The Birkeland Family Blog

Props to me..... I actually baked something. If you know me well.....that is very RARE. My reasons: 1. Nothing comes out right. My cookies are pancakes, and my cakes sink. 2. I have no electric mixer of any type, so my arm starts to cramp and I end up calling on Brian to stir for me. 3. My patience is about slim to none and... final I can confess that I usually just binge and eat a good 10,000 calories and finish everything off. I always have good intentions of giving them away but between Brian and I we just end up eating all of it.....plus a gallon of milk with it. These pictures may go down in history......these cookies actually came out right. And believe me we ate every last one. YUM YUM.....EXTRA YUM!!!

Wow.....can you believe that it has been 4 years since the day Ragnar Birkeland came to us for a quick visit? It is such an easy day to remember since it is on St. Patricks Day. We have now renamed the holiday in honor of our little boy to St. Raggy's Day. If any of you don't know the story behind the name RAGNAR....well....you may think we are kinda mean parents. But believe me it fits. It always is a good day to remember what we have to look forward to when we see the little dude again. I do feel like it is a little blessing to always have that excitement to raise a child we do not know in the next life. I can't wait to see what little personality he has, and to see my love grow for him. I am sure he is up there now giving our new little boy some pointers on how to deal with us. Hopefully "Jack" is taking the pointers to good heart. So, you are all probably wondering if that is the name of our new baby boy. Well, we have been throwing around multiple names, bu...

The Mom and Tot dance class is the highlight of Emmi's week. In fact every morning I ask her what she wants to do and without fail she says, "Dance Class". She absolutely loves being with all these little girls. She is constantly talking about all of them and especially about Ella. They see each other and for the first 10 minutes of class they HAVE to be holding hands. Every week they get better and better at listening and getting the moves down. It is so cute. The best is that she has to have her tights and tuttu on or she has a breakdown. I hope she will take to dance and be a great little dancer.

For some reason Valentines Day is a holiday that I could take or leave, but every year without fail I seem to always ask myself...."Do you think Brian remembered? Will he actually put some thought into something this year, or will it be the token Costco roses? What do you all think it was this year? Emmi was for sure my favorite Valentine this year. No offense Brian...you took the back burner this year. I made a lunch with as much red in it as possible. I set her pink table up cute and we had a little Valentine picnic. Her favorite was the red cherry Fresca in her tiny goblet. I won't tell you about the multiple spills due to no fine dexterity. All in all it was my Valentines highlight. After a nap we went to our 3:00 sugar cookie decorating appointment with Grandma Birkeland. Emmi didn't seem to care about eating the cookies she just cared about the sprinkles and the frosting. She definitely didn't get that from me. I hate frosting. She had a blast. What a ...

There is something called sticker obsession that is going on in the Birkeland home at the moment. Emmi used to hate anything that stuck to her. She would panic until someone helped her get it off. It all changed on one particular night. I had all the Young Women over one evening, so Brian took Emmi out on a couple of errands. They went to Office Max and she picked out a package of stickers. She brought them home and soon every girl had a sticker on their forehead or hands. By the end of the night this is how she looked. Hilarious. I am still picking up stickers in the most random places. All her dolls are plastered with stickers. Our furniture, floors, and clothes have been tagged. I can't complain about the obsession because it entertains her for hours.

We rarely dare anymore to go out to dinner with Emmi these days. First of all you never know if it will be the time she eats well, or when she takes a bite and says, "all done" and fights you until you let her down and then she roams the restaurant and begs for everyones attention around her. So tonight was the night we dared to go out. Now, we didn't set our expectations too high. We went fast food thinking how can you go wrong? We walked into "Eat a Burger" with high hopes it would be an enjoyable meal. Boy were we mistaken. First of all, we ordered her a kids meal....why do we ever do that? She never eats it. Second, all she would do is dip her fry in the sauce and then lick the sauce. There's a point when you call that quits. When you look over and she is still working on the same fry and the sauce is gone. We told her to bite the dang fry. So she does. Somehow she doesn't chew it and tries to swallow it whole. She starts choking. Final...

I haven't posted any of our Christmas photos yet. Since this blog is somewhat of a journal I felt like I needed to write down the memories of Christmas 2008. So before you see these pictures I wanted to say that I was so excited for Christmas this year with Emmi. She understood that a "scary" man named Santa Claus would come and bring her toys. The thing she didn't understand, nor cared to understand was how many toys He would bring and what He would bring. She just wanted "A toy". On Christmas morning she walked into the family room and she didn't even know how to react. Toys everywhere. She didn't know where to even begin. Could overstimulus be an understatement? Ummm....yeah....for sure. She did go straight to her kitchen after coaching her that she could actually go and touch some of these toys. She was in heaven with the kitchen. Setting the table, eating all the play food, cooking eggs, serving drinks. It was a kick watching her and ...