Little Emma

Lately Nate has been a very active 2 year old. He wants to help with everything and do everything himself. This leads to lots of messes, injuries (all minor), and lots of frustration on both sides. Sometimes I wonder if we will make it through this stage and if it will ever end. Then I look at my sweet little Emma and crack up, because Nate would have had a hard time keeping up with her when she was his age. That's when I realize that we will be OK.

We were reminiscing about some of Emma's antics when she was little. One of my favorite happened at church during sacrament meeting. We were in a married student ward at BYU and there were probably 10 kids total in the whole ward (so it was a very quite chapel). Jake was in California so it was just Emma and I that Sunday. I had just been thinking how good she was being, sitting on the pew quietly. I should have known there was a storm brewing. Without any warning this little girl jumps up on the pew, puts both arms up in the air and waving them back and forth shouts at the top of her lungs, "AMEN!" Not just a normal Amen, but a Southern revival amen. I quickly tackled her, but the whole chapel was cracking up. I guess she thought the meeting should be over.

About this same time they asked Jake to pass the sacrament. Emma was so stressed that he wasn't sitting with us. When he started passing the sacrament you could hear her, "Dad we're over here. Dad we need bread. Dad come here. Dad's coming.....HI Dad (that's when he was at our pew)....NO DAD DON'T GO (him walking back up front)...Dad come back, where'd dad go...Dad I'm thirsty, Dad's coming back...." It was a non stop very loud commentary. Needless to say that was the last time they asked Jake to pass the sacrament in that ward.

Emma helping get things out of the baking cupboard...Apparently she found the corn starch

Some where between the first and second pic she got a lot messier...not sure what happened there.

If you spill your snack don't waste energy picking it up...just eat it right off the floor.

Here she found the bucket of flour.

Here she found lotion in the bathroom

Here is when she found some cream eyeshadow I had.

This would be water colors

Not sure what this one was, but it was one of her first big messes.

Permanent Marker...It was also all over the linoleum and cupboards in an apartment we were about to move out of....Mommy magic got it out of everything.

I was bummed I couldn't find a picture of the time the scraped all the bright blue frosting off a cake and coated her entire face and arms with it....Oh, Nathan - I really don't think its as bad as I thought it was.

Here she is literally running in circles while talking on the phone.

Wiggling her hips...

But at least we were raising her right...GO COUGARS!!!

WIllis Boys

Brotherly Love. Nathan loves his brother. Sometimes to much, but his intentions are good. Every now and then I'll catch him just laying there holding his brothers hand as he watches TV.

Nathan loves to crawl into the crib with Ian.

Grandpa's visit

Grandpa, Andrea, Jack and Big Nate all flew out to visit us for a weekend. Looking back at the pictures I can't believe how much we squeezed into the short trip. We started the weekend by stopping by Rudy's on the way home from the airport (because no trip to San Antonio can be complete without eating there). Then we headed to our house to unload and get ready for Jack's birthday (see previous post). We had a great time playing at Chuck E Cheese.

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The next day we crammed more in that I think is humanly possible. The kids played outside with Grandpa and Jake while Andrea and Jenny went to a farmers market and bakery. Then we went to Emma's first basketball game - which she did super at! She even scored the first point of the season for her team and has remained one of the leading scorers for her team (her bff Kylie is the other leading scorer).

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I'm sure there will be another post about basketball, so I'll leave all the details for that one, but we love going to watch our superstar play.

Here is Nathan playing with the ball rebounder thing (I'm pretty sure that's its real name). He loved playing in it. Jason and Jenny were so nice to keep him entertained so we could watch Emma play.

Ian wasn't that excited about the game, but he had fun hanging out with grandpa.

From the game we headed downtown to the Mexican market. They had Mexican dancers dancing when we first got there and the kids thought it was great. Then the break dancers came out and they were really cool. (Nate break dances all the time now - I need to get a video of it)

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Jack told me that stores in California weren't like this...I guess we should have taken him to a normal store too - he's going to think all Texas stores are like the Mexican market.

Andrea bought some delicious treats to try at the Mexican bakery...this one was cool. Its an orange cooked in its own juices and with sugar and then you eat the whole thing....not my favorite, but very cool looking.

Then they treated us to dinner at Casa Rio. The food was excellent, the kids good, and it was so much fun to just sit and visit. From there we walked up to the Alamo...because that's one of the other things you have to do when you come to San Antonio.

The Alamo is so beautiful at night.

Nate was taking the photo above, so I had to put this great one of him in, it really was the only one I had of him from the weekend...

Checking out the dinosaur. We just walked through the entrance to the museums.

The kids dancing in front of the funny mirror...I love Jack dancing with his shirt pulled up - Maybe he was just showing off his Spiderman tattoo. Andrea and I called it a night with the kids, but the rest of the crew headed for a night of fun at Dave and Busters.

Sunday we woke to the delicious smell of granola baking. I've had a terrible time finding good granola in Texas, so Andrea made me some of her amazing granola. Then we had a delicious lunch of yummy bread from the bakery and roasted balsamic vinegar tomatoes, pesto sauce, and turkey sandwiches. It was amazing. I've got to get the recipe for the tomatoes and make them some time.

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Then we went to church with Jenny, she was speaking. After we came home and got dinner ready. Ok, I sat and fed the baby most of the time while Andrea cooked dinner for me. The rest of the crew ran to play at the park and Grandpa took an pretty good injury - I'm pretty sure Jenny was involved. :)

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Some where in between all these activities I turned out 80 of these cupcakes. It was New Beginnings and I was in charge of desserts. I did 32 with the cupcake batter dyed to match the flower on top. After that I just did rainbow chip. I even luster dusted the gold ones, so that they would be different from the yellow ones.

I wish I'd gotten a picture of all of them, but I'm really good at serving these creations without getting a picture. So this is one that was left over.

Monday we just hung out at the house. Emma didn't have school, so she got to be here and then Jenny drove them to the airport. It was a lot of fun and we can't wait for the next visit.