Sammi is 6 months

Sammi is 6 months old. Sometimes I can't believe it. She weighs 16.5 lbs (58th percentile) and around 28 inches (above 95th percentile). She has mastered rolling. She can roll to any location she wants. So far, any other movement is just backwards.

GGRRR!!!

 Sammi has started eating cereals, fruits and veggies. It took us a little while to figure out how she wanted to the cereal. Since day one, she has liked mashed potato consistency cereal. If you try to feed her something she doesn't like, she gags on it. Not to the point of throwing up but exactly the way a pouting child would. As annoying as it is, it still made me laugh.

 

Sammi loves her sister. Whenever Ellie is around, she giggles and smiles. If she is crying, Ellie can sing (ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle, or any primary song she knows) and Sammi stops. She is still a little finicky about taking naps.

She is a very loving child. She still likes to cuddle and give kisses. I believe baby kisses keep you looking young.

Love you lots baby girl.

Happy Halloween

I love Halloween. I don't know why, but I kinda have this thing for Holidays and decorating. The minute Ellie opened her Merida dress and after we went to see the movie (Brave), she decided she was going to be Princess Merida for Halloween. Sadly I don't think, other than being able to wear the dress around, she understood what Halloween meant. Luckily we were going to make up for Ellie never having been Trick or Treating before. (Her 1st year, she was only a few weeks old. The 2nd, we decided to go watch Utah v Air Force down in Colorado Springs. 3rd year was spent in the ER.)

 

Our neighborhood "Trunk or Treat" was the Friday before. Ellie let me put her hair up in sponge curlers. Apparently she has a little of my hair somewhere in there. 

 

Pretty Princess Merida.

Look at those curls!

I did try to find a good costume for the rest of us, but sadly no one made any Queen Elinor (Merida's mom) or adult bear costumes. Had I found one of those, I would have made Sammi a bear and Jake would have been King Fergus (Merida's dad, complete with kilt). So I just wore cat ears and a tail and Sammi wore mouse ears. It took Ellie a few cars to figure out what was going on but once she understood, she moved fast. Although still a little shy, she usually just whispered trick or treat.

One night, as tradition holds, Ellie and I carved pumpkins and watched Garfield's Halloween. Ok, so I carved pumpkins while she watched the movie. This year she wouldn't even help me clean out the innards. Don't get too excited, I'm not that talented at carving.

I guess as a way of compensating for the terrible Halloween last year, I over did the trick or treat thing this year. On Halloween, we went to a neighborhood senior living/memory care facility where Ellie gathered another bucket of candy. After we went to visit my grandma.  After some naps, we traveled up to Wanship for "Trunk or Treat" up there with Jake's family and then came home and made a few strategic stops at houses around our neighborhood. All in all, Ellie collected 2 full buckets of candy. She was so excited.

Cell phone pic: Complete costume with bow and arrows.

What about Sammi? Well, being only 6 months, she didn't trick or treat. As Ellie would say, "She can't eat candy. She don't have teeth." I still dressed her up. On Halloween, I tried to throw together a fairy costume but she kept breaking the wings. She still looked way cute.

Flower Power Sammi

2 cute girls.

P.S. After napping in sponge curlers and having her hair pulled a little while taking them out, Ellie wouldn't let me use them again. I just had to curl it with a curling iron.

I have a 3 year old

I know I am way behind on this but Happy Birthday Ellie. We had a fun celebration with family and  only celebrated one time. We had family over for dinner. Jake smoked a LOT of meat and it was delicious. In between looking at pictures and videos of the Tough Mudder (which had taken place the day before), we song, ate cake and ice cream, and opened presents. 

 

Blowing out her candles.

Daddy picked out such an awesome cake.

Ellie received some awesome presents and has used all of them already and most almost daily.

The princess Merida dress that she wore for Halloween.

She wore the dress daily for several hours for about 3 weeks straight.

Her princess tent that all the presents stay in.

 Apparently bags were the head wear of choice for the night.

Here's Braden in a bag.

Why are the kids in my family so funny?



Ellie, you are such a wonderful girl. I love that you are such a great helper; with Sammi, putting away the dishes, doing the laundry, cleaning the yard, etc. Your little sister loves you so much. She laughs so much when you play and talk with her. You bring such joy to our life. I love how you love to learn and try new things. I love that you eat vegetables and like them. Although you drive me bonkers with how adventureous and dare devil like you are, I love that you enjoy doing things and are so active.  Whenever you ask to sing songs, especially when Sammi is crying, it makes my heart melt. You are such a great daughter.  I love you so much.

We like animals.

Apparently, we like animals and doing things with cousins. One nice day, we hung out at Wheeler Farm.

Although I don't have any pictures, there were animals at the farm and we did find out that workers are given eggs and milk, etc from the animals and all farm animals are caged. Any animal not in a cage (wandering around free) was most likely just dropped off or decided to hang out while passing by.

Playing in the tree house.

We rode a wagon around the farm. I didn't know it was really that larger. Apparently you can camp in the area east of the farm. Crazy, right?

Wagon ride

A few days later we went to the Zoo.  

Baby birds in the Eagles nest.

The new Rocky Shores is pretty neat. I really liked the seal/sea lion enclosure. Sammi didn't pay much attention to the animals but loves being outdoors and around the kids.

Of course there was a Carousel ride.

We got to see the new baby giraffe. The giraffes are receiving a new enclosure at the zoo. It looks to be pretty fun, almost like the one at Cheyenne Mtn Zoo where you can feed the giraffes. We are excited. Although until its done, the entire area over by the Discovery playground is closed because that's where the enclosures will be located as part of the African Savanna.

That poor, cute thing dropped almost 4 feet to the ground at birth.

We sure love animals. 



 

Jake's Tough Mudder

So after running the Dirty Dash, Jake felt pretty good about running the Tough Mudder. Go thing too because he had already registered and paid for everything. I am proud of him and excited that he was able to do something with his brothers.

Sadly, the Tough Mudder is a rotten organization in my book. They make the appearance that they make large donations to the Wounded Warrior Project. Unfortunately the only donations made are ones of friends and family of the participants. Then on top of the outrageous registration fee ($100+), spectators have to pay $20 bucks to watch, unless you buy at the gate at which point it is $40. Because of the spectator cost, I didn't attend.

Luckily for me, most of Jake's family attended and they have awesome pictures. Not so lucky, I don't have copies yet. Luckily, I don't have to pick which pictures to post. Sadly, I don't have pictures to post. Maybe one day I will proudly display muddy pictures of my husband working together with his brothers and a few friends to complete the course.

Healing Field and Armed Forces

Ever since Sandy City started the Healing Field the first year after 9/11, I have loved going. There is an amount of awe seeing the large amounts of flags and remembering those from the attacks. This year, the size of the field shrank. Instead of completely covering the fields to the south of Sandy City Hall, only the grass area of Sandy City Hall had flags. They no longer represented all those from the attacks, just those who have died serving since the attacks. Sadly, there were still too many flags.

 

I love walking/running through the flags. It was hard to explain to Ellie that these flags represent people who have died while trying to protect us. I am grateful for people who have the desire to serve and do so.

 

I wish they received more support for their decision, how ever it may come. I was watching TV and the show on was talking about how the nation they were in celebrates their Armed Forces day with parades and parties, showing their thanks and appreciation. Maybe I'll try and start celebrating it bigger as well; 3rd Saturday in May.

 

This is the section for those who have died from Utah. They are labeled
with names, ages, and other bits of info.

Jake made a mess.

I know what you're thinking. Emily never blogs about Jake. But alas, I am and that's because he did something that didn't involve the kids (in which case it would be about them) or law school. He participated in the 10k Dirty Dash. This is because he has been training, along with his brothers and way awesome sister-in-law, to participate in the Tough Mudder.

 

Sammi and I tagged along to take pictures while Ellie stayed and played with her cousins. This is how they looked before the race.

 

Notice the white shirt. FYI, not a good choice for this activity.

 After running, walking, climbing obstacles, and sliding down a slide, this is what they finished looking like.

How they ended up with clean thighs while Jake's is caked in mud, I don't know?

 It sounds like it was a great challenge and a lot of fun to do. The day was warm-ish but the water quite chilly since this is run at Soldier's Hollow. So how do you clean off the mud? Pay $6 cash for warm showers or a power wash or use the traditional shower.

I love the guy in the towel. Any guesses if he has clothes on under?

 We did learn that it is best to wear something that will set you apart from the crowd. It was hard to locate them for pictures along the course. There are a few of Rob and Kristine on their blog. I think they had a good time and learned a little about themselves. Mostly I think they felt better about running the Tough Mudder.

Official picture from Dirty Dash

I know some of you are thinking, "How did you ever get that white shirt clean?" The answer is we didn't. It still has a slight brown twinge in it.