Our trip to Fairbury

Today we traveled to Fairbury, Nebraska which is about an hour from Lincoln for a little family reunion with my Great Grandma Grace's side of the family. Before today I hadn't met anyone really from that side of the family and I had no idea that my Grandpa and his family were all from around here. My Grandpa Schmitt and his new wife Janice traveled down from Cody, Wyoming, as well as my Aunt Joan (my grandpa's sister) and her daughter Debbie. It was so fun to be able to see them and to meet Janice for the first time - Janice welcome to the family!! No one had met Emery yet either so that was fun for her to meet her great-grandpa!! Emery Grace was named after both my great grandmas who were both named Grace. I never had the chance to meet my great-grandma Grace from my dad's side of the family, but I have tons of very special memories from my Great-Grandma Grace on my mom's side so I was so happy and feel very blessed to be able to have met some of my distant relatives on her side.
They had a little pot-luck lunch and we just sat and visited with my Grandpa and Janice for most of our visit. I was so happy that my grandpa invited us to go and we are planning on going back as long as we are in Lincoln :) Here are a few pictures of our day


Janice and Emery




Debbie and Emery



Grandpa Schmitt (back row far right) and Aunt Joan (front row red shirt) and all the 1st cousins that were at the luncheon



Grandpa Schmitt and Janice with our little family




Our happy little family

 We are hoping to make a trip up to Wyoming next summer to visit everyone - I can't wait I really hope we can make it work with school and work stuff!! I feel so blessed to have wonderful family and friends. I'm grateful for good family and examples from both my side and Guy's side to look up to and I hope that someday I can teach Emery to appreciate how important family really is.

We said "I love you" at the Zoo

 Yesterday marked our 2 year wedding anniversary one of the very best days of my life. I have the best husband ever! He is working so hard in school but still managed to help plan a fun weekend getaway for us to Omaha to celebrate our 2 years.

So after we reminisced about our dating, engagement, and the last two years of wonderful marriage we decided that the best way to celebrate was to go to the zoo. Also, there are only so many places we could go that would entertain this little beauty for a whole day :)

So after Guy got out of class on Friday we headed up to Omaha which is about 45 minutes from Lincoln and went to our hotel. We rested a little and then went out to eat at "The Cheesecake Factory" - I love the food there but we had a horrible experience with the service so I won't vent my whole story on here, but needless to say we ended up getting our food boxed up basically as soon as we got it and just ate it at the hotel. We walked around the mall for a while that night and then just hung out at the hotel and watched some football and Parks & Rec :) still our favorite show.
I had planned on getting Guy a surround sound system for our living room that he had been talking about for weeks, I thought it was the perfect plan because he never buys stuff like that on his own so I thought it would be a great surprise. Well....what does my husband do? He decides to go against everything he always does and buys it 2 weeks ago! Ugh...there goes my idea! So anyways, I decided to do something a little more sentimental and I made him a little candy jar to put in his locker at school with "50 Riesens why I love you" here are a few pictures of my little project.

Anyways, it was fun to write down reasons why I love my husband so much and it gives him a little treat to remember us while he is at school :)

Saturday morning we slept in (kinda) and then went to a early lunch at Paradise Bakery..yum!! After that we headed to the Omaha Zoo. We had so much fun!! It exceeded our expectations and we had alot of fun seeing all the animals and the different exhibits that they had to offer. It was really cool how they had it set up with an inside jungle area, indoor desert, cat complex, safari, gorilla/monkey/lemur island exhibits, Madagascar land, aquarium, butterfly pavilion...I mean they really had everything! We were there for almost 5 hours and we still didn't get to see everything...we will definitely go visit again. Emery wasn't super impressed with most of it, but she LOVED the aquarium because the water was so bright and the fish were moving around constantly. We spent quite a while in there and in the shark tunnel and she just took it all in. Guys favorite was the tiger and I think I loved the polar bear the best - and we both agreed that the jungle area was great. It was super humid and we both felt like we were back in Brazil again! :) I will try not to bombard you with pictures because I took a ton! But here are a few of our weekend at the zoo - we had a great time and it was fun to celebrate our anniversary together with our sweet Emery.

We had a great time and I'm sure we will go back soon - Emery will love it when she gets a little older. On our actual anniversary which was yesterday Guy had school so we didn't get to see him much during the day or late evening but we did get a chance to go to dinner. We even had a friend from our ward offer to take Emery so we could have a baby-free dinner!! Thanks Mickelle! Overall it was a wonderful weekend and I'm looking forward to many more anniversaries together!!

5 months

On Sunday our little angel hit her 5 month mark! Wow does time fly or what?!? She continues to grow and is such a healthy, happy baby. Speaking of growing, we took Emery to the doctor last week because we thought she might have an ear infection, turns out she didn't thank goodness, but....they did weigh her and she was 17 lbs 14 ounces - it had only been 3 weeks since her 4 month check up where she weighed 16 lbs 6 ounces. 1 1/2 pounds in 3 weeks? WHAT in the world is this girl eating?!?! I swear somehow she has figured out a way to sneak cookies while I'm asleep. We haven't started her on any solids or cereals at all so it just cracks me up every time I think about it. And in my defense I swear I am not over-feeding the poor thing...she has been spreading out her daytime feedings to every 4-5 hours and only gets up once at night to eat between when we put her down at 8pm and wake her up at 9am. CRAAAAAZY!!! She is getting taller too - I haven't been able to put her in a lot of her full 6 month outfits because many of them are long sleeved and has been so warm here we haven't needed them. Today is was a little cooler so I put her in an outfit and the 6 month pants looked like capri pants on the poor thing...she is a growing girl what can I say!?!

Updates

• Emery continues to love play time with Daddy and has proven to out last him lately instead of the other way around. She has SOOOO much energy.
• She is still on her nighttime schedule and is in bed asleep by 8pm every night. Usually she wakes up one time around 3 or 4am to eat and then I have to wake her up at 9am for the day or she would sleep in all morning. She has given us a few nights where she sleeps completely through the night...so nice..although I need to train myself to sleep too because I kept getting up to check on her.
• She has started rolling from tummy to back again (she refused to do it for a while even though she knew how) and now she has discovered that if she continues to roll she can get wherever she wants to go pretty quickly. (I put a video on facebook if you haven't seen it.)
• She laughs quite a bit now, but usually only for Daddy.
• She has started this spitting thing, gross, but I think it is kind of my fault. I'll post a video of her doing it, but I would make the motorboat sound (best thing I could think of to describe it) and she has started imitating it recently. It is kinda funny, but she drools so much that she spits every time she does it.
• She is scooting around a little more, although the rolling thing has proven to be quicker so her scooting forward has slowed down the past few days.
• She has started sitting up on her own, she is still a little wobbly at times but does pretty well.

Emery playing with the mixing bowls. What can I say...desperate times call for desperate measures. Emery started getting bored with her regular toys so we played with Tupperware, mixing bowls, and spoons. She loved it :) Guy had me put it on her head so he could snap a picture...I promise she was having more fun than it looks like.

Emery is such a happy baby and is constantly smiling and making faces. I wish I could catch it on camera but she can lift just one eyebrow and gets the funniest look on her face..it hilarious. This one is just cute :) You can kind of see her hair in this one...she looks bald in a lot of her pictures, but she really does have hair its coming in pretty thick actually, but is just really light that you can hardly see it in pictures.

She wakes up happy every single day. I always get smiles like this one when she wakes up in the morning or from a nap.

A few videos :) One of her new noise making trick and the other a little giggle I caught on camera while she was playing with Guy tonight. It is so hard to record her sometimes because the second I turn on the camera she stops laughing little stinker! We love you Emery!



Daddy's girl

 Guy came home for lunch today between classes and this is what Emery did while he was home....

She can never get enough of time with her Dad. I just thought it was so cute how she literally sat and stared at him for like 15 minutes straight. I think we might have a bit of a Daddy's girl on our hands :)

These days....

Well I figured I would do a little update about what we are up to these days...
Guy is busy with school and working hard studying, reading, reading, and reading. He does a lot of that. He comes home for dinner every night and we have been trying to go on walks with Emery in the evenings when it's not too hot outside.
I've been keeping busy around the apartment with Emery, little craft projects, running errands, and I just got a calling at church which will fun to keep me busy during the week as well. We haven't had a baby free date night since we were with family, but we try to have a "date" once a week and order in take-out, or go out to eat and watch a movie. We are kind of addicted to the t.v. show "Parks & Recreation" which we are currently watching the seasons for the 2nd time....(don't judge) and we are getting into The Mentalist which we look forward to our Netflix discs during the week.
As for our sweet little Emery Grace she is growing like a weed! At 4 1/2 months she is now in size 3 diapers and 6 month (and some 9 month) clothing. She is starting to scoot around and likes to chit chat (and scream) all day long.
Guy and I have been working hard on getting Emery on a schedule and I have to say we have done a pretty good job (as I pat myself on the back). I really wanted to have her on a good napping/sleep routine so that if Guy wanted to he could study at home in the evenings instead of having to go back to the library. Sooooo.....we set an evening routine and we are sticking to it! So around 7:15 we have bath time which Emery LOVES bath time. I thought I'd share a video of her bath tonight because she was going crazy!!

Try shampooing and washing all those cute little rolls while she is wiggling around like that! It takes true talent I tell ya!
After bath time we lotion her up, she has a little eczema so we do this twice a day, get her jammies on and then it is play time with Daddy. She LOVES playtime with Daddy more than anything. I get to play with her all day while Guy is at school so playtime with Daddy is a treat for both of us. :)  I got a video of her tonight, but I caught her at the end of her playtime so she is basically worn out! We call playtime her exercises and it cracks me up every time because she loves it. Playtime with Daddy wears her out (which is great) and as you can see in this next video she just rolls over at the end cause she is done! haha

After playtime its off to read stories. This is still a little bit of a chore, we get through about one or sometimes half a story a night, but it is all about repetition right? I want her to love books so I'm sticking with it and I know it will eventually pay off. After stories she is ready to eat and go to bed. Once we set the routine and got her used to it we have hardly had a night where she isn't in bed by 8:15pm. It...is...wonderful!
She usually sleeps about 4-5 hour blocks, although last night she gave me 7 hours so things are looking up!
Anyways that is what we have been up to these days....Enjoy!