Happy Birthday, Emily!

Today Emily turned FOUR years old! We tried to make the day special for her. The front room was decorated with balloons and other things, AND she got to have cold cereal for breakfast - which she was thrilled about. Yesterday I told her we were going to a fun place this morning for her birthday, but that it was a surprise. She didn't know where we were going until we pulled into our parking spot.

That "fun place" was Chuck E Cheese's and when she saw the sign from the car, she was SO excited. I wish I could've gotten a picture of her face beaming.

As for the presents, she wasn't all that thrilled about a lot of them when she got them opened. I was getting worried that they would all be busts, but she really liked this princess nightgown from Grandma Burnham.

And this dress up stuff.

And this beautiful quilt made by Grandma Dixon.

For her birthday dinner she surprisingly requested french toast, which we thought was odd. She was really happy about the strawberry syrup I bought to eat with it.

After baths, she fianally got to dig into her PINK cake. She picked out the strawberry cake mix, the strawberry frosting, and the rainbow sprinkles a couple of weeks ago. She's been so looking forward to it every since.

Happy birthday, Sweet Pea! I love you and I hope you had a fun day.

**A quick little addition documenting Saturday, June 27th:

In connection with Emily's birthday we took the kids to the movies for the first time! We saw the movie "Up" in 3D. I was skeptical how Dallin would do, especially with the glasses. This kid was a champ and wore his huge glasses the entire time. He watched the whole movie. I hope I can keep forever in my mind the image of him sitting there on Daddy's lap watching very intently with those glasses on. It was so, so cute. Emily, on the other hand, did not last through it and she nearly had a complete melt-down with about 30 minutes left. Fortunately, we were able to settle her down enough to get through the rest of the movie.

12 Days and Counting

My doctor said the other day that he'll induce me on the 30th, at 39 weeks! For those of you who have delivered your babies early (or even on time), you have no concept of how awesome this is. You may not know that Emily was three days late, and Dallin was 8 days late and weighed 8 lbs., 12 oz. I had to be induced with both. My doctor said that there's no need for me to go 41 weeks or deliver such a huge baby. So, there you have it! Our baby will be here in 12 days!

Here are some of the "prego" things that I'm SO looking forward to being done with - early!

• Using the bathroom all the time, including during the night, due to a squished bladder.
• Having everything about me being BIG; belly, ankles, hands, thighs, and pretty much the rest of me. I just feel so meaty and fleshy. Not too long ago the kids and I were reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and came to the part that reads something like, "Now he wasn't hungry anymore. And he wasn't a little caterpillar anymore. He was a big, fat caterpillar." And Emily says, "Just like you, Mom!" Nice.
• The nearly incessant heartburn. I only get it during pregnancy and it's awful. Half the time I get it when I haven't eaten anything for a long time, but it's especially bad when I lay on my right side.
• The lovely pelvic exams at the doctor's office.
• Only having two positions to lay in: on my left side or on my right side. And sometimes the right side isn't an option because of the heartburn.
• My painful ligaments. With every pregnancy, I've had terrible pain in the ligaments in my inner thighs due to the stretching that happens as my belly grows. It's come earlier and has been more painful with each pregnancy. It kills all the time, especially when I move, and makes normal things nearly impossible to do because of the pain. Walking, getting up, any lifting of my legs (shaving and putting pants on is awful), sitting in any position too long, laying in one position too long. The VERY worst is rolling over in bed. The pain nearly brings me to tears. It literally catches and makes a popping sound. I swear one of these days it'll just stay popped out of place. I remember getting the epidurals when laboring with Emily and Dallin was totally worth it just to be able to move my legs around and not have searing pain in them.
• Having only two shirts and one pair of pants that fit anymore.
• Hemorrhoids. Need I say more??
• Not being able to bend over or snuggle with my kids. It'll be great not to have this huge belly in the way.

ONLY 12 DAYS TO GO!! WOO HOO!!

Chattanooga

We squoze in another thing/place on our to-do list yesterday: visit Chattanooga, TN. This time it was even extra special because we met up with our old friends Leo and Amber Ebbert, and their cute family. The Ebberts moved into our Mesa ward exactly four years ago (Amber reminded me that I was "pregnant with Emily and about to pop." Funny how I'm in the same boat this time around too!). Then they moved to Knoxville, TN a little over two years ago and when we moved here, we thought it'd be fun to get together with them somehow. The Ebberts and we decided on Chattanooga because it's the halfway point between us and they have a cool aquarium there. We were glad to go because we've been wanting to go to Chattanooga before the baby comes anyway.


The day started out rocky due to our own blunders and unpreparedness: we didn't set an alarm and woke up a little late, I chose a hairstyle for Emily that took much longer to do than we had time for, we waited until the last minute to mapquest directions and found out it takes two hours to get there instead of 1 1/2, on our way out of town we took the slower Hwy. 72 instead of the interstate. Duh! The biggest problem we had that neither we or the Ebberts anticipated was that Chattanooga is in the Eastern time zone (we are in central), so we botched our plan to meet at 10:00 when we arrived over an hour late. We felt like total idiots for overlooking that, but Amber and Leo were totally cool about it. Thank heavens for good people! Inspite of the tough start to the day, we had a really great time catching up with them and visiting the aquarium.

With the Ebberts: Leo, Amber, Summer, Tyler, Bridget, and Tyson. They are such a great family and we're so glad it worked out to get together.
The aquarium has two separate parts: the freshwater building and the saltwater building. We started out in the freshwater exhibit.A little alligator.




They had a neat butterfly exhibit. There exists a species called the "common mormon". I thought that was odd.

Daddy and Dallin.

A parrot named "Amy". I felt so honored.

A cool spotted stingray.

Some big gross-looking fish.


Dallin touching a fish.

The cute kiddos.

Emily getting her snake-touching fix.

And they got to touch a possum.

We took a lunch break before we headed over to the saltwater part. Here are the kids.





Penguins.


Emily with a statue penguin.

Some neat jellyfish.

All the kids in a shark cage.

Emily and Dallin looking at some jellyfish. Can you tell Emily's sick of getting her picture taken?

What a fun day! Thank you, Amber and Leo for making the effort to come! We had a great time!

The Beach

Who knew there are beaches here in Alabama? There's not a lot of Alabama coastline, but what there is was totally awesome and blows the California beaches I've been to out of the water. When we were in Tucson, Danny had a co-worker who grew up in Alabama and when she learned we'd be moving here, she told us of her all-time favorite beach vacation spot: Gulf Shores, Alabama. We immediately put it on our "Things to do in Alabama" list and had planned on going before this baby comes. We were able to work it in this past week from Wednesday night to Saturday and we were not disappointed at all. The beach was clean and beautiful, with really fine white sand and warm water. The trip went just exactly as we'd hoped - no rain, lots of beach time, stress-free. Both of the full days we had on the beach went as followed: We went out to the beach as soon as breakfast was over, and everyone was swimsuited up and lathered with sunscreen. We played out there for a few hours till lunch. Then we went back up to the condo for lunch and naps. Then we headed out to the beach again for a couple of hours till dinner. Then it was baths, dinner, and bed time. It was perfect.


We rented a little two-bedroom condo right on the beach. It was just right for us.


























































































Emily's first moments on the beach. From the beginning she was ready to get wet, build sand castles, and dig in the sand.

Dallin's first moments on the beach. At first, he was pretty afraid of the water, but got used to it quickly and really loved it.

They were very excited to be there.

During the night, the tide came up high enough to a little dip in the sand that created sort of a river or mote that every kid on the beach loved playing in. It was warm and shallow, and even had little minnows in it. Daddy would try and catch them with our little net. Here they are looking at one.

Mommy and the kids sitting so the water would wash up and get our feet. They thought it was a really fun game because sometimes it would reach our feet and sometimes it wouldn't.

Danny and Emily did this for hours: catching little sea creatures as the waves rolled in. Emily absolutely loved it and was totally into it. She'd bring whatever was caught in her bare hands to the bucket that was up by me. They caught a lot of sand fleas, minnows, a sand crab, and a hermit crab.

We went to Lambert's Cafe for dinner. Danny had heard of this place and they're famous for literally throwing their piping hot rolls from across the room to anyone who wants one. This was my catch and they were very tasty.












Our second morning was cloudy and cooler, but the rain never came and we had a great time out there. Here are the kids playing in the "river".

Playing in the "river".

Since I can barely bend over these days, I sat in the beach chair a lot and took walks along the beach with the kids. I left the bending and digging and such to Danny. This is the view I had a lot of the time and I think they look cute.

I also thought this shot was cool.









Some condo time.




Dallin was finishing up lunch. They loved sitting on these stools and the fact that there were so many different colors to choose from.

At Emily's request, Daddy's taking her in "deep" to lift her over the waves.

This little "river" was seriously the best for little kids.

After dinner on Saturday we went to The Warf to ride this ferris wheel, the tallest in the South. Emily was so excited she could hardly contain herself.

Getting ready to ride it.

So that other passengers could also ride, we happened to get stopped for a few moments at the very top. Emily thought it was the greatest.

Danny and Dallin.

In looking into things to do down in Gulf Shores, I found this place and we thought the kids would enjoy it. It was on the way home, so we stopped there after checking out of the condo on Saturday morning. It was very cool.

This place has over 200 alligators of various ages and sizes. Most of them have been brought here for being "problem" alligators. Some of them are in enclosures like this.





The big dudes are in this huge swamp.

We followed a guide along this pathway over the swamp to see a lot of them.


This is their most famous, world record-holding alligator: Captain Crunch.







Pretty impressive stats!

Then we went to some bleachers to watch feeding time.

The guide, Wes, went into the enclosure to feed the alligators dead chickens. The gators also knew it was time to eat and 15-20 big ones came up out of the river right near him.

After they were fed, some stayed on the bank and others went back into the water.

Then it was time for the alligator encounter. The first one to hold this little guy was a kid of about 12 years old. When Wes offered the other littler boys ahead of us a chance, they were all too scared. Emily was totally fearless as she marched up to take her turn. She thought it was great.
Dallin also wanted a turn.

Danny and I couldn't pass up the chance to hold the little guy either.

It was very cool to actually hold one.
Then we walked over to the giant snake exhibit. They have a whole bunch of huge snakes in cages for you to see, only species that grow to 20+ feet. We saw anacondas, boa constrictors, and pythons, etc. Then they took out one of the smaller, safer ones for people to handle. I thought the kids would be satisfied to just touch it.

But Emily wanted to hold it like everyone else.

For that matter, so did I.

And so did Danny.

As if that weren't enough, Emily still wanted more and asked to touch its head. That made me a little nervous because, hello the teeth, but the guy said he'd hold the head to keep it from biting.

And then Dallin wanted to touch its head too.

Then they brought out a bigger snake and invited everyone to touch it too.

Again, Emily was all for it.

We laughed because Dallin liked to gently squeeze it over and over again.

They let all the kids help carry it back to its cage.

We then began our 6-hour drive home, completely satisfied with a really great trip.