Emily is 2 weeks old today!  She is a sweet baby and doing well. 

 

Erik and Emily:

 

Elizabeth and  Emily:  

Emily has arrived!

Emily Lynne Ohran has officially joined the family! She was born at 8:24am 6/15/2011 in Nassau Bay, TX. She weighs 7lb8oz and is 19in long.  Allison and Emily are both doing well. Erik and Elizabeth are so excited to have a new baby sister!

Getting back into blogging.

Since Allison never blogs (other than stamping blogs, of course), she's been officially fired. So now I will try my hand at this for a while. While the quality of the content will inevitably go down, hopefully the frequency will go up.

Things are going well in Texas. I've moved from working in the polypropylene plant over to the refinery, where I work on process optimization. Lots of fun.

Erik is big into Legos and Pokemon. As you can see, he now wears glasses. Despite the fact that both Allison and I are majorly near-sighted, he is far-sighted. He just finished his spring soccer season. He had loads of fun, even though he was usually too timid to really go after the ball much. When I told him to go give the ball a super-kick, he replied with exasperation, " Dad, I haven't unlocked that ability yet."

Elizabeth is really into coloring. She goes through a ream of printer paper in about a month's time. She also loves to color the back patio and, to her mother's chagrin, the walls in the house. She has been in heaven ever since she got her room painted pink, a white queen bed with a pink bedspread and now gets to wear pink princess panties. She loves to dress up in the many different princess dresses, crowns and accessories. I'm very happy to say that she hasn't totally given in to her inner princess; the other day she and Erik were playing treasure hunt and when they finally found the treasure chest, Erik told Elizabeth that the treasure chest had whatever she wished for in it. Her response (dressed up in her full princess regalia) was that she wished for "missiles and bombs."

Finally, Allison is doing well, given the circumstances. Being 8 months pregnant with many complications is not a very comfortable state to be in (I'm guessing?) We are all very excited for the new baby to arrive (June 15) and grateful to Allison for all the effort it takes to make it happen. It will be interesting to see how Erik and Elizabeth respond to the baby, the are both very excited about it in theory. We'll see what happens in practice. Anyway, this is my attempt to record a little of what goes on in our family. We'll see how diligent I am in keeping up with things.

First Day of School!

. . . . of pre-K preschool that is! Erik is attending a program just down the road at our local Baptist Church. (Texas is much different than LA was in terms of preschools. . . . basically all of the preschools down here are associated with a church and have a Christian-based curriculum.) Looks like it will be a great program though, and after one day of school Erik seems to think it is great! His teachers are Miss Andrea and Miss Marci. (Another apparently Southern thing that we are getting used to. . . adult women are all 'miss' and then their first name.)

Anyway, I can't believe how handsome this guy is. :-) Elizabeth and I sure miss him when he is at school!

We're Alive!

Ok, so don't fall off your chair, but I really am posting again! :-)

We've had an eventful last 7 months so I'll just run through the highlights chronologically.

--In January Ben accepted a Job with Exxon Mobile in Baytown, TX. He works for the chemical part of Exxon (not the refinery) making polypropylene. Or for the rest of us, plastic. :-) He's involved with the control engineering aspects of making the plastic.

--In March, Ben and I traveled to Houston (Clear Lake area) for a house hunting trip. We were very lucky to find a house that we love that is at the end of a cul-de-sac.

--In April we actually closed on the house! Finally the long awaited mile-stone of owning a home! We moved down to Houston the end of April. We're loving the home and of course I'm still excited about a kitchen with more than two drawers, laundry in the house, a garage, a backyard, and, and, and :-) The kids still love playing in the house too. Several of the rooms are still empty, so there is plenty of room to just run around--quite a change from our little apartment! We have also been blessed to have good neighbors. When it is cool enough Erik and Elizabeth like to go out and play with the other kids that live on the street.

--In June we were able to go to Ben's graduation, so we can now call Ben "Dr. Ohran". :-) We were also able to go to Idaho for my brother Michael's and new sister Becca's wedding. It was so fun to see all the family.

--In July Ben had a two week training in Phoenix, so I took the kids and we visited him over the weekend. We were also able to visit with my cousin and her family and a friend that lives in the area. As well, while we were in Arizona, Erik had his birthday and turned 4 years old! Perhaps Erik's most exciting present was his new bike! He is starting to get the hang of riding it around.

Well I think that pretty much sums it up. . . . maybe I'll post again before another 10 months have passed!

Front of the house--not that you can see much with the trees.

Side view of the house.

One of the many 'nooks' that the kids like to play or hide in.

Erik fixing his 'car'--just like Daddy.

Pinewood Derby Champion!

This past weekend, our ward had an Elder's Quorum Pinewood Derby! It was a really fun activity, and I think Erik enjoyed making his first pinewood derby car.

The making of the car was a family event. Ben did the body work on the car. . . with his drill and pocket knife! I'll admit I was a little nervous that we were going to end up with all fingers still intact, but Ben did a good job. Erik was the artist and painted the logging truck all by himself! (Well, other than the "E".) My job was to disguise the weights (ie three rolls of quarters) as logs. And for all you hard-core Pinewood Derby-ers out there--this was a no rules race. Anything goes as long as it doesn't involve fire/combustion. :-) Hence the quarters. . . .Here are a few pictures from the races.Between races, Erik was happy to help himself to a few cookies. . . . And the championship race. . . . Yeah!! Erik's car won first place!! Congrats to Ben and Erik. :-)

Yay for Elizabeth!

This past week has been an exciting one for Elizabeth!  Although she had been scooting around for several months, she is now officially crawling.  She is already fast and is having a great time exploring and getting into everything.  

This afternoon I was trying to get some good pictures of her crawling.  I enlisted Erik's help hoping that she would crawl to him while I got some pictures.  Elizabeth wasn't very cooperative, but she sure thought we were playing a great game.  :-)  We did finally get a few pictures though.  After I loaded them on the computer I noticed she was sticking her tongue out in most of them.  Silly girl!  

A Girl-Man?

Lately Erik has been very interested in trying to figure out all the gender-related words. . . Man, woman, boy, girl, lady, sir, etc. We had been talking about how mommy was a woman since I was a 'grown up girl'. A few hours later, Erik came up to me and said "Biffis a girl, mommy a girl. . . . man?" He was obviously thinking very hard and trying to remember what I had told him before. It was very cute. :-)

Oh, and yes, Erik calls Elizabeth, Biffis. . . Elizabeth is just a little bit too much of a mouthful for him. . .

Happy Labor Day everyone!

Yellowstone

A couple weeks ago we were able to go to Yellowstone for an Ohran Family reunion. Erik had tons of fun camping. He loved staying in a tent with Ben, and Elizabeth and I were just happy that we could stay in a cabin with Meredith and Zander. While we were there we got to see Old Faithful, the Paint Pots, some great waterfalls, some elk, and one bison. We even had matching t-shirts!


At the Paint Pots, Erik was much more excited about the signs than anything else.


Eight of the grand kids enjoying lunch together.

Trip to Utah

I need to play a little catch up, so today we're going to post some pictures of our trip to Utah that we took a couple weeks ago.

While we were in Utah, we attended the Hillier family reunion. The first day we spent in the canyon. This included a hike where Erik found pinecones. As you can see, Erik LOVES pinecones!

The second day of the reunion we went to Heritage Park in Salt Lake City (This is the Place Monument). I would highly recommend this park to anyone. It was a lot of fun!

Some of the activities we did were the pony ride, arrowhead necklaces, leather embossing, print shop, and the train ride. There were tons of other activites too, but we ran out of time.

Another highlight of the trip was Erik's new friend Jackson.

And finally, the plane ride home. Erik found the Safety Information packet quite captivating. Apparently if you read it upside down it is more interesting. :-)

Happy Birthday Erik!

Last Friday we celebrated Erik's birthday. I can hardly believe that he is already 3 years old! Time really does fly.

We went up to Thousand Oaks so that we could celebrate with Erik's cousins. First we had a yummy BBQ thanks to Grandma Maralee, Ema, and John. Next we had a pinata. We decided to do a pinata after Erik got to do one while we were in Utah. He loved the idea that not only could he beat something with a stick, but then you get candy for your effforts! Life doesn't get much better for Erik. :-)


Anyway, then we opened presents and had cupcakes. Happy Birthday Erik!

Congrats Ben!

First, I want to say Happy Father's Day to Ben and both of our wonderful Dads!

This past week has been an exciting one for Ben. He traveled to Seattle where he presented two talks at a conference. He also got the great news that he recived the Dissertation Year Fellowsip! And, last but certainly not least, the students voted him as the TA of the year!

We're proud of you!