Helena's School Christmas Program

Hot off the presses, here's the video from Helena's preschool Christmas program this evening. 

A couple of comments:
Ya'll will notice Bunny got to attend.  We will do a lot of things to avoid bolting and/or crying.  And Helena did neither, thankfully.  I am very proud of her.  And Bunny.

Helena's class is made up of 3 & 4 year olds and she happens to be standing beside the two tallest and oldest boys in her class.  She looks like a total munchkin up there!!!

You'll also notice, again, what a horrendous videographer I am.  Yes, I know I majored in BROADCAST JOURNALISM.  But, it's been eight years and I was also trying to pacify a 6 month old.  Oh, and I was trying to shoot through a very small window between two people's heads.  So there.  I should probably dig out the tripod Ash gave me with said video camera and actually use it sometime.

Warning, there are four songs.  It's about six minutes long... :)  But it's cute.  I promise. 

Merry Christmas everyone!  :)  This might be the last blog before the holiday.  Lots to do!

-Emily :)

Five

Harper playing with his piano.  Which he would totally chew on if he could lift it.

Harper is 5 1/2 months old now.  Wow, time flies.  I guess that's what happens when you're not really sleeping a lot.  Anyway, he is generally an amicable baby when he sleeps well during the day and his eczema isn't flaring up.  I think he may have inherited his father's itchiness and weird stomach.  Time will tell. :)  He also LOVES Helena.  When she's talking to him and he's 'talking' back, his voice gets really excited and actually kind of goes up an octave.  It's hilarious.  It's like he has a 'phone voice' for Helena. Ha!
 

I'm also a very messy cereal eater.  I love to grab the spoon and smear everything all over my face.

Other 'milestones'-- kind of sitting up, no teeth yet but lots of chewing and red cheeks, just slept 12 hours straight last night, so we'll see if we can make that a habit very soon!

We're very excited to see everyone at Christmas!

-Emily :)

Miss Manners

So yesterday we went to my neighbor's house to play and Helena immediately zoned in on some toy cars from Cars, the movie, and stated playing with them.  She was very excited....and always likes all of the new toys at our friend's house. 

Anyway, after about 15 minutes of intense playing with Lightning McQueen and Mater she comes over to where I was sitting with the other moms and says, "Hey Mom, can  you put these in your purse??"

I really hope they don't think we're shoplifters.

-Emily :)

I heard about lake effect snow in Meterology class...

All I'm going to say about this is that it's not even December yet.  Hold me.  Or someone please get me a babysitter so I can go skiing. STAT.  Oh, and Santa, Ash needs a snowblower for Christmas.  That's all.

-Emily :)

Best Snow Day Ever

We got about a foot of snow overnight on Saturday....leaving a winter wonderland all around us.  Helena woke up at 7 a.m. asking Ash (who was still in bed) to go play in the snow with her.  He obliged by around 9 a.m., and they spent nearly all day (minus a very forced lunch time and nap time) frolicking around.  We have a snowman in our back yard as well as a little fort, and a small sledding hill in the front made from the snow shoveled from our driveway.  I think Helena had more fun yesterday than any other day in her life.  They were so cute playing together.  At the end of the day Ash said, "Today is exactly why I had kids."  Adorable.

Snowball fight!

First romp in the snow-- it's all the way up to her thighs!

Not so sure about this snow angel thing.  She was calling them snow butterflies. :)

The only thing that saved me was that I had the very nice camera around my neck.

Oops!  Dad hit me in the face.  Still hilarious....

And...he hit me in the face again.  But I didn't really care.

With mom by the snowman.

Before round 2, Ash duct tapes Helena's gloves to her sleeves. "This is what we do in Michigan." he says.  I proceed to tell him that in Kansas we used to sled behind a pick up truck because there weren't any hills.  He tells me this is illegal or something in Michigan.  Lol.

Not wanting Harper to completely miss out on the action, Ash built him his own snow seat by the fort. (Helena is starting to melt down by this point.  By the way, she was asleep in bed by 7:15 last night.)

...And we made him his own snowball.  :)  He's obviously thrilled.

With this storm I think I'm officially ready to hit the slopes after my pregnancy induced hiatus from last year.  Hooray for snow!

- Emily :)

Mixing it Up Mealwise

Mainly just to amuse myself, I've decided to do theme weeks for awhile around here for dinnertime.  This week - Grandma Millie recipes.  Which basically means we'll be eating lots of beef.  Next week, my mom's recipes, which means we'll be eating a lot of casseroles. ;)  Ash has proposed a week of dips, which I'm not so sure about, but maybe we'll give it a try.

So tonight's recipe is Vegetable Soup -- perfect for what is turning into a very rainy and snowy day.  A long time ago my grandma wrote out a lot of her recipes for me and my sister -- definitely something I cherish more and more as I get older.

Anyway, looking over the recipe this morning I noticed 2 things:

One -- this recipe is for 5 GALLONS OF SOUP.  Ummm...I think I'll cut that down a bit.
And two -- you'll noticed that the first ingredient of this vegetable soup is 10 lbs. of stew meat.  Ha!  That is farm girl awesome right there.

Also on the menu this week at the Galbreath's is Smothered Steak, Chicken Fried Steak and Shrimp.  I'll try not to make a pie because we're on a diet around here, but I might be too tempted not to.  And really with all of the frying going on the diet is really out the window this week.  And, many of these meals I've probably never had without a piece of cherry pie finishing it off.  So, it sounds like I've convinced myself to make a pie.

- Emily :)

Snooki vs. Buzz Lightyear

I've neglected to mention here that we've made some friends (gasp!) here that are also from Kansas/the Midwest.  And mostly KU alums.  :)  So nice to immediately have some things in common with folks-- you know like drinking, sports and skiing!  Ha!  We first met almost everyone at a KU Alumni get together two years ago.

Anyway, we attended Amanda and Brandon's Halloween party with the kiddos and dressing up was pretty much mandatory.  I'm not usually a fan of dressing up, but this year I think we did it up right. 

Me, as Snooki from Jersey Shore:

 I can't explain to you how much bronzer I'm wearing.  I'm not meant to be as tan as the real Snooki.  And come to think of it, no one is, really. I tried to get out of being DD since drinking heavily should have been a mandatory part of my costume, but I did not win that one.  In reality, good sleep is more important to me right now than a good buzz.
And speaking of a good buzz, Ash went as a very not scary, kid-friendly Buzz Lightyear.  Helena thought it was the greatest.  So cute.  I love how she's looking at him in this picture.

 Party hosts Brandon & Amanda.  They went all out!

 Oh, and look! there was another Snooki at the party.  Her hair is real, though.  :)  Funny that I was 'pajama' Snooki and she was 'clubbing' Snooki.

Fred Flinstone, Mouse, and Kermit.  All of whom had matching partners.  Even a little Pebbles! :)

 The girls -- every one was so festive!  :)

 A big thanks to Amanda & Brandon for inviting us and for letting us bring the kiddos!  :)  We are very excited to keep hanging out with our Kansas transplant group of friends in Utah!

-Emily :)

My Crafty Debut Halloween Style

A few months ago I casually asked Helena what she wanted to be for Halloween.  This was when her & Ash were doing a lot of fishing and she told me she wanted to be a "FISH! A PINK AND PURPLE ONE!"  Kind of like I trout, I guess.  Anyway, after scouring the Internet for something that would suffice that we could buy, I figured I'd better just suck it up and make it myself.  I enjoyed putting it together for the most part (my first time), as it required very little sewing and a lot of glue, but was very nervous people wouldn't know what she was.  But....we had great success with the pink and purple fish costume and got tons of compliments on it. :)  Yay me!  So anyway, here's a photo run down of the kids on Halloween!  Next up, the adults in the household!

Helena breaking rank during her school Halloween parade.  Makes it hard to get good photos! ;)

Helena & her ghost sucker after the school parade.

Helena & her best bud Apollo.

Helena's teacher from last year - Miss Holly - as Sully from Monster's Inc.  SO IMPRESSIVE!

The fish right before official trick or treating, which was Saturday night here because we don't want to make God mad.  Don't get me started.  It rained, though, which I felt was God saying it was OK to just do it on Sunday next time.

Harper as a bat, or as Ash said, "someone who likes to wear bats on their clothes."  I ignored him on that one.  Such a cutie pie!

Happy Halloween everyone!!
-Emily :)

Bat Baby

We've had such a busy weekend I'm pretty sure I'll have about five posts about Halloween...but until then, in honor of Harper's 1st Halloween, here's a video of him in his Halloween garb showcasing most of what he's up to lately (grabbing feet, squealing, babbling, smiling and generally wiggling around).  And again, sorry for the weird orientation of this...you'd think I'd learn one of these days. :)

-Emily :)

Ambitions

According to Helena that catepillar looking thing is a fire truck.

-Emily :)

Growing Everyday

Our little Harper is now 3 1/2 months old.  How exciting!  He's doing great in the nighttime sleep department, but we're still working on naps during the day.  Hopefully he'll grow out of the catnapping stage he's in now!

A recent pic of our little buddy (that's what Helena told me yesterday we should call him.)

He loves when you sing pop songs to him and make fart noises at him (the two things I've done to make him laugh) and is completely enthralled with Helena, who is increasingly enthralled with him as well.  Tummy time still isn't his favorite thing, but he's getting there.  He's consistently rolling over in all directions now, so no more laying on the couch or bed for this guy!

Harper loves playing with his feet (a very recent development) and has already started putting everything he can grab in his mouth. 

He also tends to be a bit messy...pooping is always an ordeal and usually requires a change of clothes, puking is regular and I'm pretty sure there's a little piece of Harper on every piece of furniture we own. It's amazing how a baby can act like such a boy already!

-Emily :)

Helena's 3rd Birthday a.k.a. the 'Pink and Purple Birthday'

Helena turned 3 this past Monday.  This birthday was very fun because she wanted certain things (two bikes and a scooter) and had definitely opinions about her birthday cake situation (pink AND purple cupcakes -- with the cake being pink and purple and the frosting too).

We got her a scooter (but not 2 bikes) and she was very excited about it.  She opened it up and said "It's a tooter scooter!"  What?!?  I have no idea where that came from.  Although she is into rhyming these days...  Ash took her around the block on it and it took them 45 minutes to get back home.  She kind of looks like a crippled old lady riding on it, but she'll get better with practice!

I took her to see Toy Story 3 at the theatre as part of her birthday celebration and we also went out to eat for chicken nuggets and french fries.  Pretty low key, but it was fun.

Some pics:

Ash and I's cupcake masterpiece.

Right before blowing out the candles.



Hungry Hippos game was a big hit.  Side note:  the quality of the construction of the game is not what it used to be...at all.  I'll give this toy a month.



On the pink tooter scooter.

Happy Birthday H-Dog!  Man, I hope the next 3 years doesn't go by as fast as the last 3 have!  ;)
-Emily :)

Threes in Threes

'Tis the season for birthdays in our house.  Ash turned the big 3-0 on September 25th.  Harper turned 3 months shortly before that.  And Helena turned 3 on Monday!  I'll start with a synopsis of Ash's Birthday and then get to the other two later on...hopefully. ;)

  

On Ash's birthday, he went fishing for some alone time then came home and watched the KU Football game in this kick ass present my mom got him:

(It says Galbreath on the back!)

We had plans to go out to dinner, too, but Miss Helena decided that day was a no nap day, so we got carry out from Olive Garden instead.  Sometimes you just know you're asking for it....and that was one of those days.  No Nap Helena doesn't belong in restaurants. ;)  We also had a yummy tiramisu cake from Whole Foods.  That I accidentally dropped on the floor.  But it was salvaged and still awesome.

 

I'd also like to take this opportunity to compare and contrast Ash's 20th birthday with his 30th. 


The 20th (see below) evidently involved rainbow hair dying and a giant can of beer.  Yuck.  This was about 12 days after I met him at KU.  This will definitely be even more funny when Helena turns 20.

Fast-forward 10 years and you've got a total family guy.  Hilarious.  Time flies.







Happy 30th Birthday, honey.  I love you!! 
-Emily :)

Adorable

We had some professional pictures taken last week....they turned out SO GOOD.  I am in love with this photographer.  Helena did much better this year...no crying or anything. :)  But we couldn't get her to quit saying 'CHEESE!!' and just smile.

You can view some of the session on her blog here.  And if you're in the SLC, I would highly recommend her.  Jen's super great.

-Emily :)

Of He Who Wears the Pants in the Family

So those of you who have known Ash and I for any long period of time know about our endless argument about how he often wears the same pair of pants for weeks on end without washing them.  He'll mow the lawn in a pair of jeans and then wear them to work for the next four days.  He refuses to have more than 1 pair of jeans in the rotation at one time.  I believe his personal record for consecutive days wearing the same pair of jeans is 27.  It's not normal.  I recall one time in college after we'd just gotten married when we were discussing this 'habit' of his amongst a room full of his guy friends.  Ash adamantly defended his practice saying "everyone does it, right???" to which his friend Phil replied, "Dude, that's disgusting."  Major blow.

I've quit fighting with him about it for the most part and it has gotten better, slightly, since he has to dress up more for work now.  But....this week he sends me this article in the Wall Street Journal from someone who works at Levi's (and is really too into his jeans) entitled "The Jeans Care Secret: Rarely Wash Them."  Evidently 'rarely' means every 6 months for Christ's sake.  Yuck.  I personally get too much spit up, poop, food, etc. on me almost every day for spot cleaning to do the trick.  Sorry.  But Ash has taken this as the gospel, and our plight continues...

-Emily :)

Translation Toddler

The language of toddler is often very complex.  Sometimes I take for granted that everyone can translate Helena as well as we can.  And believe me, there are a lot of opportunities to deal with her quirks.  I thought it would be fun to list some things she says that might take a few guesses to figure out the real meaning.

White Ham = Turkey
The last day = yesterday
Smores = Snores
Bazangne = Lasagne
Chicken Muggets
Hoomat (pron. HOO-MAHT) = Helmet
Nola Bar = Granola Bar
Ninoculars = Binoculars
Rove = Robe
Panpakes
MM's = M & M's...leaves out the 'and'.

There's no way I could type up a list of behavioral quirks...it would be way too long for this blog.  ;)  I just put Helena down for a nap and she asked me to fill her 3 cups in her bed up with "fresh water."  Seriously?!?  It's a good thing she's so cute and funny most of the time.

-Emily :)

A Tale of Two Signs

So this is the best pic I could get....and if you look really really closely you can see one sign says 'Buses Only', and the other one says 'Busses Only'.  This is at the elementary school closest to our house -- the one Helena will attend if we are still living here when she starts real school. 

So at first I thought, "Jeez, why can't they spell 'Busses' correctly on both signs?"  It looks like someone at the school was all, "I'm not exactly sure how to spell the plural of bus, so we'll just spell it so hopefully one of the signs are right."  Or, "Oh, crap, we spelled the first sign wrong!  We'll order another one that's right but not take the other one down because we can't afford two new signs."  Surely there has to be some explanation why signs at a SCHOOL are misspelled. Right? Or is private school looking that much better??  And after I took this picture I noticed two other school signs with blatant misspellings (but I couldn't take pics because I was driving).



But then I thought, "Wait, how do you spell the plural of bus?"  Then I thought, "Maybe one is in Spanish and one is in English?"

I did some investigating and turns out the plural of bus can be spelled buses or busses.  But I still think they should have picked one and gone with it. Just my opinion.  Would make the whole sign situation look a little less silly.  And I'm pretty sure it's not in Spanish.  Maybe one of these days I'll go down and inquire in person.

Thoughts?  Isn't Utah fun?  :)

-Emily :)

Where the Green Grass Grows...

We made a trip to Burrton/Hutchinson for a week over Labor Day.  I hadn't been home in 9 months...the longest span of my whole life.  Weird to think about it like that.  Fortunately, I had seen most of my immediate family members in that span between trips to Colorado and people coming out to Utah to see Harper.  :)

Here's a numerical synopsis of our trip:

6 : The number of things Helena 'rode' on -- boat, tube, motorcycle, four wheeler, golf cart, tractor.  She's braver than I give her credit for.
2: The number of times it took me to get up on water skis.  I went around the lake twice and then I died.
7:  The number of pies my grandma made while I was home.
17: The number of pieces of pie I consumed. 
4: The number of drinks I had in one evening at the lake. By the way, margarita popsicles are really yummy.
43: The number of friends and family we saw while in Kansas for 6 days.  That's intense.  Ash's grandma Claudene and brother Alex even came down to spend some time with us! 
5: The number of times Harper pooped and/or puked all over someone other than myself.  Also, the number of outfits he 'went through' the day before we flew home.  He's a messy one.
3: The number of people who kindly helped me by holding Harper while I folded up a stroller, entertaining Helena, etc. on the flights home in the airport when I was flying by myself with both kids. I'm pretty sure I am still tired from that day, but we survived and the kids were both really good.

Anyway, it was good to be home and breathe some good old country air!

Kane, Helena & Ellie -- probably one of the best pictures I've ever gotten of all three of them together.  There were bribes involved...

-Emily :)

A Sisterly Visit

My sister Jessica and my niece Ellie also came to visit us at the beginning of the month.  It was the first time Jess had been here since we met up here and then went to Vegas a year and a half ago.  So it was the first time she'd been able to see our 'hood and SLC for an extended period of time.

Ellie and Helena were best of friends during the visit, although Helena wasn't as keen on being bossed around by Ellie as she was the last time Ellie was here.  They played pretend, watched movies, and had a grand old time.  We took the kids to Thanksgiving Point one day to see some farm animals, to play at splash park, the discovery place, on a hike in the mountains, and out to a fancy dinner of sushi for the grown-ups and fried shrimp/fish for the kidlets.

It was really nice to have my sister in town to help with Harper a bit (the first night she was here he had a personal best sleeping record) and to show her SLC a bit more.  Ellie had never been hiking before, and kept asking us beforehand what it was.  When we told her we were going to go walk around in the mountains she still wasn't sure why it was called hiking and not just walking.  She thought that was pretty neat, though.  We didn't see any animals, but the waterfall was well worth the trek.  At one point Jess climbed up the side of it to see the top, Ellie was crying since here mom was so high up and I was thinking that Justin (her husband) was going to kill me if she fell.  But all was good ,(I promise it's not that dangerous!).

Jess and I also went out to dinner downtown all by ourselves one night.  Ash watched all thee kids by himself and was very 'over it' by the time we got home. :)  He did good, though.  Jess and I couldn't remember the last time we had a nice meal with just the two of us.

Our anniversary was during her stay, too, and she watched the kids while we went out to dinner and had a couples massage.  That was really awesome.

Oh, we also developed an addiction to Red Mango's key lime frozen yogurt topped with graham cracker crumbs.  I think we had it three times.  It's so good.  Holy cow.  If you live by a Red Mango, go get one right now. ;)  It will change your life.

Anyway, they were her for a week and it was great to have quality time with both of them.  One of the things I do love about living a little far away is the quality time with family. :)  It was very busy quality time, but really really fun.

Me &Jess

Hiking to our destination.  They didn't run for long!

Ellie in front of Donut Falls.

Helena let Jess carry her for a little while, but wasn't keen on the picture taking.

Helena feeding Ash with chopsticks.

Jess & Ellie at our fancy sushi dinner.

-Emily :)

Three Ashfords in the House!

I'm so late in blogging about this, but Ashford's Dad came to visit us a month ago or so for a long weekend.  Ash took a day off work and they went fly fishing...a Galbreath family tradition.  They had a great time, but didn't catch anything.  We still weren't in the mode of doing too much, but we had a lot of fun catching up, cooking at home, and playing with the kids.  I did a horrible job of taking pictures that weekend, too, as this is the only one I have.  No 3 generation pics, no pics of Grandpa Ash and Helena.  Man, I suck.  Well, more reason to visit again sooner!  :)  Thanks for visiting Grandpa Ash! :)

-Emily :)

Quoting Helena

Helena is always cracking us up. And I know she's probably most funny to us, but I just have to share some things she's said lately that are pretty hilarious.

-- While taking a walk with Ellie and Jessica while they were here her hair was blowing in her face and she said, exasperated, "I want to be a boy with my hair!!"

--My sister babysat all three kids while we went out for our anniversary during her visit. In the middle of trying to go put Ellie and Helena to bed, they both had to go #2. Ellie had used Helena's toilet and not flushed all the way, which freaked Helena out so much she had to go into our bathroom. But then she had a change of heart, telling my sister that she wanted to go poopy in her bathroom after all so that "her and Ellie's poopies could have a party."

--One day she started belting out "who let the frogs out!!!" to the tune of 'who let the dogs out'. They must listen to that song at school?!? No idea.

-- Helena likes to find money and put it in her piggy bank. I always tell her she has to save her money for college. She has no idea what college is and one day Ash told her she was going to grow up and be a Jayhawk. Well, she knows what a Jayhawk is, in an animal type of way....and immediately starts crying "No...I don't want to be a Jayhawk." We say, "But mommy and daddy are Jayhawks?!?" Hard to explain ourselves out of that one.

Helena enjoying a popsicle in the backyard.

-- Along the same saving money lines, yesterday she said, "I'm going to save this money so I can buy more ham at the store." She also said, "Daddy has to go to work tomorrow so we can buy more ham." I guess the college line isn't sticking. And, really, we don't talk about ham that much, I swear.

-Emily :)

Yep, I'm a Quitter

I haven't quit very many things in my life just because I wanted to and not because some circumstance made it so I had to. The only thing I can recall is high school cheerleading my freshman year. After that, I'm drawing a blank. I'm sure Aimeeliz or my sister could come up with some others since they often remember my childhood/life better than I do. :)

That being said, last week I quit my job. Because I wanted to. And to be honest, it felt really good. It was a very agonizing decision for me, as I have always liked working in general and I've always worried that if I stayed home I would somehow fall into a deep, hermit-like depression. But my job in Utah hasn't really been everything I wanted it to be for many reasons, and it makes it that much harder to go back to now that I have a lot more to do at home. I am going to miss some of the good friends I've made at work, but hopefully they'll still hang with me even though they won't see me every day.

Obviously, with Harper in the mix now, it's just too hard for both of us to have demanding jobs outside of the house. Ash works 50+ hours a week and it's never going to get better despite my constant nagging. He works hard for our family, and I really appreciate that. My 45-minute-on-a-good-day commute plus the possibility of shuttling two kids to two different daycares just seems impossible right now. And if not impossible, definitely stressful and probably not good for any of us.

So, I'm officially a SAHM (or Shit Ass Ho Motherfucker as Dooce says) with benefits. Those benefits are that I am still working on contract sporadically with my former job...from home mostly. Helena's still going to go to montessori school a few days a week and Harper will chill with me.

I'm looking forward to wearing more workout clothes instead of dress clothes and possibly not showering every day. And hopefully I'll be a better mom now that I have a lot of stress off of my back.

Anyway, I'm lucky to have this option as a lot of people don't right now. I honestly never thought I would. Bring on the mom's clubs and playdates! Woo Hoo! As Ash put it, I'm working for us now.

-Emily :)

Whew!

I've got a list of 18 blogs to write and hopefully I'll get to them someday. :) Still don't really have my shit together, if you know what I mean! Needless to say between having 2 sets of visitors, quitting my job, and keeping up with the normal amount of things, blogging has gone to the wayside.

To tide all six of you who read my blog over, here's a most recent pic of Harper showing off his new skill:

Yay for smiling!

-Emily :)

Progress

We might have turned a corner this morning. Helena helped me give Harper a bottle! She was very excited. :) Maybe she'll be helpful eventually! ha!

Also, yesterday Helena told me to "Move my 'milk getter' off of her Dora couch." She was referring to my breast pump.

Happy Friday everyone!

-Emily :)