Our darling girl!

For those of you who don't know, we are currently in Utah for the summer. Andrew is doing an internship at a pharmacy here. We have loved our time here visiting family and friends (and enjoying an air conditioned home)! Emma is 5 months now and is learning and growing SO much! She can roll over all by herself, eat her feet, and babble with the best of them. She is getting ready to eat food soon! We love her SO much! Being a parent is GREAT! These pictures are in kind of a random order from the time she was about 2 months until now.

This is Emma with Andrew's Dad (aka Gramps)

This picture is Emma with Andrew's Mom. You can see her hair sticking up. We did not do this to her hair, she woke up like this. She has Andrew's cowlick.

Emma 'eating' a Snickers (she loves them just like her Mom)

On the 24th of July (Utah's Pioneer Day) we went with Andrew's family to the parade in Salt Lake City. It is a big deal here in Utah, but I had never been, so we decided to go. Usually the prophet rides in it, but this year it was President Eyring and his wife. Who can complain?! It was really special to be so close to President Eyring. Notice all the body guards!

Here is another picture from the Parade. Emma is asleep in Andrew's arms (obviously). We paid to get bleacher seats, which were really nice and shaded most of the time. We got to be in the front row thanks to Andrew's Dad who went up to Salt Lake super early to get good seats!

This is a close up of Emma that shows her big blue eyes.

Andrew reading to Emma, although she seemed more interested in eating the book than reading it.

This was taken on Andrew's b-day. Emma was mesmerized by the candles on his cake. I love the look on her face in this picture!

Another picture of Emma's cowlick.

Emma cooking in the kitchen with Mom

We blessed Emma here in Utah so our families could be a part of it. This is Andrew and Emma on the couch after the baby blessing! The blessing was amazing! We are so happy Emma is a part of our family!

This is Emma and me on the couch after the blessing. Andrew's Mom got the bow for Emma that is in her hair. It is so pretty!

On the 4th of July we went with Andrew's family to Cascade Springs (you drive through Sundance to get there). It was beautiful. This is our little family there.

This is Emma and me getting ready for go exploring at Cascade Springs.

This is Emma on her blessing day (July 5th). This is the beautiful dress that she wore. It cost $9. Thanks to the Averys who told us about the great deal! Doesn't Emma look beautiful!!

Andrew's sister, Stacia, came with her family to Utah from Houston to visit for a couple of weeks. While she was here we went to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House. It was absoultely beautiful! This is Andrew and Emma walking up to the temple.

This is Emma with her cousin that was born only 2 1/2 weeks before Emma. It is hard to tell from their sizes that they are that close in age! By the way, we did not pose them in this postition for the picture, they did it themselves!

This is Andrew and Emma. This was taken in Portland in the back of the Pittock Mansion.

This was also taken in back of the Pittock Mansion. If you look in the background you can see Mount Hood and a fabulous view of Portland.

This is one of favorite pictures of Emma, taken on the 4th of July. Is that not the most beautiful baby you have ever seen?! SO cute!

This is Emma and me in a forest near the Pittock Mansion.

This is Emma looking so precious as she sleeps!

This is a cute picture of Andrew and Emma! She LOVES her Dad!

This is Andrew and Emma on a hike on the way to Munson Creek Falls, near Tillamook Oregon.

This is a picture of Emma and I at the begining of the trail to Munson Creek Falls, which was beautiful! It is so green everywhere!

This is a picture taken of Emma when she was about 2 months old.

This was taken of Emma at the Tillamook Cheese factory in Oregon. What a face!

Blog Update

We have decided to make our blog private. I know we haven't blogged in a while, but since it has been so very long I am going to post new pictures of our little babe (who is growing quickly) and all the things we have been up to. We would love for you to continue reading our blog. If you would like to be invited to our blog please leave a comment or email me so I can add your email to the list!

Thanks,
Andrew and Jenny

rudolphs123@live.com

Like father, like daughter . . .

So we dug out some old photos a few weeks ago. What seemed like a benign family activity led to a stunning revelation: I think I may have been cloned. If it were not for the differences in color quality (and the obvious difference in the people involved), I don't think you could tell the difference between my pictures and my daughter's at the same age.





This last picture was taken by a friend who is an excellent photographer- you can check out her website at http://www.cupcakeimagesphotography.com/. Luckily, there aren't any pictures of me as a baby that match this one.

We are loving our little girl and trying to get accustomed to our new lifestyle. We are also very much looking forward to spending 6-8 weeks in Utah this summer. I will be completing an internship in Orem and my parents have been kind enough to allow us to stay with them. It's about time our little Oregon girl got a taste of Happy Valley!

Welcome Emma Delaney Rudolph, Farewell Carolyn Chase Muhlestein

We are excited to welcome Emma Delaney Rudolph to our family! She was born on Valentine's Day at 2:14 pm (that would be 2/14 at 2:14!). She weighed in at 6 lbs. 7 oz. packed into 19 1/2 ". Jenny's labor was relatively uneventful, which was quite a relief for her. Emma did end up getting vacuum sucked the last little bit of the way out because she was too stubborn to put her face down, but she has been an extraordinary baby ever since she was born. She sleeps and sleeps and sleeps (got that from her mom!) and only cries when we change her diaper. She is very small and her newborn size diapers are noticeably large, but she is eating well and growing.As excited as we have been to witness the start of a new life, we also experienced a great loss this week. Jenny's mother, Carolyn, passed away less than three days after Emma was born. She has been sick for quite some time, suffering the effects of Alzheimer's for more than a decade. Her passing was certainly expected, but we have been saddened by the timing since our new baby will keep Jenny from traveling to Utah for the funeral.
Thanks to the generosity of some friends we were able to travel to Utah for Thanksgiving. This is Jenny's mom surrounded by all but one of her eight children. Jenny had her mom's picture next to her bed during labor as a reminder that if she could do it eight times, Jenny could make it through this one. She was a celestial example of motherhood.
We feel especially grateful right now for the atonement of Jesus Christ and the power of His priesthood which will allow us all to be together forever as a family.She is so beautiful and we love her so much!

Cream of Asparagus Soup

It is currently 4:00 in the morning and I can't sleep. Is this mother nature's way of getting me ready for a 4 am feeding in a couple of weeks? It's kind of a mean trick. Well, since I can't sleep I figured I might as well do something, so I decided to post a blog entry about the recipe I made for dinner last night. We bought some asparagus on sale about a week ago and needed to use it. I have never had asparagus soup so I thought I would find a recipe online and try it out. The following link is to the "cream of asparagus soup" recipe that I made. I figured since all 5 reviews for it gave it 5 stars it was worth something. Besides the fact that it slightly resembled pureed baby food it tasted really good and is probably actually somewhat healthy, which is always a bonus right?! If you decide to try it out may I suggest setting aside the cooked asparagus tips and adding it at the very end, as it states in the recipe. The asparagus tips give it a nice variety in flavor and texture (I am a texture maniac when it comes to food). I also used fat free milk (it's all we buy, so it's all we had) and it still tasted excellent. I am constantly looking for good tasting, healthy recipes, and I thought that maybe other people out there may be looking too, so as long as you don't care if your food looks like baby food then try it out! :)

Cream of Asparagus Soup Recipe Link

To the Greatest Husband in the World

Recently I had a birthday that happened to fall on Sunday. Because of this Andrew and I decided to go out to eat on Saturday night to one of my favorite places in the world, Macaroni Grill. I had an abundant Christmas, that included a bread maker (thank you craigslist) and a new sewing machine, so I told Andrew all I wanted for my birthday was to go out to dinner and a "love note" from him. I expected nothing more and nothing less. Well Sunday morning rolled around and when I woke up Andrew brought me breakfast in bed, which included a bowl of honey bunches of oats (I'm addicted to cold cereal), a banana, a glass of OJ, and my vitamins. When we got home from church he said he wanted to make dinner for me so after a nap I taught Andrew how to bake a potato and we had a wonderful dinner, but that was not all. While I was taking my nap Andrew made a birthday cake for me! How thoughtful! But that was not the end. Andrew cleaned up a pile of school papers that has been on the floor for quite some time. He knows how much it would mean to me if it was cleaned up so he did it! He did everything for me that day. He wouldn't let me lift a finger. He even went the whole day without tickling me (I Hate being tickled, but I'm convinced it is one of Andrew's favorite pastimes). I did get my love note, but so much more! I couldn't ask for a better husband! How blessed and lucky I am! I love you Andrew!!!

The "blog title" battle continues...

So, in case if ya all haven't noticed our blog title changes quite frequently. Andrew and I have been having an ongoing battle about what the title of our family blog should be. I feel as though we should have a "normal" blog title such as "The Rudolphs". Andrew thinks that is "boring". Well , the problem occurs when the other person is not around and the blog title gets changed. It started out as "Radical Adventures in Rudolph Land" (not my favorite) and then changed to something like "Rudolph Family" (great!) and then it changed to "The Rudolphs: Join us in our quest for world domination" (what does that mean?!?). Between all of this I try to convince Andrew that "The Rudolphs" is a completely acceptable title but to no avail. I then changed it to "The Rudolphs: the happiest family on earth" (cheesy I know, but I knew Andrew wouldn't argue with it). That was the title until about a week ago when Andrew got the guts to change it yet another time. This time it was, "The Rudolphs: Yes we get more presents because of our name". This morning when I checked our blog Andrew had altered the title to "The Rudolphs: Join us on our AMAZING journey". So as you can see I have changed it to "The Rudolph Family". We'll see if it sticks.