Snow Snow Snow!

"Snow, I want to wash my hands, my face and hair with snow. Snow, I long to clear a path and lift a spade of snow. Snow, oh, to see a great big man entirely made of snow...." (Two pats on the head for anyone who knows what movie those lyrics are from.)

These pix are a week old, taken last Monday at Sugarhouse Park. Wowzer, what a storm. The snow was so thick and powdery it was tough to make a path through it; hence, downhill speeds were on the leisurely side. Fewer broken bones that way.

But mama still has the "misery in her hip," making getting up a chore.

As you can see, there were not hordes of tobogganers out that day. But it was still fun and we got some good photos.

Emma is doing well. She is such an intense, active, humorous, alert, insistent little soul. She keeps us on our aging toes. She loves her pre-school classes twice a week. She loves being involved in a project, using her hands. She likes to help cook. Emma's talking a lot, so much that sometimes I can't understand what she's saying. Final consonants are a challenge for her and sometimes she'll use an "h" sound for a middle consonant if she can't pronounce the right one....for instance "water" will come out "wa-her". (I was trying to teach her how to say "water" correctly....well, semi-correctly because I was actually saying "wadder" instead of "water" with a 't'...anyway I was saying, "der, der....wa-DER," so she points to the glass of water and says "DER!") Some words and phrases come out great, though. For instance, she can say "barbecue sauce" very well, and at our house that's important. She can also say "I love you," which is delightful to hear. "I love joo." When I tell her she's my pumpkin, that's her cue to say, "I love joo, too." The other day she had an, er, accident on the floor and when I rounded the corner and saw it, I said, "Emma, what happened?" and she looked up and whispered, "I love joo!" (Hard to be very upset...)

We've been yearning for warmer temps lately. January's kinda long and draggy, if you ask me. I wanna play in the park again!

But all is well. We are very blessed. Hope all is well with our loyal band of readers. We'll try not to wait so long between posts next time (riiiight...)

Happy Middle of January!

It's so nice to see green

We didn't have any new recent photos, so I went back to the archives and grabbed a picture that made me think of warmer times. It also reminded me how much Emma has grown these last many months. We are only five or six weeks away from the batteries reporting to Spring Camp! How about that sports fans? Then Spring training starts the first of March, and we are off again. The Giants are no longer in last place.

Emma had a bit of a bug last weekend. It started Saturday when she felt a little out of sorts. She woke up at about 3 o'clock Sunday morning, and complained about her stomach. This is not at all like her. She may wake up once or twice, but she will go right back to sleep. It seems her stomach pains were tied to a case of the 24-hour quick trots (I will spare you most of the details). As Uncle Matt would say, "she had a case of the ruins." Denny and I tag-teamed our Sunday meetings, and Emma stayed close to the porcelain pony.

We got some of the correct liquids in her, and she responded splendidly. By Sunday night, she was well on her way to a full recovery. It may have had something to do with the Cowboys loosing, you never know. We were just glad she was feeling better. We took a trip to Hires tonight after FHE, and we all had a treat. Denny had a delightful day with her today, and Emma is luxuriating in the tub as I type.

It is nice to see the sun stays out a little bit longer now. The winter nights are getting shorter, and January is half done. It's the little things. OK then.

Happppy New Year!

But first, the end of 2007....

I'm having a terrifically hard time getting these photos in chronological order, so we'll start with a photo of Emma and me posing with some nice elders we met driving home from Sugarhouse Park on Saturday. Elders Chiu (from Ontario, Canada) and Johnson (from Eerie, Pennsylvania). They were strolling up Connor Street as we drove home and Joe stopped and invited them home for lunch. Elder Chiu is 2nd-generation Chinese-Canadian and when he spied Emma in the back seat he said, "I'm guessing she's adopted." We had a great lunch with them and gave them our blog address to pass on to their folks. We hadn't fed the missionaries in ages. It was a blast.

Okay, back up to Christmas. We can't find the disk that has our photos of Christmas Eve at Joe's folks. Drat. It was most pleasant. We joined Aunt Susan & Uncle Jack, Cousin Jon, and Andy & Kathryn for dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Passed two cars in the ditch on the way. Such a white and treacherous Christmas Eve! Later at home, I stayed up late wrapping presents and watching midnight mass live from Chicago (the march-in to "Adeste Fideles" with dramatic organ accompaniment was very impressive).

My folks joined us for present opening on Christmas morning at the civilized hour of 10:00 a.m. Emma's still not quite clear on what all the fuss is about, so we didn't feel too bad about the late-ish start. She did get a kick out of opening her gifts. We need to take a photo of the giant stuffed panda Grandpa got her (we've got some good video of Emma leaping into its arms....when we figure out how to post movie snippets we'll show you).


"Ah! More crayons to eat...Thanks!"


"And a two-way easel (one side whiteboard/one side chalkboard) on which to practice my cursive. Exxxcellent!"

A couple of days after Christmas we joined Aunt Barbie and cousins Amy, Dave and Jack at Jungle Jim's for the purposes of general amusement/pizza consumption. Cousin Jack (well, first cousin once removed, but why quibble) is an adorable tyke who will turn 2 in February. It's fun when he and his parents visit from Denver. Emma and Jack enjoyed riding the jungle safari cars together. They steered enthusiastically the entire ride.




Emma's a big fan of the bouquets of balloons festooning the Jungle. Although they're not intended to simply be carted away by random toddlers, that's a hard concept for Emma to grasp.

(As I type this, Joe and Emma are watching "Mickey Mouse's Twice Upon a Christmas," the episode about Mickey losing Pluto on Christmas Eve. Joe just asked me, "Is Mickey's relationship with his dog plutonic?" ....just had to share).


Today, New Year's Day Two Thousand'n'Eight, we drove up to Brighton in the morning to get out of the house and into the cold, crisp, glorious, wintery, blue air. Tons of people up there to the Brighton...so many teenagers zipping down the hill at furious speeds on snowboards, stopping inches from us. Emma got quite a kick. We took big sniffs of cold air and then went into the little food shed (where all the teenagers go to eat chili cheese fries) and got a hot chocolate.

Here's a pretty view driving back down Big Cottonwood Canyon. Emma noticed that there were lots of "Christmas trees" lining the highway ("Kih kih tee!")

And here's our little family on the front porch for the annual New Year's Day photo that included just the two of us for so long and now includes three. Let's hear it for Emma!

Happy New Year!