Little girls

Emery loves shoes. I think her favorite part of having friends come over and play is having more shoes to try on. She inevitably sneaks their shoes and comes out saying "look at me!" Here she is the other day playing with my heels. She is growing up into such a sweet and smart little girl. 

Colder temperatures

Emery and I are getting ready to visit our family up north. Unfortunately, Gavin has to stay here and work. We will miss him terribly but I can't wait to see our families, especially my new nephews!!! Emery has talked about grandma and poppa a ton today, I think she's excited too! I had to go digging for our warm clothes; the cold is definitely not something I look forward to, but I survived last year so I'm sure I'll live through it again. :) 

Ready or not, here we come!

Our first DIY!

 I love DIY blogs. Well, I love/hate them. I get frustrated sometimes because they say, "Look at this gorgeous and super awesome and expensive-looking thing I built out of wood that only cost me $30!" And I get all excited and think, "$30?! I can do $30 for something so super awesome and expensive-looking!" But then as I read the instructions it's like, "Oh yeah, well I had this $50 piece of wood just sitting around taking up space in my garage, and I had wood glue, nails, a drill, a jigsaw, a table saw, a sander, 16 gallons of paint in an array of colors, caulk, these 10 sparkly embellishments that all coordinate perfectly, all just sitting in my garage so I just bought a 2x4 for $2 and then SPLURGED on cute fabric and the whole thing only costs $30 to make! DIYing is AWESOME!" Well DIY-Blogland, your $30 projects cost me more like $150. And that afternoon you spend takes me more like a week. Or two. But that might be more of a motivation problem so I only have myself to blame for that. But despite my occasional frustration, I still love to see what people create. Out of the stuff in their garage. Because their garage is basically Home Depot.

Well all those blogs had made me really want to put some shelves in our downstairs half-bath. It's quite small and I really hate the way it feels--all cramped and useless. It has no storage since it has a pedestal sink so some shelves would really help out. Here's a before picture:

It's a sad little bathroom. 

 Well we've been putting it off because my garage is definitely NOT Home Depot and we had none of the things that it would take to make shelves. Not even nails. Or screws. Or a drill. This is our first home, cut us some slack ok?! Black Friday came around and we got a pretty good deal on a drill and impact driver (a deal that didn't involve me waking up early, hooray!), so we finally started our shelves. Here's a mid-way picture:

 And a few weeks later (yes...sigh...it took a few weeks) they are mostly done!

I say mostly because we ended up caulking the shelves. That little nook isn't square, but we had the wood cut at home depot (they won't cut angles) and we got it home and it wasn't a perfect fit. So we tried to fill in the gaps with caulk and I did a seriously terrible job. You can't tell in this picture but it is everywhere. It was harder to do than I thought and I had a difficult time getting it smooth. So some day, when I decide to care again, I will have to go through and repaint the blue paint and try to cover up the caulk mess. But for now I'm just very excited because I think Gavin did a great job building them. It really transformed the bathroom. Now for the fun part of buying baskets and accessories! 

Santa Claus

Emery is starting to understand Christmas. She loves Christmas lights and gets so sad when we drive away from cheerily lit up homes. She likes our nativities and talks about baby Jesus. She recognizes Santa and is always excited to see him, but I don't think she knows why. She just knows she's excited. Maybe because she usually gets candy when he's around. 

At our ward Christmas party I was helping control the angry gang attempting to stampede and trample Santa Claus...um, I mean the beautiful children all standing perfectly in line waiting patiently to sit on Santa's lap, so Emery ran around with Gavin watching the other kids but not really caring about having her turn. When all the other kids were done we had her sit up on his lap and say hi. She hopped right up there, no problem. She rarely smiles for pictures so we encouraged her:

"Emery, smile! Come on, Smile! Say cheeese!"

This is the face we got:

 

Everyone bursts out laughing. It was so funny. So now she thinks this is standard Santa-lap-sitting-protocol. When Santa came to Gavin's work, again, "Emery, SMILE!" and again:

This Santa really got in to it. What a ham. 

Our newest addition

With Tobin and Whitney moving out and all the new babies in my family, Gavin and I were feeling like we needed something more in our house. So without further ado, please meet the newest addition to the Giraud family:

Yes, I am referring to the tv. :) After 4.5 years of marriage we finally own a television. Gavin is pretty excited about it, and I will admit that I have enjoyed watching movies on it, which is all we can do since we don't have cable (thank you Netflix. Your nominal monthly fee and wide array of movies and shows makes me happy).

I'm also quite happy about the "console table" it's sitting on. I scored that from craigslist looking like this:

And with my mother-in-law's advice I painted it green with a walnut stain over the top to help bring out some of those fun details. I took the tv picture with my ipad and it has a terrible camera so it's hard to see how pretty it is. The stain brings out the nooks and crannies perfectly. I love it! Some of the drawers stick a little now because of the paint, but that's ok because it just means Emery can't get in there. :) 

A tv is definitely not as exciting as a baby announcement would be, but that is unfortunately not happening for us now. On the plus side, lots of testing and procedures have told us nothing appears to be wrong with either of us so we're hoping another child makes their way to our family soon. Emery will be such a good big sister. Hopefully it happens in the next year or Gavin might get antsy again and make another big purchase. :)

Miracles and my two newest loves

I wasn't kidding a few posts back when I mentioned a lot has happened in the past few months. Two wonderful, MAJOR things...someones...have happened and they are the miracles I want to discuss. First up (because he came first even though he wasn't supposed to!) is my very first nephew, Tyler. He came 7 weeks early amidst many health complications for my sister-in-law. He stayed in the NICU for 24 days but he has been a little champion and progressed so well, mom too! He is now home and last report I heard he is doing well! He was only 3 lbs 4.5 oz when he was born, so little.  Here's a little picture of him after awhile in the NICU, holding his daddy's (my brother) finger. 

Look at that tiny hand! Doesn't it just melt your heart? Emery and I were obsessed with pictures of him, we would look at them together every day and she would pray for baby Tyler in every prayer. My favorite thing is how much he looks like my brother. It makes me laugh--I just feel like I'm looking straight at a mini-Matt!

The next SUPER WONDERFUL miracle is yet another nephew, please welcome Baby JJ!

Here he is, asleep on his daddy's lap. This is Michelle and Joey's brand new baby boy they adopted. The opportunity to adopt came like a whirlwind--just 6 weeks before the baby was born they flew back to Idaho to meet with the birthmom and now--BOOM--they have a perfect little son all their own. I am in LOVE with this little boy and I haven't even met him yet. But every picture I see (and believe me, I see a lot and I comment on every. single. thing. they post) he is smiling and responding to them. He is a much awaited and much anticipated part of their family and they are all so lucky blessed to have each other. 

 I am so excited to meet them, and have Emery see them. She LOVES babies and we talk about them and look at pictures so often that I'm excited to watch her with them in real life. Two nephews in a month. I am the happiest aunt around!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a crazy and fun holiday for us this year. Tobin and Whitney were actually planning on moving in to their new house that day, but things worked out that we were able to move them in Wednesday night. It was an exciting day for them to be in their very own house. 

Thanksgiving Feast was spent at my cousins family's new house (there's been lots of moving around down here!) and it was so much fun! Lots of food, a big yard to run around in, and best of all good company. 

Here's the kids plus Sarah (the gracious hostess):

And it wouldn't be a Giraud Thanksgiving without a little football:

We were thankful for many things this year, but most of all we are thankful for our little family and the gospel of Jesus Christ that binds us together and brings us such happiness. We hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving too. 

Halloween

You know what was more fun this year than the past 10 years? HALLOWEEN! It's so much better with a kid! Emery was so excited and had a lot of fun which made it more fun for us. We went to our church's Trunk or Treat and had a great time and got so much candy that we didn't even take her out trick or treating on Halloween. But I didn't feel too bad because she really enjoyed running to the door to see the kids. The doorbell would ring and she and Maylee would squeal with delight and race towards the door as fast as they could. It was pretty cute. 

Speaking of cute, have you ever seen a cuter bumblebee than this little dear? 

My mom sent Emery that costume and I think it is so cute! 

Emery and I were bumblebees and Gavin was a beekeeper. He had a net for his hat but that didn't work out with eating food so he's not wearing it in this picture. Also, this is Emery's "cheeeeese" face. 

See my skirt? I MADE IT! I was really pleased how well it turned out. I even dyed the fabric! The black I had on hand but I didn't have time to go to Hobby Lobby for yellow and WalMart didn't have any yellow knit so I bought some dye and made some myself with this cream colored fabric I had bought on clearance. It is so comfy I wish I could wear it again. Looks like I'm going to be a bee for the next 10 Halloweens...

On the ride home we gave Emery a sucker. Two minutes later I look back and she has another one in her mouth. By the time we got home I think she had four in there. Haha, that girl loves sugar.

The terrific trio, Grandpas are great, parties and presents

Clearly I'm quite behind on my blog. I have some pictures I want on here but not enough story to warrant separate posts so here we are. Consolidation. 

These three girls played together pretty well and had lots of fun. Bella was a good peacemaker for Emery and Maylee. They thought they were so clever sitting like this and begged me to take a picture. 

We were also fortunate to have family come visit us in October for Emery's birthday...well...it might have actually been for BYU football game, but we were happy it coincided with Emery's 2nd birthday. It was so fun to have Grandma and Grandpa here. Emery took advantage of all the horsey rides she could get:

We had fun celebrating with cousins and they even made her a little throne to sit on while she opened her presents (thanks Aunt Whitney!)

I wish I would have taken more pictures while everyone was here. We had so much fun and I got so little documentation. But we made some wonderful memories and we were so thankful they came. And Emery is TWO! She has a wonderful life ahead of her, I'm excited to be a part of the amazing things this girl is going to accomplish.

Christmas cards?

I love getting other people's Christmas cards. Like, I REALLY love it. And the longer the letter that goes along with it the better! I even like to read the ones my parents get from people I don't really know. So with how much I love them, how is it that I can never bring myself to send them out? Not even email them? Sigh. I don't know. Someday I'll get my act together and send them out. But this year I figured I would just update my long overdue blog instead. So let's jump back a few months, because lots has happened...

Granby Colorado

This summer we had a wonderful Giraud family reunion in Granby, Colorado. It was wonderful! I lived in Colorado until I was 18 years old so it was like coming home for me. I didn't realize how much I had missed my beautiful sunshine state until we landed at the Denver airport. I walked off the plane and immediately got all misty eyed and choked up. There's nothing particularly lovely about the airport that got me all emotional, but just seeing the mountains through the windows...breathing that Colorado air...knowing my feet were standing in the state that my heart will always love...it just made me really happy. I love Colorado. 

Besides all the beautiful scenery:

There was so much fun to be had with grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles! Here's the group:

And here's some pictures of the little girls shirts they decorated so beautifully:

Uncle Kellen, "Right here, Emery! Come stand right here!" Emery wasn't having any of that stand in line business

"Good job, that's it, just stay there for 1 second, just stay...there..."

And she's off!

"I've got places to go and there are adventures to be had!"

"Such as this."

"And this!"

One adventure we all took was in Rocky Mountain National Park up to the Holzwarth Homestead. It was fun learning about a family who "took on the mountain" and tried to carve out a life in the woods.  I think that Gavin might love a life like that. He looked pretty happy dressing up in their clothes...

It was a such a great trip. Here's a few more pictures that I have to post because my nieces face CRACKS me up!

FHE Temple Trip

For our family night activity a few weeks ago we took a trip to the Houston temple to walk around and enjoy the grounds. I don't know why we didn't get any pictures of us in front of the temple, but here's a few random shots!

The group:

Emery contemplating the truths of eternity and the beauty of forever families:

And now she's trying to swim in the fountain:

Here's a shot of the entryway:

A shot of the steeple: