Summer Fun

This summer we decided to get Emma involved in Gymnastics.  We are no longer participating, but had been taking Emma to Physical and Occupational therapy.  She really came a long way with her physical therapy.  She is much better at balancing, etc. now.  She still has a hard time with coordination (She falls a lot), but we are hoping that gymnastics will help her as well.  As far as her occupational therapy goes, they were just going to be working with her holding a pencil and her grip which she is honestly on age level for and so we just decided we could work with her on those things at home.  Anyway, that is a long detailed story for another time, I just realized I had never written about it on the blog. 

So onto gymnastics.  I was almost in tears the first day because I could see how good it was going to be for her and I was just kicking myself that I hadn't gotten her into it sooner.  She has really come a long way.  I'm sure she will never be an Olympic gymnast, but it a great opportunity for her to have fun, strengthen her muscles, learn to follow directions and persevere.  She gets very proud of herself when she is able to accomplish something that at first was very difficult.  She has come a long way and I am proud of her.  Hopefully we'll be able to get Vivian involved sooner than later as well.

 

The girls are also involved in swim lessons.  We were able to take advantage of the amazing $5 sessions again this year, and although I had to wait in line, with the kids, for 4 hours to get them, it has been worth it.  Emma is becoming a pretty good swimmer.  She can keep herself a float and is really working on using her arms and legs in a more appropriate manner.  She is the queen of back floating and her teacher recommended with put her in a more advanced class.  I'm so proud of all the hard work Emma is putting in to learning how to swim.  Yay Emma!

No Vivian on the other hand is such a funny kid.  She used to love the water, but our first couple of classes she just could not wait to get out and kept telling me she wanted her towel and wanted to go home.  :)  She has since warmed up to the idea and is doing really well at blowing bubbles and kicking her legs and using her arms in the pool.  2 more weeks and we'll all be pro's.

Murray Family Farms 2013

It is one of our favorite Bakersfield traditions to go to Murray Family Farms and get their AMAZING fresh blueberry pancakes.  They have these awesome all you can eat blueberry pancakes with your choice of fresh strawberry, blueberry, or blackberry syrup and fresh cream on top.  Oh boy, Mike thinks it's worth the admission just to go for the pancakes, but we also get to play with all of their kids themed activities, go on a wagon ride, petting zoo and we also get to pick our own fresh fruit.  We decided to get some blueberries and blackberries this year.  We had a great time and came away with some yummy fruit. 

Vivian's Birthday

Happy 2nd Birthday to Vivian.  Luckily Vivian had a much nicer birthday this year than last.  Last year we were in Utah and she had just gotten out of the hospital from dehydration.  Poor thing.  Vivian loves Dora the Explorer and BACKPACK!  She also loves Elmo.  I decided to make her a backpack cake and have a Dora themed party.  I accidentally signed up to feed the Elders that day and so it worked out because we had someone to share our cake with us.  Viv got her very own "backpack", some Elmo books, coloring books, movie, etc.  She was so excited to see all of the Dora decorations and her cake.  It was a hit.  Viv is by far our pickiest eater, but for some reason she LOVES take out Chinese food.  We got her some Chinese and she just gobbled it up.  The rest of us had pizza.  :)  Viv is such a fun kid.  I can't believe that she is 2 years old already.  It has gone by far too quickly.  Everyday she will do something new and I am amazed that she is no longer a baby.  She is talking so much more and imitating EVERYTHING her big sister does.  She loves Emma!  Viv can also tell us all her letters.  It is crazy!!  I swear Emma couldn't do that at this age.  She is becoming miss independent and is full swing into the terrible two's.   She really has a fit if she is not able to do what she wants, which most of the time is play games on Mommy's phone.  She loves to sing Twinkle twinkle little star and "Elmo's World".  We sure love our Vivian and wish she would take a little bit more time to "grow up".:)  So blessed to have our beautiful children. 

 Check out those gams:)

4th of July in Vegas

We usually spend New Years with the Andals in Vegas, and we have spent a couple 4th of July's with them as well.  It has become a fun tradition and we love spending time with them and their girls.  We weren't sure if we were going to be able to go because the day before we were to leave our roof started leaking and we had flooding from our condensation pan for our airconditioner.  We are still in the process of getting all of it fixed, but luckily we were able to dry it out enough to leave for the weekend.  We had such a nice time.  It is wonderful now that Vivian is old enough to interact and play with the other kids.  It was the perfect amount of time to where the kids didn't start to get on each others nerves.:)  We were able to go to the temple thanks to Merilee and Mark watching our kids and we had a lot of fun swimming in their in-laws pool.  The girls could not get enough of the water and Emma really made strides in being able to keep herself a float.  Vivian on the other hand wanted nothing to do with our helping her, but wanted to run off to the deep end and jump in by herself.  She was scaring us to death silly girl.  We really had to keep an eye on her.  We had a great time with great food as always.  We were even able to go to Zupas since they have one in Vegas now.  I LOVE that place.  Can't wait to see the rest of our family at the end of August.

O.K. so I really wanted to try this cake.  It looked nice, but it was way too SWEET!!!  We were all pretty sick of it after about a bite.  Needless to say most of it went in the trash.  It was a fun effort on my part though.:)

   AT Zupas!

 Cousin Sarah was nice enough to do face painting for all the girls, myself included.  Too bad I didn't get a shot of my butterfly.

Tiger

We are pretty much crazy!  About a month ago we had a stray cat come into our yard and he made himself at home.  I couldn't really let the dog out to go to the bathroom so we decided to bring the cat in.  The of course began the process of getting shots and the cat neutered, etc.  I think this is the 3rd time we have done this.  For some reason we can't just let the animals go like normal people.  So, after a bunch of money later I just couldn't wrap my mind around just giving this cat away so we have been trying to get it acclimated to our current pets to see if we could keep it.  At first he was just so sweet and cuddly and now he is a crazy, bouncing, pouncing Tigger.  He is truly a young cat and we are so used to our middle aged diva Gracie.  Gracie tolerates the cat for the most part, but is not afraid to let Tiger know when she does not want him around.  We're still not sure what we are going to do, and don't feel comfortable leaving them all here alone when we come to Utah, so we'll see what happens.  Oh, the lovely spots we get ourselves in som

etimes. 

Sytycd

It was such a fun experience being able to go to a live showing of sytycd.  I wish you all could have come with me.  It was definitely a different experience, and while it was fun it make me grateful that I don't live in LA, it is just not my scene.  So I was able to get a couple of friends from my ward to come with me, and some wonderful young women watched my girls during the day at no cost.  They were doing me a service they said.  we got down there in plenty of time.  I thought if we got there early a would get a better chance at a ticket/seat.  Well we ended up being 20th in line.  My sister in law Merilee was able to come from Vegas and meet us.  Unfortunately after making the long drive she was so tired.  After some miscommunications a ended up standing in the sunny line for an hour longer than we could have.  Too long of a story there.  Anyway, we finally made it in and were placed right behind the main camera.  Urgh, it was a little frustrating because there wad a bar and a camera right in our line OS vision.  Luckily everyone was standing fit the dances so we were in luck.  It was interesting to see what happens during commercial breaks.  Cat gets her hair fixed and just chats with the crowd.  There is someone there to tell you how to clap and when, and pretty much fills the time during commercials.  We could see the judges and it was a lot of fun just being there.  I was very surprised by the size of the theater.  It was pretty small, I think it is where they film the price is right a well, do that gives you an idea.  It was great for us because you can see the dances really well.  After the show we went to the cheesecake factory for dinner.  It ended up being a very long but fun day. 

So the funny highlight of my day wad when we first went to get in line and I had to go to the bathroom.  The closest one I could find was at this marketplace on the corner.  It was a very organic place with a juice bar, etc.  you get the picture.  Anyway, they had one bathroom in which you had to get a code to enter.  If the code didn't work the bathroom was occupied.  So I punched in the code, opened the door and I walked in on this guy. Not just any guy, but the actor who played Marshall on Alias.  I had recently become obsessed with the show and he was my favorite character.  Anyway, he apologized for not locking the door and I waited embarressedly for my turn.  When he came out he came over and apologized again at which point, trying to be cool about everything, I proceed to tell him hire much I enjoyed his show.  Haha, yeah, weirdo groupie.  He was So nice, introduced himself and carried on a 5 minute conversation with me.  It was too crazy.  This is all while my friend is waiting for me outside.  She wondered what took me so long while I wasn't going to the bathroom. :-)