Thanksgiving

Emily had a fun couple of days. We had a playdate with Cary, Hannah & Spencer on Wednesday. Unfortunately schedules have been crazy and the girls haven't had many opportunities to play recently so it took them a little bit to warm up to each other. But they were soon running throughout the house screaming and laughing.
After leaving Hannah's we decided to stop and see dad at work. Emily just loves playing with Jeff - especially at his work. They had a blast with the big beach ball and of course on Emily's favorite - the stool. They rolled around the gym chasing each other and riding piggyback. Emily wasn't very happy when lunch was over and Jeff had to go back to work.

Emily then spent the majority of the rest of the afternoon looking like this:

Cousin Ally was coming for a sleepover and Emily was SO excited. After waiting for at least an hour Emily finally said, "Mom! I don't see Ally anywhere!" Ally did eventually come and they were soon laughing and playing. We spent Wednesday night having dinner, playing, visiting Jeff at the church, and getting shakes at Iceburg.

The next morning the girls read stories:

Dressed up:

Played with potato heads, beads, polly pockets:

And with all of Emily's babies and stuffed animals:

That afternoon we headed over to my grandparents house for Thanksgiving dinner. After the delicious meal, all the girls headed outside to see Lisa's new car.

It was a great day and it was fun to see so much family. I can't believe Thanksgiving's already come and gone. That means I only have 3 more weeks till the baby comes. It's really hit me now how close it is. As much as I want him here and the uncomfortableness and awkwardness of the pregnancy overwith, I'm really starting to dread the actual delivery part. Right now I'm just trying to keep my mind off of it by getting the last couple of things done on my checklist.

Play House

Several months ago when we got our new kitchen chairs we made a house for Emily out of the boxes. She has loved playing in it and hiding things in it. When I was making some flowers to glue on it, Emily had to make some pictures too. She'd color my scraps of paper and then run upstairs to her house and glue them to her walls. It was the cutest thing!
We told her it was a temporary thing since that's where the baby's crib has to go. She seemed to understand and always knew she had till December with her house. Well... a couple days ago we realized that we were going to have our carpets cleaned on Saturday and a cardboard house sitting on wet carpet isn't such a good idea. Emily wasn't very happy about it at first. But she was soon compliant - she's such a good girl.
I was pretty much gone over the weekend so Jeff and Emily spent Friday night playing in her house one final time and taking lots of pictures. It's kind of sad to see such a beloved "toy" be taken away. Especially when it was so cheap. But hopefully one day we'll have more room and then we can make her a new one.

Princesses!

Emily and I had a girls night with my family last week. We all went to see the Princesses on Ice at ESA. The girls just loved it. Emily was so excited to see Mickey & Minnie and all the princesses. She was especially thrilled whenever the princes joined the princesses and was in heaven when they kissed and danced. She is such a romantic.
Unfortunately our camera broke and I was relying on my mom's camera to take pictures. I was only able to snap a couple before the batteries died and we didn't have any replacements. So pictures were slim. (But on a side note - hallelujah! We just got our camera back and it works great).

Children's Museum

I've thought about taking Emily to the children's museum several times. But since it's $9 per person, we've never ventured there. I had a couple free passes that expired the end of October so I decided I didn't have anymore excuses. Jenn and her kids met us down there and I'm so glad they came. Emily had a lot more fun with Sara & Ally there. I think the museum was well put together and I'd love to visit more often. But seriously, having to pay full price for me to sit there and watch Emily play is a little much. Not something I'm going to cough up the money for very often.

Playing with all the balls
Loving the market
(Emily's favorite part and where we spent the majority of our time)

Gas'n up the car

Playing with Grace in the baby area

Miscellaneous pics of the girls favorite areas

Halloween

Emily had a halloween party at preschool. They all got to wear their costumes and have a little parade. Then they made fun halloween crafts, sang spooky songs, read scary books and had some great snacks and treats. They ended with "trick-or-treating" with all the treats everyone brought to share. It was really cute and Emily had a blast. I can't believe she's big enough to be in school. It's so fun to see her there. She absolutely loves it.
On Halloween we had dinner at our ward and then did our annual trunk or treat. I took Emily around once and then she refused to go again saying she had already been there. So Jeff decided to go and tried to make another loop with her. She would only go to 2 or 3 more cars before she was adament that she'd already gotten candy from those cars. She then said she was done and went and climbed into the car and buckled up. I don't know if I have a really well mannered child that would only take candy from people once or if she was just really excited to go to Gma & Gpa Holbrook's house.

I'm leaning more towards the wanting to go to Gma's house rather then the extremely well mannered. Mostly because she knew she could see Ella when we got there. We were all excited to have Brad & Heather in town for Halloween this year (that's not usually a holiday they come out for). We snapped a few pics of the girls and then went out for a little bit of trick or treating. The girls just loved being together and laughing. They were so cute in their matching costumes. Emily shared her pom poms with Ella and was so cute when she would jump around and yell "Go Utes!"

Our First Pumpkin Carving

First Snow!

We were thrilled when we had our first snowy day. Emily was so excited and wouldn't keep the door closed. She kept sticking out her tongue and trying to catch the snowflakes. She also got a little confused and kept asking if the baby was coming that day (we've told her not till christmas/winter/snow).

I was in love with the big flakes too.

Fall Traditions

Last Sunday we had our annual Halloween Dinner with my family. My mom's been doing it for over 20 years. It's a fun tradition where we all order 3 courses of food that have been named different things (ie: cat vomit... which is really disgusting and my mom was particularly gross this year). The fun part is that the utinsels, napkin, and drink are all included in the menu. I was fortunate enough to get one utinsel with each course this time. I think my favorite memory was when my brother got a plate of peas, a knife and a napkin ... and no drink. He hates peas.

All the cousins in the costume before dinner

We also celebrated Chris's birthday.

Last week we also went to my brother Matthew's last game (before playoffs anyway). Matthew played the whole game and did awesome. He got the 2nd touchdown of the game ... right after I turned my camera off. So no pics of that unfortunately. It was fun to see him play. It made Jeff miss reffing even more ... although he didn't miss working with sloppy crews. He says the officials that night were horrible with their mechanics. Fortunately, they didn't make bad calls and affect the game however. Skyline beat Murray 59 to 35.

Last Friday my mom and sisters and I had our annual lunch at Gardner Village. It was a lot of fun to be away from kids and be able to carry on a complete conversation without interruption. I'm glad we all live so close to each other and can get together so often - even if it is with the kids sometimes.

Don't Stop Believin'

Special Olympics fall games was this past weekend. For the last 3 or 4 years Jeff and I have been saying that we're done being on the committee - yet we've always gone back and done it. This year when we knew I'd be 7 months pregnant and Jeff would be on crutches we decided we were finally done. However as the games got closer and closer Jeff started working harder and harder to try and convince me that we should do it again. One of my good friends was the director again this year so I finally just told her that if we wouldn't be a hinderance in our current condition we'd be up for another year. Mal said to come - So we spent Friday and Saturday up on campus.

Emily absolutely loved it. Mal made Emily her own credentials this year so she was an official member of the GOC (even if she didn't get a t-shirt for the 4th year in a row). Friday she helped hand out lunches and just had a blast doing it. She loved just being involved and helping out.
Emily sees Mallory quite often and was excited to see her this weekend. Actually, excited might be an understatement. She absolutely loved her and was always wanting to play and dance with her. Emily also got to know a lot of the other GOC members and by the end of the weekend was running around playing with them.

This year's Miss Utah was there again so we got another picture. Emily also met Miss Legacy and got a jazz ball from the Bear.

One thing Emily wanted to do all weekend was play bocce. So as soon as the competition was over we pulled out the bocce balls and played a few games. She loved it (and of course won everytime).

Olympic Town had an AMAZING face painter this year. She did the most elaborte painting and was so quick. Emily has never liked having her face painted and at first wouldn't even consider it. I finally told her I was going to do it and asked her if she'd like to too. She reluctantly agreed and after waiting in line (that never ended because she was so good) Emily got more and more excited. As she watched the woman paint she not only decided she couldn't wait to have her face painted, but she had to do it before me. She said she wanted a pink and blue butterfly. I got a red and purple butterfly. Isn't it amazing??

Friday night after the opening ceremonies there was a dance. Emily was very excited for it. She told Jeff that he had to dance with just her. When he asked who I was going to dance with she promptly said I could just watch - then later added that I could dance with Jacob (aka: her brother). I love the 2nd video where she wanted to dance alone. You can't hear it really well, but after a few seconds Jeff tells her to shake it and I love how her dancing changes. (And sorry they're so dark. There usually isn't a lot of lighting at dances).

It was a long weekend and we were all completely worn out afterwards. But we were all extremely glad we went back "for on more year." Actaully, one thing we learned from this past weekend was to not try and predict the future. This was the 7th time we've geen on the GOC and like I mentioned before, we've been saying we were done for the last 4 years. At first it was because we had baby and then because Jeff graduated from school. But we've always made it work and still been involved. Next year we'll have a 9 month old running around and who knows what else may be going on. SOUT staff kept saying see you next year and they made Emily promise to come back. But - we'll see ... it might have been our last year.

Pumpkins

On Sunday we went on our annual trip to my dad's friend's pumpkin patch. Emily was the only grandkid able to go this year. But she still had a blast picking out pumpkins and running around outside.
I made a comment to Jeff earlier in the week about how we don't have any pregnant pictures of me. I had refused to have any taken when I was pregnant with Emily and looking back on it I wished I had at least a couple. So Jeff took it upon himself to snap several pictures of my oh so lovely stomach.

Thursday was Emily's first field trip with her preschool class. We went to a cute little nursery to pick out pumpkins. The kids got to sit inside a tee pee and sing Halloween songs and read spooky stories. Then they each got to pick out a pumpkin. Emily had a blast running around with all her friends.