Last Post

This is my last post of the year!! Tomorrow starts a New Year. It's a time for new beginnings and resolutions. What are my resolutions? I have several this year. Probably to make up for all the years that I've never had any. Then again, I ask myself "Why must it be a new year for me to decide to change or do something new?" Well this just happens to be a convient time for, as it is for alot of other people. So what are they?

1) Start being more deligent about my blogging.
Both on here and for my professional blog (kaylavanpatten.blogspot.com). I regret stopping doing both of them. I look back on all the things I've wrote or things that I've taken pictures of and I'm sad that I missed doing that for a while.

2) Start "home schooling" Emily.
Yes, she's way too young for homeschool persay, however I feel that I need to give her more structure. I need to be able to sit her down and say "Okay, Emily, it's school time" and teach her. I know that she will be so happy with it. She strives to learn more every day and I think that will help occupy some of her brain and maybe keep her out of mischief...a little. Since I blogged on her last she has learned so many new things that I'm going to have to keep adding them as they come up. But some of them are the letters "mommy E", "baby e", "m", "i", she has some trouble with "l" and doesn't quite have "y". She can also legitematly draw an "e" most of the time. So I feel that if I can channel her brain into learning her letters that she will be able to read before preschool...okay not really but she will definatly be ready by the time she turns 3.

3) More structure in myself.
My days go by all too fast. It could be the late hours that I wake up and the lack of structure in my daughter that I chase 24/7 that has done this too me, but I feel that if I can do this it will greatly improve my days.

4) Improve myself.
I want to start going to the gym and getting healthy. and I want to start eating healthier...Again, these also will reflect in Emily. When the dogs start barking Emily runs to the door and says "pizza?" That has to be a bad sign. She also calls Dr. Pepper "peppa dee". She has recently started both of these things and it's a bit of a red flag, the fact that she thinks the dog barking always means pizza and that she can easily distinguish Dr. Pepper from any other dring actually makes me kind of sad.

and I think with all of these things I will be able to do number 5

5) Become a better house wife and wife in general.
I want to pick up some wifely hobbies like: gardening, sewing, and baking. All three things I'm pretty sure that I'm cursed at doing, but I think with the TIME to be able to practice that I can at least give a valient effort to improve on them.

6) But 100% into building my business
Photography is something that I LOVE. Not only is it a passion and fun hobby, it is also a dream come true to be given such an amazing opportunity to build my on something that I love so much!

So with all of that said...I want to wish everyone a very Happy New Year in my last post of 2009.

THEE worst day ever!!

After Emily turned 2, I found myself having much less time to get on the computer or to take pictures. It also didn't help that every time I took a picture of Emily doing something bad, she would end up thinking it's cute because mommy would take a picture of her instead of getting her in trouble. That, and my wonderful husband complaining about the numerous hours I was on facebook, farmtown, and blogspot led me to giving up most those things so I would stop hearing the threats of divorce. But after much complaining (mainly from my dad who used to read this religiously) and the guilt trips of people not getting to see my daughter on a daily basis I planned on making a New Years resolution to be more dedicated to taking pictures of Emily and putting them on here. I also thought it was sad that in Emilys "year 2" photo album there where over 2000 pictures and in the first 4 months of her "year 3" album there are only a few hundred. So with all of that said...I'm starting this again and what better way to start it than on THEE worst day ever?

"THEE" worst day ever does seem a bit extreme because I'm sure that there will be other times in my life that I will feel even worse than today. However, these last 24 hours have been the most rediculous 24 hours I have endured in a while.

So lets start off with what I think to be the cause of it all...Winston. Some of you who read this know Winston. He is Aaron's brother's pet bull dog. Winston has hated me from day one. It could have something to do with me chasing him down and yelling at him for chasing cars from the day he came home to the Van Pattens. To some of you that may sound harsh, but you see, Aaron's brothers previous pet bulldog also did the same thing, which eventually led to him using up his 9 lives (yes like a cat) and not making it though the last car he came in contact with, which happened to be Aaron. SO to avoid this tragedy again, me and a few other friends and family will slam on their breaks and chase Winston in hopes of him not chasing us anymore. And for the most part this theory has worked. He might not like me but he also doesn't chase my car. A few days ago Aaron's cousin ran over Winston...actually ran over him and he got up and ran off, after finding and checking him out his bulky build held true to him and he was a little scraped up but fine. So yesterday I was driving up and here comes Winston running towards me before I could completely slam on my breaks he ran into my tire. "REALLY?!" were the first words out of my mouth. I opened up the door to see him standing a few yards from the car in the grass giving me this long ominous look like he was putting some sort of doggy curse on me before he ran off, again perfectly fine. I climbed back into my car and sat there for a second thinking "that was creepy" and drove to my house. THAT is when it all began.

Last night, after giving Emily the stuff we forgot was in her stocking (give us a break, we are new to this whole Christmas w/ kids thing!) she was super excited to have gotten some chapstick, that's she's pretty much obsessed with, and some nail polish, also favorite. Aaron gave her the nail polish and hid the chapstick for the time being. Well somewhere in the 5 minutes that she had the nail polish, she developed the ability to hold with one hand and twist a lid with another hand...I'm sure you know where this is going. After being quite for more than 2 minutes, which is rare, I set out on an Emily hunt and THIS is what I found:

I'm sure everyone reading this will think it's cute but think of it from the mom who has to clean it all up's point of view. I also failed to get a picture of my pretty white comforter, now painted pretty with bright purple smudges. *sigh*

After a small fit about not getting the polish back to play with Aaron gave her, her chapstick, which is only fair, right? RIGHT?! Well mommy failed to think of the color of it:

That pretty much rounded out my night. I scrubbed my daughter clean 2 times that day and with her pretty mad at me I put her to bed.

I woke up this morning way to late and Emily defiantly woke up on the wrong side of the bed with me. I got dressed and gave her breakfast. After spilling food all down the front of her I decided to put her in the bath. I started to run the water and for some reason it wouldn't drain. I pushed back the bubbles and saw :

Just kidding I didn't take a picture to save all of you weak stomached people from losing there lunch. What I saw in the drain was a little nose with whiskers, bucked teeth and little arms curled up in the fetal position...yes, it was a mouse...DEAD in my drain. I'm not 100% sure how it got there or why it was dead in my bathtub but it was in there. So my definition of "house wife" and "man of the house" might be wrong but it seems to me that this is where my job ends and Aaron's job begins. So I call Aaron and tell him that he must come home from work right now and come get this thing OUT. Apparently coming home to get a mouse out of my tub doesn't rank high on the emergency list. So I weighed my options: 1) suck up my manhood and get the mouse out or 2) leave it in there until Aaron gets home. With my knowledge of mice and how bad they smell after being dead for less than a day, I tried, with one final valiant effort, I called Aaron's brother Matt to save me, but he didn't answer.

So, I sucked it up and grabbed the little guy by his slimy little tail and, without trying to look at it I tossed it in the toilet. Somewhere in there I made the mistake of looking and lost it. After tossing in the mouse, I also lost my breakfast. I normally consider myself to have a strong stomach but apparently wet dead mice rank high on my gag reflex.

With my gag reflex still on high alert I walked out of the bathroom only to see that my cat (who I swear is allergic to humans) sneeze up the most disgusting slimy booger and with it still dangling from her nose, tactfully sling it around and into her mouth and eat it. I ALMOST lost it again.

It was about this time that I started contemplating going back to bed. I pulled out my hazmat suit and thoroughly bleached my bathtub I then put Emily in for her bath and called my friend Jessie to tell her about my horrendous morning. She laughed at me like the good friend that she is and told me it's bound to get better...it HAS to get better than that.

Somewhere along the line I forgot about my daughters "hold with one hand and be able to twist with the other hand" reflex that she so recently learned the night before. This is what my proud daughter came out of the bathroom looking like:

This is my long lasting 24-hour lipstick...ALL OVER Emily's face

After scrubbing the entire first layer of skin off of her face, I quickly learned that this is some

good makeup! It does NOT come off!! With my daughter screaming bloody murder at me, I tried

one last thing to get it off. I tried the age ol' trick they use with hair dye. Just put more on it and

it will come right off. To my surprise it came right off!! Emily still wasn't very happy with my excessive

scrubbing but eventually I got her all cleaned up.

After, I quickly ran over to the in-laws to check on my laundry to come back and find Emily

who had stripped down to nothing, dumped over my mop bucket water and was going "ming ming"

down my hall way. This included her running and sliding in the water then splashing her arms and

legs and squealing. Yes, it sounds cute now, but at the time it wasn't. Here was my freshly mopped

floor, and my freshly cleaned daughter covered in dirty mop water. So Emily gets to go back into the

bath and then put down for a nap. What could possibly happen while she is asleep?

I went over to my in-laws AGAIN to check on my laundry and as I am brisky walking (which I do

when I leave Emily unattended, sleeping or not) down the stairs I catch my little pinky toe on the

ping pong top that goes on the pool table. I saw my life flash before my eyes I started to black out.

I don't really remember much but I'm sure by the pace that Aaron's siblings ran down the stairs that

I had a few choice words that with forever scar their little ears. After realizing that the pain wasn't

ending and death probably wasn't coming. I opened my eyes to make sure my toe was even still

attached, and it was...which somehow makes my pain seem less sufficient. Aaron's sister ran and

grabbed me some ice and some papertowels to clean up the mess. I hobbled back over to my house

to curl up and die. I figured I should probably take care of my toe while Emily was asleep and wouldn't

bug me, and while I was still in shock and couldn't feel much. I thought for sure that I remembered my

mom always telling me "no, honey bactine doesn't hurt at all" so I was stoked when I found some

under my sink. So without hesitation I spray about 30 squirts on my broken and bloody toe. Now,

kids, if there are any reading this, if your mother ever tells you that bactine doesn't hurt SHE LIES!

I quickly began to feel that blacking out feeling again and braced myself on the toilet incase I went

down for the count. Again, I didn't, which makes me seem like even a bigger wussy. I cleaned it up

only to discover 1) that it wasn't broken and 2) that I had successfully "scalped" the whole top of

my poor pinky. So I clipped the rest of what dangling skin there was while the 'bactine shock' was

still in effect and flipped my toe nail back into its rightful place. Then bandaged her up.

This picture does NOT do it justice.

However, I did discover one very important thing today. The cure to any owie is a sweet Dora the Explorer bandaid and a kiss from my munchy!

P.S. Almost exactly 24 hours after I hit Winston...my bad day ended. So, you can think I'm crazy, but I'm going to have my eye on that dog.

The TWO'S!! dun dun DUN!

     Well. It's official! Emily Grace is two years old! My dad called me yesterday and asked me if it felt like two short years ago that I was "walking through the valley of the shadow of death" A.K.A. labor. And my answer was "no" It really doesn't seem like two long years ago that I layed eyes on my little Emily for the first time. She was so beautiful and innocent, she just looked up at me like she loved me as much as her little heart could handle (could have been because I was her food source, but I would like to not think that). Now she's running around, pushing every one of my buttons she can and trying to find a way around what mommy says. Oh the joys of a child! They say "terrible-two's" but I think it's difficult from the moment they get mobile and I'm pretty sure it doesn't get any easier until they are out of the house. Even then...I wonder if it's not easier until your children have babies of their own and truly appreciate what you had to deal with for the last 18 years (love you mom and dad). Anyway...now that I've I went on a little bit of a bird walk, here is a picture of Emily yesterday:

She blew both of them out all on her own and was SO 

proud of herself. It was pretty cute.

     I have many more pictures to post just to catch up with the last week...and a few funny stories, but for now I have to go pack for day in Bakersfield. Keep watching for more :)

Cheatwood picture day

    So it's been planned for a week to go take pictures of Jess Cheatwood and her little ones. I've been waiting for Thursday to roll around and after looking at TONS of pictures of Montana De Oro on the internet I was SUPER excited to go and take pictures there. I have been to the beaches of MDO many a times but I've never been in the beautiful trees surrounding them so I was even more excited to take pictures somewhere kind of new. 

    In anticipation for today I kept checking the weather forecast to see what kind of weather I would have to deal with and to my advantage the news said it would be perfect! Most people think that sunny days are the perfect time to take pictures. I do agree...to a point. For me it is better to take pictures when it is overcast. The fog layer gives me the opportunity to not have to fuss with the right lighting but it's still bright enough outside to not have to worry about a flash (which I hate!). I don't have to worry about squinty faces or ugly shadows. The worst place to have to fuss with the shadows is under trees where it tends to get splotchy. So needless to say when the weather man came on last night and said that the marine layer was back and that all coastal cities would be covered in fog all day today I was very pleased.

Right in the middle of a bunch of trees...and splotchy!

     We planned to meet in MDO at 9:00AM so that if the marine layer did decide to burn off, it wouldn't do so until after that I got some pictures. I learned real fast that God has a funny sense of humor. I pray on a daily basis that He will lead me in the right direction with my career and that I will continue to advance. So far he has done just that! He has provided me with amazing opportunities that the average joe does not just stumble across like I have been blessed to do. So, as I drove over the hill that led into Los Osos, I should have known that I would come face to face with...I bet you guessed it...bright sun and a beautiful SUNNY day at the beach. I guess I should add that I fall asleep the night before a photoshoot painting mental pictures of what I'm going to do and how my pictures are going to look. So when I drove over that hill and saw nothing but the ocean for days, I was all of a sudden faced with a blank slate. Every picture I had painted in my head the night before vanished and I had no idea what I was going to do. 

Quite literally the clearest day I had ever seen at Morro Bay

     I went on with my day, a little frazzled and not sure what to do but I think in the end they turned out just fine:

     So back to my point about God's sense of humor...How can I ask God to help me get better and expect Him to just hand everything to me? It reminds me of an old old song I used to listen to by Everybodyduck. It talked about a man who was in a boat in the middle of the ocean and a storm was coming in and instead of rowing to shore he dropped his oars and started praying. The song goes on to say "Oh you've got to draw the line between having faith and being blind, use your mind if you've got time don't drop the oars! God will save you like he said, but you've still got to use your head..." Anyway, why would I expect God to give me the easiest setting possible when I asking daily for Him to help me grow? That's right He wouldn't, nor should He. He gave me a sunny day,that I should have been thankful for, because it was BEAUTIFUL, I complained about it not being the way I wanted it to be. So, you say, "well Kayla, you should have known that would happen, now where's the humor?" Here it is:

The "view" of Morro Rock about 30 minutes after I was done taking pictures...

It's so overcast that you can't even SEE the rock!!!

    I will leave you with one last picture. A picture that Jess took of me today that I couldn't help but put up! Good job Jess!

Trouble!

     So...my dad called me and told me that I'm pretty much in trouble for not blogging for a while. So, I guess I will do my best to catch everyone up on the last week and a half. I've slacked off and on with the whole, potty training business. First off, I've never done this before; I have no idea how to potty train a human. A puppy, on the other hand, I can handle. Tell them it's bad to pittle on the floor, rub their nose in it, and shove them through the doggy door until they get the idea. It works every time, but Emily is not a puppy and there is such a greater complexity to how her mind works that it's rediculous!! For example (rumor has it that this picture has been sent out to everyone already but I have to put it up!):

 How do I handle this?! She knows that PLAYING in the toilet is wrong, but in this case she actually went to the bathroom in the toilet and THEN crawled in. Do I punish her for playing or do I reward her for going? How can you not smile at this though? 2-year olds . . .

    At the beginning of this week my mom came up to visit for a couple of days. It was great for Emily to get to spend time with her "mom-ma". My mom had a explained to Emily that she was her mom's mom, therefore she started calling her mom-ma. Too cute how her little wheels turn. I'm waiting for her to start calling Aaron's mom "dad-ma" While my mom was here I had my photog buddy Jill come over and snap a couple of pictures of Emily, my mom, and I:

These were my two favorites

     Emily is talking up a storm! Of course it's all her own language. And for whatever reason she is partial to the letter "G", so why doesn't she say grandma? Again, Emily's mind is one of the many mysteries of the world. I feel REAL sorry for her future boyfriends! So, "guy" = swing. She is obsessed with the swing. It is her daily ritual to go after her nap. And when I say ritual, I mean it. She must be strapped in just right. Her butt must be sitting in it just right or she fusses and wiggles and says "I want dat" and hits the seat. She must be holding on to her stuffed pony or she won't swing. Occasionally, she will request that it be sitting in the swing next to her. She will point to the bungie cord if you forget to strap it in and then pat her butt and point to the horse telling you that you must also push the horse and her. If she wants to go higher (which she always does, my little dare devil!) she will say "I want dat" and pat her own butt, telling you to push her more. She always finds a way to communicate exactly what she wants to you, but she is just a little like her mom. She tends to get very frustrated, very easily. Especially when you don't understand what she's trying to tell you.

     Another of her favorite words is "goggy", which you would think means doggy. Nope, "goggy" = candy. My little Emily takes after her Aunt Kaylee and Uncle Andrew. She has a HUGE sweet tooth. Therefore it is working to my advantage to give her a piece of "goggy" everytime she goes to the bathroom in the toilet. She even walked over to the bathroom door just the other day and told me "A gotta o PEE" that's Emily talk for "I have to go pee". I couldn't believe it. I almost fell over. She looked at me like I was an idiot (yep she's got that look down already) and pulled on the door handle again and tried to pull down her pull-ups. I took her in and she went pee!! Then held out her little hands and said "goggy". She so has it figured out. Oh, and to add to the potty paragraph, "goo-goo" = #2.

     The last thing to add to the g-list is "a go" sometimes also said "gow" is probably her best buddy right now. The cat, who has always been named "the cat"...and a couple other random names, we have finally named Abby. I don't know how we have been soooo blessed with such a good cat. Emily will pick her up and carry her around the house, or try to wrap her in a blanket and call her a baby (not that she doesn't have enough of them!), but my favorite is when they play wheel-barrel. This is one of those things that you can't help but laugh hysterically at but she should probably get in trouble for...if the cat didn't seem to actually enjoy it and not run away I probably wouldn't be so lenient. Wheel-barrel, as I like to call it, is just like the game they play in relay races where one person holds up another persons feet as they "run" on the ground with their hands. Instead Emily holds the cat's tail and runs around as the cat paddles with its front paws. Now, no one call animal control on me because I SWEAR the cat enjoys it! But for now, her is a picture of them after a long hard game of wheel-barrel:

    Well, that's it for now! I have a messy house, dishes in the sink, a ton of laundry, and bills to pay while Emily is off playing with her Great-Aunt Kate.

OH! and a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Rhiannon!

A mother's love

    When I was younger (even up until right before I got pregnant with Emily) I wasn't fond of babies. I thought they looked like a wrinkly, alien version of a bratty little kid. I remember crying one night when I was pregnant wondering if I would love and adore my little Emily like a good parent should. I knew I would love her and it would all be different as soon as I saw her but I was still afraid...What if I did have post-pardom depression or the baby blues...? but just like everyone assured me, as soon as she was in my arms I loved her. A greater love than I could ever fathom surrounded me and filled me and I know in that moment that I would never be the same. 

     As we approach Emily's second birthday I look at her now in all of her terrible-two-ish-ness and even though she drives me crazy on a regular basis I wonder: how is the human heart capable of such love? I guess it will always be a great mystery to me...but I know now:                  

NOTHING is greater than a mother's love!

     Emily right after she came home from the hospital. I thought this was the CUTEST picture I had ever seen. I should have seen it as a good idea of what she was going to be like in the future. 3 days old and already sticking her tongue out at me.

Right before her first birthday when her toothless grin was the CUTEST thing in the world...it still is, of course, but her little gopher teeth win my heart now.

Now...I know I'm a little bias (yeah? meaning I favor her.) but she seems to just get more and more beautiful with every picture I take of her.  I love this child more than life itself.

Terrible Twos

    That's right! Emily's "terrible twos" are right around the corner and I swear on everything that with every day closer to her birthday the more terrible-two-ish she gets. Not only is she in the developmental stage where testing mommy is becoming a minute by minute habit, but she is also going through a growth spirt. She has eaten my entire pantry and if she thought hard enough about it, I'm sure she would start gnawing on the baseboards. Along with the growth spirt comes moodiness and clinginess. She will cry over something like dropping her bouncy ball her babies shirt being on "wrong". The literal clinginess is probably the hardest for me to handle. She's almost two and wants to be held in the shower, while I'm eating, on the toilet... . So needless to say, my "me" time has significantly decreased. Perfect example...

     Even as I was typing this she has to be right here on my lap. In the midst of hitting keys and clicking she managed to get across the point that she wanted me to take a picture by pointing to the camera at the top of my computer. I took one picture and she was excited...then started crying because she wanted my sunglasses. SO I put those on and took another one...she was happy then and crawled off my lap. My guess is that as I'm typing the rest of this...she's TESTING to see if my sunglasses fit down the toilet. *FLUSH* I should probably go, but I know it's too late.... 

Family

     Today was possibly the longest day of my life. I got up at 7:00...AM. and for me that is EARLY. I got ready, fed Emily, got her ready and then headed to San Luis. I figured if I could get an early start I would be home before the heat of the day and be able to get something done around the house. I was wrong! I had originally gone to get my old camera fixed up. After one guy said that it was useless, and that I could buy the same one used for less than what it would cost to fix, I walked around the shop and swooned over all of the pretty camera lenses in there. My friend Jess (I dont know what I'm going to do without her!) watched Emily so that I was able to take in the beauty of everything in the shop. I left...disappointed because my camera was shot and because I'm not a millionaire. I went back and picked up Emily and had planned on going home. Instead I decided to go to another hole in the wall camera place that I had hoped would give me a different result. The guy there took one look at my camera and said he wouldn't charge to fiddle with it. His mistake, because his fiddling actually further broke my camera. Okay so the good news in all of this? Because he worsened the problem and literally broke it he's keeping it and fully fixing it for free! "FREE"- since my dreams of being a millionaire are nowhere in my near futures sight, "free" is a VERY good word.

    I ended up getting home about 2 hours later than I had hoped but when I went to pick up Aaron's littlest brother, Andrew, from his Aunt's house, I was pleasantly surprised to see Aaron's cousin Brooklyn there! Brooklyn is almost exactly one year younger than Emily and is Aaron's first cousin...so she's Emily's second cousin, once removed...? or something like that. Yeah, me an Aaron switched up the family tree a little. Grace became a great grandma one year and then had another grandchild the next year. Actually we messed it up on both sides. Margie became a great granny and had another granny-child a year later (and hopefully more in the near future). 

     I have a bad habit of calling every other baby I see the second cutest baby, next to Emily, but really, Brooklyn is in a dead tie with a good ten other babies, for the Cutest baby EVER! I couldn't help but take a few (just a few) pictures:

I love that she's "lovingly" squeezing Brooklyn's head.

I actually think that they could pass as being related!

"talking"

Brooklyn eyeballing Emily's pig-tail. Don't do it Brooklyn

it was a fight to just get those in. She won't be very

happy if mom has to put them BACK in.

Jessie and Reid
I LOVE this one. She didn't like the feeling of the grass so she hovered

her hand around in the air not wanting to put it in the icky grass.

I love her hair too in this picture!

This last one is my FAVORITE (good job g.g.grace)

Visitors

     The last couple of nights Reggie will bark at something at night, and since he hardly ever barks I know something is out there. Since we've been sleeping with the windows open I can usually hear something rustling through the weeds on the other side of the fence. I know it's a deer from the way they pounce through the weeds. Yesterday I saw these guys right down the road laying in someones front yard. They are most likely the culprits. Of course I stopped for some pictures. I was half tempted to throw Emily out there for a photoshoot but from the way "mom" was eyeballing me for taking pictures, I don't think she would be so nice to let Emily squeeze them and kiss their noses.

Forever

    It seems like it's been forever since I've had the time to sit down and write something on here. It gets harder and harder every day. My last few weekends have been crazy. This last weekend we went out to the lake with Aaron's mom's family while Emily stayed with her Great Grandma Grace (who she did AMAZING with). We drove out to the late on Friday night, Saturday I woke up, drove to a friends house, took a shower, and then went to a wedding. The last 4 weekends I have gone to take pictures of a wedding and I'm really beginning to think it's something I could do! I do, however, miss my Saturdays a little. After the wedding, which was about 10 miles away the way the crow flies, but because there is no back road it ended up being more than an hours drive all the way around, I went back out to the lake and camped until Sunday. After alot of relaxing and quite a bit too much sun, we picked up Emily and went home so that Aaron could be with her for a little while. Monday, I did laundry and packed and then Tuesday I got up early in the morning and drove down to the Valley to visit my parents. 

     Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE the Valley. In fact every time I drive into town I roll down the windows and take a deep breath of valley air. There is something about the mix of Mexically smog, fresh crops and dirt...mixed with a slight hint of feed lot that reminds me of home. With all that said, I do remember evertime I come down here why I love Paso. There's something about my temperature gage reading 115 when I first turn it on that screams...NOT OKAY. Given, it is not in fact 115...yet, but it was easily 104 today.

     After my little photo excursion of Emily on the tractors earlier, my dad thought it would be a good idea to throw her in the middle of a beet field and take some pictures of her. Here they are: and if I dare to go outside for longer than 2 minutes maybe I can get some more.  I also have a sneaky feeling that my daughter is going to be a little FISH...I have to spend most of tomorrow trying to teach her how to swim. I'm sure it wont take long...and I will get plenty of pictures :)

SO sad! and something for my dad :)

    I dressed Emily today in a cute little outfit that finally fits her for summer.  She stayed in the bedroom after I put her clothes on while I walked out to the living room. About 2 minutes later she came walking out with her pretty pink cowboy boots on that ironically matched her outfit PERFECTLY. So I thought I would take the opportunity to take some cute pictures of her...and since she hasn't been THEE subject of my pictures for while I thought now was the perfect time.

     Before I show the pictures of her from today I have something else to show. This pictures were taken almost exactly 1 year apart. She has grown up so much in such a short amount of time...it makes me wonder how much bigger she will be by this time NEXT year. Actually I don't even want to think about it. Here they are:

4th of July 2008

Today

     Here's the rest of the pictures from today. I kind of went for a country tractor theme. and since my dad is a farmer I figured they were appropriate... Here's a early Happy Father's Day dad.

Emily and her daddy