Mills Moments: Birthday Pictures

These two little kids are growing up! Emma turned 7 years old in April and I can't believe it. She is as smart as can be and has a very sweet demeanor...most of the time. :) She is doing very well in school and has straight A's. She is beyond the reading level they test for first grade and has been for months. She has great comprehension and reads fast! She is also good at math and loves science. She has struggled with handwriting a little bit because they are learning a different style of writing here in Texas than what she learned in Washington. When she started writing she liked to write in all caps and I didn't really care because she was writing! Now it is a little bit of a problem but she has made great improvements this year. For mothers day last week we made cards for all of our Grandma's and Emma wrote the messages for the inside. My dad didn't believe that it was Emma's handwriting so it must not be too bad. Can't figure out how to make the picture straight. Sorry!

Emma is also taking piano lessons again here in Texas. Her teacher is our Bishop's wife and we love her. She is very technical and really stresses Emma learning timing and the notes. She has made a lot of improvement and I think she really likes playing the piano. She does love to challenge me when it is time to practice and acts like I am torturing her though. :) We have a new neighbor girl next door who is a year older than Emma whose name is Emily. Emma wants to play with her every day and the rule is she has to do her chores, practice piano and have homework done before she can play. It has really helped to have an incentive.

Emma loves to play with her little brother and they have a lot of fun together. We have a fenced in back yard at the house we are in now and they love to be outside. The weather here is so different from Washington. It is HOT right now and it is only May. We have seen temps as high as 97 degrees already. The crazy part is a storm will come in and the temp will drop 50 degrees over night! Emma only has two and half weeks of school left though and we are ready to play in the sunshine!

Levi turned 3 the beginning of March. He has so much personality we don't know what to do with him! He adores his big sister and asks all day long if we can "get Emma at school." He just got tested last week to get into the speech program at the school and is very qualified. haha The speech teacher says he is very smart and can make all of the sounds she asks him to but he needs a lot of help with articulation. He leaves off the beginning, end and middle of words. Mostly he just uses vowel sounds. His teacher says he speaks very much like someone that couldn't hear. He has made a lot of improvement with his speech since we got tubes in his ears last August. He is pretty sensitive to loud noises now and always covers his ears. I can understand most of what Levi says but I spend all day with him. His first speech appointment was on Monday and he loved it. He was so excited that he got to go to school. He will go Mondays and Fridays and it is just for half an hour. He only has two weeks until they finish for the school year. I might get him into a summer speech program through the college here in Canyon.
Levi is also a very funny boy. He loves to laugh and tease. He has the best belly laugh! He has decided to be pretty independent. This week he got ice cream all over his face from an ice cream cone. Ivan picked him up and took him to the sink to clean him up and he got really mad! He ran back over to his ice cream cone and smeared it all over his face so he could wash up himself! He is pretty sure of what he wants. We potty trained Levi right after his birthday. It was a breeze! By the end of the first day he would tell me he needed to go potty and we even went to a friend's house that night without any accidents. He has also been completely night time trained and hasn't had any accidents. He is a normal kid and has had a few random days where it seemed like he didn't know what or where the potty even was...but they have been very few.
We did a photo shoot last night for both of their birthdays. I love to take pictures and it helps that I have such adorable little models. Ivan found this cool abandoned train depot that was perfect. Enjoy!