Well overdue updates

WARNING! This will be a rather long post. We've had lots of excitement the last few weeks... which probably explains why we haven't posted and therefore have lots to blog all of a sudden!

Emery's 2 month birthday!

Yeah for our cute little rugrat being 2 months old (on Feb 29th)! Her two-month fat stat was 10 lbs 9 oz so she's still gaining more than an ounce per day. (Meaning she's probably inching up on 12 lbs by now!) Go Emery! She officially declared herself a giggler yesterday so we'll have to post a video of that soon. We love being her parents and constantly find ourselves talking mostly about how cute she is in the limited time Aaron and I get to spend together these days. :)

Em with all of the toys she owns on/near her 2 month b-day

Trip to Las Vegas

The weekend of Em's 2 month mark we took a quick weekend trip down to Vegas to visit my family. Emery was a great little travel buddy... though her wiggliness necessitated a few stops strictly for wiggling purposes (car seat doesn't give her enough room and she gets frustrated). On the trip Emery met her Uncle Bry, Uncle Jer, Aunt Mel and cousins Jacob, Emma and Abe (Em is their first cousin so they were pretty excited!). She and cousin Emma (fondly known as "Em and Em" by Grandpa) had matching dresses and pjs for the occasion. Pic of the matching dresses below. She also met her all three of her great grandparents on my side - Grandma and Grandpa Wimmer and "Great-Mama" Ila Mae Britt (my namesake and her's as well). Great-Mama loved her through a mask since she was sick and we wanted to make sure Em didn't get it! :(

Emery and Great-Mama Ila Mae Britt

Emery and Emma in their matching dresses

Emery and cousin Jacob just relaxing

Emery and Abe

Bryan, Aaron and Jacob on their hike to the top of Clark Mountain (pic is missing my dad, Pink and Van who also went)

A moment of wiggling frustrations for Em in the carseat on the way there. That's a seriously cute sad face.

Meeting cousin Miles
Matt and Amy were in Utah for Amy to interview for a fellowship to do her PhD at Utah State so the day after we got back from Vegas we took a quick jaunt up to SLC so Emery and Miles could meet (Miles is Emery's cousin, just 2 weeks younger than her). They completely love each other... or at least we think so. They laid on a blanket together just wiggling and holding hands and kicking Grandpa in the head. It was adorable.

Grandpa in heaven with his 2 newest grandbabies

Holding hands - soooo cute!

Miles does like Emery, despite his projected tongue shown here

Emery the nun?
The video tells the story better than I ever could. Sorry it's sideways!

Adventures at the Dinosaur Museum... sometime back in February!

Thanks to Grandmama Wilkinson, her grandbabies - even the tiniest ones - get to enjoy the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point! Way cool!

My little buddy and me

Grandma making Emery laugh

Grandma and her grandkids with the ginormous prehistoric shark!

Random cute pics!

Sleeping beauty

Emery's "This isn't funny! Quit taking pictures, don't change my diaper, just FEED ME!" face.

Emery's inquisitive face in her play gym... it's fun to watch her little eyes bounce around and try to decide what is the most fun to look at!

Busted for chocolate consumption... or should I say FRAMED!

Emery and Cami Gourley hugging! We loved seeing Clint, Clare and Cami visiting from Wisconsin last week!

My New Friends

Hi all - Emery here! So, I'm sooooo excited because I've had so many friends born lately and I just wanted write about how excited I am! These are some of my forever friends and I can't wait to meet them!

This is my cousin Miles (my mom's brother Matt and wife Amy's little dude). He is 2 weeks younger than me. We're going to meet for the first time in just 8 days! I'm so excited!

This is Angela. She is just a few days younger than me. Mom and Dad's friends Adam and Rachel are her parents. Dad and Adam served in the Philippines, Angeles Mission together.

This is Jewell. We are exactly 1 month apart and she belongs to mom and dad's climbing buddies Jeanie and Travis.

This is baby Russ. He was just born yesterday, so that would make us 8 weeks apart! He is mommy's best friend Bekah's little guy. Cute, huh? I might have my first crush. :)

A name and a blessing...

Aaron blessed Emery in Church this last weekend. He gave her a beautiful blessing, much of it revolving around spending her life in the service of others. I hope she lives up to the wonderful things that the Lord inspired her daddy to bless her with because it would truly make her angel in the Lord's hands. It was wonderful to be surrounded by family and to see everyone loving our little girl! (And thank's Auntie Summer for letting your neice borrow Missy's dress. I wish I would have gotten a picture of Missy and Emery! That would have been so cute! Emery was also styling hand-knit booties from her Great Grandma Wimmer, her blessing day bracelet from Emily Earl Nelson and mom's first experiment with homemade headbands.)

Beautiful Emery Mae

The proud parents

Sandwich kisses

With Grandpa Wimmer - Grandma Wimmer got really sick and couldn't make it! :(

With Grandma and Grandpa Wilkinson

With Great Grandma Wilkinson

our smilely girl

Emery's latest trick is smiling and it is soooo stinking cute! She's really turning into such a cute little person! She has a goofy smile in this picture because she's extra happy in the morning when she wakes up!

Good News Minute

There's a phenomenon in many LDS Relief Societies called the good news minute, but since I haven't been able to go to Relief Society since Emery was born, I'm going to have a good news minute on the blog instead!

Emery Mae sets sleep record

Emery's been sleeping great lately (4.5-6.5 hours at a time once during the night for the last week and a half) but two nights ago she beat her record at a little over 7 hours! And just when I thought the little rugrat couldn't get any more amazing she slept all the way through the night last night! 8 WHOLE HOURS! I actually woke up before she did... in a puddle of breast milk. Haha. I love that the Lord gave me a pre-programmed, great sleeping baby because as far as I'm aware you cannot teach a 6 week old to sleep through the night. I think He's bribing me to keep wanting to have lots of kids, and it's working!

Dirtbag Climbing's business climbs

For those of you who don't already know, Aaron sews. No, not sequened dance costumes, but chalk bags for rock climbing (he's also ventured into a few other rock climbing accessories). He's always sold his bags at the local gear shop, MountainWorks, and in the past year has expanded his formerly unnamed business to a few local climbing gyms. Well, recently some larger clients have been pushed his direction and so we finally had to give it a name (Dirtbag Climbing - "dirtbag" is a complimentary climbing term for someone who lives the climber's dream of being on the road for months at a time, living in your van and just climbing), standardize pricing, find someone to outsource big orders to, etc. We're hoping these big fish will bite and that we can keep expanding to other bigger clients as well!

Reflections of a college graduate

Even though I knew it was coming, I got a much-welcome surprise in the mail last week - my college diploma! I've felt "graduated" for a long time since I haven't been in school for almost a year, but my 2 credit Health and Physical Education class (fondly known as HEPE to you Cougar readers), finally and painfully completed in November, delayed my actual graduation until now. It was kind of sad actually receiving my diploma when a part of me hoped that they'd call me and say they'd made a mistake and I still have a bunch of classes to take. But I'm proud to be a college graduate and it definitely gave me warm fuzzies to think about hanging it up on our wall. I'm no less educationally obsessed now that I'm officially done though... I started reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals this week and it's starting to get me excited to start thinking about writing my own book again!

World's best husband loves his wife - even during mid-terms

I have the best husband in the whole world! I just hope I won't be the demise of his burly mid-terms since he came home early (at 9) twice during the week to let me go to the gym. I had my post-partum doctor's appointment on Monday and couldn't wait to go. He's so sweet to me and watched Emery twice during the week and then again last night and this morning so I could work out... and man, it felt good!

Wow! Congrats if you made it all the way through this post! Sometimes a blog post turns into a long journal entry... whoops!

Emery's 1 month birthday!

We can't believe she's already 1 month old! It's crazy how time flies. I feel like one of those irrational moms when I say that I feel like she's changing so much all the time and while she gets cuter every day it breaks my heart that she isn't my teeny, tiny girl anymore. She weighs 8lbs 6oz as of today... meaning she's still gaining over an ounce a day! Our sweet little porker! Since we last blogged she's had her first pumped bottle from dad, her first pacifier and even her first go at her parent's favorite sport (see below). Here is her one month birthday picture and some other recent favorites and even our first blogging video! Yeah!!

I'm one month old!

Sassy Emery

Cute sleepy smiles

Crazy Eights

I got blog tagged by Clare to do "Crazy Eights", so here it is!

8 things I’m passionate about:
1. My sweet hubby
2. Emery
3. Food
4. History
5. Working Out!
6. Being productive with my time (which often means I over-committ, but I'd rather over-committ than under-committ or I'll go crazy!)
7. Having lots of kids
8. Goals, living the Gospel, getting good grades (when I was a student) - or anything else that requires drive, self-control or determination. Let's just say I'm kind of a nut case.

8 things I want to do before I die:
1. Go on missions with Aaron
2. Have lots more babies
3. Be a grandma and spoil my grandbabies like my mom and mom-in-law do
4. Stand next to Shaq (in person - a life-sized cut out won't cut it)
5. Go on month-long climbing adventure with Aaron (or maybe multiple week-long ones)
6. Write a book (I have a few in mind, but I'll start with one!)
7. Occupy a space that has more than 1 bedroom
8. Get education beyond my BA

8 things I say often:
1. I love you
2. Emery - or any form of her name
3. Little farty pants (imagine it in an accusatory tone)
4. What do you want for dinner? (my constant battle with creative cooking)
5. I'll show you...
6. When are you coming home? (I have a very busy husband... who unfortunately I love to have around even when he's so busy!)
7. Oops!
8. I'm hungry

8 books I’ve recently read:
1. All of the Harry Potter's
2. Twilight
3. The Secret Life of Bees
4. A Mormon in the White House?: 10 Things Every American Should Know About Mitt Romney
5. Heathy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby
6. Book of Mormon
7. What to Expect When You're Expecting
8. Lots and lots of pregnancy books/magazines/info

8 songs I could listen to over and over:
1. any of the dozens of songs Aaron makes up on a daily basis
2. Amy Grant - Breath of Heaven
3. this one song on the Mae CD
4. MoTab - My Shepherd Will Supply My Need
5. Bob Marley - Could You Be Loved
6. Moulin Rouge Soundtrack - Come What May
7. Colby Callait - Bubbly
8. Little Big Town - Bring It On Home

8 things I’ve learned this past year:
1. The Lord's timing is always better than my timing
2. No matter how busy life is, every year gets busier
3. Being pregnant is fun!
4. Life would be impossibly unaffordable if it weren't for tithing and fast offerings
5. When in doubt, have faith
6. Labor, delivery and motherhood are some of the coolest things a woman can ever experience
7. I would be lost without a "To-Do List"... occupationally, personally, in EVERYTHING!
8. Getting 3 hours of sleep at a time eventually catches up with you

8 people I think should do Crazy 8’s
1. Maggi
2. Bekah
3. Rachel
4. Lindsey Rust
5. Dani
6. Lindsay Miranda
7. Brandi
8. Amy Wilkinson