Visit from Nana

Nana flew in Sunday night to spend a few days with us, then took Lauren back with her Thursday night to visit family in Las Vegas. Emma opted to fly down to Las Vegas with me tomorrow night. Unfortunately Landon has summer school, so he has to stay home.

While Nana was here last week, we went shopping, ate at the new Chinese restaurant in town, and had a good time together. Next week Nana, Lauren, Emma and I will be driving back up to Rexburg from Las Vegas and Nana will spend about 2 weeks with us.Lauren was so excited to go to Las Vegas! She counted down each hour until it was time to leave. She's been having a great time so far, and so have we. It's been really calm and peaceful at home, but I'll be happy when we're back together again. I hate having her so far away.

Emma's having the time of her life with both parents to herself. She and I went and got pedicures yesterday. We got matching flowers on our big toes. Notice the sores on my feet! I got some new shoes and they're really tearing up my feet, but they're kind of cute, so I'm hoping I can break them in.

The Erin Collection

Raise your hand if you're getting a little bored with the pictures! I don't care.
These are some pictures of me! Enjoy.
This is us at Kristen's wedding in May, 2004. We were both skinny at the same time for about 5 minutes. The sad thing is, I had gained about 30 pounds back from my thinnest and I felt super fat. How could I have been so dumb? I was hot.
This is me with Lauren at my heaviest, at Justin and Stacy's wedding in 2001.

This is me with the girls in Seattle. I had driven up from Utah to visit my family in Vancouver without Landon. We drove up to Seattle to visit some friends from Duvall. It was a fun trip.
This is us at Mirror Lake, a favorite destination when we lived in Utah.
This is a picture of my sister Kristen and my brother John at the MTC the day he left on his mission. There's always tons of Saturday Night Live/Jim Carrey impressions, irreverence and loud laughter when I'm around these two. Landon, Kristen and I took him and dropped him off. It was fun and I like my hair.

This is where it gets fun. Check out this picture of the 6 Kimball siblings. I'm guessing this was around 1987 or 1988? I think I was 16. I love Heidi's glasses, and I love how John is holding onto Shannon's finger. I also realize that when I look at my siblings today, I still see them looking just like this. The next two could have gone in the "Old People" group of photos. The first one is Heidi and me, and the last one is me around age 18 months or so. Sounds crazy, but I actually remember going to the photo studio with my mom and having the picture with Heidi taken. I remember sitting in a shopping cart, wearing those white tights and that lavender dress. I must have been about 3.

The Emma Collection

I have tons of recent photos of Emma that I think are beautiful, but I can't figure out how to make them black and white unless I scan them. I'll work on it, but in the mean time, here are some fun photos of my number 1 kid.
Everyone who knows Emma knows that she's been introspective and quiet since she was born. This is Emma seriously contemplating her toes while waiting for me to get out of the shower.

I have great memories of spending all day with Emma when we lived in Vancouver in our first house. To help make ends meet, we only had one car, so Emma and I stayed home and played all day. We would go for a walk everyday, play in the yard, do housework together, and just hang out. Emma would stick her head through the cat door that led to the garage to watch for Daddy to get home. He'd arrive to Emma's happy little face stuck through the door.

This is Emma at age 2, just a month before Lauren was born. We lived in Duvall, Washington. She and I used to walk down to the park to play (still just 1 car!), or down to the grocery store, or down to the community center for indoor playground day. She and I took a long nap every day right after our daily ritual of reading 5 books. She'd run and grab 5 books (she has always preferred books to anything else in the world), we'd lay on either the couch or my bed and sleep together for about an hour, then I'd get up and she'd keep sleeping another 2 hours. 3 hour naps every day until she went to Kindergarten! She kept taking naps after Kindergarten started, but not every single day. Why did we stop having kids?? It doesn't sound so hard now!

This is Emma and me at an Activity Days hike 2 years ago. She says it's her favorite picture of the two of us.

Father's Day

We did our best to make it a nice day for Landon today. Emma spent a lot of time this week making him a picture frame out of popsicle sticks. She painted it, decorated it and selected a cute picture of Emma and dad to put in the frame. Lauren gave him an eraser buddy she felt she could part with, and we also gave him an Arby's giftcard (his favorite fast food), a sunglasses string-thing to keep them around his neck, and a big bottle of Chulula. We made him bacon and eggs for breakfast, and steak, roasted potatoes, carrots, and fresh green beans (with bacon) and ciabatta bread for dinner with vanilla ice cream and fresh strawberries for dessert. He said he felt appropriately adored.Here is the "Father's Day" collection of black and white photos for your viewing pleasure:
Landon, Justin and Pa in their scout uniforms circa 1996:

Mountain Men, sometime before Landon's mission.Landon and Lauren, hunting trip, fall 2004
Grandpa Kimball and the girls, 2001Pa and Emma at Justin and Stacy's wedding in 2001
Daddy and Emma, 1999Daddy and Lauren, 2003

Saturday Adventure

Yesterday we went on a drive up to Moody Meadows, which is in the hills above Rexburg out past the dry farms. We brought the dutch oven and Landon had prepared sausage, peppers, onions and potatoes to fry up for dinner over a campfire. We found a good spot after about 30 minutes on muddy, dirt roads. The girls had a place to play in the water, we had a good fire going, and were getting ready to cook when we heard thunder and saw lightening. We got in the truck and waited about 20 minutes for the rain to stop, but it rained for about 45 minutes. Our fire burned out, and we packed everything up and went to Big Jud's. Landon was the only one disappointed, because the girls and I weren't too excited about his menu anyway. Big Jud's was delightful.
The water was cold, but the girls loved it!Landon found a stick/tree to hang onto for balance, but they said it was a little too big.

I found this picture online. These are what Big Jud burgers look like, if you've never had the pleasure. Landon, Emma and I split one and are completely stuffed. Lauren always goes with the mini-corndog kids' meal. The fries are homemade, greasy and delicious, as are the onion rings.

Summer Fun

I'm cautiously optimistic that summer is here, despite the fact that we had a freeze warning Thursday night and we're pretty sure our tomato plants died. It's been kind of sunny and Lauren played in the water all day yesterday, so I'm going to say it's finally summer.

The good part (and bad part) of living in the Meadows is that all the kids go outside and play together, so our back yard is basically a public playground. I wanted to buy some new Popsicles, but we had some old, freezer-burned Popsicles in the freezer that I needed to get rid of first, so I just started handing them out to the kids. I shared about 30 Popsicles with the kids in the neighborhood...they were happy, and I got to buy some fresh Popsicles.

Here are the kids playing Mother May I and slip n' slide.

The girls have really gotten into doing the Wii Fit lately. Emma is getting really good at step aerobics. She made it look so fun that Lauren put a couch pillow on the floor and did it along with her. When Lauren tries to do the yoga poses, Emma "helps" her bend and stretch without falling down.We took a trip to Idaho Falls this week and stopped at Winco. We each got to choose 4 different bulk food treats to eat only when we play games together. We put a bunch of treats in our Tupperware divided dish, but we have tons leftover in the pantry for future gaming. We all seem to want to play a lot of games now. Last weekend was the ward Give N' Take, which is like a free garage sale for the people in our ward. The girls both got several good items of clothing and as you can see, Landon found a lady tool belt that some teachers use in their classrooms, and a table that he cleaned up and put next to his bed. (He's going to give the tool belt away.) He knows I only take pictures to post on the blog, but he still insisted in posing like a retard.We've been taking care of Landon's class gerbils. As most people know, I can't stand animals, but these little guys have been fun to watch. If they get startled, they start running like crazy on their wheel. It's like they're trying to run away, but they can't. When they go really fast, they flip all the way around on the wheel. They happen to love corn, so after we cut the corn off the cob so Emma can eat corn with her braces, we give the cob to the gerbils.

More Photos

I'll call this group of photos, "Old People." Mom and Nana, please feel free to make corrections on my comments.

This is my mom, April 1969: Once when I was skinny, I tried on her wedding dress. The shoulders are so narrow, that even if I was a size 2, I couldn't wear this dress.

This is my dad, but I don't know how old he was. I'm guessing 3 or 4, so it would have been in the late 1940s?This is my Grandma Kimball. We went to visit Grandma and Grandpa when Emma was 5 weeks old. I found Grandma in her bedroom rocking Emma and singing to her. Grandma is still living and will be turning 96 this year (I think).This is a favorite picture of my Grandpa Robertson (Mom's dad). He died in 2004, but we still think about him every day. Love him!!This is Nanny and Grandpa on my wedding day in the Portland temple, February 1995.This is Landon's Grandma and Grandpa LeFevre, who died in the mid 70s, not long after Landon was born. They died within months of each other, I think. I was happy to find this picture. Landon's grandma's name was Josephine, which is a name he's always loved.
This is a picture of Landon's dad (Pa) with his 3 older sisters, Ramona, LaDawna (Dawna), and VaLynn (Lynn). Dawna is the only one still living, and we love to visit her when we're down in Las Vegas. We were able to do Lynn's temple work at Christmas time and maybe some day soon we can do Ramona's.

I think most of these will end up on the wall. I would love to get some more photos of old people...if anyone has any that I can scan, let me know. (I'll give them back!)

Lauren Photos

We spent a few hours on Sunday going through hundreds of older photos, picked some good ones, and scanned them into the computer in black and white. I'm planning to choose a few, buy or make some black frames, then hang them on the wall in some kind of arrangement. We have ZERO family pictures on any wall in our house, so I thought I'd better get on it. I thought everyone who reads my blog may enjoy seeing some of the pictures we chose. I'll post them little by little so you don't get overwhelmed. I would LOVE input on your favorite pictures and which ones you think I should put on the wall. My problem is going to be narrowing down the selection. Today will be the "Lauren Collection." We have SO MANY pictures of Lauren crying or looking mad. I'm expecting to hear all about it one day after she goes through therapy.Christmas, 2003. I made the girls these matching flannel jumpers that had Dragon Tales characters all over them (they chose the fabric). They had received a dress-up box from Aunt Lorina/Christina, Lauren was wearing the necklaces and hat. She was 3 months away from 3 years old.How could you not love this kid?! Landon said over and over in the first few minutes after Lauren was born, "She's so beautiful! Look how beautiful she is!"

I Hate Blogger!

As you can see, my blog design has changed. I'm not computer savvy enough to get it back to the way I want it. Hopefully I'll figure it out soon. For now, enjoy these funny pictures of Lauren: