Emily is turning 4 tomorrow

This morning I went in to wake up Emily and reminded her that her birthday is tomorrow. She says what number am I? Which if you speak Emily, it means, how old am I? I tell her she is three, but will be four tomorrow. She then says, I don't know how to be four. I try my best not to laugh and tell her that she just has to be herself, and that she can do everything she did when she was three, but that she will be learning many more things as a four-year-old. The things she says sometimes.

A Result of Having an Accountant for a Father

Last week I was over at my brother's house hanging out with my mom who was watching my brother's kids. Everyone was in school but their littlest, Madi. I had just picked up Emily from school. Emily was playing in Madi's room and I told Madi to go get Emily for lunch. A couple seconds later they both come down the hall, and as soon as Emily sees me she says, "I was just doing my taxes on the computer." You see everynight Mike gets home from work, he sits down to do other peoples' taxes on our computer in the office. The rest of mine and Emily's conversation went like this:

Mom: "Oh, did you finish them?"

Emily: "Yes"

Mom: "Are you getting any money back?"

Emily: "Yes"

Mom: "How much?"

Emily: (holding up five fingers)

Mom: "Five dollars?"

Emily: "Yes" (and yes, she really does say yes instead of yeah or uh-huh, it's really cute)

Mom: "That's great. That means your withholdings were practically perfect for the year."

Emily: "Yep" (okay, so sometimes she doesn't say yes)

I mean what other three-year-old pretends to do taxes for fun? A three-year-old that idolizes her dad, that's who.

Emily's First Haircut

Here is a shot of her hair before the cut.

Here she is at Aunt Stephanee's salon in the middle of getting her hair cut.

Aunt Steph is doing some more cutting and layering. Steph said that Emily was one of her best clients because she sat so still the whole time.

These are the results. I think it is a very cute haircut, and Emily is very pleased. She said she wanted her hair cut like mommy's, and Aunt Steph did a great job. She looks so grown up now.

Playing in the Snow

These pictures were taken around the time that we got all that snow fall. Emily's favorite thing is to make a snow angel. You will notice that I am not in any of the pictures. These two are the snow lovers in our family, and I'm sure Abby will join them one day, but I prefer to be warm and dry.

Right after she finished she got tackled by Dad.
Emily and Mike making a snowman.

The finished product. A snowshoeing snowman with ski goggles and a carrot nose.

Halloween and Boo at the Zoo 2008

I know these pictures are old, but they have been stuck on my camera for awhile. I think we all know how that goes. Anyway, I still wanted to post them and show off my cute trick-or-treaters.

Here we are at a pumpkin patch picking out the perfect pumpkins for carving. Mike is really into pumpkin carving, but the rest of us humor him and carve pumpkins, too.

Here is our little lady bug, Abby.

This is our little Cinderella princess Emily sporting her spider ring. A must-have-accessory for any princess.

We had a great time at Boo at the Zoo. The weather was great and they scored lots of candy. We got a lot of people commenting on "the ladybug". We have to admit we think our girls are pretty stinkin' cute.

A couple weeks ago we went up the canyon with our friends the Stauffer's and took some pictures of us with the beautiful fall leaves behind us. Here are just a few. Enjoy!

A Day at This is the Place Heritage Park

Emily with her cousin Claire sticking their tongues out.









Emily sticking her head out the window of one of the playhouses there.










Emily, Audree, and Emma hanging out and showing off their homemade pinwheels.










The goat that was not in its cage and decided to come play with us. It didn't seem to care we were there. We just made sure we didn't bend over. :)

Emily's First Day of PreSchool

Emily on her first day of preschool. She was so excited to be going to school. She was a little upset for a while because she didn't get to take the bus to school. At our old house there was a school bus stop right in front of our house, and she used to watch the kids get on and off the bus everyday. She will just have to settle for being shuttled around by BJ, Becky, and Momma.

Here are some more recent pictures of my Googamoo. Isn't she adorable?

A picture of us in front of our new house in West Jordan. Cute Emily wanted to hold the "Sold" sign. We moved Labor Day weekend. The whole ordeal was a little chaotic, but it all worked out as it should have in the end.

We went to Flaming Gorge in July with the Hunt family. Emily is getting ready to take her dad for a ride around the lake. She just loves getting out on the boat and the waverunners.

Dimples

Here is a cute picture of our growin' baby girl. She's got her daddy's dimples, as you can see. She is getting so big so fast.

She's Finally Here!

Abigail Grace Dawes was born April 23rd and 3:17 p.m. She weighed in at 7 lbs. 2 oz. and was 21.5 inches long. She was in quite a hurry to get here. I had been having contraction since 5 a.m. that morning. They were consistently 10 minutes apart all day and didn't change so I didn't think anything of it. Well in the middle of a contraction at 2 p.m., my water broke at home. I called Mike immediately and he made it from downtown to home in ten minutes. I had everything packed and loaded in the car ready to go. Grandma Hunt met us at the hospital and took Emily home with her, but had we been able to foresee the future, we would've just had them wait outside the room. We got checked into the hospital at around 2:45 p.m. I called for an epidural as soon as I saw the first nurse enter the room. The anesthiologist (spelling?) came in and saw I hadn't even received an IV yet so he decided to go do the girl in the next room. The contractions were coming hard and fast, and I had to have the nurse help breathe through them. The "guy who gives the epidural" came back in, and just in time. He moved quickly and I was able to have it kick in right before the doctor wanted me to push. He told me to take a breath and hold it, then take a breath and push. He and Mike started talking about how much hair Emily had when she was born. And I said, "you can see her hair?" The doctor moved the sheet blocking my view and I could see her head. I couldn't believe it. He told me to take a breath and hold it, then take another breath and only do half a push, and she was out! One and a half pushes and Abby was here. It seemed like I was going to be pregnant forever, but once she had her mind made up to come, she was here.

Boozer's 3rd Birthday

Here is Boozer on the night of her birthday playing with some of her presents. As you can see she is wearing a princess dress. I tried to keep her away from princess stuff as long as I could, but it was bound to happen. She also got a Barbie sized Cinderella doll and a smaller Cinderella doll, the movie Enchanted (she makes me sing all the songs from the movie so she can memorize them), a bunch of new clothes for our growing girl, and a new soccer ball because she has worn out her other one.

Here she is eating birthday cake with two of her cousins, Audree and Ethan. I think she had a really good time because it took us an hour and a half past bed time to get her to settle down and go to sleep. I guess that's not bad if it only happens once a year. Oh yeah, she wanted a purple cake with pink frosting. It looked interesting, but tasted yummy!

Happy Easter

Here is our little family on Easter afternoon after church. This was our silly face picture. I just had to get a picture of Boozer in her Easter dress while she was still clean.

Dawes Family Fun Night

Dad was able to come home early this night (which during tax season translates into, he came home at 6:30 p.m.) so we decided to make our own pizzas for dinner. We all had a blast putting our own toppings on our pizzas. Boozer had the strangest combination. She chose to have olives and pineapple. She loves those two things separately, but I don't think she liked them together because she only had a few bites of her pizza. Before we made our pizzas, we went to a nearby park and Mike and Booz went down each of the five slides about twenty times each. She tried out the swings and the tire swing, but decided she liked the slides the best, especially the tallest one. We were really proud of her "no fear" attitude.

New Baby Girl

We are going to have an addition to the family in April. Another girl. I warned Mike that with three girls in the house, it is a safe bet that at least one of us will be crying at any given time. He's not excited about the crying, but he is sure excited to have another child. Emily claims to be pregnant as well, although she says she is having a boy. She likes to comment on how my tummy is getting bigger and then she pushes her tummy out and says she is just like mommy. I'm not sure she fully understands what is coming, but she seems excited right now and talks about her baby sister all the time.

Snow Bear

This kid loves the outdoors no matter what the weather is. Here she is sitting proudly in front of the snow bear she and her dad built.

Snow angel