Closing out winter

Well, at least we hope winter's on its way out. Here's to hoping!  Here are some more pictures of what we've been up to lately, with a special section especially from Joseph.

We found out Emery's quite the artist and loves to play with this little magna doodle. It's pretty neat.

Here's Emery at Grandma Denney's birthday party. She was enjoying the company of a carrot that evening. At least it matched her dress, right?

Happy Birthday Diane! Julie had tons of fun making her angel food cake for the party. It sure was good!

We had cousin Cadence over for some V-day cookie fun. Unfortunately J's cookies all fell onto the oven door as we were putting them in. ( A little incident involving a nameless baby sister ;) He still got to make some, with other dough, so it all worked out. *click on the collage to see all the pics better*

This is for Grandma Eris. Thanks for the placemats! It's Joseph's job every  Wednesday to set the table. He really enjoys doing it!

The other day for "school" Joseph went on a picture scavenger hunt. We ended up walking around and he searched for 5 things to take a picture of. He ended up taking pictures of over 50 things (including the 5 required.) These are some of Julie's favorites.

His perspective is so different than an adults (mainly because he's shorter), so it's neat to see things through his eyes. A lot of his pictures were really close up,  but it adds a lot of dimension and emphasizes the texture of things. (Julie's recalling her photography class days...) Anyhow, he had a blast, and enjoyed the scavenger hunt.

As for the day to day goings, Aaron is still waiting around for a contract. We are very hopeful, as we know the principal likes him and wants to keep him on board, but until that comes around, we're cautiously hopeful. Julie and the kids are doing great. Emery is officially walking. It's not her only mode of transportation yet, but she practices more every day. Joseph is doing a daily "school" with Julie. They learn songs, scriptures, spanish, do crafts, plan meals, learn to write, and read. It's just a little bit everyday, but it helps to give Joseph some structured time so he's not spinning his wheels all day long. We're enjoying the sunshine, and waiting for the rest of the ice to melt and the mud to dry.

Oh yes, and Julie had her 26th birthday! Can't forget that. It was wonderful. Julie and Aaron enjoyed a nice dinner at Famous Dave's, and some ice cream and cake with family. And don't forget to look at the two new links listed at the top of the blog. They're Julie's projects. One has been going on for a while (and is about to be seriously updated) which is called Made With Love. It's filled with yummy and kid friendly recipes, with pictures for each one, and tested out by your favorite family, ours. The other is called A Real Day Job. It's a little personal project of Julie's all about the real life of parenting, it's joys and griefs, but still loving it all. So check them out!

Big Steps

So we've got some pictures leftover from Christmas break that weren't off the camera yet, as well as the latest and greatest. This is what we've been up to, and how we've been surviving the winter.

Joseph's absolute favorite thing to do is build caves.

Aaron had his 28th birthday. Happy Birthday! And no, we didn't make him blow out all the candles. Julie just thought it would be funny to stuff all 28 candles onto the tiny slice of carrot cake.

We took Joseph on his first real sledding trip. He had a blast! We ended finding a pretty good spot and spent a lot of time going up and down. Emery was a doll and sat bundled up in her stroller the whole time.

We made a point to prepare him for wiping out, worried it would make him sad or not like sledding. Thanks to our preparation, he loves wiping out! As long as it doesn't happen too fast. He now tells us when we go sledding, "It's okay to fall down."

We also had a great opportunity to drive down to Missoula and see Julie's Grandma Burnham. Travis and Heather flew her out to Missoula for a week and so we drove down the day she arrived to meet her at the airport. We had a really nice visit.

Emery starting standing while we were visiting with Grandma Burnham. She was so excited about what she was doing. It was really funny. Excuse my (Julie) loud voice during the video. She was right next to me and I was backed up to the couch, so I couldn't get good footage of her. But you can see how excited she was.

Just the other day Emery started taking steps. Right before the video she took one step, then Julie got her taking one small step in the video. After this, she took single steps a few more times, and once, took about 4 steps (although 3 were with the same foot, in a row.). We're still so proud of our little walking girl! We know it won't be long before she decides she wants to do this all the time too. We imagine she'll be prancing around by Julie's birthday.

2009-2010

Well, 2009 came to a glorious ending. We had a great month filled with family and friends, as well as a wonderful two week break for Aaron. It was great. Well, here's an abbreviated picture montage of our month and fun events. Enjoy!

Joseph finally got Julie to take him out in the snow. They made a few snowmen for him to knock down, had a few snowball fights and all in all had a great time. Emery even enjoyed herself in the stroller throughout the whole ordeal.

Church Christmas Party

Joseph's glamour shot

 

The Denneys had their traditional reading of the nativity story. This year Grandma Denney made the kids their own robes to play their parts in. Joseph loves his! Emery also got a blanket, so she could be swaddled. (since she played baby Jesus.)

 

 

  Julie even made Joseph a beard (he played Joseph), but he didn't like it too much.

  

This smile on Emery sums up her Christmas day. She was a bundle of happy that day. She finally figured out crawling by Christmas morning. Perfect timing for crawling all over everything. She thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Joseph was, if possible, even more ecstatic than she. Being the first Christmas that he could really anticipate what was going on, he was psyched!

Last, but certainly not least are the pictures from our home photo shoot.

Joseph

Emery

Joseph and Emery 2009

Hope you all had a Wonderful Christmas Season and are enjoying the refreshing new start of a brand new year.  ~The Denneys

Thanksgiving and more...

Talk about a busy month! We were extremely busy with Thanksgiving and things have not really slowed down at all since. In fact, they might have picked up speed! Nonetheless, we are having a ball and really looking forward to all of the festivities. Due to the business, this post will be a short picture log. Not much notable has happened this month outside of Thanksgiving. The kids are growing bigger and bigger. Joseph and Emery now share a room and do fantastic! They even nap together. It's working out awesome and we couldn't be happier. We're looking forward to a very busy month in December with tons of fun activities. We'll try to keep you all updated on it all!

Our big girl now sits up so well we figured she didn't need to be in her little baby tub. She had so much fun sitting in the tub. This was her first time. She had a ball.

In honor of Thanksgiving, for the second year now, we make this thankful chain. For a FHE (Family Home Evening - one night picked out to be a family night) we play the thankful game. (Julie created this last year.) We roll a ball between us and say things we're thankful for. We play this sometimes just to play it. (Last year Joseph loved this game and we played it often.) This time Julie wrote down all the thankful things on small pieces of paper and made a chain.

These are pictures of the kid's cloth book Julie has been working on for a while. (We've had a few requests to post these.) The next set of pages is almost finished. Once they are done, we'll post pictures of them too.

These two pictures were taken by Joseph. Julie was inspired by her nephew Cardon's picture taking skills (and parent's patience in letting him do it.) and started letting Joseph take pictures. He loves it! And every now and then he takes some pretty good stuff. He's now figured out how to hold it pretty straight and stand a reasonable distance from what he's taking a picture of.

Yes, Emery is started the crawling process. Although in this particular picture, Julie propped her up. She can now do it all on her own. She's also started pulling herself up on things too, as of today. (shown below)

Well, Thanksgiving was marvelous, and Julie did quite a bit of cooking. She'll be adding all of her recipes to her cooking blog. (Listed on the left under "Made with Love".) So for more details on how that all went, check there in a few days.

Here's a picture of the cutie pie on Thanksgiving at Jared and Anitas. Although her eyes are closed (classic), you can still see her adorable smile and super cute outfit!

Later that weekend we all went bowling as a family (all the Denneys). It was tons of fun. Even Emery got in on the action.

And to bring you all back to the present, here's the Christmas tree (wonderfully hidden by Joseph) which we put up earlier this week. Joseph really enjoyed helping to put the ornaments on, wanting to know what each and every single one was.

So there's the skinny. You're all up to date! Julie is wanting to (despite how busy she is. She's so crazy!) get out a small Christmas type newsletter. But she'll do it after the kid's pictures are taken (in about 2 weeks.) But don't worry, she's emailing it out like last time. It was way too convenient not to do it that way again. Until then, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

Trick Arrrr Treat (Read til the end!)

We're proud to say that we dressed up this year (parents included.) Although we did not dress up Emery. She's just so darn cute as she is. The whole family went to the trunk or treat at the Church dressed up as pirates! Halloween was a blast. We had a ton of fun. After the trunk or treat we headed over to Grandparent Denney's house. We had some fun spooky treats and laughs. Unfortunately now, Joseph is aware of what Halloween is, and it'll be another holiday he'll ask us about once a week for the next year. That, and we have enough candy to last us a really really long time!

Everyone say Arr

Head to toe pirate action, complete with homemade eye patches for the ultimate pirate look!

Halloweeny dip!

Dry ice in the punch bowl. So cool!

Candy corn pudding!

Awesome little treat bags made by Julie. Aaron dropped one in the parking lot about 3 times and nothing fell out! Quality craftsmanship! (Not really, but they didn't fall apart!)

A short while before Halloween we had an FHE of making spooky Haunted Houses. For more info on them, check out Julie's cooking blog. (It's in the right-hand menu of My Blog List. Click on Mediocre Eats.)

Made Aaron get Julie in a picture.

Julie made one for us and Joseph made one to give away to a friend.

Cute kiddos!

Joseph made a jack-o-lantern with Aaron. Joseph even got to draw the face and Aaron translated it into this. So Spooky!

Out for a walk. (Eventually Joseph ended up with Emery in his lap. It worked better.)

She enjoyed the wagon.

The was the climax of our walk. They were working and moving around too. It was pretty exciting.

So, the real news (as many of you already know) is that Aaron passed his COMPS and will be receiving his masters degree! He already applied for graduation and will be officially graduting in December, though we won't be doing any of the formalities. We are extremely excited that his student days are done. Now his teacher days have officially begun. Now if only Montana paid better for a masters degree! We're excited either way.  Anyhow, that's all our news and photos! Thanks for enduring the long post!