stop watching shows from the Food Network. We've watched a few different cooking shows lately (Pioneer Woman, Great Food Truck Race, British Baking Show (I think that's the name) ) and we just keep adding to our list of recipes we want to try. Mini pecan pies? YES PLEASE! We're making those this weekend, I'm super stoked.

8. It's almost cooling down enough that we can play outside more. Emma will be so excited to not melt completely when we play outside! I will too.

9. I became an aunt again this month! My brother Bryan and his wife, Kristi had the cutest baby this month! I want to meet and hold him so bad, but they live far away. I love that technology is available so we can watch him grow from far!

I'm going to try to blog more regularly, and maybe even be able to include some photos. I just realized I STILL haven't blogged all about our cruise, and that was almost an entire year ago. Whoops! Don't know how that got skipped.

the last few months

Why do I always let so many months go between blogging? When I finally do sit down to write a post I love it, it's just remembering to do it in the first place that seems to be hard for me.

So... since April when I last blogged:

1. Emma finished her first year of "preschool/playschool" and has learned a lot. She sings/screams a song about the days of the week and months of the year. She can count to 30 (although she throws a few extra 19s around as she counts, and sometimes 13 gets skipped completely). She learned how to ride a scooter and has much better control over her steering when she rides her tricycle.

2. Chris has been struggling with insomnia and other sleep issues for the last few months/years (but especially the last few months). We're waiting for results from his recent sleep study to see if he has sleep apnea or some other problem.

3. I finally decided it was time to talk to my doctor more seriously about some issues I've been having with my back/shoulders/neck and we concluded that surgery was in my future. It looked like insurance was going to make me do a TON before they'd approve surgery, but I saw a surgeon anyway and they submitted all my information to the insurance company. The next day my surgery was approved and scheduled, so on June 1st I had surgery. It's been 5 weeks now and I'm slowly getting back to normal. Next week most of my restrictions go away and I am SO excited. It's been really hard not being able to lift anything that weighed more than 5-10 lbs and not being able to help Emma get into her car seat. So far it seems like my issues are getting better, but I am excited to be able to go get a massage soon that should be able to help.

4. Because I had surgery and couldn't do a whole lot Emma and I started what she calls "Emma and Mommy School". I was debating doing another co-op preschool in the fall, but we decided that doing something on our own at home was going to fit Emma's needs and our family schedule better. So we are doing our own things at home to help her learn. She's been asking to read lots and lots of books, so we've been working our way through all the books we own (I couldn't go to the library for a while because books are heavy and I just can't lift very many... for one more week) but just put a HUGE stack of books on hold at the library. Can't wait to go get them soon. We've been working on recognizing the lowercase letters and Emma has been working on some pre-writing skills. Her scissor usage has improved dramatically and so has her attention span! During our "Emma Mommy School" we also plan on a bunch of active activities- park days, swimming (I just got the ok to swim again!), bike riding, and scooter riding.

5. Also while we've been chillin inside our house Emma has a new favorite activity that she calls "little beads." I purchased a few sets of Perler beads (they're tiny beads that you put on a little pegboard and then you iron them and the beads fuse together) and we've been making all sorts of things- a ton of fish, dogs, cats, squares, circles, octopus, dolphins, whales... the list goes on and on.

6. With my back doing better my surgeon recommended getting back to the gym (we cancelled our YMCA membership a while ago because I was in pain) and doing some weight lifting to help strengthen my back. I'm actually really excited to get back to the gym and so is Emma. We're going to check out a new YMCA that just opened by our house this weekend and are excited to sign up soon! One more week until I can start doing small exercises again!

7. Emma discovered Dora the Explorer and I HATE it. Dora is obnoxious.

8. Yesterday I cooked what was probably the most real meal I've cooked since surgery.  It was super nice having my mom here for the first week after surgery, taking care of Emma and doing all the cooking. Then it was super nice that we had a bunch of leftovers after she left, and that we got 6 meals brought in by members of our ward, plus we had some meals in the freezer that I made before surgery. But now we're out of most of those... and it is time to eat real, homemade meals again! We are so grateful for everyone who has helped us the last 5 weeks. We had plenty of meals, someone mowed our lawn, and a lot of friends took turns having Emma over for play dates so I could rest.

9. Grocery pickup services are amazing. I am so happy that we have two stores near us with curbside pickup. It is so nice to just spend 10 minutes adding everything to my cart online and then just have to pull up to the curbside pickup spots and they bring me my groceries. I think that will be something I continue doing even after all my restrictions are gone. I think I saved a ton of money NOT taking Emma into the stores... and I ate a lot less donuts 😆😆

10. I couldn't leave the list at 9, that was just such an odd number to end on, so here is a pointless number 10.

Howdy!

Oh, hello blog friends! It's been a while.

1. I learned how to play the organ! I was actually kind of decent at it too!

2. Our neighborhood got switched to a new ward last month after our neighboring ward needed to be split.

3. Chris is still the Assistant Ward Clerk over finances.

4. I am back in the Primary Presidency now, but this time I'm the 1st Counselor.

5. It's really hard getting a new primary fully functional after losing most of its teachers. We've only got 65 kids, plus 17 in nursery, but we've got our hands full with these 65!

6. I had the flu last week. It was awful.

7. Emma got a scooter and is learning how to ride it.

8. Emma also has learned in the last few weeks how to climb a big ladder at our neighborhood park. She's pretty short for her age and has been trying to figure the ladder out but her legs were just too short. She's grown a bunch recently and tried it and can do it! She was so excited and so proud!

9.  I can't think of anything else quick to say.  I've got a preschool lesson to plan for tomorrow and a sharing time lesson to plan as soon as I get preschool figured out! Plus it's Monday, which means it's laundry day... so I've got piles of laundry taking over my main walkway in my house.

Stuffs.

I swear we're still alive! It's been a wild couple of months, and soon I hope to have the time to document it properly with a ton of posts!

Since August when I blogged last (about Emma's birthday which was in May...) we've been so busy, but also so not busy, it's hard to explain.

1. I started Allergy Shots back in May, so I now spend one morning a week (it really only takes an hour from the time we leave our house til we're done) going to the allergy doctor to get my weekly shot. I feel like that has taken over our Monday mornings.

2. In September Emma started a little preschool group with two of her friends, we call it Play School, since the point was more learning to play together with some learning thrown in. We have a letter of the Day and start with circle time where we talk about that letter and the days of the week, etc and read a book. Then they typically do some sort of project/craft and then they go play until lunch time. We've been on a field trip or two and had so much fun! This next week play school is at our house and we are talking about the letter M.

3. Emma was Elsa for Halloween. She was SO excited to go run around our neighborhood and knock on doors and say Trick or Treat. In our neighborhood it is really common to sit out on your porch/driveway to hand out candy instead of making kids knock on the door. It was fun to watch her run up to all the houses on our street. She JUST finished her Halloween candy last week. We really made her stretch it out!

4. In November we went on the trip of a lifetime! We went on our Disney Cruise! This will get a bajillion posts of its own, at least a post for each day, and a probably a few more just of photos. We had the most amazing time, and it was so nice to just be together the 3 of us, and to have VERY limited technology with us! We didn't buy an internet plan, so we just used our phones to take pictures and know the time. Our cabin had a tv that showed disney junior shows in the mornings (probably all day really, but we weren't in our cabin enough to find out) so Emma would watch that while we would get ready, but that was it! Oh man, I'll save the rest of my thoughts until I have time to really blog about it. While we were onboard we booked another cruise... our countdown was originally something like 531 days, I was excited to see it get below 500 a while back. We probably won't tell Emma about that trip until it's just about time to go, but earlier this week she did ask if we could go back to Mickey's Ship again.

5. Christmas was fantastic! We stayed home and did our own thing, and it was LOVELY! Whole posts about Christmas and Christmas adventures later!

6. I got released from being the Primary Secretary and got called as the Ward Organist. Totally didn't know how to play the Organ. Next Sunday will be the first week I will actually play it. And it's going to be super intense!

and... now Emma is awake. So hopefully soon I'll come back and give lots more details!