Emily Mae turned FOUR

Our sweet little Emily turned FOUR last Monday, April 20th! Above is her baby announcement that I made when I was still really new to digital scrapbooking.

We had a special visit from my mom, but she wasn't able to get there until late Monday night so we celebrated Emily's birthday on Tuesday. Maddie was so cute on Monday for Emily's real birthday. Maddie had been counting down the days for her until her birthday and when they woke up Monday morning Maddie sang Happy Birthday to her and got Emily breakfast (just cereal - but still!) And all day she was being so cute with her. For Family Home Evening we went around and all shared some of our favorite Emily memories and things that we love about her. It was so sweet listening to Maddie and Tyler remember and retell the stories they love about Emily. Here are a few cute Emily stories:

May 2007: Blowing Kisses
"Peter was leaving for work and giving the kids hugs and kisses. He got into his car and Emily started blowing him kisses. She'd blown about 4 kisses to him and then blew a really BIG kiss to him and blew super hard and just then Peter started backing out of the garage. Emily's eyes got really big and she looked at me and said, "Mommy, I blowed him away!"

June 2007: I'm sorry Cinderella!
"Emily has been working on being potty trained and she has been wearing princess pull-ups. One day she walked into the kitchen and said, "Oh no Mommy! I poopy! I soooo saw-ee (sorry) Mommy! I poo-ed on sin-dee-elle-ees (Cinderella's) say-s (face)! I soooo soo saw-ee (sorry) sin-dee-elle-ee (Cinderella) I yon't (won't) ezer EZER (ever Ever) do dat (that) adain (again). I saw-ee (sorry)!"

November 2007: Caterpillars
"Emily was in the bathroom watching me get ready for the day and I was putting on my make-up while she was sitting on the counter. She was very interested and got in really close to see better. As I started putting on my mascara, she got a confused look on her face an asked, "Mom, why do you like those caterpillars to be on your face?"

February 2008: Toothpaste Disaster
"I was downstairs cleaning up and Peter was in the basement working on a project and I heard Nathan crying, so I came upstairs to see what was going on... and I found this!! The girls room was covered in toothbrushes, hair bows and clips and empty toothpaste tubes. And there were smears of toothpaste EVERYWHERE! Nathan was sitting in the middle of the floor with a helmet of toothpaste on his head and his arms and legs were covered! He started crawling and left diagonal crawl marks of toothpaste as we went. I picked him up and put him in the sink (the bathtub had been vandalized as well) and tried to rinse him off. Then I found Emily hiding behind the shower curtain with this look on her face like she knew she was in some serious trouble! Her eyes were HUGE and filled with tears and she didn't say anything, she just lifted up her hands to show me that they were covered in toothpaste. At this point I was so angry but I knew I would want pictures later so I grabbed my camera. Then the clean-up began. I don't know if you've ever attempted to clean up a large amount of toothpaste in the carpet but it's not a pretty sight! You know when you brush your teeth and your mouth gets all foamy? Same thing happens with carpet, but you can't just spit it out and be done with it! It was a nightmare and all 3 kids were scrubbing with me. Finally we got it pretty much under control but it was so terribly messy! What's funny, is that Emily does things like this often! She is the QUEEN of dump it out, grind it up and smear it all over!"

May of 2008: I didn't WANT to pee on Daddy
"Emily has been totally potty trained and accident free for almost a month now. Well tonight we were all sitting around visiting (Peter's parents and Joe and Jessica came out for dinner) and Peter was doing stunts with the kids. He has always thrown them in the air, made them do 360's onto the couch, or hung them by their ankles and things like this. Well tonight he was laying on his back on the ground and he had Emily standing on his chest. Then he held her feet/ankles and lifted her into the air. She stood for awhile and laughed and then she squatted down and looked like a frog and was holding her own ankles. Well she was laughing and I guess her position combined with lack of air between giggles made it impossible for her to communicate her need to use the bathroom... so she let loose... on Peter's chest... while squatting in the air above him in a frog position...
Peter was disgusted and went upstairs to change while I rushed Emily to the bathroom and clean her up. Meanwhile the Family Room is still erupting in uncontrollable laughter. While cleaning Emily I took the opportunity to talk to her about the events that had just transpired! "Emily, you can't do that! Why didn't you just tell us that you had to go potty?" And with huge apologetic eyes she said to me, "I don't know Mom. I didn't WANT to pee on Daddy! I'm so sorry Mommy!"

May 2008: It's a Potato
"So Tyler is working on his first "project" for school. He was supposed to research an animal and find out all about it, then create this animal using anything you have around the house and then decorate a shoe box to look like it's habitat. Well, Tyler chose to make a cat. We took a potato and placed it in a fuzzy sock and put a rubber band around the neck and tucked the rest in to make a head and ears and we sewed button eyes on and pinned a tail on it and used bobby pins for his legs. So funny. So Emily was fascinated by the whole process and couldn't wait to get her hands on it. Well it hasn't been turned in and graded yet and with Emily's track record it wouldn't be long before that poor cat was a mangled mess hanging from the banister or strewn around the whole house! So I rushed over to her and said, "Emily, no, no! That's Tyler's special homework project!". And she just looked at me with crooked eyebrows and an incredulous look and a tone in her voice entirely too 'teenager' for me, she said, "Uhhh, Mom... it's a POTATO!" Completely dumbfounded as to why we would care so much and have to be careful with a potato.

March 2009: Apple Juice
"Emily has been working really hard on correcting her pronunciation of certain words, and the other day at lunch she said to me, "Mom, you know how I say apple juice? I say it apple DUECE!" For so long she has pronounced it apple duece and now that she knows how to say it right, she is still so used to saying apple duece that sometimes she forgets and still calls it that. So she explained it to me. Cute girl."

April 2009: Who is it?
"The other day Emily went down to the basement to see Peter in his office and she knocked on the door and Peter said, "Who is it?" and Emily responded, "It's one of your kids!" Peter got a kick out of that. That she didn't say, it's Me, or it's Emily, but instead just a broad answer of One of your kids."
April 2009: Crazy Looking Flowers
"Emily was saying a prayer tonight and she said, "...and please b-yess (bless) daddy...um...dat he...uh...b-yess him dat he... uh... won't pick any c-yazy (crazy) yookin (lookin') f-yowers (flowers)...and b-yess me that when baby yogan (Logan) is born dat I will be able to hold him and dat he will not fall out of my yittle (little) arms... and b-yess me to have good d-yeams (dreams) about my birthday and about a fire truck that is red and helps me to drink my water..." She's so funny! There was no background to the whole crazy looking flowers thing, she just wanted to make sure he didn't do it. Cute girl."

April 2009: Emily's Talk
"Emily gave the talk in Primary and while repeating back the words "Doctrine and Covenants" she said instead, "...in Doctors and Presidents it says..."

We love our sweet little Emily. Here's a scrapbook page highlighting her first year

Wasn't she the cutest? She got the chicken pox when she was 5 months old! Poor thing! She got them SOOOoooo bad, but being the giggly happy girl that she's always been, she never stopped smiling! I love this page too of all of her FANG pictures. She had fangs for about FIVE MONTHS! So stinking cute!

So anyway! My mom got to our house super late on Monday night and she woke up and came upstairs while the kids were all just waking up and they were so excited and surprised that they almost knocked her down the stairs! We had a fun day, Emily got to take "Pinkalicious Cupcakes" to preschool and they sang to her and blew out a candle on her cupcake and everything (Teresa is going to email me pictures from that soon) and then we went down to Provo and met Sterling and Katie (my brother and his wife) and then headed over to the Brick Oven for lunch and met my Aunt and Uncle (Debbie and Rick) and my cousin Melissa and her daughter Sequoia as well as my Diane and Norman (another aunt and uncle) and my cousin Tawna. Emily got a birthday treat there and they came to sing to her and she was so excited. Here's a few pictures of us at Brick Oven.

Then we came home made more cupcakes for her family birthday celebration. Aunt Katie has been taking cake decorating classes for awhile now and she's got a lot of great decorating tools and fun ideas so she sat down with the kids and they decorated all of the cupcakes. It was messy and some looked pretty crazy but the kids LOVED being involved and helping out. Nathan basically just smeared his finger across the frosting tops and then ate his cupcakes that he was supposed to be decorating! But that's okay! Here's the process and the finished product.

Then we (Me and Peter and all 4 kids, plus my Mom and Sterling and Katie) had Peter's family (Mom, Dad, Joe, Jessica, Lauren & Austin) join us for dinner and then the rest of the clan (Aunt Debbie, Uncle Rick, Melissa, Sequoia, Aunt Diane, Uncle Norman, and Tawna) join us for cupcakes and ice cream and presents. It was a house full and a lot of fun. After dinner and before cupcakes we headed outside to play some more "Kuub" (the game Sterling and Katie introduced us to on Sterling's birthday). It was so much fun! Here's part of the group playing and cute Maddie striking a pose between turns:

Emily didn't want to play and instead had a great time harvesting our enormous purple flowered weed patches in the backyard.

After we finished playing Kuub and the rest of the group arrived we headed inside and opened presents and had cupcakes. Emily was so cute. She got a new princess crown and earrings and shoes and she kept admiring herself in the mirror in our dining room. Sweet girl!

And here she is as she saw her new bike

...which she immediately mounted and started riding around the kitchen table!

And here she is blowing out her candles on her cupcake. She specifically requested "pinkalicious cupcakes" on her real birthday and told me we could make a fancy cake for her friend party. Pinkalicious is a SUPER cute book about a little girl that eats too many pink cupcakes and turns pink! Needless to say, she was careful to only eat a few cupcakes!

Isn't she just a doll? We sure love our little Emily! She says the funniest things and is always smiling and dancing and laughing and giggling and we just adore her! She keeps life interesting wither her creativity and spunk! Here's a few scrapbook pages that seem to capture her little personality so well. Her giggly silly side:

Her creative, curious, mischevious side (aka: her messy side)

Her spunky and crazy side that loves to dance:

And lastly, her superb sense of fashion:

So she wanted to help me make her birthday invitations so I tried to let go of my perfectionism and let her have some free reign as she picked the colors and accessories... however, I did encourage her to cut back a little and go with a more minimalist look. Anyway, here's the finished product:

Yesterday we had all of her friends over. There ended up being 9 little 4 year olds here and we had a blast! First we had to send them downstairs to play dress up because we weren't quite finished with the cake. So here are all of the girls (minus one who had to come late) in their fancy princess clothes:

Then we had them trace Emily on a piece of butcher paper and then decorate her to make her look like a real princess. We used crayons and glitter glue and diamond stickers and hearts and all sorts of fun stuff.

Then we did a princess crown pinata (and we learned that cute petite little four year old princesses are too sweet to bust open and we needed to help them out a little). And then we came upstairs for presents and cake and ice cream. So my sister in law Katie, like I said, has been taking cake decorating classes and was working on a wedding cake which she was using Fondunt to make and I decided that I wanted to give it a try. Roberts had a box of fondant in 4 neon colors and I thought we'd start by just putting fondant decorations on a regular frosted cake, I'll probably try an all fondant cake next time. But here's the crazy, bright finished product:

And here's all of Emily's cute friends enjoying the cake:

It was a super fun party and 2 hours was the perfect length for 10 four year olds. We are so happy that our little Emmy Pie is a part of our family! Peter has been calling her his little bird recently just because she is so cute and thin and petite and every time he calls her that she responds with a sweet little "Tweet tweet!!". We adore you Emily! Thank you for the joy you bring into our family!