Emma has always been an above average reader. For the last few years in school all of her teachers always commented on what a great reader she was. She reads with such emotion that sometimes I am surprised to hear what it coming out of an 8 year old. Lately, she is not only good at reading, but she loves it! This is partly due to her love of Harry Potter.

I read the Harry Potter books as an adult. I read the first one about 12 years ago while we were in Maui. I remember loving it and scrambling to find the next one so I could read about what happened next. I have the whole set of 7 Harry Potter books. I have been saving them, thinking that someday my kids would like to read them. I talked about starting the first one with the kids about 2 weeks ago. I showed Emma the set of books I had been saving.

The next morning I woke up and Emma had gone up to the office and gotten the first book. She started reading it before I woke up and I swear she had half of the book done. She finished the first one in 2 days! After only 2 weeks, she is now on the 4th book. She reads, and reads, and reads. She asks to stay up late to read. When I go to wake her up for school she is reading. She reads in the car and in line for her karate tournament

It is so much fun to see her so excited about reading. I have always loved to read and it is fun to see that same love in my daughter. I hope that once she finished the Harry Potter series she can find more books that keep her just as excited about reading.

First, I have to make a disclaimer. I rented a special lens to use for this tournament. I am SOOOO disappointed at how these pictures turned out. I think there was a problem with the lens–I can see a strange reddish bar running through all my photos. I’m happy to have the photos because they really captured the emotions at the tournament, but I really wish they were better quality.

This years tournament was a big success. This was Emma and Nora’s first time participating. It was Ian’s second time. They all had fun and competed well.

Nora was the first one to compete. I signed her up to do forms for this tournament. She was supposed to perform tay keo ku sho don. She had a little speech she was supposed to say:

Hello Judges. My name is Nora. My style is kwon shu. Today I will show you tay keo ku sho don.

Except, she didn’t say it. She just walked up and stood in front of them looking very shy. They asked her if she was going to do star block–another form she could have done. She got all flustered and confused because that wasn’t the form she had practiced. Instead of doing her form, she started crying. Luckily the judge was nice and went out and consoled her. She ended up not doing any form, but all her tears were erased when she saw that she got a medal for participation anyway!

Next, we got to watch Emma. She participated in forms as well and did the same form as Nora. She did awesome. There were about 20 kids in her white belt group. She was thrilled to have a friend from our studio in our group. She and Bella sat together and I think it helped calm both girls nerves because they both did great. Emma ended up getting first place and Bella got second! They don’t actually give out medals to the white belts for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place. But Emma and I went to look at the results and she was thrilled to find out she had gotten first place in her group!

Ian was the last one to go. Since he is a purple belt he participated in forms, self defense and sparring. He did forms first and he did really well. There are so many moves that usually I can’t tell if he does it all right or not It helped to have the judges so I could see the scores. I knew when I saw his scores that he had done well. He ended up getting a second place in forms. Then he did self defense. He got a little confused when he went up to talk to the judges. He started to get really worked up and I think there were a few tears. But he held it together and did pretty well. He got third place in self defense.

The most entertaining thing to watch was his sparring. Up until now, he hasn’t been able to kick in sparring. In our studio, purple belts just focus on punching. In other studios the purple belts are allowed to kick. So for this tournament Ian was allowed to kick. It totally transformed his sparring! He went from mostly blocking and dodging without ever getting any points to scoring a lot of points with kicks. He still didn’t punch, but the kicking saved him. He won his first match 5-0. His last match was for 1st and 2nd place. He gave it a good fight, but ended up losing that match 5-3. But he was so cute to watch. He was so into it and so animated. I loved seeing his face light up when he found out that he had scored a point. Now he just needs to work on controlling the kicks and adding some punches for the next time.

It was a fun tournament. I was proud of all three of them for participating and doing their best. I’m looking forward to the next one in the Spring!

We had an early snowstorm this year! It turned out to be more snow that I was expecting. Usually the first storm of the year is just a dusting and the snow is usually gone by afternoon. This year we got a few inches and they stuck around.

Emma and Nora were home from school and Ian was at hockey practice with Scott. Emma asked if they could go out and play in the snow. We dug out all the snow clothes and headed outside. I little while later Emma called me to show me what they had made and to ask for a carrot. I remembered that we had a snowman kit that I had bought years ago. I dug it out and we decorated the snowman. They were so proud of their work!

For the past 4 years Emma has been taking dance at Park City Dance. She really wanted to be on the Academy Team. Last year she tried out, but she didn’t make it. She danced all year last year and then took a bunch of summer camps this summer. She tried out for academy again this past summer, and this time she made it. The summer dance camps were intense! They were long days and hard work. At the end of the summer Emma came to me and told me that she didn’t want to dance any more. I didn’t want to just let her quit. Academy is a big commitment. They dance 5-7 hours per week and travel to multiple competitions. We had a few talks about it, and finally decided that she had put in a lot of effort at dance. She didn’t give up. She made the academy team, but then decided that it just wasn’t what she wanted to dedicate herself to this year.

Emma has been watching Ian do karate for the past 2 years, and she decided that she wanted to try that. She took her two introductory lessons with Mr. Klekas and decided that she wanted to do karate this year. I think she will be really good at it, and it will be a lot of fun for her!

Now that the kids are back in school, I have finally had some time to edit some of my own photos

Here are the photos I took of Emma at the beach. She looks so grown up to me in these photos. I can’t believe how fast she is growing up.

Today was the official first day of school for Emma and Ian. It was a big one because they were both starting a new school. The opening was delayed a little bit because of construction, and I was a bit worried that they still wouldn’t be ready, but they made it. The school still looks like a big construction zone, but the classrooms are done and look nice.

Ian started first grade with Mrs. Johnson and Emma started third grade with Ms. Taylor.

Emma was the first one up. She was all dressed and ready when I got up. She couldn’t wait to wear her new dress! Ian was a little later and I had to wake him to start getting ready. We took a few quick photos at home and then we were off to school.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they both have a great day!

Last fall I spent a couple days at a really fun photography workshop with Ali Hohn. She came back to Utah for a few more workshops and asked me to help out.

This morning I went to lend her my equipment and brought Emma along to model for the people in the workshop. She was such a great little model. I took a few photos of her too, and thought I’d share them here. She did so well they begged me to bring her back tonight for the sunset shoot.

Stay tuned for a few more later!

Emma made her first communion last week. Here are a few quick photos. She was in heaven! She LOVED her dress.

This was the scene at our house at 4:55am this morning.

Emma and Ian got up at the crack of dawn and made me breakfast for Mother’s Day. They had first gotten up at midnight, but Scott chased them back to bed. They got up again around 4:00am and started my breakfast of cereal, waffles, and cinnamon toast.

They came in to wake me up about 4:45am. I was so tired I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t realize at first what they had done, but as soon as I did I knew I had to get up!

They were so cute. Emma had made me all kinds of cards and crafts. Ian was so proud of himself for making my waffle all by himself.

I sat with them and ate my breakfast while I read all of my cards. They made me feel so special. It was so sweet that they went to so much trouble to make my Mother’s Day breakfast.

Ian recently learned how to blow bubbles with his gum. We were loving the weather outside today in North Carolina, so I decided to have some fun with the kids and the camera. Here are some photos of our fun afternoon.