Decorating

After Thanksgiving, we put up our tree. Jacob has SOOOO many ornaments (yeah...I contributed zero to our collection when we got married. He, on the other hand, had several boxes) that I can do a color theme each year, and put up ornaments that match the color of choice. This year we did gold with burgundy and browns. It turned out beautifully, but it seems that I never took a picture of the finished product...we're in Wyoming for the holidays, so I can't take one now to show you. Oh well. Take my word for it: it's beautiful (if I do say so myself).



And of course, I had to share some pictures of my beautiful babies.

Olives

Miya loves to feed Emi (I should post another video of that), but Miya got a kick out of giving Emi something that was a little out of the ordinary to see her reaction...over and over again. Emi just kept going for it! Fun.

Thanksgiving olive tasting from Jacob Nishida on Vimeo.

10 months - working on walking

This video is from nearly a month ago, but I didn't get around to posting it....obviously. Emi is getting quite good at her push toys, and will even stand up and balance without holding on to anything (quite the contrast to Miya, who didn't even want to crawl until she was 11 months!). She's definitely a busy-body these days!

Push toy at 10 months from Jacob Nishida on Vimeo.

Thanksgiving

We spent our Thanksgiving with Jacob's family up in Green Bay. We had a wonderful time, ate lots of good food, and thoroughly enjoyed our little family vacation.



Miya made some turkeys out of apples, marshmallows, olives, and dried cranberries. Gobble, gobble!
And then grandma helped her make some homemade bird feeders out of pinecones, peanut butter, and birdseed. I had a good laugh when Miya would forget that the birsdeed wasn't edible, and she would lick her fingers to try and eat the peanut butter(this happened several times, and the surprised then disgusted look on her face got better each time)!

Happy

Today, Miya was just plain happy. Pigtails and all. Happy to be home. Happy to go to church. Happy to be outside.




Come to think of it, I took a picture last week, too, when everyone was happy to be riding around in boxes (don't let Emi fool you...she was loving it).

Gotta love Sundays.

What are YOU thankful for?

I saw this today, and in the spirit of the season, I remember that I have many, many things to be thankful for.

Eating toes

This cracked me up. Not only did Emi think this was great fun, but so did Miya. Yucky...but a cute yucky, right? Right. Get a load of those giggles! (Sorry it's so long...the good stuff's in the first 30 seconds, but I don't have the energy to edit it right now.)

Eating Toes from Jacob Nishida on Vimeo.

This happened last week, before Emi cut her first tooth (Sunday). I'm guessing it would have been a little less fun with the tooth...

Temple

We went up to Chicago on Friday night, then went to the temple on Saturday morning with the ward. It was nice. The weather was beautiful, and the girls were good. Love the temple.

Beautiful

The weather here has been beautiful! The girls love to be outside, and of course, Emi loves to eat everything she finds out there!





Before I gave it away, we took some quick pictures using the frame from our entry mirror (that met a tragic fate a while back...it had something to do with Miya and time out...). I wish I would have thought to do it earlier with some fall leaves shots...oh well.

Long

• 
  It was a long day. One of those days where you keep wishing it was tomorrow already, hour after hour. It's been worse, but it's also been better. This is what it was like:
  
  One minute everything is fine.
  

And the next, it's chaos.

The day was filled with:
- everyone waking up before 7am...never a good sign. I don't ask for much, just let me sleep until 7.

- repeatedly scooping small pebbbles out of Emi's mouth (compliments of Miya smuggling them into the house in her pockets after prescool day after day).

- making lots of phone calls to find a backup babysitter while I worked several hours (no, I didn't shower again today) - thanks Julianne, for coming to the rescue.

- scooping out more pebbles (hiding in the carpet...frieze is nice, but it hides those darn rocks!), then some pink play-doh. Nothing like slobbered on play-doh on new frieze carpet, right?

- working in a smoke-filled house, sitting on dirty carpet, then changing into clothes not smelling of smoke and covered with germs before hugging my babies.

- running Miya to preschool while Emi cried (she was tired, and doesn't like the carseat much these days).

- sneaking Emi into her crib (she finally fell asleep 2 minutes before arriving back home) only to have her wake up 40 minutes later (just enough time to get in a shower and do some paperwork, but not enough time to catch my breath). But I was clean!

- picking up Miya from preschool, then having her fall asleep in the car on the way to church because she didn't take a nap today.

- driving all the way back home (after arriving at the church) to get new supplies for my insulin pump that had somehow been pulled out of my body! Grrr...I hate it when that happens. High blood sugar does not mix well with an already bad day.

- got my blood glucose down a couple hundred points, then drove back to church to help set up for enrichment night(with Miya still sleeping in the car), and Emi crying because whe was hungry.

- trying to drive straight while periodically straining to reach Emi in the back seat and hand her snacks to eat (10 month-olds are not very good at keeping a good hold on teddy grahams and rice crackers).

- calming the now grumpy Miya who woke up tired and irritable, in front of all the sisters at enrichment night (imagine her laying on the floor, reaching for me saying "Mommy!"). Sigh.

- cleaning up a puddle of milk on the nursery room carpet, and letting Emi eat spilled cheerios right off the floor. Yuck.

- listening to Emi cry all the way home, because it was almost 9pm and way past her bedtime.

- convincing Miya that it really was time for bed despite her insistence that it was time for lunch and that she wanted cottage cheese (she would live off that stuff if we let her).

- typing this at 10pm while I wait for my hard working husband to come home to me and give me a hug.

That's all. No, not the worst of days, but I'm definitely done with it.

I'm not usually a complainer blogger...I guess I got carried away. Hopefully most of you got bored and skipped most of that. Just stick to looking at the pictures...that's what I do.

Grateful

I'm so grateful that I have a job. A good job. A job that allows me to use my skills and education. A job that has flexible hours. A job that I want. A job that allows me to still stay home with my girls. A job that pays well.

Not everyone can say that, and I'm so glad that I can. Speech therapy rocks!

Bus day

Yesterday I went on a field trip with Miya's preschool to the bus station. We rode a bus there, took a little tour, went through the "bus wash", then rode back. Very exciting.




Here she is waiting in her cubby before we all left to board the bus.

It brought me back to the Houston days when Miya would ask me every day if she could ride the bus with daddy. It usually started with two questions, then a statement: "Miya ride a bus, okay mommy? Miya ride a bus? Miya ride a bus." Jacob did finally take her on the bus a couple of times. She was in heaven.

Happy Halloween

We dressed up as a family of penguins for Halloween. We were pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself!









Emi was having such a good time playing with the pumpkins while we answered the door for the trick-or-treaters...except for the unfortunate fall for the camera.

Penguin in a pumpkin from Jacob Nishida on Vimeo.

She got right back up, by the way, and played some more!

We went to Lafayette's "Boo at the Zoo" activity, and Miya had a great time playing the games and trick-or-treating. We entered the cute costume contest, but didn't win (it must have been rigged).


Miya did want to dress up as a fairy princess on Friday, though, and was delighted to wave her wand and twirl on demand when people asked her what she was.

Chicago and DC

Thanks to our super Expedia deal find, we we took a couple of trips in September: one with the girls to Chicago for 3 nights ($54...I know, it was a steal!), where we met up with grandma and papa, and one with just the two grownups to DC ($184 for airfare and 3 nights hotel plus car rental for 2 people...couldn't pass that one up, now could we!). I love my girls, but boy did I love being away and getting a good night's sleep three days in a row!

Here we are in DC...kidless, remember? It was nice...thanks for taking care of our babies, Kathy! We really loved the Newseum and the Library of Congress. And the killer garage sale we ran across one morning! I got a bunch of New York Times Best Seller List books for cheap, cheap, cheap! Now I just have to find time to read them!




Here are some pictures from our Chicago trip.



The Bean.



Riding the Ferris Wheel.


Taking an architecture tour of the city by boat.



At the zoo. Miya loves taking pictures...this is her insisting that it was her turn.




At the Shedd Aquarium. This is where I got the idea for our Halloween costumes. This is the first time in a while that Miya has wanted to dress up in a costume, so I thought I'd better capitalize on it!

Disney World

Yes, we went back to the wonderful world of Disney. I guess we just can't get enough of the happiest place on earth!

Miya loved the plane ride and bus trip to our resort, then did a face plant off the curb before we checked into our rooms. Poor baby. The swelling went down after a day, and she was back to her happy self in no time!




We stayed in a cabin at Fort Wilderness, and loved it! We rented a golf cart to get around. No, this isn't ours...but there were some pretty wild decorations!










We went to the "Not so scary Halloween Party" one night, and had a great time riding rides and trick-or-treating. We thought Miya would be tired or grumpy (or both) by the end of the evening (it started at 7pm), but she loved every minute of it! We got lots of comments on our penguin costumes.







Good times at Disney! Here's Miya asleep on the plane ride home. As fun as it was, it is nice to be home again. Thanks Kathy and Les for the memories...Until next time!