Our New Table (and picture download)

Okay everyone. Emily is having her first birthday party on February 20th. If you read this blog or are related to her than you can come. It's going to be at 11:00 am at Grandma and Grandpa Buckholts' house. We're serving lasagna and cake and ice cream. You don't have to bring a present, but it you do she likes balls, buttons, and anything that already belongs to Gwen. Oh, and she took her first steps on Super Bowl Sunday morning.

Emily on Christmas morning. Sorry we had to get a new computer so I haven't posted pictures in a while.

Gwen and Emily breaking into their loot on Christmas. Emily got fruit in her stocking but immediately switched it out for candy canes when she found them in Gwen's stocking. What was Santa thinking?

Gwen's Cookie Grandma and Farmer Floyd (Jonathan's mom and step-dad) made this beautiful table and chairs for the girls. The pictures don't do them justice. They are perfect. Just the right size for my little princesses and they love them.

Emily no longer wants to eat in her high chair. She's too big for that. They both want to eat all their meals at the new table and spend a lot of their time climbing on it or coloring on it or having many, many tea parties. I love having little girls. No doubt that if they were boys the table would be destroyed in minutes.

Cookie Grandma and the girls at the table. They brought the table down from their place in Idaho this last weekend while I was away at work. I could hardly believe my eyes when I got home and saw it in person. They assure us that it's such good quality that it will last through the grand kids. Thank you so much Cookie Grandma and Farmer Floyd.

Oh, Gwenners.

So, I was sitting here thinking about my favorite things: my daughters, and thought that I'd update about some of their funnier things they've been up to:

Gwen thinks her name is "Gwenners". It's one of her nicknames that we don't really like but she does. She introduces herself as "Gwenners" to new people and when we're playing she'll tell me that she's Mommy and I'm Gwenners. So, I think this nickname is stuck. At least for now.

Gwen re-named Emily for a day last week. She named her "Han". I have no idea where she even picked up that name or where she could have possibly heard it before but all day she told everyone to call Emily "Han". It was only for a day and the next day her little sister was back to being Emily and now her baby doll is named Han previously named Baby Bobby. Also, she calls Emily, Em-o-lee all drawn out like that most of the time.

Emily's first "word" is uh-uh. She loves to use it and mimics us when she is told uh-uh. It doesn't necessarily stop her from doing what is uh-uh though. She also says "bleah" which is what we tell her when she's eating the dog or cat food to get her to spit it out. She'll crawl toward the pet food going "bleah, bleah". At least she let's us know where she's headed.

Emily gets goofy at night time. I usually work in the evenings so I didn't really know about that until I had a couple days off this week. She would crawl over to a pillow on the floor and rear up on her knees as tall as she can get then fall face first onto the pillow and laugh. She'll also squeal as loud as possible and then crawl away from you as fast as she can trying to get you to chase her.

This week we finally moved Emily out of our room and into the bedroom with Gwen. Gwen loves the idea of having Emily in there with her and luckily she's a sound sleeper and hasn't yet woken up to Emily's midnight fussing. Yes, Emily still gets up in the night to feed - twice! I like that she wakes up at midnight to feed because I need it by then after working all evening away from her. The 4:00 am feeding I could do without. She doesn't need it, it's just habit at this point. I'm scared of letting her cry it out because that would probably wake up Gwen. We'll get this worked out and it'll be time to wean her.

We're planning our first family trip to Disneyland in March. Or as Gwen calls it "Bisney-go-land". She's so excited to see where the princesses live. She keeps telling everyone that we're going there tomorrow which is little kid speak for soon and not today. I can't wait, I'm probably just as or even more excited than she is.

Christmas and the New Year

Before I forget about everything that happened over the Holidays, I thought I should jump on here and make a post. We had a really fun, nice, and safe Christmas and New Years. This year for Christmas Eve we had a pretty quiet evening. I roasted a chicken that I had brined with one of Jonathan's famous turkey brines since we forgot to do one for Thanksgiving this year. The chicken was very moist and yummy. We invited my parents over for our little feast and it was nice to actually have other people in our little space. Emily thought that the stuffing was the best part of the dinner - she was scooping it up into her mouth with both fists as quickly as she could. After dinner we had the girls open one of their presents. Then we said good-bye to Grandma and Grandpa and tucked the girls into the car and drove around looking at Christmas lights. Gwen fell asleep faster than Emily did. Jonathan and I stayed up late watching TV together.

Christmas morning Gwen woke up early - how can a three-year-old who can't tell time know to wake up early because it's Christmas? She came into our room and asked if Santa had come yet. We all went downstairs together and opened the rest of our presents. Gwen got a few princess barbies and princess movies. I love that Gwen was so excited that the reindeers had eaten some of our carrots and Santa had some hot cocoa while he was dropping off her presents. Emily, of course, didn't really know what was going on but loved playing with the paper. She also loves crawling around with her hands on books or dvd cases so her hands slide and she can crawl really fast because she doesn't have to pick up her hands. She's really clever like that. These days she's really into walking and has found out that she can push around some of her toys and use them as walkers so she can get around the house. She'll be walking on her own before I know it.

Christmas afternoon we packed up and went over to my parents' house for brunch. While we were there, Jonathan's mom and step-dad stopped by to spoil the girls. Gwen got a princess tea set from them that she adores. She loves to make us pretend to drink out of her little pink cups. My sisters and their families came over for dinner and we all got to spend time together playing Beatles Rock Band until late (9:30-ish hey that's late when you have little kids). It was such a fun Christmas. I swear that each Christmas gets funner as my kids get bigger. The very best present was season passes to Lagoon from my parents. That means that I get a whole summer of spending time with my fun mom, sisters and nieces and nephews. I am so excited for that. I'm also very excited for our other big present - a trip to Disneyland over spring break. I can't even think about it too much or I get really distracted.

Between Christmas and New Years I got to spend an evening with some of my high school and after friends. I love spending time with them, not only because I'm really beginning to value any time spent with people not as into Dora the Explorer as Gwen, but because they've known me for such a long time and we have little inside jokes that are so comfortable and familiar.

For New Year's Eve we went to my parents' house again. They got an amazing big screen TV and sound system so everyone will be spending more time there in days to come. Some of my sisters and their kids came and we had a New Year's countdown at 9:00 - remember that's super late for little kids and then Gwen, Noah (4), and Sam (4) had a sleepover in Grandma's front room. It was Gwen's first sleepover and first time sleeping away from us. I was nervous for her but after kissing her goodnight and offering to stay a little longer my sweet little Gwen looked me right in the eye and said "I want you to leave right now, Mommy." It was pretty obvious that she wasn't as reluctant about this new adventure as I was. The next morning when I came to pick her up I learned that she's not as well behaved as I had believed. Apparently, she's a bit of a goof and kept the other two kids up until almost midnight with her antics. She'd make herself burp and then giggle loudly, she's climb into her sleeping bag head first and then laugh, and she made monster noises to scare her older cousins. I still am a bit amazed that she's big enough to have a sleepover. Really I think it's a bigger deal to me than to her. Hopefully, her aunt's will still want her to spend the night on the rare instance after reading this post.

Giving Thanks

Here's the silliest group of girls (minus one Emily) at Grandma and Grandpa Buckholts' house at Thanksgiving this year. It was super fun to have all my sisters and their spouses plus all the crazy kids running around the house. Some of the grand kids have allergies to cats and dogs and it's the first year in a long time that there haven't been animals at the Buckholts' house so we could all be there together. Chris, Noah, and Mason playing Trouble. Mason was pretty good at playing it.

The table looked awesome and the food was so yummy. I went to an hour and a half Zumba (cardio Latin dancing) class in the morning so I felt less guilty about eating everything that I wanted.

Gwen was a bit worn out at the end of the night. She almost fell asleep in her peppermint ice cream which she calls "Santa ice cream".

Even though she didn't get a nap at all that day, Emily managed all the excitement very well. She's so cute in her green jammies. It really shows off her red hair.

At the beginning of the month we went with Laura and Noah to the Festival of Trees. Emily and Gwen had so much fen for a few hours and then they both hit their limit at the same time. I thought I was going to lose it for a moment as they both screamed their way through the festival. Everyone keep looking at us because they were really very loud. We did have a fun time before that. Gwen even got to see "beeneenanas" (ballerinas) and got a treat from Santa.

It's really hard to get a couple of crazy 3 year-olds to hold still for a picture.

Jonathan is finishing up his last finals this week. He's been feeling really good about them. On Friday we have an appointment with his doctor to talk about possible treatment for ADD. I'm 100% sure that Jonathan has it and has had it his whole life. He's really learned to manage it but this year at school it's been a challenge for him and he finally asked if he could get some help with it. It will be interesting to see if it will make a difference. One of the biggest side effects is weight loss which would be a good side effect for him. It may also mess up his sleeping and moods so we're doing it over break so that we can get the dose figured out as best as we can.

Witty November Post Title

Okay, here's the deal, I don't have the time to put the pictures in the blog where they belong. Too bad, you get to see all the pictures and read the captions then read the rest of the blog if you want.

Emily is getting so big these days. She won't let us spoon feed her anymore. She needs to be in charge and therefore will eat anything she can put in her mouth by herself. She doesn't have any teeth yet though so she gets a lot of soft foods like bananas. I don't think she minds.

Carving our pumpkin this year. Gwen was so good at scooping all the pumpkin guts out. That was her very favorite part. Then we sorted the seeds out and baked them, another big hit with Gwen.

We carved a witch holding a pumpkin. Yay for carving kits with easy to follow directions. Gwen wanted to help out more with the actual carving but a 3 year-old doesn't mix with sharp little knives. Instead, I gave her a crayon and let her color on the back side while I carved the front.

Emily the pony. She did not like wearing the hoof gloves or the hat.
Cowgirl Gwen and pumpkin Boot. Gwen thought it was very funny that the dog got to dress up too.

My cute little girls. Jonathan wanted them to dress up in a theme so I thought this was a cute one.

At grandma's house Gwen found a scary witch hat to wear. She was sort-of obsessed with witches and if she could have picked out her costume she would have switched between a witch and a princess. Too bad they had a cowgirl costume on sale because that's how I decided what they where going to be.Halloween night - the entire Rail family. I was a tiger and Daddy was a ninja.

Gwen has happy with her loot. Emily was jealous.

Gwen found out that she loves playing the leaves. She doesn't love being thrown into them though - right Daddy?

This is such a funny picture to me. She ran up to me with the camera and said take a picture of my bum. Then she struck this pose and I took the picture. She wants to take pictures of everyone's bums now.

After we put Emily down for her long afternoon nap we go on a walk to the mailbox. It usually means that we pretend that we're Dora the Explorer and Swiper etc. This day she wanted to take her stuffed "Boot" with her on the walk. Here she's making it sit.

Emily loves her bouncer. Sometimes it just wears her out though.

Gwen walking her "Boot".

Gwen's dance class performance. She's one of those blurs in a big poofy tutu.

What a pretty dancer she is. If only she'd pay attention in class.

Jami, Gwen, and Sam.

Mason, Emily and Sam crawling around after Grandpa's funeral.

Playing with all the second cousins (my cousins kids). There sure are more girls than boys in our family.

Noah stole my camera the night of Grandpa Madsen's viewing and took some good pictures of people for me. Here's my mom, my cousin, and my dad.

So, I typed out this huge blog post last night at work because we were slow for a few minutes and the computer didn't save it. Argh. Oh, well, I have a few spare-ish moments now before I have to leave for work in a bit to try to remember my post and add some super cute pictures.

We had Grandpa's funeral after I last posted. Although it was sad to say good-bye to Grandpa it was so neat to see all my cousins. There's 27 grand kids and 44+ great-grand kids. All the grand kids were able to make it to the funeral and it was so special to spend some time with all these people that love so many of the people that I do. It was also fun to hear so many stories about Grandma and Grandpa Madsen that I had never heard before. I actually learned a lot about him.

Okay, I really need to write about Halloween. It was awesome this year. The weather was just perfect. It had been cold and snowy the days before but for Halloween night it was about 55 degrees and dry. Gwen dressed up as a cowgirl and Emily was a pony. I found both the costumes for less than $15 at Kid-to-Kid. I love that store. We went to Grandma Buckholts' ward party on Wednesday as a dry-run for the actual Halloween night a few days later. It was fun to see it all click for Gwen as she went from car to car getting candy in her little pumpkin basket.

On the actual Halloween day I had to work at the clinic until about 5:00 then we went to our ward's trunk-or-treat. It was so fun to watch Gwen really love to see what everyone else had dressed up as. There was a guy dressed up as Bert from Sesame Street and she really wanted to go see him. We were walking up to him and he took his mask off. Gwen just froze in her tracks and stared at him. "He not Bert." she said to me looking disappointed. I explained to her that he was just pretending to be Bert like she was pretending to be a cowgirl. Although she was temporarily disillusioned, it helped to to realize that the people who were dressed in scary costumes weren't real either and were just pretending to be scary.

Also, this month Gwen had her first dance recital. For Gwen's birthday this year, Grandma Buckholts gave her dance lessons. It was for 3 and 4 year-olds and I think that Gwen was just a bit too young this year for it. She had fun at class but had a hard time paying attention for an entire hour. The teacher was really fun and engaging though and she loved getting dressed in her leotard and tights. For her recital I had to work, but Aunt Heidi and Sam and Jami came down to watch her. Aunt Heidi had made her a pretty dancing skirt and she loves it so much. Jonathan video taped the entire performance and I really didn't miss much. Gwen didn't even do the dance they had learned. Instead, she played in the big black curtains and got the other little girls to join her.

Thanksgiving is next week and we're looking forward to spending time with the people that we love and eating yummy food. I'll remember to bring along the cameras and make another post before too long.

Mommy's Grandpa

On Monday night my Grandpa Max Madsen or as he's known in my family, Mommy's Grandpa, died at the age of 96. I'd mentioned before in this blog how he had fallen in May and had broken his hip. After two surgeries, he went to live with my parents because he had started to become more and more confused and it was obvious that he could no longer live alone.

At first the confusion would come and go, but he would remember the times when he was confused and it would seem like a dream to him. He would ask me how to fix it. I was like his personal nurse and I liked that. I love that my training and knowledge can help my family. He'd call me over to him and say "I have an embarrassing question for you." It always started like that even if it was a simple question like how much Tylenol - oh, excuse me, acetaminophen, could he take in a day. The answer to that is four grams by the way, although, he'd never take more than two grams even if he needed it.

As his nurse, I got to help him try to understand what was happening to him as his health began to fail over the last couple months. He felt so betrayed that his body and mind were both giving out on him. He could not understand why we insisted that he not drive, never mind the fact that he couldn't get out to the car on his own or react quickly enough or even really see very well. I could get away with saying to him "As you personal nurse, Grandpa, I don't think you're fit enough to operate a vehicle." That would lay that argument to rest for a few minutes at least. With my training and experience I could also help my mom and dad understand that his confusion was because there were physical holes in his brain and the connections were no longer there and it was affecting thing like his memory and personality and would only get worse. I also got to watch as his heart began to fail and his legs and arms began to swell more and more as the fluid in his body backed up and knew that this great man in my life would not be around for much longer.

I had the great honor of being with him as he passed from this life to the next. I have been with other people as they died - it was often a part of working in the ICU - but never someone that I loved. As I had experienced with others before, when he died, the feeling in the room is similar to how you feel in the Celestial Room in the temple. You can feel how very thin the veil is and that there are more people in the room than those you can see. I know that my Grandmother Elaine was there with us waiting to hold him again. You could feel the love in the room and it was eternal and pure. I am so glad that I was there. I learned many things from my grandpa during my life and perhaps the greatest, most important lesson of all was etched into my heart and memory that night: families are forever. I love you Grandpa.

Gardner Village

This week Jonathan's on Fall Break. I have today and tomorrow off from work so we decided to take advantage of our rare chance to send a day together and we took the girls to Gardner Village to see the witches. We splurged and had lunch at the restaurant there. Gwen wanted soup in a bread bowl and also ate a big part of my roast beef sandwich and french fries. Emily was so tired at lunch that she fell asleep in the high chair with her forehead on the front part. It was so cute, but I didn't even think to get a picture of it.

After lunch we went to explore the village and all the witches they have there. The witches are all doing silly things and they're fun to see. They're mannequins or made of paper mache or something, I'm not sure. This picture is of Gwen playing on this stage they have for something witchy. I guess on the weekends it's more fun and they have actors and such.

This is Emily after she woke up from her lunch nap. That castle thing in the back is the stage that Gwen was playing on.

They have an animal petting area with a bunch of different animals for the kids to harass. Here's Gwen checking out the llamas.

Making friends with a pot bellied pig. Gwen of course informed us that it was Babe.

Checking out a goat.

They had a donkey but it was in a fenced off area and although we tried to get it to come over and say hi to us it wasn't interested.

They have chickens, but you can't really pet them very well. I guess that's okay. Gwen is actually very fascinated by chickens and this is probably the closest she's ever gotten to some.

Her new best piggy friend, Babe.

When Gwen was making her rounds to check out all the animals it was so cute how she gets right in there face on their level. It's a good thing they were all very calm and docile because I know I wouldn't want someone that close to my face.

Some of the goats even had big horns like this one.

Gwen's checking out the goats long floppy ears. See what I mean about being docile?

They even had a baby cow. When I asked Gwen what she was looking at she told me it was a "Moos".

There was a small area with baby pot bellied pigs. The big one was so nice it made me almost understand why people would want a pig as a pet. Yeah, I know they're supposed to be smarter than dogs, and cleaner, etc, but have you ever petted a pig? It's like petting a brillo pad. Not soft and snuggly like my Boot.

This picture belongs at the top of this post, but I'm not moving it. This is Gwen eating her bread soup and Emily still awake at this point. It was yummy food. I'm glad I have this chance to celebrate fall with my husband and kids. I do love this time of year . . . even if it means that winter's right around the corner.

Here's my super crawler. She started crawling at 6 months but would only army crawl. Then she saw a one-year-old crawling at church and she's been up on all fours since. Today I took my kids to work out with one of my gym friends. Her kids are exactly the same age as Gwen and Emily. In fact her little girl in only one week older than Emily. It's so fun to watch them together. Her little girl has like five teeth already and is such a chunk. That's how Gwen was. Emily is long and lean and toothless so far. Well, be surprised by this bonus post. Thanks to my hubby who's watching the small ones so that I can write this. Only, now it's bed time and Emily's not loving it so I better go help.