What will 2009 bring?

Six years ago, our young couples pastor taught us about the benefit of setting annual goals for our marriage. With so much uncertainty in the economy this year, Eric and I thought it was more important than ever to get our priorities straight up front. Thankfully, we were able to get away for a few hours this afternoon to talk about the year ahead and put our goals down on paper. It was a very productive time, first to review how much we've accomplished over the years and then to plan for the coming year.

While we were off doing some strategic planning, Emilia was hanging out with Uncle Corey and Gillian. Looks like they were also productive... check out this masterpiece!

Emilia's latest tricks

Recently, Emilia:

• is obsessed with church; if you ever ask her where she wants to go, the response is"Chuch!" This morning she grabbed her winter hat and my purse and started walking to the door repeating, "chuch, chuch."
• asks to go "nigh, nigh," even sometimes forgoing her bedtime milk and books routine.
• says "bawk, bawk," when we serve her chicken for dinner (sorry, all of you vegetarians).
• has expanded her accessory obsession to include "jeans" and "boots" -- here she is stealing Gillian's Uggs:
• actually responds to questions now:



Q: How are your vegetables?

A: Good.

Q: Do you want to put your coat on?

A: Yeah.

Q: Where is Elmo?

A: See below ("I dunno" gesture):



• is also obsessed with the potty, although we have only had success one other time since we returned from California; I have, however, caught her standing over the open potty ready to sink shoes, Elmo, remote controls, etc.
• is doing better at putting two words together, usually "hi, daddy!"
• loves putting things in and out of her Elmo purse, asking mommy to "aben" (a.k.a. "open") it every 10 seconds; she particularly likes the change purse (saying "money!") and the lipstick. Here she is primping for a hot date:

• can repeat "I love you," although it sounds more like "Armani."
• is not shy about telling us she wants to go somewhere, either by saying "go," "outside," "car," or simply trying to put her coat and hat on.
• is very interested in "teeth," and wants to brush hers all the time.
• helps around the house with the "vacuum," (although it's usually the corn popper or her toy lawn mower).
• enjoys getting "manicures" from daddy.
• and finally, has discovered that dreaded word, "no" -- there seems to be no stopping it!

Back online

We hope you all had a great Christmas and that your 2009 is off to a good start. I took a little blog-publishing break to celebrate Christmas and recuperate from a nasty bout with gastroenteritis, but we’re back now! I’ll do my best to -- as my friend Megan would say -- “recapture” all that has happened during the last few weeks. Click on "January" in the right-hand sidebar to see all of today's postings. Scroll to the bottom and work your way up to go in chronological order.

Happy 2009!

We hosted a raging New Year’s party for our friends on Wednesday night. I mean, who needs Times Square, black tie and limos when you can have wii at the Korsvalls’?? We played a new wii game that was absolutely hilarious – Dancing with the Stars. Here are our DWTS champs – Dan and Dave – getting down!

Emilia was not to miss out on all the fun. Before going to bed early, she sported a classic ensemble and played with Nathan and Clara. She was awakened when everyone was leaving and Eric literally had to take her around through the entire dark house to prove to her that everyone was gone and that she wasn’t missing anything. I don’t know where she gets that!

So many toys, so little time…

This just happens to be the phrase of this cool vinyl lettering that Gillian gave us for our basement playroom (2009 project), but it also couldn’t be more true of Christmas 2008! Emilia received so many wonderful gifts and I know that many will be making appearances on the blog. Here she is pushing her new stroller and baby doll in our cul-de-sac while Grandma and Grandpa try to keep up. One minute she’s pushing it all over the house and the next she’s actually trying to climb into it. One of her favorite gifts was a basketball hoop from Aunt Anita, Uncle Adam, Paige and Seth. It’s hysterical how she claps and says “yeah” after every basket. Can you say WNBA?

East coast family Christmas

My family was actually at our house when we arrived back from California. They just returned from South Carolina where they were visiting my Aunt Louise and Steve. Grandma and Grandpa were staying to babysit Emilia when I went back to work, but since I was sick, it was great that they could keep Emilia as far away from me as possible so that she didn’t get sick. On Monday night, Corey and Kyle were with us, too, and we exchanged some gifts.

The long flight home

No need for photos here – it wasn’t a pretty picture. We woke up at 5 a.m. on Sunday to head to LAX. I wasn’t feeling great but I was trying the mind over matter approach: “I cannot be sick – I have to spend all day on a plane.” No such luck. It turns out that Melissa didn’t have food poisoning after all. I’ll leave the rest of this post up to your imagination.

One final day of fun

On our last day, we spent some time with our friends, Adam and Anita, and their daughter (our God daughter), Paige, and brand new baby, Seth. Seth is such a cutie and Paige is very protective (when I was holding Seth she said, “Are you going to give us our baby back?”) Here’s Eric with Emilia and Seth: Grammy and Poppy live right next to a great park, so Owen and Emilia got to burn off a little energy in the afternoon. Later that night we met up with Eric’s high school friends for their 16th annual Christmas party. They are a really close bunch and it was great to see them. Here's just some of the crew:

Roller coaster day at Disney

Eric’s Uncle Peter and Aunt Laurel both work for Disney and they graciously gave us enough passes for all of us – Eric, Emilia, Grammy, Poppy, Bob, Melissa, Owen, Henry and me – to go to Disneyland and California Adventure the day after Christmas. Since they had given us passes back in June and we had a great time with Emilia, I had been looking forward to going again. Thank you, Peter and Laurel!

The day started off great. It was cold but sunny and we were all excited. We made a quick purchase -- a Tinkerbell hat for Emilia! While Eric, Bob, Melissa and I went on Indiana Jones, Grammy and Poppy took the kids to the Tiki Room. Apparently Emilia loved it and continues to say “Tiki, Tiki!” (we have the song on a CD at home and she dances around to it). It was really crowded, but we went on some rides and Poppy even brought Owen and Emilia up close to a show with Pluto.

Unlike out last visit to Disney when Emilia was intrigued by all of the characters, Emilia’s reaction to them this time was mixed --
Freaked by Mickey: Chip’s (or is that Dale's?) best friend: Warming up to Santa now that Christmas is over: Here are some other shots from the day: Eric was thrilled to learn that the day we were at Disney, the park was also hosting both Rose Bowl teams, including USC, which is Eric’s favorite team. We saw a press conference in front of the castle with Joe Paterno, Pete Carroll and the teams, and saw a lot of the players walking around the park. Unfortunately, the day ended on a scary note. Melissa got really sick and ended up being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. She was released a few hours later and was feeling better the next day, but it was very scary. We had thought the culprit was food poisoning, but we’d soon have proof of a more contagious bug…

Potty training?

Owen is potty trained and Emilia was just fascinated by this. She kept saying “potty, potty,” so finally we decided to just put her on the potty. She actually went to the bathroom on the potty! We’ve got a long way to go before she’s trained, but we were encouraged that she’s at least interested. Here she is getting a little too comfortable on the potty: