FHE: Nephi & Candyland

For FHE tonight we watched one of the living scriptures about Nephi going to the promised land. Emma loved it. While Laman and Lemuel were misbehaving, Emma said, "I wish I could go in that movie and stop the wind". Then we made a little paper boat like the one from the movie. It was fun.

Then of course, we played candyland. Emma's favorite. Emma won--fair and square! I'm hoping she can get into some new games here soon, because it's getting a little old. That is until I see the excitement on Emma's face when she gets to the candy castle. Then her little guy goes back and forth over all the trails. Oh, to have the imagination of a little kid again. :)

Emma's Spider

I'm trying to save digital copies of emma's many creations, and I thought this one was cute, so I'm posting it here. :) Here's our conversation...

"Emma, what is this?

"It's a spider mom. See it has eyes, and a nose and a face. And arms and lots and lots of hair! I love green. I love that green pen. I love it soooooo much."

(She always wants to draw with a green sharpie, which I have banned, but she someone always finds. This is a green vis-a-vis from school, and is our compromise.)

Get in Shape Girl!

Do you remember this from your childhood years! :)

I've been hearing this run through my head for a while now, and I'm ready! Here are only a few of my goals (physical at least--I have a full table of all my other goals) for the year, but I'm hoping that by sharing them, I'll be able to be more successful!

1. Move! (walk more, exercize, hike...all the fun things that require me to get off my booty!)
2. Eat better! (to help with my training, Shane and I are joining weight watchers together...thanks to Jen for the inspiration)
3. Limit internet/blogging to 1/2 hour a day. (This will be so hard! I realized last week how many times a day I check my email, my favorite blogs, and just generally sit and surf during the day. I need to re-prioritize what I do during my home time and be more active).
4. Be a better example for Emma.

Most of this is motivated by our need to be healthy. We have had some trouble for a while now getting a #2 here to our family, and decided it was time to make some major changes so we could help make that happen. We are hitting it off with lots of doctor's visits and just general good healthy thinking. Hopefully in a few months we'll have some good news. It's frustrating because we didn't have a problem at all getting pregnant with Emma, and it's been over a year and 1/2 now that we've been trying for another. Hopefully by sharing this we can really commit to this new lifestyle.

Favorite 2008 Photos

I've been working on our 2008 photo book, and am just about done (just have to fill in all the journaling). I must say, we were blessed with an amazing year. I really love how I can look back and see how the Lord guided us throughout the year. He blessed us immensely, and guided us through unexpected challenges. I'm so grateful for our little family, I can't imagine life without Shane and Emma.

Most of these photos are from the blog this year, so it's nothing new. I just loved them all!

When Jesus comes to our house...

Tonight at FHE, Shane's lesson was about how Jesus showed us how to love others. At the end of the lesson, we were talking about ways to be nice to each other, and Emma said this...

"When Jesus comes to our house, he gives me hugs...I really like to give him hugs".

Love it! :)

Who can you call at 3:00 in the morning?

Due to snow & rains, we had a major flooding situation last night. I didn't realize how bad it was until Shane got home from work, and said people were out sandbagging. He came in, got a bite to eat, and then was off to shovel sand, haul bags, and generally enjoy the soaking wet splendor a flood preparation. At about 1:00 in the morning, we realized it was getting worse, and that we could use some extra hands, and so we called in reinforcements. My Dad, Zach and Michael all came out to help us. I can't tell you how grateful we are to have people that are willing to come help in the middle of the night. They were out there until about 3:30-4:00, and they decided they did all they could do. No homes in our complex were damaged, but the house behind us got a little water damage. We found out the river crested at about 4:00 when they decided they were done. Here are a bunch of pictures, I wish they could do the situation justice. I can't put into words how much more water is on our creek than normal...even more than last year. Mother Nature is amazing! I just went out to look and there are many "items" stuck in the trees, including a large metal structure. It'll be interesting to see whats left out there when the water subsides. Here are some of the pictures.




These are Michael's hands after being soaking wet in his gloves. They aren't bruised, the leather dyed his hands that color. Hopefully it washed off when he got home!

Here is my Dad, Michael and Shane sandbagging...2:30ish am.

My hard-working sweetie! I'm so grateful for wonderful strong men in my life!

$.49

Emma is a natural bargain shopper! We've spent the last couple of days at various stores going through the clearance racks and she is such a trooper. She'll just hang out in the cart (if there is one), or like yesterday at Old Navy, she reorganized a whole sock display. Anyway, we were shopping yesterday, and she had been so great for so long, she found these flip-flops and she asked if she could get them? I thought...they can't be more than like $5.00, so why not. We got to the counter, and they rang up at on 49 cents! I'm so proud of her. Her first big deal. :)

Project 365

So, I accepted a challenge from one of my old roommates, to participate in this project. You take a picture for each day of the year and then at the end of the year you have a record of the exciting and the boring...everything from the past year. I love this idea, as I look at blogging now, and my current form of journaling. I remember to blog everyday, but I barely remember to write in my journal once every couple of months.

Here are some links to ideas for the project.

http://www.creatingkeepsakes.com/images/stories/magazines/creating_keepsakes/January2009/365GreatIdeas4.pdf
http://www.sweetshoppecommunity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21224

They have a lot of ideas and links on how to do it! Some people do hard-copies and print out each picture, or do a one-week summary. I'll probably just blog all year, and then do a year-end book on my Mac at the end of the year.

I started a separate blog for this challenge here. I'll post my daily pictures there, just so they aren't so boring here on this blog. Not that this blog is that interesting. Ha! :) Anyway, does anyone else want to join?

In the paper!

We got our local paper this week, and they had an article about the teachers in our district that had received their National Board certification. I'm in there! FYI if you want to read. :)

Click here to go to the Issaquah Press.

2008, the Year of the Cursed Cell Phones

I'm really hoping to turn over a new leaf this year, and have better luck with my cell phone. I "lost" or "misplaced" five different cell phones in the last six months. It has been horrible. I have never been so flighty in my whole life, but they seem to just disappear from my car, home, purse and desk. It's been horrible. Everyone I know has given me their old cell phone, so I don't have to keep buying new ones, but it is getting ridiculous.

I was actually going pretty strong on a 2 week streak of keeping my phone charged and with me, when a major disaster occurred yesterday. We were at the aquarium, and I was searching for my camera in my purse, accidentally pulled out my phone, put it back in what I thought was my purse, but it slipped down my coat sleeve and directly into one of the tide pools where Emma was playing with starfish. I pulled it out immediately, let it dry out, and tried to reassemble it last night, but it no longer works. Cell phone #6 bites the dust. It was the Blackberry Pearl and I really loved it. Oh, well.

Jake is giving me his old phone, which is actually my old phone, and I'm hoping that I will do better in the coming year. Let's keep our fingers crossed for 2009! :)

*4:33 UPDATE! While putting away the decorations today, I found one of my old phones! (The one my Mom gave me to replace one of the lost ones!) It was in the stroller on the back porch. I guess I haven't gone for a walk for a while. But, I'm so glad I found it. 2009 is looking great so far! :)