What happened?

What started out as a weekend full of promise-Eme's birthday, some needed yard work, Beatles RockBand, the primary program-ended on such a lousy sour note. Ugh, is about the only way to sum up our weekend. I just have to say: "Eme, I'm sorry that the sweet memories of your fun filled 4th birthday were tainted by the stomach flu that gripped us all way too early the next morning. We were so looking forward to the primary program, I know that you've been practicing your songs so hard, maybe next year." Yup, that pretty much sums it up. Birthday post with pics will be coming later today.

Eme's birthday, the Beatles, and some more bugs...

the birthday girl waiting for her breakfast and first gift.

Eme had a great birthday. It started off with a gift from her brothers-a littlest pet shop lizzard (that the boys then took turns fighting over), and one from us-a new little people fairy carriage thing. Breakfast was a wonderful feast of french toast (or in Davin's case "English toast"-don't ask), orange rolls, and juice.


We did, however, have a doctor's appointment for the girls-our office is doing well visits on Sat as well through the busy season. We made sure Eme told everyone that it was her birthday, so they'd feel really good about the fact that she had to recieve 3 immunization shots, plus the flu mist. Poor girl, but she did get to pick an extra toy from the box, plus I took her to lunch-taco bell for a soft taco.

waiting for dinner.
After lunch she got another gift: a Fancy Nancy colorform scene, from Gramma and Granpa Seguine, and a cupcake piggybank. While she played with her new toys, Maddie took a nap, and the boys played quietly upstairs with legos, I got going on her cakes.


I just have to say, I really go all out on my kids birthday cakes. I think that one of my all time best used Christmas gifts was a private decorating lesson with a professional (she was also my sunday school teacher, and did my wedding cakes)-thanks mom and dad! I look forward to birthdays for the fun of decorating their cakes. I even try to steer them towards ones that I want to do, and this birthday was no exception.


I picked up a cute butterfly cakelette pan from Wilton (I may go back and get the dino one too), and just went to town. As promised, I did try to make a Painted Lady Butterfly out of one of them, not too bad. I only made two batches of the butterflies, I made mini cupcakes with the rest of the batter. Those I turned into ladybugs-they all had 4 spots, in honor of our birthday girl. But more important than the fun that I had decorating these cakes was the joy Eme had in seeing her cakes.


After dinner of pizza, we had our last gifts for Eme. From Gramma and Granpa Seguine-one of my special dolls (all cleaned up and looking lovely), she's a 15" tall, blond hair, blue eyed, little miniature of Eme. And Eme loves her (and all of the clothes too), and has even named her "Miranda" or "Emelia Miranda" for short-don't ask, I try not to. Maddie also love the doll, and tries to steal her from Eme every chance she gets-I'm thinking a doll for Maddie at Christmas might be in order. And for her final gift, we gave her the new little people fairy treehouse. Which, she was super excited about, she's been asking for it for a while.

I love that Maddie has already stolen the doll.
After dinner, and cake, and presents, we played Beatles RockBand with Eric's sister Heather. And all I can say is WOW!!! Way more fun than Rock Band 2, they've redone the levels (4 instead of 3), and the music is just so much fun! We could have played all night, we even played through Heather's asthma attack (we paused it for her inhaler, and then she was back in). We're looking forward to playing it again.

The beach, a blessing, a cemetary, the temple, and a long drive, or Labor Day Weekend-pt 3

I couldn't very well get away without posting at least one picture of our newest niece! So here are some of the ones I took (you may all be getting Dad's volumes of photo CD's-he took like 600, I wish I was joking, but you all know I'm not). Although, I'm now asking myself, why don't we have a pre- or even post-church picture with everyone in it? Too bad, but enjoy these.

The beach, a blessing, a cemetary, the temple, and a long drive, or Labor Day Weekend-pt 2

After the cemetary we drove up to UCLA, because, really, what trip to LA would be complete without seeing, even just a glance, at the old campus? I'm just glad that we had Columbia represented with Maddie's shirt: I packed it on purpose-I was sure that there would be a lot of UCLA talk betwixed Mom and Tom, Go Lions!

From there we drove over to the LA Temple, I had never been there before, but all my life, I've heard Mom's stories of dates up to the temple: the one where dad told her he couldn't date her anymore if she wasn't willing to listen to the missionaries (not a problem), and of their engagement (Daddy you were such a tease). But it was so wonderful to walk around hearing the same stories but seeing where they all happened, to see the light in Mom's face as she remembered them for us.

It was a great way to spend our sabbath, walking on the grounds of the temple, reminding our children of their time inside the Oquirrh Mt Temple's open house. We took a few moments to touch the cornerstone, and to draw their attention to the fact that this one was all sealed up, which ment that the temple had been dedicated, and what that ment.

Mom reminded us that this was where Ed recieved his endowments, and how Bishop Keala drove down to be there for him. And we sought out the statue and plaque of the family-it used to be right out front, but they had moved it to the back. It was in front of this statue, after making Mom walk all around the temple grounds, and then reading the plaque, that Daddy proposed to Mom.

Thank you Mom! It was a super short trip, but doing these extra outings on Sunday, made the whole weekend complete for us.

The beach, a blessing, a cemetary, the temple, and a long drive, or Labor Day Weekend-pt 1

This year we actually did something for the long Labor Day weekend. And boy, did we pack in the activities. Tom and Heather invited us out to LA to be a part of Shelby's blessing, it was an added bonus that Mom and Dad were there along with Bill and his kids.


We decided not to tell the kids what was going on, we packed our clothes and the car up after the kids were soundly asleep, and didn't tell them anything when we loaded them into the car. After a half hour we gave them enough hints for them to figure out where we were going. And after few minutes of reassuring them that we had all neccessary items (bears, blankets, books, snacks), the kids were totally on board for the adventure ahead.


We spent Saturday afternoon at Redondo Beach, .5 mi downhill from Tom and Heather's (which ment it was .5 mi uphill when we were done). Mom and Dad walked down with us, and Bill and his kids arrived about 30-40 minutes after we did. The kids had a great time frolicing in the surf, building sand mounds and moats, and collecting rocks (Davin brough home 1/2 cup of new rocks). Eric, upon arriving at the beach, remembered instantly how much fun the beach is with our kids, and had just as much fun building mounds (and finding crabs) and taking the kids into the deeper surf, as the kids did.


Sunday was Shelby's blessing, and it was quite lovely. I'm hoping Mom and Dad got a family pic of Tom and Heather and Shelby, because we didn't, sorry. After a late post church luncheon at Tom and Heather's, Mom fufilled my request for Sunday activities by taking us to the National Cemetary (the Arlington of the West) to see Grandpa Munt's crypt, followed by a trip to the LA Temple.


We pulled into the cemetary at 5:01 pm, they close at 5 pm (oops, we didn't know that), so we hoped that we weren't too late. We drove over to the small mosileum, only to find it locked. At that moment, however, an officer drove by asking if we were there to see someone, upon saying yes, but it looked like we were too late, he kindly unlocked the door for us and told us to take as long as we needed. I'm not sure about Mom, but that small, kindness about put me in tears. The kids particularly liked seeing the uniforms on display.

And my father dwelt in a tent...

No we are not getting ready to go camping-good grief, it was 113 on Thursday and Friday last week. No the tent shown here was Aidan and Davin's temporary housing this past weekend (Friday night thru Monday night), while the girls took the office, and Eric and I got the air mattress in the family room. Why on earth would we do something so stupid for so long? Why, indeed.

Friday afternoon, I noticed that the upstairs felt a bit warm. But it wasn't until we got back from a dr appt at 3:30 that I noticed the temp had risen to 88 degrees! I called Eric right away, and after realizing the outside unit wasn't even on, I called our home warranty people. I tried to call the a/c people right after, but they wouldn't even schedule me until they recieved their email (which can take up to an hour and a half-after closing time!), so I had to wait until Monday, ugh. Thankfully, we have 2 units, so we were just fine downstairs. We shut up all the doors upstairs to keep the heat contained, but by 5 pm it was 98 in the hallway-the rooms were hotter.

So with no hope of the kids playing nicely in their rooms while I made dinner, we ate leftovers and took turns crabbing at each other. And by the time Eric got home (an hour late), we were all so hot and tired of each other that the only remedy we could think of was ColdStone (btw their marshmallow ice cream is heaven).

Bedtime upstairs was out of the question, I wouldn't even let them into their rooms to collect their belongings, Eric or I did that. We set up the tent as a way of keeping the boys contained, they did alright the first night, sleeping on top of their sleeping bags. But they faired better the next night when we put 2 afghans, 2 fleece blankets, and 2 quilts on top of their sleeping bags. Davin destroys his bed nightly, so we had to really make it hard for him to burrow through to the not-so-soft-in-the-middle-of-the-night carpet. Eme and Maddie got the office, with doors that shut. And we took our queen sized air mattress into the family room.

It is sufficient to say that everyone slept about as well as you would expect, no one going to bed until after 9:30 the first night, but awake by 5:30 the next morning-just like camping, but without the s'mores. And that we spent a lot of time at Eric's parent's house over the weekend, it's only too bad that Maddie had the pukes and the pool was out of commission.

However, that long, awful ordeal is over, for at 11 this morning a guy came out and replaced the dead motor and failing capacitor. Aidan immediatly ran to his room as soon as he walked in the door, and currently, I am the only one downstairs. Peace and quiet, just as it should be. Tomorrow I will have to clean, but for now, I'm enjoying the solitude.