Emily's 1st Tumbling Meet!

Emily had her 1st tumbling meet today, Nov. 7, 2009, in Idalou. We had to be there at 8:45am, which is very early for Emily! She did an awesome job on her 2 passes. She had to do 4 cartwheels and she did them all! She was the youngest tumbler there so with all things considered coming in 2nd place was a great accomplisment!

Emily waiting for her turn, a little sleepy eyed still.

The spider walk!

After recieving her 2 place medal!

She was so proud of the medal. She ran up into the stands to show her Daddy and Kaitlynn!!!

Look what they gave me for doing such a great job!!!

On the winners stand :)

At 11:00pm asleep in her P.J.'s or Baya's as Emily calls them.

She wore her medal ALL day long and even fell asleep with it on. She is so proud of it!!!!! And we are so proud of her!!!!!!!!!!




As we were waiting to see what place she recieved Emily wanted to watch herself do her pass on the video camera. She watched it over and over again, along with Kaitlynn. What a great day!!!

Emily's 3rd Birthday!

WOW! I cannot believe our baby girl Emily is already 3! It has been the best 3 years of my life. She is a joy to be with all the time. And her little sayings, for example when she says excuse me it comes out "Hootius". Now you can catch all of us saying hootius for excuse me :) She is into so many things these days! She started Tumbling lessons the first of September and is really loving it. She has a meet tomorrow, her first one, and hopefully she will do great. The only thing I worry about is that it starts at 9am and Emily has never been a morning person :o Also this fall she started Violin lessons, as I am sure you guessed by the pictures of her holding her new little violin. She likes violin lessons too, however they are much more difficult than her tumbling lessons. She is coming along though. She knows all the parts to the violin, resting and playing position and has just learned the names of the 4 strings (Gabby the G string, Dori the D string, Anna the A string and Emily the E string), can you guess which one is her favorite? She learned Dori and Anna first and when I was working with her during the week I asked her to show me Dori and she did and then I asked her what the other strings name were and she said Nemo (I just thought this was too funny, she actually remember that on Finding Nemo the blue fish trying to help find Nemo's name was Dori) Too bad the musical alphabet does not go up to N only to G. One of the sweetest thing Emily does is holding Kaitlynn's hand. She will hold Kaitlynn's hand when we are riding in the car. She will hold it while we are walking and best of all she always wants to hold Kaitlynn's hand when she goes to sleep. The girls are sleeping together in the toddler bed in their room now. Kaitlynn always falls asleep before Emily does and so when Emily crawls into bed with her she promtly finds Kaitlynn's hand and then tells us good night :)

Emily recieved many presents for her birthday, one of which was a fish tank. She absolutly loves it. We have 11 big fish and 2 or 3 baby fish (depends on the day you look, they keep hiding from us). We were told the fish would probably have babies, however I thought we would have them more than 3 days before they had them. The girls both love watching the fish and of course feeding the fish. She also recieve a new bicycle which she calls her "NEW BIKE" all the time. Her bike riding skills have improved so well since she recieved her new bike (Thanks Mommie!). She even rode all the way to "Mommie's" (my mother) house and back to our house tonight.

We went to have her 3 year check up this past Monday (Nov. 2, same days as we took these pictures). Emily was almost 37 inches tall and weighed 33 pounds. The doctor was happy with how much she had grown.

Oh, the biggest news with Emily right now is that she is finally potty trained. As Shelby says, it is like it happened over night (well that is because he is not with her all the time like I am). It did seems like once she figured out what all was going on she got it. I don't even have to ask her if she needs to go, she just goes into the bathroom when she needs to go and after she comes out she tells me "Mama, I Hee,Heed in the potty". Last week as we were going from Lubbock to Church on Wednesday night, Emily said "Mama, I have to go Hee, Hee", I asked her if she could wait until we got to church (5 minutes away) or if I needed to pull over so she could Tee, Tee on the side of the road. She said "Pull over, I have to go Hee, Hee". So I did. This was a first for us, to Tee, Tee on the side of the road, but much better than a wet carseat!!!!!

What a joy the last 3 years have been, watching Emily grow up. She told me the other day that her "Baya, Haya (baby Kaitlynn for those of you who do not speak Emily's language) is big like ME!" Well, Kaitlynn is not quite that big yet, but they sure do have fun playing with each other, just like 2 little puppies playing with one another :)

The many faces Emily makes!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Well we have been busy, busy, busy the past couple of months. With Kaitlynn's Birthday in September and Emily's in October I figured I needed to post on those two happenings. I will post these seperately and hopefully with many pictures!!!!

Update Time!

Well, I have been meaning to update everyone on the happenings in the Smith household but just haven't found the time. So as I tell everyone "I do my best work at midnight" and it is now 12:07am! The kids are fed, bathed and have been in bed for about 2 hours. The house needs cleaning, but that can wait until tomorrow!! I wish I could post some pictures right now, but I need the cord that goes from my camera to the computer, so I will try to post pictures very soon.

*First let me tell you about our precious Kaitlynn. She is 11 1/2 months old right now. I cannot believe in just a few short days she will already be a whole year old! Time flies by so fast!!!!! She has 7 teeth right now and I think she is working on number 8. She is walking everywhere and no longer crawls at all! She can even go from the kitchen, through the living room and into the bathroom!!!! Today she walked all the way down the long hall at our new church building, and let me tell you I think that is the longest hallway I know of. She is walking great in shoes also. She is climbling on EVERYTHING. Just yesterday we were outside at the fort and sandbox and I turned around for just a minute and when I looked back Kaitlynn was on the next to top step of the 6 foot high fort! I ran over there and helped her up the rest of the way (as if she need my help to climb up the last two steps). I really have to keep my eye on her now! She can give you 5 when you ask her too, she can give you kisses when you ask her too (as many times as you want her too!!), she can blow on her food if it is too hot and the other day we practiced blowing out a candle and she did it (great, that means she will be able to blow out her candle on her birthday cake!!!!!!), and just today I asked her to wave "Bye, Bye" and she did it (and better yet I caught it on my video camera!!!). She is such a sweet baby girl with such a cute personality!! She loves playing with toys and her big sister Emily. Her favorite thing to do is put objects into things, like balls into a box, coins into her piggy bank, etc. Oh, I almost forgot to mention how much she loves to sing!!! Every Sunday at church while we are singing if you listen closely you can hear Kaitlynn singing!!! It is so sweet! And she already knows the motions to her first bible school song "There is a flag that's flown in the castle of my heart" (she "Sings" and waves her arms in the air), it is so cute (I also caught this on my camera!). I will update you more on Kaitlynn when I post pictures.

*Now for our sweet Emily!!!! She is doing and saying some of the cutest things right now! For example just this evening as we were leaving the new church building (we are in the process of remolding it and were working on it ALL day today) we were driving down Division street in Slaton and passed by Saint Joseph's Catholic Church and I made the comment about them having church tonight, Emily promptly said "No WE go to church in the morning" over and over again. It amazes me that she knews that we go to church in the morning and not at night. She loves going to church and singing all the little songs they sing in class. Her favorites are "I'm all wrapped up, I'm all tied up, I'm all tangled up in Jesus", "There is a flag that's flown in the castle of my heart", "There once was a little boy David", "Roll the gospel chariot", "I may never march", and on and on the list goes. She also likes to sings these songs at home all the time! She is very proud that she can now tell you how old she is and show you on her fingers (Thanks Mommie for helping her learn this!) She can already show you three too (so we are good for over a year now!). She can tell you when her birthday is and she also tells people that Kaitlynn is 1 now (well it is really close!). Oh, the cutest thing happened tonight, after we got home from working at the church all day (and yes Emily helped paint, well she painted her hands, feet and legs and a little bit on the wall too!), we came home and were doing a few chores (Emily's chore is to feed the dogs, which she loves). Shelby decided he need to work on his newest invention which is a stand for his welder to make it portable. Anyway, Emily thought she needed to help, so her Daddy gave her some plyers and a wrench and she went to work on the welder stand! Of course I made sure she was wearing saftey goggles (along with her Daddy). She can be such a prissy little girl one momment and then a tomboy the next. Also the other day Shelby took the girls out to the farm and before Emily would get in the truck she had to go get her tool box so she could work on things at the farm along with her Daddy. Her favorite sayings right now are "What dthat?" and after you tell what it is she says "What dthat do?" She is so inquistive right now and wants to know how everything works. The other day she wanted me to get her a drink of juice. I was very busy with Kaitlynn and I did not promptly get her the juice. The next thing I knew she was handing me the can of apple juice and saying "Ma, I want juice". I just leaned down and told her how smart she was and of course I poured her a cup of juice! She amazes me everyday.

Well, I think that pretty well catches me up for the last month and a half. I am going to try to be better about posting more often. We will see how that all goes. Be looking for pictures from our vacation (that we took in July) to Lake Irwin! We had such a wonderful time! I would like to live up there all summer long (We did get to spend 3 weeks up there this year, I think I will push for 4 next year). The weather is just so wonderful and landscape is so beautiful. And it is nice to get away for being so busy all the time. There is no cell phone service and no TV or internet. Just wonderfully peaceful! Good night all!!

Emily's Shadow!

I must let you know Emily's newest thing, her shadow! She found it one sunny day outside of the eye doctor's office. Her uncle Jay Mac pointed it out to her. She was quite interested in it. But the best story happen the other night. We were walking from our house to "Mommie's" house (my mother's) and it was about 9:45pm, very dark. Emily insisted on pushing her two baby dolls in her double stroller over to Mommie's so we walked on the road instead of cutting across our neighbor's yard. Anyway when we reached the corner Emily noticed her shadow and pointed it out to me. I acknowledged it and showed her mine. Then we kept walking. After about another block she said "Ma, where did my shadow go?" I told her it was behind her now. She said "Oh!" Then she turned around and said "Come on shadow!" as if it were a real person. The next night when she saw her shadow she said "Let's go shadow!". She has found a friend in her shadow. Just thought I would share those cute stories of my 2 1/2 year old.

First Step!!

Kaitlynn took her first step on Sunday, June 14th!!! She has taken a few more steps since then and will be running after Emily before we know it! She is now 9 months old and getting so big. She is up to 19lbs 8oz . She is so interested in everything and how it works, always investigating. I wonder what she thinks sometimes seeing and experiencing things for the first time ever in her little life! She has 5 teeth now and really likes to bite anything she can get to her mouth, including her mother! She bit Emily the other day, and boy was that a shocking experience for Emily! Kaitlynn also absolutely loves food! (Of course I did not have to say that after I told everyone how much she weighs, but oh well) Her favorite food right now is blueberries. She will pick out all of the blueberries on her tray at breakfast and not eat any of the other fruits I put on the tray until ALL of the blueberries are gone! She has also started singing, well baby singing, at church when everyone else is singing. It is so cute. I am amazed at everything she is doing and wish she would just stay my baby forever, oh but how fun it is to watch her learn and grow!

What has been going on in May!

Well, we have been very busy this May and I have not had much time to put anything on my blog. I thought I would just share a few things the girls have been doing.
Emily is talking up a storm and has now started singing little songs such as "Little Bird". Her favorite book is "Nest is Best" and she wants me or Mama to read it to her at least once a day. When we get to the part in the book where Mr. Bird sings "I love my house, I love my nest, In all the world, MY NEST IS BEST". Emily always wants to sing the part by herself "MY NEST IS BEST". It is so cute!!
We also have 5 new Golden Retriever puppies at our house and Emily is loving them!! I will try to post the pictures of the girls with the puppies soon.
Kaitlynn is growing a changing so much. She is now up to 18lbs 4oz (WOW!). She is very, very mobile. When she wants to share a toy with you she will crawl over to you and give it to you. It is so cute. She is also pulling up on everything and sometimes letting go and standing by herself a little. The other day in the sand box she stood up all by herself for a little while and then fell down on her bottom. She is also "talking" a lot! She makes really neat little sounds trying to express herself!