Emily is SIX!!

Here is our sweet and spunky six year old on her birthday!

Emily has always had such a unique personality. From the time she was little she was always SUPER happy and giggly and SO FUNNY! She cracks us up! Here are some cute pictures of her as a baby.

You can see how happy she is even when covered in Chicken Pox she didn't complain at all and still smiled and giggled as if nothing was out of the ordinary! The picture in the middle is of her very first laugh! My nephew Garrett was making duck noises at her and she just started cracking up and I happened to be right there with a camera. Such a sweet moment and I'm so glad I caught it! Here's some pictures of her as she got a little bigger and a little... busier!

You can see her spunky personality coming out even more here as she's getting a little bigger! She has always been so curious and so creative and expressive. She is the only one of my kids that has had a "comfort item" it started out as a baby doll and then shifted to her special blankie and then to a favorite stuffed animal and even today she still sleeps with her blankie and a special heart pillow that my Granny made for her.

As Emily got older and started dressing herself her creativity came out even more! What a darling little artist!! At this stage she started drawing on everything as well. Coloring on every flat surface she could find, and folding and cutting things to create "masterpieces". It was exhausting but definitely a part of her personality! She also got SUPER giggly at this stage and was giggling and laughing during every waking moment!

Here she is fairly recently, still spunky, still creative and now a touch of sass and diva as well! She loves to dance and shake her little hips and as you can tell from these pictures - POSE! She is NOT camera shy in the slightest!

Emily has a MILLION funny stories since she is always saying and doing the craziest things, so I'll try to pick a few of our favorites. To preface, when Emily was little she used to have a hard time saying the "L" sound and would instead insert a "Y" sound. Our favorite phrase that she used to say all the time was, "Yook at my Yittle Yegs!". She also called Logan, Yogan. So cute! Anyway, here's a few stories:

May 2007 (Emily is 2): Emily was blowing kisses to Peter as he left for work. Just as he started to back out of the garage she blew him a huge kiss and she gasped and turned to me and said, "Mommy! I blowed him away!"

November 2007: Emily was watching me get ready for the day and as I opened my mascara and started putting it on my eyelashes, she looked confused and said, "Mom, why do you y-ike d-os caterpi-y-ars to be on your s-ace?" (Y=L, D=TH, S=F) I guess the mascara wand looked like a black caterpillar to her.

March 2009: Emily was saying a prayer before bed and she said, "... and peas b-yes daddy dat he won't pick any c-yazy y-ookin f-yowers. And peas b-yes me dat when baby y-ogan is born dat I will be able to hold him and dat he won't fall out of my y-ittle arms. And b-yes me to have good d-yeams about my birthday and about a fire truck that is red and help me to drink my water..."

May 2009: Emily has been trying really hard to pronounce things correctly recently and she said to me the other day at lunch, "Hey mom, do you know how I say apple juice? I say it apple DUECE!"

July 2009: The day after Logan was born the kids came into the hospital room to see him for the second time and we asked Emily what she thought of him and she responded, "He's good... and righteous!" We all laughed, she joined us and then grew serious and asked, "Mom, what does righteous mean?" trying to understand why it would be funny that she said that her newborn brother Logan was righteous!

Sept 2009: Peter squeezes the kids hands 3 times and they know it means 'I love you' (one squeeze for each word) and then they squeeze back 4 times for 'I love you too'. Every time Emily squeezes back she counts out loud in a whisper "1,2,3,4". Peter was telling me about how cute it was that she counts every time. Emily was in the room so they demonstrated it for me and when I smiled as she counted to four, she said, "Yeah, dats how we say 'I love you too' in Spanish!"

October 2009: Emily had a bad dream and came into our bed to snuggle with Peter while I was feeding Logan. When I came back up I put Logan in his bed and then started to carry sleeping Emily back to her bed. When we got to the doorway she mumbled something that I couldn't understand. I asked her what she'd said and she responded, "can I stay in your room so I'm not so f-weaked out?" I chuckled and said of course. I carried her back to our bed and laid down beside her with one of my arms under her head and with my other hand I tickled her back and played with her hair. When I was pretty sure she was asleep again I took my arm out from under her head and rolled over. She sat straight up and said, "Mom, will you put your arm back like that? It helps me to not feel f-weaked out."

November 2009: Grandma DaNae took Emily and Nathan to lunch at Carls Jr and Emily was eating french fries dipped in fry sauce (which apparently she'd never had before) and she exclaimed, "Oh Grandma! These fries are DELICIOUS in this skin colored sauce!"

December 2009: During Sacrament Meeting Peter took Logan out to change his diaper and Emily leaned over to me and asked, "Mom, why did Dad just TAKE OFF with Logan like that?"

There are a million more, but I haven't been as good about writing them down recently.

So as I mentioned in my last post, Peter and I were able to attend a wonderful sealing for a family in our ward on Wednesday which was Emily's birthday. We opened some presents in the morning with her and took her to lunch and she got to share birthday treats with her class at school and all of her classmates each made her a birthday card. Since I'd just started feeling better I didn't want to be on my feet too much and overdo it again, so on our way home from the temple, Peter and I picked up a birthday cake for her. We came home and had dinner and sang to her. She had a great day and we were so happy to celebrate with her! We had a fun birthday party for her a few days later.

Here are the girls playing with the balloons and having balloon races (with the balloons held between their knees)

Here they are eating cupcakes (Thank You SO much Jen for making them for us since I was still kind of out of commission!)

My fabulous brother Billy holding the pinata since Peter wasn't home yet and I was certainly not in any condition to do it! The girls had a blast! (Funny story: Maddie let all of the girls at the party have a turn hitting the pinata and then when it was her turn she very matter of factly informed them that they needed to get their treat bags ready because she was going to break the pinata and all the candy was going to come out now)

I made the girls cute little ribbon bracelets (regular plastic bracelets with tons of long ribbons tied to them) that they could twirl around in the air as they danced and played musical chairs

We also played pin the horn on the unicorn!

And of course the birthday girl got to open presents.

It was a lot of fun but I definitely could NOT have done it if I hadn't had the help of two of my fabulous sister in laws and my brother to get everything ready, and be there to help get the girls all set and onto the next activities and help clean up before and after. Thank you thank you THANK YOU for making Emily's 6th birthday a super fun one!

We love you Emmy Pie!! You are such a fun and exciting part of our family and we are so lucky to have you!! Love you sweet girl!