We've had a lot of fun playing in the snow and setting up Christmas decorations.

Emma loves to go outside no matter what the weather. Here she's wearing her mothers hat that makes her look like a knight with blue chain mail on. Also, she was VERY excited to make a snowman and place a carrot for the nose.

It seems when Emma is outside in the winter, all she does is eat snow. Mom was nice enough to bring some inside for her to eat. She had fun helping to decorate the Christmas tree this year. William had fun eating any decorations he could get his chubby paws on.

Lazy winters

Each winter in Wisconsin we have had church canceled at least once because of the weather. I think it’s because members have to drive so much farther to get to church. Today happened to be another one of those days, so in our down time I decided to update our blog. It feels strange just sitting home on a Sunday especially since church usually takes up 4-5 hours of our day with extra meetings, set up, clean up, and travel time. But I guess it is nice to take a day off now and then when we’re forced too!

Emma likes to get down in Williams pack'n'play once in a while and play. Many times when she wakes up from a nap she'll stick her fingers out under her door and implore first "mommy", then "daddy" to come rescue her. This time William happened to come to her rescue.

Emma loves stickers! She places them strategically throughout the house on furniture, toys, etc. But this time we got a huge laugh when we discovered her in this state. As always, William screams, and charges when he sees the camera, because he wants to taste it.

William loves to sit in the sun, and this time he was laying on the couch with his arm wedged between two cushions. He was very sweet and serene (and bald). In the swing he reminds us quite a bit of Emma who also enjoyed a good swing.

Emma absolutely loves music and dancing. She'll sit up to the piano and play and sing like she's an old pro, then change the page every 5-10 seconds as if she is extremely picky. We'll post a video of her latest. Below we have a typical William reaction to a camera.

Fall

Happy Halloween!

Carving a pumpkin with Dad

The Parkway ward Halloween party

Emma in her dress from Aunt Debbie (that dad put on backwards)

Here is Emma at her best!

Emma loves to sing and she often sings Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star or the ABC's song. She has started to sing in silly voices and it always makes us laugh. William is crawling now but wishes he could walk.
For Halloween we went trick-or-treating at the Medical College, the Mall, and the ward Halloween Party. Emma saw very little of the candy she got. Mom and Dad ate most of it.
We had stake conference today and were reminded many times to follow the prophet and to keep our lives in order. We were promised as we did these things and especially as we paid our tithes and offerings that we would be okay. The presiding general authority who visited our stake mentioned that he was recently in a meeting with the general authorities. He said he felt so much peace during that meeting even though the world is going through some hard times. It was nice to be able to sit together through all of the meeting. We miss that!

Come What May and Love It

This past weekend we listened to general conference. It is hard to get a lot out of it when four people are confined to one small bedroom. I miss the luxury of watching it on TV or even listening to it on the radio. However, one thing I picked up was a line from Elder Wirthlin’s talk “Come what may and love it”. As I thought about this I thought I would like to implement that into my life. I got the chance the next morning when William woke up at 5:30. I admittedly had gone to bed a little late and was feeling pretty ornery about having to get up so early. Then this quote came to my mind, “come what may and love it”. I decided then that it could be a good or bad morning depending on what I made of it. I’m so grateful for inspired council from our leaders!

We are pretty busy these days with kids, school, church, playing, etc. William is almost crawling and loves to be involved in whatever Emma is doing. Emma likes to take care of him and thinks his binki is the answer to every problem. Even if he is crying with it in, she will take it out and then promptly put it back in…

She is learning so much right now. She talks about Jesus a lot and will often name things that he has made…birds, trees flowers, etc. One day she informed me that William poops, Daddy poops, Mommy, poops, and even Jesus poops. I told her I guess he did when he was on earth. She seemed okay with that answer.

The rest of our UT pictures

Playing at Grandma Jensen's

Eric, Jen, & William

Bath Time


Emily & William

Debbie & Kids

Grandma, Mom, & Kids

Sister & Brother

Sept. 2008

Briggs & Al's Run/Walk for Children's Hospital
Dennis has done this fun run for the past two years. We did it as a family this year and had a lot of fun. Dennis pushed the stroller and let me run on my own, what a guy! (It was an 8K race or 5 miles. Dennis finished in less than 33 minutes and Amber was close behind at 36:something.)

UTAH!

This gives you an idea of some of the fun things we did on our visit to UT. However, I can't find all of the pictures so these are mostly pictures of the time we spent in Laketown with Grandma and Grandpa O. Emma was in heaven with all of the rocks and sticks there were to play with. And she couldn't get enough of Bear Lake, which is actually warmer than Lake Michigan!
More to come as soon as I round up our other pics.

Emma in her cow girl hat riding the tractor with Grandpa and Dad

Emma loved her card board box house

William got a lot of attention

ROCK HEAVEN!!

Our outing to Bear Lake with Aunt Debbie

Time with cousins

Emma's least favorite activity, the water slide. She only went once!