What a depressing post title... I know! It just has been a bit hard for me to break away from the twenties and accept the fact that I am thirty now. There is nothing I can do about it and time will only move forward faster from here on now, but I just such a great third decade of my life that I am going to miss that a lot! It started with me barely being a newlywed, then getting my degree at BYU (while having a great time being a student), moving to Texas, internship, buying our first home together, working my first grownup job, bringing two beautiful babies into this world, moving to Austin and buying our perfect little home... So many firsts and milestones!
It gives me hope that in the resurrection we are all going to be in our twenties :)
My birthday started in the rec center, on the treadmill. I was never the person who can eat whatever I want and never see it in my waistline. So I started the morning right knowing that the will be some calories eaten today :) The upsetting part was typing in my age on the treadmill: 3 0!!!! Gasp! Unbelievable! Feels just like 29!
Like poring salt on the wound, when we drove to San Antonio a few weeks ago, I saw a huge billboard ad for weight loss and body surgery, that said: "Wanna feel 29 again???" Ahhhhh!
Well, at least I did for my 30th something I've never done before, which felt good and exciting - I flew!! Doubling up with Mark and Camille, we went to iFly and enjoyed getting blasted with a massive air flow. It sounded not so cool to me at first, well, not compared to skydiving, but it was actually amazingly fun! It was challenging to keep myself airborn and also to try moving my body in different directions. At one point in time the instructor made us both fly up super high and then descend! It was a blast! For sure made me want to go skydiving! That will be something to look forward to this next life decade :)
Here we are suited up before the flight:
The handles on the suit are for the instructor to direct you or lift you or pull you down. We lovingly named them "the love handles"!
Matchees:
The team is ready for take off! Seriously we laughed so hard throughout the evening that I was close to peeing my pants :) (re-usable earplugs and Mark's reluctant flight exit strategy) these guys are the best to go double-dating with!
Mark with his post-flight beard:
Good times! After flying we went out for Amy's ice cream, which was heavenly delicious (sure was glad for that treadmill start of the morning).
When we got home, I had a sweet surprise waiting for me from my Laurels from church. They heart-attacked our house! The funny part was that PJ was supposed to tell his Mom about the secret plans, so she would be ready for them. Well, PJ worked so hard to keep it a secret from me that he kept it a secret from everybody else too.
The twenties were wonderful, but I know that we have even better times ahead. Me and the love of my life cruising through life together, raising two beautiful munchkins, having joy in family life! Also, hopefully in a few years I'll be able to put myself back into the work field. Keeping the eternal perspective in mind I know that I am here to grow and learn and I am thankful for the years that I've been given and I'll need many more to learn how to be more Christ-like and how to faithfully deal with life's adversities.
We are so proud of our little girl! She worked hard to memorize all 13 Articles of Faith throughout this year. The incentive was a big chocolate bar. So finally this month Ophelia was able to pass off the final, 13th article and she stood up and said it in front of the whole junior primary. Such a big girl! Of course, she loved getting a whole chocolate bar all to herself for that:
Here is a video of her doing her last article:
I love that whenever we eat dinner, Ophelia touches, snuggles, or rubs her Papa's shoulder. It's the sweetest thing! I had to capture it:
A few things that Ophelia has been saying:
* "I almost falled, but I holded on" This stage of her language development includes incorrect verb usage, PJ can tell you all about it. But it's kind of sad and funny at the same time that I've started talking like that too. I guess these are the people I hang out with all the time, but now I am starting to talk like them. Shouldn't it be the other way around???
* One day Ophelia comes out running out of her room and says to me: "Mama, there's a lawyer in my room!" Me, confused: "What is a lawyer?". She says:"It's a scary, scary monster!" Me: "Did you know that Unkie Mark is a lawyer?" Ophelia: "Oh...." Following an explanation from me on what a lawyer is, I had to text Mark :)
Here is our other little munchkin. Although he doesn't touch me during dinner time on his own accord, but whenever Ophelia does something to PJ, like a kiss on the cheek, or whispers something in his ear, Emerson HAS to do the same to me. Just being a little brother who wants to to everything that his sister does! Most of the time I make sure Emerson does not touch me though during dinner, because despite forks and spoons being available to him, he usually at least once grab the food with his hands! This is so different from Ophelia, who couldn't stand having her hands dirty when she was Emerson's age. Emerson could care less, but he does comply with the routine hand and face scrub down after mealtimes.
Ophelia is for sure a little OCD about having clean hands and face. Whenever eating she HAS to have a napkin. She dabs her face with it after each bite. And I stopped asking her to wash her hands after meals, because she always keeps them clean!
Here is Emerson signing different emotions for me:
That little sweet boy loves wearing hats! And I think he looks pretty adorable in hats too, but I may be bias :) Whenever I brush Ophelia's hair and she asks for a bow on top, Emerson asks for a bow too, then I tell him that boys don't wear bows, boys wear hats, after which he proceeds to pick a hat from hit "hats" bin. This is our routine pretty much every morning these days. I'm not really concerned that he loves doing all these girly things, like bows, necklaces, headbands, but I think he probably needs more boy playmates around here!
So, we had Winstie with us for a few hours one Saturday afternoon:
Cousy time! Winstie got his hair properly brushed :) Then snack time is always ten times more fun with more kiddos:
Me and Ophelia went to a neighborhood party that day too and she got her face painted. Of course, she wanted a rainbow. Whenever you ask her what her favorite color is, she'll tell you "all of the colors of the rainbow, and black and brown". She is just such a bright and colorful little person! She loves lots of bright colors!
Emerson has been really into playing hide and seek lately. It's pretty confusing though because he runs to a "hiding place", closes his eyes with his little chubby hands and begins counting: "one, two, four, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Come! Not!" (which means "Ready or not, here I come!") He can count to ten, but always skips 3 and 5. Go figure! But it's still confusing whether he wants to seek or hide :) It's a combination of both kind of game, I guess. He also loves playing "roll the ball." In fact he is crazy about balls. He can name off the different types of balls: baseball, basketball, soccer ball, football. And in the store we can't possibly pass by a basket with balls without Emerson asking: "Ball, please!"
He is such a polite little fellow. It is absolutely adorable and how can anyone ever say "no" to an almost-two year old who says "please", with no prompting? He does better even than Ophelia with saying his nice words, "thank you" especially.
Here is my little pijama crew (Emerson with a ball, of course):
I got a new haircut! This is the shortest my hair has ever been! I loved the layers that the stylist did, but I can never lay them the they they do at the salon on my own.
Oh, here is another one with Emerson and his eating style (I should've taken Ophelia's picture for contrast with her amazing cleanliness skills) :
Emerson has been sooo into the "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" book series. He wants me (or any willing poor soul) to read it to him over and over and over and over! He loves reading other books too, but the "Brown Bear" ones are always the first ones that he finds on the shelf and wants to read.
I also love the way Emerson wakes me up in the morning. He starts yelling out of his crib: "ARE you, Mama?!!". I can't describe his exact intonation, but it's as if he was saying "where are you, mama?" but dropping the "where". That's what it sounds like. Super cute! Or sometimes he yells: "DooOOR!!" To mean "open the door" :)
November 25th, PJ and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. Crazy, unbelievable, where has the time gone??? My love wrote a sweet message for me to find in the morning when I woke up:
We're looking forward to some quality one-on-one time on our Caribbean cruise this coming January! Can't wait!!!!
This year Chuck and Nancy were in Chile during Thanksgiving, so we got to go to the Gills for the big dinner. The kids always have a blast together:
The food was amazing! How could we have not stuffed ourselves? Impossible!
Ophelia on the hammock at the Gills' home backyard:
Boys being boys! Emerson with a ball in hand (of course):
Winston and Emerson have been starting to have a harder time getting along. Winstie always seems to want whatever Em has. This was fine before, when Emerson could care less, and would quickly move on to something else after Winston would take a toy away from him. Now Emerson is at the stage where protests, grabs, and fights back...Thus we enter the joyous journey of teaching our little boys how to share:
The AKs:
The CPKs:
Ophelia does not have trouble sharing with the boys and she does a great job of exciting them up to jump, run around, and play tag. But here she stopped for a good chunk of time to play Go Fish! with Joyce. She loved playing it so much, she talked about it for days later. That might have been her favorite thing about Thanksgiving this year :)
Ooooo! I have to share this picture of our amazing bed, built by my amazing father-in-law. It's been almost a year since we had it, and I just LOVE it! I love the 7 drawers on the bottom of it. Only one of them is currently empty. Lots of much needed storage space! I love the wooden look of it and the natural tongue oil smell of it. I love how sturdy it is. This will be a piece of furniture to be passed along to the future generations for sure! Also, PJ and I love having a king sized bed. It's huge, I know, but it's so incredible comfy!
Welcoming a few cold days this winter, we got out the winter gear. Emerson is ready for this Texas winter weather:
Just playing around, making a collage of Ophelia's emotions picture and Emerson's "scared" picture too:
Wait, didn't we just have a cold day last week? Nope, just kidding, it's still Texas fall, with warm lovely weather. It's November and the leaves are finally falling in our backyard. The kids were excited to make some leaf piles to play in:
Christmas is in the air! I am starting this new tradition of 25 days of Christmas, with a special spiritual message relating to Christ each night from Dec 1 till 25. Each night there is a little symbolic ornament to be put on the tree. That meant I had to get the tree out before December 1st. So here it is:
The kids were super excited about the tree. I remember when I was a little girl and how exciting it was when my parents brought a tree home and we got to decorate it. Now my kids are doing it and it's so much fun watching them and being excited through their eyes :)
This is another one one of my LOOOONG posts. But here is one last bit of news. Ophelia got to be the line leader in her class at school, which not only includes leading, but also being the weather person for the day, reciting a song about vowels and taking this little stuffed monkey home with her and making a journal entry about her adventures with him. His name is Bonzo, but PJ gave him a nickname of Gar-Bonzo, which I thought was funny. So, the whole week, Ophelia took Bonzo everywhere with her! She had to feed him each time she ate. And she asked me to take a picture with her and Bonzo about a dozen times a day:
This last picture was my favorite with Gar-Bonzo. Ophelia had to have him in pijamas, so I dug up a pair that was too small for Emerson.
What can I say, raising these kids is a blast! Every day is a new adventure for sure!
All the cabinets in the house have become pretty much free-for-all play areas. Sigh! But when I have to get dinner done, anything works to keep the kids happy and entertained. Emerson also loves taking all of the silverware out of the dishwasher and putting it either on the dishwasher's top rack or bottom area, where the drain is. Then he closes all the silverware compartment's lids and shuts the dishwasher door. I guess that's what order in the dishwasher seems to be like to a 15-month old!
Bath time giggles with Papa:
Our newest Craigslist purchase. This will be perfect for summertime adventures in the backyard. Emerson has not mastered the climb up the stairs to get to the top, and it's a good thing. His head has enough bruises as it is without this.
We made it out to the splash pad and officially opened the outside water-play season!
This is all new and exciting to Emerson. He was so excited the whole time!
Here are his squeals of excitement:
Ophelia got too cold towards the end:
Mother's Day is the best, most wonderful, relaxing, awesome holidays of the whole year! PJ let me have the whole day off my full-time mothering job! So I went to workout at the rec center in the morning, did a little shopping, (then we had to interrupt my day because of a new car purchase, which is a pretty sweet Mother's day present), then I got to go out with a friend and have a pedicure followed by an ice cream cone. It was heavenly! A much needed break. I came home to find one very tired Papa:
Thank you, love, for letting me relax and taking on the tough job for the day! This was the best present ever! I love you!
Another sunny day in Oatmeal. Hanging out with the cuzz:
Here is our sweet little girl and her colorful artwork. She loves to incorporate as much different colors as possible whenever she is drawing or coloring or painting. I love it!
It was Ophelia's bestie's birthday and we got to go to the splash pad again, this time to celebrate Lois's 5th Birthday.
Mmmm, cake time!
The summer in Texas has officially begun! Woo-hoo!
