A Fun Reunion Party

The wonderful woman who was our guide and facilitator in China, Judy Wu, has been visiting the U.S. for the last three weeks and made a stop in Salt Lake to see many of the families she helped in China. Our agency threw a party on Saturday at the Olympic Ice Sheet in Ogden and we met up with Judy and a bunch of our friends.

Emma seemed very pleased to see Judy, although it's been 16 months since we've been home and I don't imagine she can remember much about the big trip...

...but Judy certainly remembers Emma and was delighted to see her again.

Our friend Shawn was there with his little girl Sophi. Sophi's been home almost six months.

Here's Sophi and her mama, Calista.

Little Maylin was at the party, too. Maylin's mom, Laurel, and I think Emma and Maylin look a little bit alike.

Emma enjoyed collecting goodies and arranging them on the chairs...

And she just generally had a good time.

It was wonderful to see Judy and our friends. We had a blast.

A Sunday in the Life of Missy Em

Young Emma got up at 7:55 this morning after sleeping all night in her bed. Sleeping all night in the bed happens about half the time. The other half, Emma brings blanket and pillow out to the living room sometime between 1 and 3 a.m. and spends the rest of the night on the couch.

We breakfasted with my folks, who stayed overnight after babysitting for us last evening (thankyou-thankyou-thankyou!). Emma's breakfast: Two bites of scrambled egg, four spoonfuls of raspberry La Creme yogurt, five individual Cinnamon Toast Crunch squares, two fingers of apple juice.

After briefly (but vigorously!) protesting getting dressed for church, Emma saw it my way when she realized "Handy Manny" would be turned off if clothes didn't go on. (Disney channel programs are helpful negotiating tools in our household; and of course they teach valuable lessons of cooperation and friendship consistent with appropriate Sabbath viewing ;)

Off to church!! Sacrament meeting is often a challenge, but today Emma enthusiastically vocalized during "Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel" (with open hymnbook on her lap) and was very quiet during prayers, although she looked around suspiciously a few times (which I guess I did too). She also spent a good part of the meeting galloping stocking-footed across the gym floor, juuust ahead of Baba. She had a good time in Nursery and came home with a bestickered art project.

After lunch (Campbell's Goldfish soup and a few bites of leftover KFC), Emma and I retired to her room for the naptime project. This can take awhile. We usually read some books pre-sleep (on Emma's nightstand right now: "Harold and the Purple Crayon," "Pete's a Pizza," "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," "Caps for Sale," "From Head to Toe.") I think Emma is gradually moving away from needing an afternoon nap; it takes longer and longer for her to fall asleep in the afternoon. But once asleep, she often sleeps a looong time (like today: 3 hours). But of course after a long, late nap she doesn't want to go to bed very early. (However, when she doesn't get a nap, she's SO unhappy in the early evening). I don't know...I think naptime probably will fade away sometime in the next few months and we'll opt for earlier, crankier bedtimes.

After long, late nap, Joe's dad and Andy & Kat joined us for dinner (Joe's mom is on a trip to Asia with Aunt Adele for 2 weeks; today they're in Cambodia). Joe made every bit of dinner. Bacon-wrapped pork loin. Yummy chunks of sweet potato with a lemony sauce. Fresh green beans. I contributed by putting butter and jam on the table for the bread. Joe loves to cook. I love that Joe loves to cook. I am a lucky duck, a fortunate fowl. ("Bannister, you're a lucky dog" -- anyone know what movie that's from?)

After company went home, Emma and I lounged on the couch and watched a Mickey Mouse video. (She loves TV; I try not to overindulge her, but man, she gets a charge out of a good cartoon.) Joe retired early, earning a well-deserved rest after a hard day of churching, cooking, and chasing his 2-year-old. Emma and I headed in for bedtime project a little after nine, equipped with blankie, toothbrush, and sippy of water (after she finished a bedtime snack of Nacho Cheese Doritos, she willingly submitted to brushing teeth by herself; she's been doing much better with the brushing lately). Took over an hour for her to fall asleep. But here's the beauty part: Emma now lets me rock her at night! This is huge. It took months for Emma to let me rock her in the rocking chair. But she loves it now, and it's cute, 'cause she's getting taller and she's got these long, rangy legs that hang over the side of the chair and she has to keep readjusting to get in a good position. But she's a regular snuggle bunny at night. 'Snice. After the hundredth readjustment, however, I said, "Emma, why don't you get in your nice comfy bed with the snuggly green quilt and you can fall asleep there." She realized that was a good option, too, and so she jumped into bed with a giggle and was asleep in 10 minutes.

And to close, following are two photos: The first one is from December '06 when Emma had been home just a month or so and we had ribs at Uncle Matt's house. The second one is from just last week on Superbowl Sunday when we had ribs again at Uncle Matt's house. It's fun to see how much she's grown (her head comes up higher on the chair).

Adios!

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!

'Twas the Night Before Christmas.....

On this cold and snowy Christmas Eve we wish you peace and happiness. We're so blessed to be spending our second Christmas with little Missy Em. We are grateful for her...and for all our dear family and friends. Merry Christmas!

Many Things To Do, So Little Time

One of the moments Emma slowed down long enough to snap a photo

Mmmmmm, hot chocolate!

I think you need more scotch tape on that

I'll start on the next one

It has been a busy few days, as Christmas approaches. Last Monday we took Emma on the Trax Train downtown to see the lights on Temple Square along with 8,000 of our closest friends. I don't want to say it was cold, but there weren't any brass monkeys out that night, I must say. Emma is not one to like confinement, so the Trax experience was interesting. It was all we could do to keep her from running up and down the crowded aisle. The threat of the big guy in the blue shirt coming out from behind the dark glass and yelling at us finally kept her at a dull roar. Everybody on the train was in a nice Christmas mood, which helped.

Upon arrival at our final destination, Emma was off and running. She was bouncing like a pinball from one site to the next. The cold didn't seem to bother her much. I was working up a sweat keeping up with her, so I was not affected by the cold myself. At one point Emma climbed up on one of the tableaux to pet a fibreglass lamb. It was only by persuasive coaxing and pleading that our evening was not interrupted by the nice men from security. She did hold still for a couple of seconds, long enough to snap a few photos.

We just missed a returning train, so we had 15 minutes to kill. There's a hot chocolate stand on a corner from the train stop, so we perched Emma on a small ledge and ordered a hot chocolate for her to drink. That staved off the cold that was catching up to us, and kept her entertained until the next train rolled by. A wonderful FHE experience was had by all.

Andy came over tonight to do a little laundry, as Kathryn was doing a little Christmas shopping. He had a couple of presents to wrap, so Emma helped. She sure enjoys any project that involves paper and "sca tae" [scotch tape]. Denny was out doing a little shopping herself, so Andy and I watched football on the couch, while Emma plied us with Clementines and things off of the Christmas tree. Denny is working on an update, so keep an eye out. OK then.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Fresh out of the box with all components



Concentration, strategy, and coordination will pay off!


You can tell when it is getting close to Christmas at Hacienda JoeyDennyEmma. The gals are constructing a gingerbread house, "Scrooged" is on the television, and there is a recently opened box of Enstrom's milk chocolate butter toffee on the shelf, thanks to the gang in Chicagoland. Gracias to Aunt Laurie, Porkchop, et al.



The g-bread house is a work in process. Emma learned to say the word "dang" from the construction foreman, but they are having a great time together. Perhaps a completed photo will be in a subsequent post. The roof keeps sliding. Instructions are for the weak.



Christmas is only ten days out, and it will be here before you can say "virgin eggnog." We actually put up a few lights and a festive wreath above the garage this year. Not too bad for us, but when compared to the neighbors, a wimpy effort. That's ok, something to build on. The cove does look festive though.

We donated two racks of smoked ribs for a Sub for Santa auction, and they are about to come off the Green Egg. I wonder what the neighbors think about peach wood smoke wafting through the 20 degree air. Gotta love the BGE.

Andy and Kat are through with school until January, so they can breathe a little easier. They sure work hard, those two. Emma sure enjoys their visits. There will be another post next week, as there have been photos taken that need to be shared with all, so keep checking in. OK then.

Our Sullen Ballerina

Emma loves her new tutu and leotard (a gift from her sis Jane), but didn't especially want to beam for the camera when we took her picture.

But she did show off one of her fancy moves.

And took a nice, deep bow.

Here's a smile. She likes taking tubbies in the kitchen sink as well as in the grown-up bathtub.

Random comments:

- Our tree is decorated only on the top half (and I think you know why).

- Emma enjoyed the recent big snow on Saturday ("Bih! Sno!"). We got bundled up and went for a walk and shook snow-covered branches of trees to watch the snow fall down.

-Stephens' dulce de leche flavored cocoa: Yumsters!

- I like it when cute Christmas programs for kids come on between 7:00 and 8:00. That's the hour when I'm always wondering "what do I do now...."

-We had fun at birthday dinner for Grandpa Hiatt at Chuck-a-Rama last week (and please pronounce that Chuck-a-Rahma). Aunt Barbie was there and Emma blew the wrapper of her straw at her and hit a perfect bull's eye (to many cheers and much laughter). She's been talking about Aunt Barbie ever since. "An Bawbie...blow! straw!"

-Oh! Big news. Emma started nursery school at DDI Vantage last week. She goes two mornings a week for 90 minutes. She loves it and I think it's going to be really good for her.

-I went shopping last night at All-a-Dollar to see what I could find in the way of dollary Christmas items. Found a few of those, but found even more non-Christmasy things. Spray starch that I usually pay way more for. Canned beans. A set of 5 kiddy toothbrushes. A little bag of chocolates to eat on the way home (and they were terrible; I was so disappointed). There was such a random variety of merchandise. I counted 33 beeps as the checker scanned my stuff. Grand total: $33.83. It really is all a dollar!

-Our stake conference is this Sunday. Last conference I went alone and Joe stayed home with Emma. This time I think we'll take her and hang out in the foyer if need be. Emma has worn the same pink dress to Church 3 weeks in a row and I think we'll shoot for 4 this Sunday.

-Check out the following link to the blog of a family who adopted twin girls from China shortly before we did. One of their girls is a real juice fan. It's cute.

http://salsainchina.blogspot.com/2007/11/juice.html

-I taught Relief Society on Sunday and it was such a relief to have it done that now I feel like I can enjoy getting ready for Christmas.

-Hope everybody else is enjoying getting ready, too!


PS. Take a look at this! http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1187870322 OK then.

Ain't Leftovers Wunnerful?

Happy Thanksgiving weekend to our peeps everywhere. We had a loverly holiday yesterday. Joe cooked up a moist and delicious 20-pound turkey and made cornbread stuffing. I expertly opened a variety of cans and heated things up. Grandma & Grandpa Hiatt, Janie, and nephew Jonathan joined us for dinner. Jon brought us a key lime pie to enjoy along with the pumpkin. That's a nice taste combo! Grandma & Grandpa stayed overnight and Emma got up in the middle of the night and wandered downstairs in search of them...not wanting the fun to end, apparently. (We heard a plaintive "PA!!" -- what she calls Grandpa -- wafting up from the depths of the house as we lay asleep.)

Today we're putting up the tree, listening to the Carpenters' Christmas album (the pinnacle of all Christmas music) and eating the odd green olive and turkey fragment.

In other Emma news: She now only wears two shirts (willingly), the pink one pictured above and its light green twin. I wash one or the other almost daily, and sometimes we turn them around to get a different, non-stained view. She's got a million darling outfits that she's just now growing into but thumbs her little nose at all but these two summery shirts. (I tried to coerce her into wearing some cute black velvet overalls over a pink turtleneck yesterday. I asked her if she'd wear her new outfit and she retorted "No ow-fih!" A pox on outfits.)

She also likes to wear an extragavant pink dress with a fluffy skirt covered with netting given to her by a lovely lady in our ward. She saw a tutu-wearing ballerina on BYU's World of Dance program recently and dashed into her bedroom to don "the dress," then began spinning across the living room floor. "The dress" is now the apparel of choice for Sunday.

One of Emma's favorite phrases is "happy choo choo." I don't know where it came from. A few months ago she started saying "happy happy choo choo," then it dwindled to just "happy choo choo," and now it is applied solely to birthdays and birthday cakes (as in "I hope you have a very happy choo choo birthday and eat a lot of happy choo choo birthday cake"). Next week is Grandpa's happy choo choo birthday, which I'm sure Emma will enjoy, and I told her that Christmas is Jesus' happy choo choo birthday. I think she understood. We're looking forward to the next five weeks of festivities and hope you and yours enjoy a very happy choo choo Christmas season.

A Halloweeny Update

We should probably give Emma's update on Halloween before Thanksgiving gets here. We also celebrated "Emma Day" on October 30th. I took some time off of work, and we all went to Jungle Jim's for the morning on Emma Day. It was great watching Emma ride all of the rides and ignoring lunch in the process. We took some footage of the occasion, and may even post it some day when we can figure out how to do it.

It doesn't seem like a year has passed since we first saw Emma. The year has gone by quickly, and Emma has made so much progress. She now has added to her vocab words and phrases like "mine!," "stop it," and "move!" So much has happened that it is difficult to think of how life was without her. The time her mother has spent with her has produced great results. Go Mama!

Halloween was a fun day. While Denny was playing an out-of-tune piano at a funeral, Emma and I hit a couple of Halloween parties. The first was at my work, and she was a big hit in her ladybug costume. She filled up her collapsing pumpkin with candy, and we took off for the party at Boo Boo's work. Those folks at OCC know how to do Halloween. All of the employees were geared up for the occasion, as well as about 30 or 40 kids. The office was decked out, and there was candy and favors at each desk on three levels. I took a few pictures at this location, but our trusty camera gave up the ghost, so there will be no pictures. Bummer. We then took off to meet Denny at her folk's place out in Sandy. We had a pleasant visit, and ate crackers to help balance out the sugar.

After a sugar-laced nap, we took off for dinner at Andy and Kathryn's place up by the "U." There was a parade of about 50 kids that Emma joined, and they marched around [Emma had her arms folded like she does when the Nursery kids at church walk down the hall] and enjoyed hot cider and donuts (before dinner). Dinner was great, and it was good to see Andy and Kat. We then went up the street to visit Emma's other grandparents for a few minutes. By that time it was getting dark, so we headed for home to greet trick-or-treaters. Emma was bushed from a long day of partying, so we stayed home and handed out candy to about 28 scary visitors.

It was a busy couple of days, and much fun was had. She may not completely understand the Emma Day or Halloween, but that will come later. In the meantime, everybody is sure enjoying the ride! OK then.

Latest Pix + Vonage Schmonage

Our neighborhood playgroup visited Gardner Village recently. It was all decked out in its Halloween glory. Here is Emma with her friend Jackson.


Emma and pals surveying the stream below


L to R: Witch, Mom, Em

Gardner Village has a cool petting zoo. Emma took full advantage of the petting privileges.


These baby pigs were darling. Their tails were waving a mile a minute.


Emma is just beginning to fit into many of the darling outfits we got as shower gifts a year ago. Here is a sporty denim look.


And a chic green and white ensemble.


Emma in a beautiful coat her Aunt Boo Boo brought her from Disneyland (it has ladybug spots on the back).


And in keeping with that theme, a ladybug is what Emma will be for Halloween (we got the costume online from Old Navy).

On a different subject: Joe and I have Vonage telephone service, which comes through our computer. When we get voicemails we get them as e-mails with the voice message sent as an attachment (that we listen to). Lately Vonage has been pushing a new service whereby somebody (a human being presumably, but I'm not so sure) will transcribe the message so you can simply read the text of the message in an e-mail ("for only 25 cents a call!"). We've been getting free trial transcriptions of our voice messages and they are an absolute SCREAM. I think they must have non-native speakers, or robots, or aliens transcribing them. Or maybe it's just a machine. Anyway, check out the transcription of a message I got yesterday:

"I. Know. This is granted to me if. Dictator called me this morning and 1 good need to see if we could have been opening song. So. Could you please just choose 1 and then. I can eat anything so it doesn't happen to me but. Central not home and i have to go get the grandkids in a couple of hours. But different you would like to call me back it's 569. 1 c route 79. Thank you. Life state."

After listening to the actual recording, I discerned this is what the caller really said:

"Hello. This is Grethe, Denise. Birgitte called me this morning and wanted me to see if we could have an opening song. So could you please just choose one and then, I can lead anything so it doesn't matter to me, but since you're not home and I have to go get the grandkids in a couple of hours, but if you'd like to call me back, it's 569-1079. Thank you. Bye."

And then at the end of the transcription you read the following:

"Isn't Vonage Visual Voicemail Great! You could be reading this voicemail message even if you were stuck in a meeting. No more waiting until the meeting is over to listen to your messages."

Joe and I won't be signing up for the service, but we've had some great laughs over the nutty transcriptions.

That's all for now!

A Great Time of Year

Here are my two gals sharing a large bowl of Sunday-night popcorn

Spring training is a great time of year. It means that the worst part of winter is behind us, and rich dudes are running around on green grass playing ball. The Giants aren't in last place (yet), and there are many summer nights on the horizon when baseball can be enjoyed. October is the cumulation of all of the above, with some great games being played. Too bad about the Cubbies, I would have liked to see them give the D-backs more of a battle. I think the Rockies will do just that.

Enough about baseball, for now anyway. On to Emma, and her progress. She is talking more each week, and seems more grown up all the time. She is having a rough go of it these last few days, we think due to her last four molars finally poking through. A spoonful of orange medicine and she calms down enough to fall asleep.

We were eating out for breakfast the other day, and I was reminded of a scene from The Godfather (I). The food had just arrived, and due to Emma's wanting to leave immediately, we had to "Tom Hagen" our food. This is in reference to the dinner Tom Hagen had with the movie producer. Just after he started eating, old Woltz started in on why Johnny wasn't going to get the part in his next movie. Ol' Tom knew he wasn't in for a leisurely meal, and was going to have to get on a plane in a hurry, so he starts stuffing the food in. Anyway, that is what we had to do. Oh well. it doesn't happen all that often, and a little "speed eating" once in a while won't kill you. Kinda funny if you think about it, I think.

Another reason October is great, is that we now have "Emma Day" to celebrate. Every October 30th we will celebrate the day we met Emma. We plan on giving her a special Chinese gift and doing something special. It has been a fast (almost) year. Emma is growing up fast, and her mother is doing a wonderful job in smothering her with love and attention! OK then.

Okay, we are MAJOR blog slackers. It has been one calendar month since we updated. We were indeed having some computer difficulties, as Joe has noted, but still... We are in danger of losing our handful of loyal readers. We have been chastised recently by both my dad and Shawn Stephens in our ward (hey to Shawn) for being poor updaters.

And now on to the Emma photos:


We went to the zoo with some friends a few weeks ago. It was splendid weather, Emma was quite well behaved, and I felt like I was on vacation it was so much fun. Here is Emma striking a pose in front of some feline (leopard? jaguar?)

I like this photo of the kids with their hands planted on the glass, observing the crocodiles (we saw the albino crocodile with the blue eyes -- "Ghost of the Bayou!") Maybe it was an alligator. I called it the wrong name when I was there and the zoo attendant briskly corrected me. (One has a longer, V-shaped snout; the other a shorter, square snout, but I can't remember which one's which anymore.)

We've attended a couple of U of U volleyball games recently. Kathryn Haynie, Andy's wife, is on the team and she is GOOD! We dress Emma in her red sweats, red Utah T-shirt, and white sneakers when we go. She likes to clap and cheer with the crowd. She also boldly approaches anyone close by, known or unknown to her, who has snack items. Sigh. It's kind of a problem.


Joe smoked some ribs recently. Emma's a big fan of the ribs.
We've been to the airport a couple of times lately to watch planes land. We walked along the bike path and the planes roared overhead. Emma mostly enjoyed it until a great big loud one came over and she got this expression on her face.

Today (September 25) is the Moon Festival, second biggest Chinese holiday after Chinese New Year, celebrating the autumnal equinox. We bought four moon cakes, the traditional Moon Festival delicacy, at the Melewa Bakery on 9th South to celebrate. They're filled with kind of a pasty, gelatinous something or other (sweetened bean paste I've heard). Not bad. Emma didn't partake, though.

Emma is really learning a lot of new words lately, stringing words together, chattering, humming a little (something she hasn't done much of until recently). She is a funny, energetic, happy soul. A joy. She'll be two and a half next month and it's almost a year that we've been home with her. The recent change in weather reminds me of getting ready to leave last year...such amazing memories.

Sorry about the long dry spell on the blog, but thanks for being loyal readers and checking in.

Technical Difficulties

We are experiencing blogger angst, and cannot log in from home. Stay tuned and we will update again as soon as we can do some reconfiguring. OK then.