Ophelia is Seven!

Tonight I was watching a few of the older videos of the kids, when Ophelia was just a tiny four year old, talking so well, being such a sweet big sister, always dancing or moving, never shy of the camera...This past weekend my sweet little girl has turned seven! In her own words, she is a big girl now! Sigh. In everything that she does, she strives to be independent. I don't need to meet her at the school bus stop at the end of the school day any more, she officially can walk herself home (despite it being a tiny short walk, it brought a lot of pride for Ophelia to be able to do it on her own). I can easily delegate responsibilities to her and fully trust that she will do what I asked her to do. She loves to do lists (the apple didn't fall far from tree here), and loves to help me with anything, cooking is one of her faves! Ophelia is very polite, still loves to move and dance, and is an AMAZING big sister. Most of the time the last fact is not as appreciated by Emerson as it should be. I love my "big" girl! And here is how her birthday weekend went.

Ophelia has been waking up lately to her own alarm in the mornings. This was mainly set up because the first week of school she would be so anxious about waking up on time that she would be up waaay before she (or me!!) should've been. So, on her birthday she woke herself up and got dressed for school. PJ, Emerson, and I got Krispy Kreme donuts for her classmates (two dozen of O-shaped goodness), a Happy Birthday balloon, and lunch from Chick-fil-a and came to visit Ophelia during her lunchtime. She sure felt special and loved! This was right before school:

After school Grandma took Ophelia shopping at the mall, AND got her ears pierced! While that was happening PJ took Emerson to the bouncy house. All this was planned out by the birthday girl weeks in advance. She not only included Emerson in her plans, but also got him a toy at the Disney store while shopping with Grandma. So super sweet and thoughtful! After the mall we all ate at Olive Garden, which she says is her favorite restaurant.

Saturday was the big Birthday Party day. I never meant for it to be big, but it turned out that we had 12 kids in total coming over to our house! I stressed out about it, but in the end two hours really flew by and it wasn't so bad after all.

The theme of the party was all about hamsters. For the past few months Ophelia has been saving money in order to buy a pet hamster. A nice lady from Craigslist gave her a cage for free, when she learned that Ophelia was saving money for it. It was a special day to go to the pet store a pick out her new pet, hamster Flurry. This brings our total family count to seven "people": PJ and myself, Ophelia and Emerson, Freddy the betta fish, Melody the robot vacuum cleaner, and Flurry the hamster :)

This cake was huge and delicious! We still have a third of it in our freezer. Yumm! Ophelia came up with a few hamster-related activities for the party: solving mazes, stuffing cheeks with marshmallows, and learning some neat hamster facts.

She also wanted to have a dance party, which we set up in the office, equipped with disco lights, loud music and her favorite songs. The kids had a blast!

The traditional gift opening ceremony:

And my favorite, but most time consuming part was the favor gifts. I found lots of used Zhu zhu pets on Craigslist, cleaned them up, fixed them up, and we gave them to each of the guests. They had such a great time playing with those things the last little bit of the party. It was a huge hit! If you don't know what those toys are, they are a motorized hamster toy that squeaks and goes all over the place. Kids loved them when they first came out about five years ago, but these days none of the stores carry them any longer, so that's why I had to go with Craigslist.

My favorite part of Ophelia's birthday was this: Babushka and Dedushka gave her an Amazon gift card to buy whatever she wanted to. The first thing she wanted to buy with it was a remote control car, but not for herself (because she already has one), but for Emerson because he has none!! So so incredibly thoughtful and sweet. Now we are starting a new family tradition thanks to Ophelia: the birthday girl or boy has to get a gift for the other one for their own birthday. Emerson was so very excited about it:

Even though Ophelia strives to be independent and a big girl at everything, there are lots of moments when she is still my sweet little girl. She tells me she believes in fairies. She has a fairy home set up in her room and keeps waiting for a fairy to move in. She also does not want to be independent when it comes to tucking herself in at night. When one evening I sent her to bed on her own, she came back a few minutes later in tears, telling me how much she misses me and wants me to come tuck her in.... I hope she will continue to feel that way for many more years to come!

Emerson's Fourth Bday Bash

We have arrived at this day! Emerson is 4. I had many doubts this past year (or even ever since he started walking) that this active little boy of mine would survive to be four. His energy combined with some clumsiness, plus the height he is at, put him at a minimum of one head trauma per day. Minimum!  This kid always has a bruise somewhere on his head. Heavenly Father is sure watching over him, he is not only alive and well, but he is smart, clever, curious, adventurous, and funny. I love being this boy's Mama! He makes me laugh every day. He easily gets upset or frustrated, but he just as easily snaps out of it and becomes my snuggly sweetheart. Emerson randomly tells me throughout the day: "Mama!" "What?" "I love you!" On occasional moments I sit down on the coach, he is sure to come and snuggle for a brief moment. He is so generous with his hugs and kisses. When I get down to his level, he often grabs my face in his little hands to say: "You are just so CUTE!", followed by a kiss. I love it! 

The other night he woke up around midnight for some reason. PJ went in to lay him back down. A few minutes later we heard yells from his room, but when we got closer we realized he was belting out the lyrics to Adele's Hello: "Hello from the over SIIIIIDE!!! I musav called a fausand TIIIMES!! To tell you I'm soooorry, for evryfing that I've done....." 

An update on hid thumbsucking...I think he is finally over it, cross my fingers. I suspect he still does it at night when he sleeps, unconsciously. But during the day, even for comfort, or boredom, or TV watching, or riding in the car, or even when hugging and cuddling, he has been really good at not doing it! Hope I will not jinx it, because we have done this before, where for two weeks he was so good at not sucking and then all of the sudden he reverted back to it.. We used the gross Mavala stuff to put on his nails. It lasts for about 4 days and slowly washed away. At this point he knows his thumb is not yucky any more, but consciously chooses not to suck it.

Emerson's bday was a blast this year! We rented a room at the HopnHappy bouncy house place, brought our decoration and food, and the place provided set up and clean up, and entertainment for the kids. I especially loved coming back home to our house with no cleaning to do! It was perfect! All the kids loved it. 

This is Tori, our future daughter-in-law :) Emerson said that he is going to marry Tori. So, now that's settled, we don't have to worry about that any more :) She sure is a cutie:

Emerson invited many people to his party. I kind of had to trim down his list a bit. He says his BFF is Garrett, who is 9, who is Emerson's role model in everything. Garrett was like the guest of honor. It was sweet of Garrett to play with Emerson a lot on all the bouncy things.

The party he wanted was Teenage Ninja turtles, so we had to have cheese pizza, of course. A big hit with the kids!

Besides the bounce things, the place has a huge foam pit. The kids spent the majority of their time swimming in these blocks:

Hailey and Emerson going doing the slide together:

Emerson thinks that the exact moment when your age actually changes is when you get "Happy Birthday" sung to you. So, when on my birthday, Ophelia kept trying to sing Happy Birthday to me, Emerson kept stopping her and getting mad, saying: "Mama is gonna turn if you sing!" So this is the "magical" moment when Emerson turned 4:

For homework this week, Ophelia had to write a paragraph about an important person. It could be someone famous, like Rosa Parks, or somebody she knows. Guess who she chose to write about? I glanced over and the was already on her third sentence writing about Emerson. So sweet! She loves her brother so much. Those two together can be so annoying to each other, but they are the best of friends. They play together all the time, make each other laugh, are silly together. Ophelia is Emerson's biggest protector (from other kids or even when we try to discipline him) or his gentle soother when he gets hurt.

Emerson told me today: "Mama, I am almost going to turn five!" Not quite, buddy! But we will get there, one bruise at a time :)

German Texan

For PJ's birthday this year we decided to go on a little getaway adventure. We made sure that Grandma and Grandpa missed the kids enough that they gladly wanted them over there for a few days. Last time the kids spent ample time with the grandparents was the time we went on our anniversary cruise so both parties were equally excited to spend a few days together. In fact the kids were so excited that I heard about spring break at Grandma's and Grandpa's house for days and days, hour after hour!! They had a ton of fun and so did we!

We stayed in a hotel in Fredericksburg that served delicious Texas shaped waffles in the morning, which was a favorite for my birthday boy. Here we are dining at a German restaurant connecting PJ with his German roots! 

Fredericksburg is a lovely little town founded by German settlers. It has lots of cool history but now it is turning into a very touristy place to go. We usually don't like doing touristy things with throngs of other tourists but we did stumble into a free museum where we found out about a Mormon colony of Zodiac that came and settled down by Fredericksburg for several years. Who would've thought! Also just this weekend I found out there is a town by Houston called Williamson that was started by Mormons and this Williamson family basically stayed in this town and multiplied and created a little piece of Utah here in Texas! Everyone in that town in Mormon! So interesting! This Texan Mormon connection :)

The main strip of Fredericksburg is where all the action is happening. We went there two times on two different days for the main purpose of visiting the "tasters store". One of the shops on the strips sells hundreds of different jam, jellies, honeys, dips, sauces, oils, salsas, pie fillings and even fudge. The amazing thing is that you can taste ANYTHING in that store, all labeled with crackers or pretzels for your convenience. It is amazing! And that was our lunch for two days straight :)

On PJ's actual b-day we detoured from Fredericksburg and visited Enchanted Rock national park. It is a cool sight to see in the middle of pretty flat Texas land: a huge rock and a few less huge one around it. Apart from being a great camping spot it also is great for hiking around. We had a blast going up, down, and around these rocks.

The winds were soooo strong that day. I was glad I ate my whole Texas sized waffle :) it kept me from blowing over! The gusts of wind reminded us of our iFly adventures:

I forgot our camera, so these images are not nearly as amazing as in real life, but it works for the sake of great memories. That place is beautiful!

It was such a nice getaway! We did miss the kids like we always do, but we enjoyed ourselves and our time together immensely! Here is a cool coo-coo clock wall at that German restaurant. It would've been more German if they synchronized all the clocks and made them coo-coo together, but it looked like they were mostly just broken. Cool decoration though!

The Third Decade Is Over

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. 

Here we go, fourth decade! Bring it on!

Ophelia's big 4!

I could begin each post about Ophelia's birthday with words: "I can't believe I am a Mom of _-year old!" Because that's how I feel every time she turns a year older! She is just growing up so fast. I feel that especially this summer she has just sprouted! Her 3T clothes that were worn all year long have become too small now. When I see her playing with peers I don't see her as being the most petite one any more, she is up there with all of her friends. She has been loving "running" with me at the gym lately. After my workout, me and the kids go up to the track and she takes off as fast as she can and run a whole lap. She really is fast, too! Emerson tries hard to keep up, flailing his little pudgy arms by his sides as he runs, and yells "fas! fas! fas!", meaning "fast!".

At her well-child visit, Ophelia's stats were: 30th percentile for weight, 40th for height. Our pediatrician, Dr. Spencer loves talking to Ophelia and in turn she loves going to the doctor. She wrote her name for him and drew shapes that he asked her to draw. He asked her to jump like a kangaroo, she did it, then like a frog, she did it. All to check her physical development. Then she started jumping differently and asked the doctor: "Guess, what am I now?!" We giggled about that one :) Totally turned the game around. The nurse was trying to check her vision and showed her a board of letters, pointing at a letter on it, the nurse asked: "What is that?" Ophelia just looked at her questioningly and answered: "Letters!". Love it! Ophelia got two shots this time. She laid on the table super still and squeezed my hand. Her eyes got big and scared as soon as the needle punctured her leg, but she did not cry at all. So brave! She checked out perfectly normal in all aspects. And extremely well in some. I sure feel a proud mama when the doctor compliments me on how bright my child is!

One day randomly in the car Ophelia was talking about who she is going to be when she grows up, thinking out loud, this is what I was hearing: " Mama, when I grow up, I want to be a Mommy...I'm going to have kids and we will drive a car...(thoughtful pause) Mama, where do we buy a car?"  :) Love it! I am growing a mini me: a planner, an organizer, a detail-oriented little individual :)

For her birthday party this year we decided to rent a pavilion at a splash pad. I think it worked out wonderfully. My house was clean, we were able to invite lots of friends (everyone who she put down on her own list), I didn't need to plan and execute games and activities. It got a little hot towards the end, but the cake was still delicious even though the frosting was a little melty. Here are a few pictures from the party:

Oh, the theme that she picked and I made her stay with it once I ordered decorations online was "Rainbow Pony". The napkins and plates matched the theme perfectly (imagine that?) and other things...well, I did my best. Plus, as soon as the party started, really, she did not even ask, say, or pay attention to it. She loved the little unicorn/pony couple off her cake. The day after her party, she started telling me already that next year she want a "rainbow party", a few days later - a "flower party", and here we go again!

This girl loves frosting! Just like her Grandma! She'd rather have a bowl of frosting, hold the cake :)

I love this age of Ophelia, when it is easy to reason with her. In the stores, she'll always want to look at toys, books, candy, etc. and will tell me what she wants for her next birthday. And I usually agree in a nice motherly way: "uh-huh". I am so glad that she did not remember her loooooong list of requests as she got her presents this year. She was excited to get anything:

Our happy little boy joyfully wearing his favorite hat:

He loves wearing it a lot and he pulls it onto his head and keeps it there for sometimes at least 30 minutes! Such a hoot! He makes me smile a lot. I especially enjoy how "huggy" he is with everybody and everything. He randomly comes up to me throughout the day, lays his head on me, thumb in mouth and say: "Mama. Hug." I love it!

Emerson had his 18-month well-child visit this month too. His stats were: 20th for weight, 5th for length, 70th for head. He is growing, he gained a pound since the last appointment, just not as fast as the charts want him to grow. And I'm fine with that. As far as I'm concerned, he can just stay little forever! He showed off his vocabulary for the doctor, so the doctor noted that Emerson is very smart. And he also said that "it is rare that each of the two kids is so good, but both of your children are just great". He mainly meant how well-behaved they were, so, once again, going to the doctor made me feel like a good Mom...I must be doing something right!

The other day Emerson said a three-word sentence for the first time in his life: "Mama. Milk. Please." I just can't ever refuse Emerson, because he is ALWAYS so stinkin' polite! He ALWAYS says "please" and, in addition, he ALWAYS follows it with "ta-koo" (thank you) or "tak, Mama!" (thanks, Mama). It's so amazing to me, because even his greatest example of his big sister is not that good at saying please and thank you all the time. Some other gems out of his mouth: he says "apapap" for lollipop and "ah-peace" for ice cream, and he can say "applesauce" no problem! Most of all I love it when he busts out singing with his head tilted back: "The Preisthood is Restored" is more like "Peace...Resto-ahd". "Ga-ga-ga" = I am a child of God. We are growing a future missionary, no doubt about it. Just a year ago the Prophet has announced the age lowering for missionaries to be 18 for guys and 19 for girls. I get teared up thinking about our kids leaving our home and now it will be even sooner than I though! I know it will all be worth my tears though :)

Ophelia started her new preschool this month "First Foundations Preschool". Here's he first day of school picture:

She looks so grown up! I decided to switch her to this school to help her get used to a more traditional school environment and learn more about classroom rules and dynamics. Although we miss the Butterfly Garden a lot, I feel like she will benefit from this experience in preparation for kindergarten next year.