Ice Skating

Russell's work had an after-Christmas Christmas party at the new ice skating ring in St. George. So of course we went and had a good time.

Despite the cold, we had a lot of fun.

Russell grew up on the ice in Logan so he was a pro at skating.

I have only been skating once or twice in my life but I was able to pick it up pretty easily. I didn't even fall down!

Even Emily wanted to skate. She loved walking on the ice thinking she was big. She would get so mad when we tried to carry her while skating. Then the workers got mad at us and said we couldn't have Emily on the ice because of liability. We couldn't even carry her so we took turns skating alone. After about an hour and a half, our toes and fingers were frozen so we decided to go home and get warm.

Ice skating is a lot of fun, we are going back soon!

I Know That My Savior Loves Me.

I have been the Primary Music Leader in our ward for almost a year now. Before I was called to this position, I thought this calling was to worst calling in the church and, I will admit, when the bishopric counselor called me to it, I really considered saying no. For the first few months, I really struggled with the responsibility of teach the primary songs to the kids because I am not a singer and I have a hard time with being in front of people. Over the year, however, I have come to love the primary children in our ward and I really enjoy this calling now. I have always loved Primary songs but now that I have to teach them, I have developed a testimony of the power of music and realized the powerful messages these little songs have in them. I still struggle with this calling but I am trying my best to convey to the children the important messages in these songs (as well as throwing in a few games here and there!).

As I was preparing to teach the new song for 2010 theme, I came across the above slide show and had to post it to our blog so I could share it with others. The song "I Know that my Savior Loves Me" has an important message that everyone needs to hear not just primary children. Our Savior loves us and He wants us to know that and follow Him. Even though we cannot touch Him physically, He is real! I know this is true! Please watch this slide show and listen to the simple, yet powerful message. You can also go to the website to see it without captions. http://larry4you.com/carolyn/

It's Christmas Time!

We wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! It's Christmas time and of course we got everything we wanted!

Emily with all of her loot. She loves her new rocking horse and I had to get her the pink boots to go along with it. The first thing she ran to was her new baby and baby stroller. I don't think she really understands Christmas yet but she did like all of the new toys she got to play with. I think her favorite gift was the banana in her stocking! She pulled it out and said "NANA!" then tried to eat it before it was even peeled!

Russell got what he wanted too. A Smith & Wesson 38 Special Air Weight revolver. Yeah I know he's spoiled. Now that he has his concealed weapon permit he needed a weapon to conceal.

I got what I wanted too. The songbook of Favorite Songs for Children. It is a book of primary songs with pictures and stories to go along with each song. I'm so excited to read it.

We also got a lot of Emergency Preparedness stuff. We finally put together our 72-hour kits and got a big water jug. Now we just need to put water in it.

Emily loved opening presents. She would rip them open, look at what was inside, say "Ooh!" and then put it down and go find another gift to unwrap. She was so fun to watch.

I don't know why but she had to be sitting on my lap or Russell's to open a present.

To Dad; From Emily. A Little People Firefighter Paramedic.

To Mom; From Emily...

After opening our presents, we went over to Russell's parents' and opened more presents and got to talk to Russell's sister, Traci. Traci is on a mission in El Salvador right now so it was fun to talk to her on the phone.

We went to my parents' house for Christmas dinner and had a good time with them as well. We had a great holiday and we are glad we live close enough to both families to spend time with both of them. I am grateful for this time of year and the opportunity we get to celebrate our Savior's humble birth.

Christmas Festivities...

Christmas time is always full of fun activities and parties. Every year on the Saturday before Christmas, my family gets together for the Morwood Christmas Party. All of my dad's brothers and sisters and their families come from all over Utah and some in Nevada to enjoy Christmas together. At the party we all eat soup, talk, and get a visit from Santa! This year my immediate family was in charge of the entertainment. I am so mad at myself because I forgot to bring my camera. Luckily my mom and dad had theirs and Russell was able get a video of the cute entertainers. First, all of my nieces and nephews got up and danced and sang to "The Reindeer Rap." They all had reindeer antlers on and were so cute. Emily even joined them in the number. I was really surprised because she stayed up on the stage the whole time and danced and clapped right along with all of her cousins. I thought she would have ran back down to me. She knew she was as big as all of the cousins and she had a good time dancing. If I can, I will most the video later because it is so good. Then my nephews, Justin and Jared, and I played some Christmas songs on our bells and my niece, Cassie, played with us on her flute. They did really well considering at the practice the night before they did not really know the songs at all. Then it was time for Santa! Emily did not do as well with Santa this time. She started screaming the moment she was put on his lap. But she did like getting a present though.

Emily in her new jammies playing with her new magna-doodle from Santa. She loves playing with her magna-doodle and it is a great church toy!

Then on Christmas Eve, we went over to Russell's parents had a lot of fun getting ready for Christmas dinner. Russell's sister, Jennifer, and family was down visiting from Laramie, WY. When we arrived, Jen and I started baking up a bunch of holiday goodies. We made chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin cookies, and a pumpkin roll. Thanks to my Bosch mixer, making all these things was a lot faster and easier than hand mixing. We also made sugar cookie dough but we put the dough in the fridge to cool and kind of forgot about it (oops!). Needless to say everything we made was very delicious!!!!

Here we are slaving away in the kitchen!

Here are the three Farnsworth cousins: Emily, Alex, and Paul in their new Christmas jammies from Grandma. Emily likes playing with cousins but does not like to share toys with them. Any time Alex (who is two weeks older than her) would pick up a toy, Emily take it from him and say. "MINE!" She is usually pretty good at sharing but I think she was use to being the only kid around Grandma and Grandpa Farnsworth so she thought all of their toys were hers.

Here she is being silly and showing off. Saying "Eww niney" (Eww stinky) and plugging her nose.

This picture doesn't really have anything to do with Christmas but I had to put it in because every kid has a picture like this... and now Emily does too!

Meeting Santa

We took Emily to see Santa for the first time on Wednesday. Santa was really good with the kids and took his time with each of them. Emily saw the candy canes he was giving out and that is all she wanted. She didn't really care to sit on Santa's lap she just wanted the treat. When it was finally her turn, I put Emily on Santa's lap and Russell got ready to take a picture. She didn't cry, which was great, but she didn't really do anything. She just kind of sat there with this confused look on her face trying to figure out who this guy was that was holding her. Santa was happy to hold her though.

"Ho, Ho, Ho!"

It is fun getting ready for Christmas. Emily and I were watching "Polar Express" on TV the other night and at the end one of the characters says "Merry Christmas!" and then, out of the blue, Emily said "Merry Christmas!" (Well in baby talk, but that is what she said) Since then, every time we say Merry Christmas, she does too.

This is Emily's first candy cane. As you can tell, she loved it! In fact, she was so mad when I took it away to move the plastic wrap down so she could eat more of it. She snatched it from me when I gave it back to her.

This is Emily's new Christmas dress that my mom and I made. I put two jingle bells on the dress for buttons. Emily did not like this dress at all because while we were making it, we kept putting it on and taking it off of her and I think a pin poked her in the process. When I put it on her for church, so kept fighting me and tried to take it off. In the struggle she heard the bells jingle and she stopped fighting. Then I jingled the bells again and the dreaded dress turned into the funnest dress ever. The bells would jingle while she was walking and they kept her busy during church too.

I am excited for Christmas this year. It will be so fun to watch Emily open all of her presents.

Mommy and Daddy's Big Helper

Emily is getting so big and this age is so fun because she tries to do everything we do. She is so observant and she remembers everything. We are teaching her a few things in sign language like treat, more, drink, eat, please, and thank you. She has picked the sign language up really well, especially treat! When we don't know what she wants, she will point to it and say "uhh uhh!" I think her favorite word right now might be "no." She says no whenever we ask her a question. If the answer is yes she will say "No." while tilting her head to the side. Then if the answer in no she says "Noooooo!!!!" while being mad.

Emily also loves helping her mom and dad. Even though sometimes we don't want her to especially when I am folding laundry and she is unfolding (helping) faster than I can fold. Here are a few pictures of her being very helpful:

Emily is helping by mopping the floor with a wash rag she saw hanging over the edge of the counter. She reached up and got the wash rag down all by herself.

And we can't forget the dishes! Every time I open the dishwasher, whether to load or unload, she has to help with the silverware. The only bad thing about that is she likes the knives the best.

Here she is helping put the laundry bins back in our rooms.

Russell's parents found this wooden toy chest at a garage sale so Russell is refinishing it for Emily's Christmas present. Emily was watching him paint the stain and varnish on the chest and she wanted to help so she grabbed a paint brush that was laying on the ground and started painting. Unfortunately, the brush had purple paint on it from when Russell painted her name on the chest so Russell had to re sand the places Emily "helped" with. He wasn't very happy at first but then he laughed about it.

Emily loves brushing her 6 little teeth. Every time she sees her toothbrush she points to it and says "tees, tees" (teeth). I think she mostly likes eating the toothpaste but we figure it is a good habit to get into. She lets me brush her teeth but she would much rather do it herself because it makes her feel big.

And this is her new trick! She can pull herself up on the stair railing! Isn't she big!!! She will run to the railing, pull herself put then jump down and laugh then do it all over again. She thinks she is so funny.

My favorite thing Emily does now is she wrestles us. We tell her to put up her dukes and she puts arms up and makes fists with her hands. Then she walks over to us with her fists up and pushed us down and laughs so hard. It is the funnest game we play.

I love this age. Emily is so fun and I cannot imagine my life without her or Russell!

Snow Day in St. George!

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow! Yeah it snowed in St. George on Saturday. We had a fun time playing in the snow at our house. We had to go outside right after breakfast because we knew that all of the snow would be gone in the afternoon. Unfortunately there was less than an inch of snow so we didn't have enough to make a snowman but we did throw a few snow balls at each other. Emily liked playing in the snow too!

Like I said, we had to play in it in the morning, hence Russell in his pj's.

The ground was pretty slippery for Emily so she was constantly falling down. Then, because of all of the layers of clothes, she couldn't get up by herself.

She finally got the hang of walking in the snow.

Here we are making snow angels in the little bit of snow left. As usual in St. George, the snow melted by 2:00 pm that day so we were glad we got to play in it before it melted. Below is a video of Emily singing and walking in a winter wonderland.

Mommy, Wow, Emily's a Big Girl Now!

If any of you remember the Pull-Ups jingle from back in the day, you will know what this post is about. Yep, Emily did it, she went to the bathroom in the toilet for the first time today!!! We were so happy Emily and I danced and sang afterward. I can't believe how big Emily is getting. She is only 14 months old but I think I am going to try and potty train her because she knows when she needs to go and she knows when she goes. Well she only went in the toilet once today but I think that is a good start! I wanted to take of picture of it but Russell wouldn't let me. Now that I think about it, however, it probably would have been pretty gross so I'm glad I didn't. (Yeah I'm gross sorry guys). My baby is growing up...sniff...sniff. But she is so fun.

O Christmas Tree!

It is officially Christmas time!! The day after Thanksgiving, we started putting up our Christmas decorations. Here we are setting up our tree. I would have much rather gotten a real tree but the fake tree is a little more convenient and less messy, however I do miss the fresh pine smell.

The tree before the lights and ornament's.

Russell had too much fun decorating. He even decorated Emily in tinsel. She wasn't too sure about that.

Dad helping Emily hang up her own ornament.

Emily quickly picked up on the idea of hanging ornaments. After I put the hooks on the ornaments, she would take them from me and walk over to the tree and act like she was putting the ornaments on the tree and then hand them to Russell to have him actually hang them up. It was so cute to watch.

Our beautiful Christmas tree all decorated, and our beautiful family. Our tree looks kind of funny because we had to put all of our ornaments up high so that Emily couldn't reach them and take them off. She is funny, she knows that she isn't suppose to touch the tree so she will walk by it and say "NO NO NO!" and then touch it anyway. What a smart-alic. But what can I say, she is too cute. Merry Christmas everyone!