introducing

lil peanut:

for those of our readers who may be less accustomed to examining ultrasound photos, the baby's head is on the right of the frame, and you can sort of make out the eye and nose sockets (and, is that a giant brain?!), and a hand/arm up by the left side of the baby's face. then the huge abdomen (full of all that chocolate) is on the left side of the screen.

dearest little baby: 

enjoy the rest of your time in my dark, quiet, calming womb because out here, you're going to have two crazy, loud (and all too cute) sisters who are going to love you to death and drive you nuts. 

see you soon, 

mom

cha-ching!

so summer recently came in to some money (courtesy of a birthday and four generous great-grandmothers).

and today, she took her cash to the grocery store in her little pink purse and made her very first purchase: two ring pops, one for her and one for her sister.

she excitedly picked out her treats, put them up on the conveyor belt, and handed the correct amount of money to the cashier. she waited for her change, which she tucked back into her pink purse, and very proudly took the receipt.

ps - in other firsts for the day, summer also filled out her first tithing slip to give to the bishop on sunday and sent out her first letter. her sunbeam teacher will soon be receiving words of gratitude and love from one little summer girl.

school girl

what's cooler than a chick in a tie?

a pregnant chick in a tie.

the ghost of christmas past

going through old photos today and remembering babies so cute and mommies so tired.

summer and me, december 2007

evergreen

ten days ago we were busy carving pumpkins; today we bundled up and headed to the carnation tree farm to select and secure our 2011 wheeler family christmas tree. my, the calendar pages pass quickly.

before we left, summer shared with us a few of her ideas on how best to cut down the tree: 1) daddy will shoot it with his gun.  2) she will knock it over with her princess wand. and after a brief discussion on why methods (1) and (2) were less than ideal, she finally settled on 3) she will bring her blue plastic saw to cut through the trunk.

ah, the physics of a four year old.

but after giving it her best go, summer eventually had to concede -- a little unwillingly -- to daddy cutting down our douglas fir with a much larger and a definitely not plastic saw. then our tannenbaum was baled, brought home, and the girls and i settled in for a winter's nap while bryan made dinner (really, what's there not to love about my life?). when we woke up, we enjoyed watching micky's christmas and treating ourselves to top pot doughnuts and deliciously rich sipping chocolate.

the christmas season can officially begin.

hot to trot

no tutorial for the turkey bows (or the other two little turkeys for that matter) -- i made them myself! (i guess bryan helped some with the girls...)

if you're interested in bow instructions, email me, and i'll see if i can remember ribbon measurements and what not for you.

little turkeys

tutorial here. 

curlz

summer and afton bounded down the stairs this morning and wanted curlers in their hair.

is there anything cuter than two little girls in curls?

marry me

on thanksgiving day eight years ago, bryan wheeler finished what i had started two years before and became the last man standing in my looooong (ha!) line of suitors. 

grateful everyday to be with someone who is as perfect for me as he is (left-handedness and all).

bryan and emily (young and dorky in every way), thanksgiving 2003.

i can't believe we made butter

for family home evening last night, we had our annual (i-can-call-anything-a-party) harvest party.

first, the girls made butter. they actually did a great job and enjoyed the shaking a lot (which they did while running around and dancing to various primary songs).  here's a tip for the young ones: we "started" the butter a little bit with a hand mixer to more correctly align the butter-making process with the girls' attention spans.

then we played a game called color me grateful. we went through six or so colors and had the girls name something of that color that they are grateful for (not surprisingly, most of their answers ended up being different kinds of fruit). then they colored in a sheet of various objects, trying to use the correct colors.

afterwards we went turkey hunting -- an easy activity that kids really dig. we had the girls leave the living room while we hid little turkey cards all around. then they came back in and raced around trying to find the most turkeys. summer had an obvious advantage and beat afton easily; however, she could not surpass little afton in sheer excitement every time a turkey was found.

finally, daddy baked us up some delicious scones that we smothered in the homemade butter, wild blueberry jam, and honey.

happy thanksgiving!

chocobabe

"Mfd. by The Hershey Company"

don't be surprised if wheeler threeler is born into this world with that inscription on his or her little tiny baby bum.

i'm not going to come clean about how many hershey bars i have eaten (so far) this pregnancy. but i am going to say, it's at least one a day, and thank heavens for costco.

lazy dayz

in case someone was wondering how long the 

wheeler girls stayed in their pajamas today,

it was until 12:07 pm.

on the edge

one of the most enlightening aspects of parenting a preschooler is all the questions you get to answer that make you feel like a total idiot.

i'm not talking about "why is the sky blue?" or "where do babies come from?" or "how long is forever?"

it's stuff that's much more complicated than that.

the other day, we were in the car, driving along, and listening to the radio.  lady gaga's "edge of glory" came on, and the girls and i jammed to its happy, upbeat tune. then, seemingly out of nowhere, summer inquires, "why is she in danger?"

blink. blink.

"uh, honey, she's not in real danger, it's just a song."

whew. narrow escape.

"but why does she say 'dangerous'?"

blink. blink. 

uh...uh...think back, think back, the song says, "it's hard to feel the rush/to push the dangerous/i'm gonna run right to, to the edge with you/where we can both fall over in love." it's nonsense.  nonsense, i tell you!

dangerous...dangerous...why does she say 'dangerous'? come on emily, answer the question. where's that college scholarship, that only person to get the bonus question on the calculus test right, that published research on positioning theory, that magna cum laude?  where are they to save me now?!

okay, it's lady gaga. she's probably at a bar. she sees a dude she likes. she wants to run around and be dangerous with him. she decides to write a power ballad about it...

just say something!!

"um, because it's dangerous to go home with people you don't know."


post script:  see update here.

we got that super bass

(http://youtu.be/daz9NPgnNV0)

no guts, no glory

we didn't mean to make this a tradition or anything, but it looks like the cool kids are still carving their pumpkins halfway through november.

wrapping up

the last of the birthday posts:  summer whacks (and whacks...and whacks....and whacks) her birthday pinata.

(http://youtu.be/auNh4UsjhGo)

thank you, summer girl, for filling the past four years of our 

lives with so much more joy than we ever could hope for.

mwah!

where a kid can be a kid

not too much to report on the chuck e. cheese front.  it's pretty much like we all remember it, only more crowded. and bryan and i have since learned that chuck e. cheese's is the site of more adult brawls than biker bars -- with some locations even sporting armed guards. who knew?

anyhoo, our time there wasn't that dramatic, but it wasn't without its drama.

summer and afton climbed up into those tubes that kids love which wound around the ceiling. this one had only one entry point and one exit point and quite a bit of tubing in between. a little less than half way into her journey, afton decided that she had had enough and began screaming to be rescued (the screaming being amplified, of course, by all the tubes). so momma did what mommas have to do and shimmied up and crawled around to rescue her frightened cub. that was pretty much all the exercise i'm getting in this month.

summer really loved all that chuck e. cheese's had to offer (like we knew she would);  afton, who pretty much hates machines, was afraid of not only the tubes, but all the games and rides and only loved collecting tickets.

so it's a good thing that mom and dad turned out to be pretty darn good at several of the chuckster's trickster games (who needs college?), won our fair share of tickets, and now our girls are the proud new owners of two rainbow slinkys (that i have since spent more than a few minutes every day untangling) and two sets of green dracula teeth. go team wheeler!

i feel pretty

summer and afton were so great getting their nails done. you never saw such little girls sit so still. summer chose a sparkly deep burgundy (a color about thirty years too old for her), and afton chose a sparkly green/gold (a color that's just, well, odd). they were singular and fastidious in their choices, though. and their nails -- like the girls -- are beautiful.

ps - yeah, i got a pedicure, too (who do you think is running this show?) i chose barbie pink, a color about ten years too young for me, but it still looks smokin'.

extravaganza

so before we get into summer's various birthday posts, i'm going to go ahead and be out with it: there was no "party."

*gasp*

i know.

summer and i had visions and dreams and schemes of a fantastic little mermaid party for her and her girl friends. including the best party favors ever -- designed, hand-crafted, and sewn by yours truly.

but those dreams went down the toilet (along with a lot of other things...), and i was beginning to worry that poor summer would be a victim of the dreaded pregnancy-induced birthday shaft (i.e., as far as the official family records show, bryan never turned twenty-seven. ask him about it. you'll see there's still a dark cloud over his head).

but it turns out there is no need to feel sorry for our little princess. we ended up maybe overcompensating and jam-packing the weekend with an extended (three day!) celebration of all things summer.

first off, her grandparents were in town to celebrate with us. they took her to the disney store, and she got to shop to her heart's content.  ice cream sundaes for dessert.  then on saturday, she received the royal mani/pedi treatment from our favorite local nail salon (complete with painted nail art), her first-ever trip to the famed birthday hot spot, chuck e. cheese's, and more ice cream for dessert. to continue the revelry on sunday (her actual day of birth), she flounced around in her brand new birthday dress, told everyone at church she was the birthday girl, was sung to in primary, came home to a delicious roast beef birthday dinner (yes, her choice), busted open a cupcake pinata filled with ten pounds of play doh and play doh accessories, opened more delightful birthday gifts, and topped it all off with candles, singing, dancing, and homemade bubble gum ice cream.

whew.

i really think that's as much as one newly-minted four-year-old girl can handle.

birthday shaft averted.

ps - the photo is of the white chocolate and sprinkles covered birthday treat summer brought to pre-school to kick-start the festivities.

floaty, friendly, feminine, and four

happy birthday, summer girl!

picking pumpkins

peter piper

picked a peck

of pickled

pumpkins.

lil pumpkin

okay, so i'm already totally backlogging on my blog updates. i'm about five in the hole right now and life just keeps on going.  so bear with the timeline for a little while as i might sprinkle in current events with happenings from last week with stuff from two or three months ago and so on and so forth until the end of time.

anyway, we did manage to squeeze in an outing last week to head to a local pumpkin patch and pick out our very own (as yet uncarved) perfect pumpkin.  more pics to come on that soon.  in the interim, here's one we snapped of our newest lil pumpkin:

the cat in the hat

now, you didn't think i'd send the girls out without a chaperon, did you?

We looked! Then we saw him step in on the mat! 

We looked! And we saw him! The Cat in the Hat!

 I will pick up the hook. You will see something new. Two things. 

And I call them Thing One and Thing Two.

 And they ran to us fast. They said, "How do you do? 

Would you like to shake hands With Thing One and Thing Two?"

 "Put me down!" said the fish. "This is no fun at all! 

Put me down!" said the fish. "I do NOT wish to fall."

Look at me! Look at me! Look at me NOW! 

It is fun to have fun But you have to know how.

Happy Halloween from the Wheelers!

ps - because i got asked a lot while we were out, i did design and make all the costumes and accessories (the only thing i really wanted to get done but didn't was painting black stripes on the girls' tights). after being useless for so long, my brain and my two little hands were anxious to get back to work (uh, but note to bryan, they're not quite ready to cook dinner yet...)