Emma Loves to Dress Up!

One of my favorite things in the last couple of months has been to watch Emma's imagination develop.  She loves to play pretend, especially as a Princess or Queen.  Everyone gets Princess, Queen or Prince attached to their name, like Mommy Princess or Emma Queen.  She is also fighting me more and more on choosing what she wants to wear.  If I know we are staying home that day, I don't care.  I let her pick but if we are going out in public, it has to match, fit, and be appropriate.  She doesn't like that part.  This is what happens when I let her choose!  lol

 This is her playing pretend.  She is "cutting" Tigger's hair.  She  means combing but says cutting for all hair related things.  Imagine the heart attack the first time I asked her what she was doing and she called back, "I'm in the bathroom cutting my hair!" 

The Fence is done! (For now)

We decided to work on getting our fence in this Fall.  We were hoping to start over Labor Day weekend but things kept getting pushed back until mid October.  You can see from the first pictures that the leaves were still green and the weather good.  I didn't get a picture of the concrete pallet, which was almost as big as the pickets palate, or the amount of screws.  But you can see from the pics that we were in over our heads, but determined to still do it ourselves.  Luckily we are only putting up the back fence right now and will do the West fence next Spring.  

 

 This is basically week 1 and week 2's work.  Drilling the holes, even with a water drill and a post hole digger, had us constantly asking ourselves if Home Depot's installation price would be worth it!  Thanks to some good ward help and Cale's brother-in-law Curtis, we got the posts in.  Our property butts up to a wash and our fence is up on the berm which was made with pond stones 1 foot in diameter or more.  At least I feel safe from a flood, but oh so hard to get out of our holes. 

 Week 3 consisted of getting the rails put up for half the length of the fence while we had some great help.  Then Cale and I were able to put up fencing on our own Week 4.  It was slow progress....

 ...until our previous Bishop, Bishop Peterson, showed up to help!  We cranked out this half of the fence in one day!  (Yes, that is half of the fence.)

Week 5 was the weekend before Thanksgiving and Cale and I were able to finish cutting rails and put them up on the remaining half.  But then cold weather set in.  Which would have been workable but the 50+ winds that came with it were not.  So we waited until Thanksgiving Day!  Cale and his brother-in-law were able to crank out almost all of the remaining fencing.  I helped Cale finish putting up the boards the next day and then Cale went back and finished screwing in the remaining screws!!  Yeah Cale.  It was cold!  Look at the trees compared to the first of the project.  Did I mention it snowed Thanksgiving Day morning!

The best part.....Both cars fit in the garage again just in time for the snow to come!

Potty Trained! (I think so)

I'm not sure at what point you say your child is potty trained.  If you waited until they go 1 week, 1 month or 1 year without an accident then I think we could be waiting a long time.  We started trying to see if Emma was ready to do this in April.  We gave up after a couple of days.  Not ready.  We tried again in May.  Not ready.  Stopped trying really until August when I went back to work on a long term substitute job for 2 weeks.  To get back into her day care, they only had room in the potty training class...so we did it!  She's been really good since then, with accidents here and there.  She started waking up dry each night in late September so I'm going to say she was potty trained as of September 29, 2010.  31 months old!  If you don't count a wet diaper at night then 30 months!  The point: I haven't changed a diaper for over a month!                    

Halloween!

We grew our own pumpkins this year thanks to them spontaneously growing in our front yard.  At one point we had 9 pumpkins.  Some of the little ones rotted a way. 

 

 

 We went to the library's story time dress up day!  Emma loved getting in her costume early, especially the tights!  She is a Ballerina Bat in case you are not sure! 

We had a lot of fun this year but trick or treating was definitely easier last year.  Emma was so excited!  We carved our pumpkins a week early and Emma wanted her pumpkin to have all of our faces on it, including Kinzers of course. 

Then the night of, we went to a ward party where Cale won best dressed adult male - he was Tony Romo complete with the broken clavicle and arm in a sling! 
Next we were off to get candy.  We went to the first house...Emma came running back exclaiming "I go so much candy!...and this was only the first hosue!"  We went to 10-15 houses and then went to our friends house for a bit.  We had one tired little girl and because we were gone all night, we didn't get a single trick or treater.  Unlike last year where we ran out of candy! 
Halloween is my favorite holiday and I wasn't looking forward to it being the first without Kinzers.  It didn't hit me till Sunday so I guess that's good.  We had a great Saturday. 

Bye Bye Hermana Young

My little sister, now 22, decided to go on a mission! And her MTC date in Provo was October 6th, three days before her 22nd birthday! I was trying to find a way to get to Texas to say good-bye but knew it was just too expensive when the thought came to drive up to Utah, much closer and cheaper! So I packed Emma and I up (Cale really wanted to come too but had to coach football)! It was great to spend a couple days with her and then a couple more with my parents and Doug and Kim and family. I brought back 8 boxes of peaches too! Yummy Utah peaches!

Anyway, I'm so proud of Krista. Emma calls her a "murshanary" and loves to tell people that her Kickus is a "murshanary." For those of you who haven't taken a missionary into the MTC for awhile, they no longer have the whole parent program; it's just a curbside drop like at the airport. I prefer it - short goodbyes! So we pulled up, got her luggage out, gave quick hugs and they wisked her away! She is loving it. For info see her blog link. My mom is updating her blog with her letters while she is out. (Good job Mom!) We love Kickus and miss her. Only 17 more months!