Christmas Wish

You may remember, my sweet little Emma was a dragon for Halloween. She wasn't ferocious, I even put a bow on her head and another one on her tail, but still, she was a dragon. One little boy in her preschool class told his mom, "Emma was a mean dragon, but she sure is a nice girl."

I'm not sure where this has all come from, but lately she is really loving dragons and also dinosaurs. She's obsessed. She plays with them all day long, even in the tub. Dinosaur Train is her favorite cartoon. All of the toys she has selected from the toy catalog for Christmas ideas follow this same theme. The other day we were at a craft store and she found a dinosaur puppet. It's huge, almost half as tall as she is. You can put your hands in the mouth to make it appear as if it's alive. Wow! You should have seen her eyes light up. All of the other things she's been asking for have taken a back seat to this.
I think it's hideous. It's not cute, but it's what her little heart is set on. This afternoon she brought me a pen and paper and asked me to help her write a letter to Santa.


In case you can't read my hurried handwriting, it says:

Dear Santa,
Happy Christmas!
Can I please have the thing that I want?
Love Emma


What's a mom to do?

Don't worry, I went back today. Every time I think about it, it makes me chuckle.

I printed our blog!

I quit scrapbooking once I started blogging. It wasn't a conscious decision, just something that sort of happened. I'm not saying that I'm done with scrapbooking. I was behind before, now I am just more behind...

Blogging is so easy and fun. It only takes a few minutes to post and it's fun to read comments from family and friends. I really wanted to print my blog into a book, but I wasn't sure where to do it and I thought it would cost a fortune. I was pleasantly surprised to find it quite affordable and the finished product is exactly what I had hoped it would be.

I LOVE it!

In case any of you are wondering about printing your blog, here's what I learned.

I used blurb. It wasn't the simplest or the quickest option, but after watching a quick webinar, I found it pretty easy and fun.. a little time consuming maybe. I finished it in less than one week, but yes, I did have to go through it page by page. It wasn't tedious, in fact I found that I wanted to spend any and all of my spare time on it. I liked that there were different page layouts and lots fonts to choose from. You could change the color of the text or background color on each page and you could even add little ornaments. I kept it pretty simple, but found that it was nice to have the options.


One thing I didn't like is that the comments were not included. I went through and had to cut and paste them myself. It seemed tedious at first, but like I said, I had to go through each page anyway, mostly spacing issues and sometimes I'd change the layout to fit the pictures better, then I'd either add the comments or leave them out, depending on the post. It wasn't a big deal.

My hardcover book ended up being 160 pages (2 years of blog entries) and it cost $52.95 Not too bad.

If you are looking for a really quick way to print your blog, as in 3 steps quick, shared books might be your best bet. You can choose the dates you want, and you can also choose if you want to include your comments. Recently they made a change that only allows you to have up to 200 comments per book. The downside is that once they pull all the info from your blog, it's pretty much the way it is. I didn't like that the pictures didn't always match up and sometimes there were spacing issues. Like only the date and one line of a post would be on the bottom of one page and then the rest was on the next. For some, maybe that's not a big deal, it bothered me. It was a little more expensive. When I first looked into it, my book (with comments) was nearly 200 pages and was going to cost me $92. Then, since I hadn't saved it and they changed the policy about comments, I was going to have to print two separate books and it would have cost more.

There.

Thanks to all of you who read our blog and have made this so fun for me. Too bad I don't have a great scrapbook, but I'm so glad to have such a neat blog book about all of our comings and goings over the last few years. I can't wait to print out another one once this year is over!

Some may find this gross

Spitty,
yet so sweet.

So typical.

The Talent

The Talent

...made the whole night worth it...

-Roenfeldt

...I was laughing so hard I couldn't see through my tears...

-Hatch

...we didn't know what would happen next and then all of a sudden, whoosh...

-Anonymous

Years ago my sister Mandy was a track star. I remember going to her districts track meet and seeing her win every race she was entered in. All the sprints were her specialty.

A few weeks ago we were at a family party on Alki Beach and the kids were all running around like kids do. Mandy turned to me and said, "Wow, that Emma really can run. She has really good form.” Little did she know that Emma heard every word and, as kids easily are, became convinced that she must be the fastest kid in the whole world. During our weekly family home evenings the kids each share a talent or do a show-and-tell. Running became Emma’s regular talent of choice. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when, at the next family home evening, as we discussed the Mill Pond Ward talent show, that Emma proudly declared that she was going to run for the whole ward. I remember looking at Camille as we both shrugged and thought, oh well, it’s her talent.

As the weeks progressed toward the night of amazing talents, Emma began perfecting her technique and making some important decisions. When asked what shoes she wanted to wear she responded with “I’m not going to wear shoes so that I don’t slip. And I’m going to wear my yellow dress.” Since mom wasn’t aware of any yellow dresses she asked Emma to go and get it. She brought down one of her dress-up dresses with a black and white stripped top and yellow, very short, skirt. Emma explained that it was short enough so that, “everyone can see my legs and how fast they are moving.”

I helped her choose the correct background music. I would play a song and Emma would take off running and then come back and tell me if it was a good running song. She like anything with a beat but when I explained that Chariots of Fire (thanks Tara) was from a movie about running (movies are Emma’s second most favorite thing to do) it became the clear favorite.

On the night of the show I was still a little skeptical on whether or not she would really go through with it. The show was on the stage, in front of lots of people. But we practiced before hand and had the music cued on the Ipod. We were ready.

When it was her turn we moved to the stage as the MC (Emma’s Aunt Bri) explained the situation thus…

“And next we have Emma McInelly. A couple of months ago Emma’s aunt Mandy told her that she could run really well. Tonight Emma is going to show us just how fast she is. She’s chosen a special dress to run in so that you all can see how fast her legs move. So don’t blink or you might miss Emma McInelly…” applause

And the curtain opens.

Go time.

Emma and I are on the stage with the plan for her to run from one side to the other and back, 3 times. We were far enough back from the edge of the curtain that by the time she came into view she was going full speed. And it was a new kind of full speed. I’ve never, in my life, seen her run like that. From the audience there was a bit of apprehension as to how she was going to show her talent. The curtain opened, the right kind of music was playing, what was next? Then all of a sudden, and only for a split second, a cute curly red head girl shot across the stage wearing a funny yellow dress and smiling like it was the best moment of her life (which it probably was). And then, just as suddenly as she left, she reappeared like a bullet going the other direction. The gym filled with laughter and hoots and hollers. Each time she ran, the cheering got louder. The look on her face was one of pure exhilaration mixed with adrenaline and sprinkled with a little fear. After three back and forths at full throttle I whispered, “great job Emma, now go do a bow.” She took a few steps beyond the curtain, turned toward the audience and bowed slightly. And then ran off the stage and into my arms.

She did it!

The rest of the night we heard comments about how funny her talent was. I must admit that I was a little surprised by all the attention she got. I think knowing the background of her decisions leading up to this moment and then seeing her and the look of pure joy on her face was something special to see. I’m just glad that we have a ward that supports each other and has such great activities like these for our kids to be a part of. There were many wonderful talents displayed that night and they were all either really funny or really good. But none was quite as unique as the red haired, yellow dressed sprinter.

When asked later if she was frightened at all by all the people watching she replied, “no, I just thought of all the people and thought of them with no clothes on, except of our family and Naty’s family, but everyone else had not clothes on.”

What?

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!

We hope you had a great Halloween. Our day started out with a few soccer games. We laughed because the kids were already a bit crazed with the idea of trick-or-treating and costumes. All the little boys were extra silly and a bit distracted. Right during Hunter's game, one of the boys on the other team threw his arms up in the air and yelled out, "IT'S HALLOWEEN!"

Here's our crew Halloween night, all ready for trick-or-treating!

We have a giraffe

A modern vampire (twilight)

A traditional vampire

and a dragon.

Here they are with their friends.

Emma's friend Natalie was a witch and she was her pet dragon, an idea they came up with weeks ago on their own. So cute!
Halloween night was a lot of fun. I usually pass out candy at home, but this year Jared is recovering from a sprained ankle and didn't think he was up for all the walking, so I went out with the kids. They have really grown up since the last time we went together. Hunter used to be afraid of dogs and he'd wait at the back of the crowd to see if each house had a dog, only approaching once he was sure it was safe. Scary costumes made Emma cry and Linsey would get frustrated that no one could keep up with her and she always had to wait. This year was different. Hunter led the group, racing from house to house (thank goodness that fear of dogs is finally gone). Emma kept up just fine and I was really surprised at how well my shy little girl talked with perfect strangers. Standing on the sidewalk I could hear her little voice chatting with the friendly neighbors at each door. The weather was perfect and everyone had fun!

I know I say this every year, but I really think this year the kids go SOO MUCH CANDY! It's always so shocking!


Jared and I went to a costume party on Friday night and last minute came up with these costumes. Jared is facebook and I'm the comments. Not too creative, but it was much more comfortable than what I had planned and way less hot.
Before I go to bed, I like to check on all my kids and make sure they are tucked in nice and warm in their beds. It was so fun to find Austin fast asleep in his little costume. Jared said he just looked so warm and comfortable and he thought, why not? I think it's adorable.

Hope you all had a great Halloween too!