Cough, Colds, and Crummy Weather

So the past week Emma has not been feeling well. She has been irritable, running a slight fever, and now has a yucky cough. I guess it's about time we got a humidifier. It's sad seeing her so miserable. The winters here in Bakersfield have been somewhat interesting. When we first got here we heard that sometimes they cancel school because of fog. It does get pretty foggy here in the winter. I guess Bakersfield and Logan are right up there at the top for poor air quality. So with the weather and Emma being sick we stay inside the house quite a bit. It has been fun seeing Emma learn how to cruise around the furniture. Her favorite "thing" to play with is Gracie. Sometimes Gracie will be in a playful mood and they will play "tag" or "hide and go seek". Gracie will go and hide and wait for Emma to come and find her and then she will jump out and find another place to hide. It is funny because you can see her just waiting for Emma to come and follow her. She has been really good with Emma. She gets annoyed after awhile of Emma following her everywhere, but she is pretty patient. Now that we have our new table, Gracie likes to lead Emma underneath the chairs, and Emma tends to get "high centered" on the cross beams of the chairs. It's kind of funny to watch. She is just so determined though to get through any obstacle. So some of these pictures are sad, but they kind of make me giggle because I see this "boo boo lip" all day long. She sure can make a sad face. She was upset because Gracie ran away from her and she couldn't find her. (I think she is also just still not feeling well, poor girl
)

Birthday Fiesta!

So Mike turned 27 yesterday and we had a fun birthday "fiesta" for him. Last year Mike wanted me to make "Posole" for his birthday dinner. Posole is a Mexican stew that he grew to love on his mission. Well, I got a good looking recipe online and went too it. Um, yeah it turned out HORRIBLE. I think Mike ate it just to be nice, but we just threw it all away it was so bad. I was just like red colored water. So this year we had the help of our wonderful neighbors. Our neighbors, the Romero's, who just happen to be members of the church as well, have helped us out a ton from watching our cat, our daughter, helping us get our table, to showing me how to make really yummy Mexican food. So your main ingredients: Espinosa (pork neck), hominy, chile sauce, onion, garlic, cumin, oregano, and salt. First you put the pork meat in a big stew pot and cover with water, adding the garlic, onion, cumin, salt and oregano.Once the meat has simmered for a couple of hours and the meat is tender, you add the chile sauce and hominy.
Once it is ready to go you eat it like a soup. You can top it with tostada's, cilantro, onions, cabbage and a squeeze of lime. Oooo it turned out really well this time. This was the easy way to make posole and it tasted so good. I also made a "Tres Leches" cake which is cake with 3 milks on top. It is normally pretty soggy with milk, but I must have not put enough milk on mine because it was just slightly soggy. > Everything turned out a whole lot better than last year and we had a good time. The Romero's came for dinner as well as the missionaries, and our neighbors across the street.

The missionaries ended up teaching them about the Book of Mormon and asked them if they wanted to take the discussions. It was a big surprise to us, but hopefully things will go well. Thanks for all of your birthday wishes to Mike, he really appreciated it. "Feliz cumpleaños a Miquel!"

Happy New Year!

We had such a fun weekend at Merilee and Mark's. I was so nervous about the drive to Las Vegas, but we really didn't experience any traffic, and Emma slept most of the way. It was a Miracle!! It's so nice to be with family. Sometimes you feel somewhat isolated being so far away, but it is great that we live "closer" to some family. We just had fun eating junk food, playing Karaoke, and watching our two little girls play. It was so amusing seeing the together. Emma definitely likes Annadele a lot more than she likes Emma. Annadele tolerates Emma unless she is sitting on "her" mom's lap. They are so close in age that they are somewhat on the same level and can do a lot of the same things. They both get jealous and are so inquisitive. It was just fun watching them interact. Even though they are cousins they sure have their own unique and special personalities.

It was also nice to have the opportunity to go to the temple. Our closest temple is about 2 hours away and so with Emma it makes for an all day excursion. It will be nice when she is no longer nursing, and then we can leave her with a baby sitter. Anyway, we took turns watching the kids while the other couple went to the temple. The Las Vegas temple is so beautiful, and it is always so peaceful at the temple. It's a very interesting contrast being at the Vegas temple when it's just a few miles from the "strip", talk about getting away from the "world". So our time with the Andals was wonderful, and then we started our trip back home. Who knew that traffic to California on a Sunday and a holiday weekend at that would be so crazy. (I'm guessing a lot of people know that by now.) It took us 4 hours to get to Vegas and 6 1/2 to get back home. It wouldn't have been so bad, but poor Emma did not want to be in the car any longer and screamed the last 2 hours of the drive. I was sure she would fall asleep, but no, she can be pretty stubborn that cutie patootie. It was just nice to finally get home, and Emma seemed so excited to not only be out of her car seat, but to see all of her familiar surroundings. They learn so quick.

So these are some fun pictures of our weekend as well as our New Table!!! My sisters have wanted to see a picture of it so here you go. It is so nice to have a "real" table to sit at, except now it seems way to big for us.:) Now we just need some visitors.:)

Christmas & Our Growing Girl

So we had a really nice Christmas. On Christmas Eve we had a few families from our ward over for dinner. It is a new tradition of ours to invite other people over who don't have family around to spend Christmas with. I think next year I will try and not make as much food. I tend to overdue things and then I worry too much about making sure everything is "just so" that I don't relax and enjoy myself as much as I should. Just something to work on. Christmas morning was fun with Emma. She didn't quite get the ripping of the paper, but she really has liked her new toys. The best was her reaction to her cabbage patch doll. I didn't think she'd care too much for it right now, but she was so excited and thought it was really neat to have a new friend just her size. It was also nice to have Mike home for a long weekend. We just hung out and were lazy. We went dog "browsing" even though we really shouldn't get a dog right now, Mike REALLY wants one. We'll have to be wise about getting a new addition to the family. Any thoughts?

So, Emma keeps getting bigger and growing up so fast. She loves to pull herself up to things, has begun cruising and is determined to walk on her own. (At least she wants too). She is just a lot of fun. She has been sick again this week. Besides her constant teething I think she has a cold and sore throat. She's been pretty miserable. Thankfully she was able to sleep throughout the night last night. We all needed it. So, I finally got a calling in the ward. I am going to be serving as the 1st counselor in the Relief Society Presidency, I've served in the Relief Society in student wards, but it is such a different experience in a family ward. There are a lot more needs as well as a different dynamic. I hope I can serve the best that I can. It will be a good opportunity to serve.

This weekend we are going to brave the New Years traffic into Las Vegas and go and spend the weekend with Mike's sister Merilee and her family. It should be fun to get Emma together with her cousin Annadele, they will be cruisin all over the place. Hopefully we won't be stuck in traffic when we ring in the new year.:) It will be a fun adventure.

Ho, Ho, Ho, Merry Christmas!

So last night we attended a couple Christmas parties and we were finally able to get a picture of Emma with Santa Claus. It was actually pretty lucky. We were leaving Mike's Work's Christmas party on our way to a friend Christmas party and on the way out we saw Santa waiting in a room. He was nice enough to hold Emma for a couple of pictures. It was nice to finally meet some of Mike's co-workers. It was a pot-luck dinner and so there were a great variety of Ethnic foods. Next was the Bishopric party, hosted by our Bishop. His wife is amazing because she hosted that party and then a baby shower the following morning. The food was awesome there and it was nice to get to know some of our ward members even better.

Tonight we went to take some Christmas goodies to our neighbors and didn't have a whole lot of success. For some reason we have a hard time finding people home. We were able to meet a couple new people though so that was nice. We have been "a lot" lax on the eating only one dessert this week. (At least I have). It's hard to be making goodies and receiving goodies and not at least sample one of them right? Oh, the holidays are difficult to cut back on the sweets.

We are LOVING the weather out here this winter. I thought that I would be missing the snow, but we both had to comment today on the fact that we don't miss the snow at all and we are relishing the 50-60 degree winter temperatures. We are trying to keep a positive outlook because once the summer hits and it is 110 degrees everyday I think we will have a different attitude about the "nice" weather in Bakersfield. I guess you take what you can get and be thankful for it.

This post is getting so long I know, but I had to talk about Emma. It just hit me today how fast she is growing up and it made me feel so sad. She isn't our "baby" anymore. I went to get her up from her nap and she was standing in her crib. She has been standing up to everything all day. What happened to our little baby who never moved anywhere unless we took her with us? It is fun to see her learn all of these new things and she sure gets proud of herself, but I guess it's just hard to let go of the little baby stage. I'm sure I'll be feeling like this her whole life as she gets older. I guess that's just life.

When Mommy's Sick!

So yesterday I got a lovely reality check. I have been super fortunate not to have had the stomach flu for about 4 years now and boy had I taken that time for granted. Yesterday morning I woke up and realized that something just wasn't right. That knot in your stomach, the constant dull headache, and the need to live in the bathroom. Sorry "Too much information". So I had caught the 24 hour bug! The first thing I thought of was that I needed my mommy, but then I realized that I AM the mommy and I have to take care of my child as well as myself. Oh boy, my hat goes off to all of you mom's out there who deal with being sick while pregnant and having other kids to take care of. It is not an easy or fun task. I was just feeling so bad for my poor neglected daughter because I didn't want to get her sick and I just couldn't play with her very much. I can't tell you how much I appreciate my sweet husband though. He was able to come home a little early and he watched Emma and helped around the house so that I could take it easy. It was such a blessing for me. It was funny because usually Emma is so excited to see her Dad when he gets home because she hasn't seen him all day, but yesterday it was just the opposite. She had spent more time with her dad that day so when she saw me she would get so excited and just had to crawl right over to see me. Oh she's funny.

(Oh yeah she is crawling all over the place now and getting into everything. She has also been pulling herself up to standing sometimes as well. She loves it, but it is sure crazy for mom and dad. It's kind of sad seeing our little baby growing up.)

So thankfully I'm feeling quite a bit better today and hopefully no one else catches the flu, and this post goes out to all of you women who have the responsibility of taking care of others while you are miserable and sick. Please give me some advice on how you are able to cope when your kids are sick at the same time. Oh, the fun things I know I have to look forward too.:)

Home for the Holidays

So it has been forever since my last post. We had a great mini-vacation to Utah over the Thanksgiving holiday and it was so good to see our family. We wish that we could be there for every holiday, but it's nice that we are close enough this year to make it to at least one. Of course our camera batteries were dead during the trip so I have zero pictures. Emma was a super traveler. She only cried for an hour total the whole drive there and back. We were so impressed and very blessed. Now that we are back she has had a hard time getting back onto her schedule. She was doing really well at sleeping through the night, but her sleeping has sure been sporadic since we've been home. I'm not sure if it's because she's getting another tooth, has a cold, or what. She has just been super fussy and I feel so bad for her. Last night she was up every 2 hours and wouldn't go down for any of her morning/afternoon naps. She must be SO tired. She finally fell asleep at 2:00, but she usually gets quite a bit more sleep than that. I hope we don't have another night like last night because both she and mommy need their sleep.

We got our Christmas decorations up and we were the only festive ones on our street until another lonely house decided to don some lights. Emma and I have been listening to Christmas music and Emma loves to dance along. She gets a big kick out of Mom and Dad twirling her around. She's been a pretty happy baby considering she hasn't been feeling well. She is 8 months old now and according to my grandpa she's a "husky guy". I'm glad that she has finally put on some cute baby fat.

Stay Puff Marshmello Girl



Last night we went to our Stake centers Nativity display. Every year they have members bring their nativities and then they put up a beautiful display of nativities from around the world. It is open to the public and I wish we would have invited some of our neighbors because it was a really nice presentation. Next year we will be more proactive. After the nativity display we were able to watch the First Presidency Devotional which was so nice as usual. It always helps me get into the spirit of Christmas. It's easy for me to get caught up in all of the decorations and presents to purchase, but it's nice to remember the reason why we celebrate Christmas, the birth of our Savior, and all he sacrificed for us. It's our families and serving others that is truly important. Hopefully we can take this sweet spirit of Christmas into the next year.

Update on Emma's Room