Wintertime

Tuesday  night when we got home from our Christmas party, it was snowing out.  If you click on the pictures you can see the snow a little better, it was huge white flakes which did not show up well in the pictures.  Emily is so funny when we go outside now even if we are just walking to our car, she says it's wintertime!  We have been talking about the seasons, wintertime it's cold and snowy and this week it sure has been cold!

Bible Study Group Christmas Party

Last Tuesday we got together with our home builders bible study group for our Christmas party.  We had a wonderful dinner, and then played Christmas charades.  Our team lost by one point, but we had such a good time it didn't matter who one.  The kids played and they were so cute acting out the word they got.  Emily even participated, her and Claire acted out mistletoe, Emily was to kiss Claire, but instead she planted a big kiss on my cousin Diane, on the lips too!  It was so cute, but I got that on video instead of an actual picture.  After Emily was done, she kept saying she wanted to go again.  She wants to do whatever everyone else is doing!  I acted out Nativity scene and everyone got it, yeah! 

Emily had fun playing, she drew on the board, played with the dollhouse, read a book to Claire, and played the piano.  It was a great time, it's fun now that Emily can participate more and play independently without Jim and I chasing her around the room.

Helping Daddy

I had to share another picture of Emily helping her dad with the home project.  Emily always puts on her hat and slippers to help out, but lately she has been also wearing her gloves, coat and sunglasses around our house too.  Our house is toasty warm with our wood pellet stove heating it up, I absolutely love it, not sure why Emily tends to bundle up.  She is so cute though helping her dad, it's priceless.  I need to get it on video!

Emily's Christmas Pictures

Last week I took Emily to Sears to get her Christmas pictures taken.  My mom met us there, she often helps gets Emily to smile and it's nice to have a special surprise at the mall.  This time Emily was especially good, she did exactly as the photographer said and posed so cute.  She got a little silly at the end, but she really was an angel.  When the photographer said she was done, Emily kept saying, "No, one more picture!"  The photographer played along as Emily did this about 3 or 4 times.  Here are some of the posses.  I was excited about the winter wonderland theme and doing something other than a red dress, but I am a little disappointed with how the lighting turned out with the blue dress, you almost lose Emily with all of the white.  I wish we would have tried a black or dark colored background. 

Girls Christmas Party- 10th Year

Carrie Goodman, Danielle Weston, Sherri Watts, Me, Danielle Filias, and Bridget Drzewicki, (Nicole Collins is missing)

I have some special friends that I get together with from my old job.  We worked together when I first started out of college and now only one of the 7 still works with the same company.  When we first started to get together most of us were single, and now several weddings and children later we are still getting together, between the 7 of us we have 15 children.  We don't live close together so we usually get together about once every two months or so.  We realized that last Saturday was our 10th Christmas celebration.  I always love our get together, we have the best conversations and it's such a special bond.

Putting up the Christmas Tree

Emily is absolutely loving this Christmas season!  It has made it so much more fun for me, it's so hard not to buy her every toy that looks cute and of course "perfect" for Emily!  She will even see toys on commercials now and say "I want to bring that home to play with!"  Usually it's the princess doll houses, she is such a girl.  When we drive at night she fines houses with Christmas lights up and yells "Christmas lights Mom, Christmas lights, far far away, as we drive closer she says ohhh awww so pretty!"  We have been listening to Christmas music and she loves Jingle Bells, and Frosty the Snowman, in some songs she says "Santa Claus singing!"  She already knows all the words to Jingle Bells from just hearing it the last couple of weeks.  They sure are like little sponges.

Last night we got out our Christmas tree, and boy was Emily excited to decorate it!  We made the mistake of setting it up before dinner so we could decorate it after we ate.  Of course Emily ate a few bites of dinner and was ready to decorate the tree!  

I was amazed at how well Emily did putting the decorations on the tree, hanging them up, finding spots for all of them, and being careful.  She did a really good job.  The only thing is now she wants to take them off and move them, I keep telling her we don't need to do that, that we are done.

I included a couple of cute pictures of Emily snapping pictures with her toy camera, she would take our picture and then say it was our turn to take her picture.  That is how I got the adorable picture of her in from of the tree with her snowman, she doesn't usually smile that good for the "real camera" but Jim was taking pictures of her with the toy camera and I snuck in and snapped a picture too.  I wish I could of gotten the toy digital camera I wanted to get Emily on Black Friday, but Kohl's was all out.  Don't worry I found a lot of other great things for Miss Emily for Christmas.  Yes she is spoiled!

Thanksgiving with Jim's Family

Emily just loved Grandma's cat Holly (actually it's Aunt Susan's cat) this weekend when we were at her house. Emily followed it around everywhere and always wanted to "go find Holly!" She brought this duck and was trying to show it to Holly, she actually crammed it under the bed and everything. I'm not sure if she thought Holly would come out then?  I just noticed two sets of eyes in this picture, this is the first time I have seen the other cat at Grandma's house, how crazy is that!

Here is a picture of Emily and I cuddling on the couch, and Alan is waving next to us. Emily and I both were a little under the weather so Emily liked lots of cuddles from her mom. We took Emily to the doctor on Wednesday (the day before Thanksgiving), she woke up from her nap with a 103 fever. Luckily the doctor said it's an upper respiratory infection, I was relieved because I was praying it's not H1N1. We haven't had the vaccine for it, and with me being pregnant, that is the last thing I want. I did however catch Emily's upper respiratory infection, and this is no fun either. Cough, Sore Throat, Runny Nose, and for a while I lost my voice, but that is better.

Here is a picture of the Hunters - Pete, Susan (Jim's sister), Tristan & Zach (Sue's boys). They saw 14 or 15 deer the first day they went hunting on their 13 acres, but the second day I don't think they saw any deer. But I think it's hard to hunt with two boys who are making noises? All I know is now Emily says she wants to go hunting. She doesn't quite know what it is, but she knows the boys got dressed up in special clothes, went outside to do something fun, had special equipment and were talking excitedly about seeing a lot of deer. Sounds like fun to a 2.5 year old!

Here is a picture of Emily and Jim blowing kisses to grandma in the house. They were running around in the leaves pretending they were airplanes, too bad none of those pictures turned out!

Here is another picture of Emily and Holly, she sure loved that cat!

Emily helped Grandma open her present, I think Emily was as excited as Grandma for the Chico's gift card!

Here is another picture of Emily helping Grandma open her present with much better lighting.

This picture is of Emily watching Tristan and Zach open their Nerf guns, she was so cute watching her older cousins.

We had a great time celebrating Thanksgiving at Jim's mom's house, a big Thanksgiving meal, we made Christmas cookies, and Jim won at a game of Poker with his family (I was putting Emily to bed).  Lots of fun family time.