Labor Day Weekend

We hope you all are enjoying your Labor Day Weekend! Yesterday we went to a Craft Festival outside of Atlanta. There were lots of vendors there selling their "knick-a-knacks", good festival food, and local singers. Emily enjoyed dancing on the lawn and walking up the stairs at some of the displays.

There was a man selling hammocks and Emily enjoyed trying one out:

This morning her Bible class was small due to folks being out of town, but they still had a great time learning about Noah's ark:

Here they are helping build the ark with their hammers:

And beating on the drum to make thunder:

and singing about the rainbow that came out after the flood:
After class several girls had a great time running down the hall:

This morning our class helped with communion and when Emily saw Joe walk by she screamed out "Daddy, Hey!" really loud . . . so everyone got a chuckle. Then about 2 minutes later she decided she was ready to go to Bible class. She looked up at me and said, "Class" and got to the end of the aisle and pointed her finger to her wrist and started singing the song about "time for Bible Class" and took off running for the door. I caught up with her in time to help her out of the auditorium. Fun times!

Last night we went to a Chinese restaurant and they had the big goldfish that swam under a little bridge. The lady showed us a small bowl with fish food to let Emily feed the fish. She enjoyed that and even tried some of the fish food for herself before I realized what she was doing! So she can now add fish food to her list of items she has tried to eat : )

War Eagle!

War Eagle!!!!!!

Our Dog

I wasn't going to post anything today until this happened. I'm sitting here at my computer checking my email and heard this vibrating sound under my desk . . . it's our dog Bud snoring so loud that he's vibrating the desk . . . because he's crammed up under my feet and his head is up against the wall. Crazy dog!!!!

Day at the Lake

Yesterday my friend Tim and I drove to Lake Martin in Dadeville to meet our friends Bonnie and Rita at Bonnie's lake house. I've worked for the same software company for 13 years which is how I formed my friendships with everyone. Bonnie is the manager of support (the department I work in), Rita worked for this company for close to 20 years before "retiring" and we met Tim because he used to work for one of the dealerships that sold our software. Tim is currently living in Atlanta, but is getting ready to move back to California. So before he heads back to the west coast, we all got together for a wonderful visit.

This was as close as we got to the lake because it rained ALL DAY today. When we drove home this evening it was as dry as it could be in Georgia!
Joe and Emily had a great time back in Georgia hanging out together for some wonderful Father/Daughter time!!!

Birthday Party

Emily and I went to our friend Dagan's 4th Birthday party today!!! We had a great time at Monkey Joe's which is an indoor play area with lots of inflatable slides and jumping areas.

This is such an attractive picture of me . . . but what can I say . . . we had fun going down the slide!!!!

There weren't many areas that Emily felt comfortable in . . .she's a little bit too young to fully enjoy this place . . . but she enjoyed the slide above and this area with inflatable animals:

. . . and the stationary car : ))))

I packed her lunch because I didn't know if she would eat the pizza they served the kids, but girlfriend ate the whole slice and wanted more!!!

Happy Birthday Dagan! We had fun at your party!!!

Dress up Pictures

I am such a sucker when it comes to getting pictures made at a studio. I go in with the mindset of what I want to get and come out with 50 extra pictures and spending more than I planned on . . . I can't help it . . . I feel under pressure to pick the best pictures within the time frame that Emily is playing with the toys at the studio, and I'm so afraid I'll get home and will realize I didn't order a picture I remember seeing that I liked and will regret it. So this time people I have so many extra pictures that anyone I know can have one . . . just let me know : )

The dress Emily is wearing was put together in a group effort. My sister cut out the dress and put the basics together, I smocked it, and my mom sewed it . . . so we all played a part. I HAD to get pictures of her in this dress . . . so here are some of them for her 19 month portraits. The place I went to let me have a CD of all of the shots so here are a few. I was so shocked that we got any pictures to choose from because she was so clingy since she didn't quite know how she felt about the photographer. . . . but he got some great shots! In the black background picture she is sitting in my lap and I have a black cape draped over me.






The picture below is Emily and 2 other children in her class (there are 4 total in her class). One of the moms brought her camera when we went to pick them up and she emailed me this picture of Emily. It appears as though Emily is holding all the chalk and the other little boy is left at the chalkboard with no chalk. . . .I'm going to have to teach Emily to share : )

Emily's First Day of "School"

Up until now Emily has stayed at someone's house a couple of mornings a week since I work part time from home. Between nap time and those mornings, I'm able to get my hours in . . . which I'm thankful for. Well today, instead of going to a sitter's house, Emily started her first morning at a local church's Mother's Morning Out program.

I tried to get some "first day of school" pics but as you can see they didn't turn out so great. The very first one she was smiling, but goofy me forgot to set the flash so the ONLY picture of her smiling is blurred. After that she was mad at me for not allowing her to see the picture screen on my camera so the rest are pretty groovy:


This is as good as I could get after trying to convince her that if she let me take a picture I would let her see it in the camera:
I finally gave up and let her play with the bag they give you to put their supplies in, and she had a good time:
So there are the glorious first day of "school" pictures!!!

When I dropped her off this morning her sweet teacher gave each mom a goody bag marked: PARENT SURVIVAL KIT. The package had a poem that said,

A package of tissues to wipe your tears. Hershey hugs and kisses are the next best thing. A bandage to mend your heart.

I think this is very sweet that she is so thoughtful . . . but I didn't see any moms wiping away tears this morning. I saw a bunch of women with "places to go and people to see" as Joe likes to say. I was heading off to get some work done, while one mom was heading down the hall to teach her class, another mom holding a newborn was probably running home to get a good nap, and last but not least a mom rushing out the door with "a million things to do"! This was the same mom who said, "he seems fine to me" when the teacher asked us to stick around a couple of minutes to make sure the children did fine on their first day . . . what a hoot!

Emily will be having play time, art class, snack time, playing on the playground, lunch time and then home for a nap!

We hope you enjoy your first day Emily!

When I went to pick her up she was playing with the bubbles they were blowing in the air and trying to write on the chalkboard. The teacher said she had a great time, ate all her lunch, and didn't cry at all . . . go Emily!

. . . and because I use this blog to chronicle her accomplishments for us to remember for years and years: In other Emily news, this morning when I got Emily out of her bed she asked to hold her elephant stuffed animal. So I gave it to her and she held her pacifier up to his nose and said "paci". How sweet . . . I told her she was being so nice to share her paci with her pet elephant. Then she gave him a hug and held her "night night" blanket up to him!! Too cute! She also tried to give Bud some of her milk yesterday by holding her cup up to his mouth . . . he just walked away. If it's not food to share he's not interested. She has also learned how to climb up on the kitchen chairs and enjoyed coloring on the table last night instead of her paper . . .nice. Good ol' Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to the rescue again . . . I love that thing! A couple of weeks ago Emily also put two words together for the first time. She said "Daddy phone" as she held up his cell phone. Since then she has also said "more pacis" for me to give her all of her pacifiers she sleeps with, and "more cheese" when eating lunch. Yesterday a neighbor was walking his dog and he allowed Emily to pet him and as they walked away she waved and said "bye bye doggie". It's so exciting to hear her say more than just one word at a time.

19 Months Old

Emily is 19 Months Old Today!!!

This is Emily saying "cheese" as I took the picture

She is getting really good at coloring with crayons:

I had fun last night putting her hair in pigtails just to see what they would look like. Joe and I got a good kick out of this! She looks like Pippy Longstocking:

Yesterday afternoon Emily had Joe's EXPENSIVE blackberry phone and leaned over me and accidently dropped it right in my glass of water! Joe took it apart and dried it off but none of the keys would work. Sprint support told him to let it dry overnight and try it again this morning. Luckily this morning it worked . . . whew! He said some of the keys are a little delayed but still work . . . so thankful!!!

I also realized this morning that my mom had my sister when I was 19 months old!!!! I could not imagine having a newborn right now . . . you go mom!!!!

Video of Emily

Here is the video I tried to post last night. Enjoy!

Update on Emily

It's as if Emily knew I was talking about her on the blog the other day . . . but this week she has been so much better about being so clingy and whiny . . .yea!!! She still falls on the floor and cries when we don't let her have something she's not allowed to have. . . but I can handle that any day over the whining and clinging to my legs . . . I just walk away from the falling on the floor and crying : )

I took her to her 18 month checkup this morning (yes I know I'm late but I put off shot appts as long as I can) and she FINALLY weighs over 20 pounds . . . yea! I sure do hope this trend of being long and lean sticks with this girl! She is doing well and we are happy to report that she doesn't have to have any more vaccination shots until she is 3 . . .whew! That is a load off our minds . . .we always worry about getting vaccination shots. She still screams the whole time we are at a doctor's office but that's o.k. . . . that all started when she got her kidney infection over Christmas and from then on doctor's offices have been scary places.

I have more pictures of how busy she has been this week . . . last night she figured out how to open one of the drawers on her chest of drawers (or as we have always called it: chester drawers) and has enjoyed taking all the clothes out of the drawer and transporting them to the same spot at the end of the hallway. But before I show you that video, I had to post this picture. I love seeing Emily sleeping and yesterday I was able to get a picture before she woke up from her nap:

Speaking of sleeping . . . Emily woke us up at 4:15 this morning with a sharp cry out for her "night night" (which is the little burp cloth blanket that she sleeps with). I got up to go check on her but before I could reach her room she had quit crying so I didn't dare go in to her room in fear that we would be up for the rest of the morning. I wonder if she was dreaming . . . it was just so quick and so loud. Of course, I never went back to sleep and kept having fitful little dreams of someone snatching her from her bed and kept questioning (in my sleepy stupor) if that was why she cried out. She was fine this morning so must have been a dream . . .weird.

I thought this was a sweet smile so had to post. This was last night after her bath:

She was playing sweetly this morning in her room while I finished getting ready . . . such a nice change from previous weeks:
After she got bored with the Legos she went for the PJ's again:

. . . my sweet baby girl . . .

I had a video I wanted to post but can't get it to load right now . . . so I'll try again later.

Getting into Everything

Man . . . all of a sudden it seems like Emily has been on speed mode about getting into stuff. I remember thinking when she started crawling that our house could get into disarray . . . but that was nothing compared to now!!! Emily is RUNNING now and likes to go from room to room to see what she can pull out of a drawer or cabinet and take out and scatter all over the house. When we put her to bed now there is STUFF EVERYWHERE . . . and for a non-clutter person like me it's pretty hard sometimes. Here is what she did last night before bed. She started bringing diapers into the living room and laying down and trying to put them on. When she got bored with that she grabbed both baskets out from under her changing table and carried them into the living room to rearrange the contents for me.


She also found a deck of cards in one of the drawers in the kitchen and ran up and down the hall taking piles of cards from one end of the hall to the other. She found pens in that same drawer and scribbled all over the church directory (which I'm glad it was that and not the floor) and also gets all the spatulas out of the drawer in the kitchen and scatters them all over the house. This morning she tried to drag out several toilet paper rolls from the hall closet and I stopped her . . .goodness gracious this child is busy!!!

Saturday Fun!

This past Saturday we went to a Barbecue festival where several vendors sold their barbecue. They also had a competition for best barbecue . . . but I'm not sure who won. Anyway, we enjoyed walking around and Emily enjoyed the kids play area. It was held at a park so she also got to slide down the slide. There was a water section for the kids and as you can see Emily got soaked. I remembered to bring everything but a change of clothes for her : ) We just sun dried her clothes out while we walked around and she cruised in her stroller in nothing but a diaper . . . oh well. At least it was sunny enough for her clothes to dry quickly. They had a pony ride on these cute little ponies but then I found out that the ride was $5 . . . so Emily just waved at the ponies. The barbecue sandwiches and fried pies that we ate were delicious. I didn't bring my camera so thanks to Lewis for these pictures:

As you can see Emily got drenched:

Doing her chores

We've decided that one of Emily's first chores that she will be responsible for is cleaning the floors. She loves to get out the mops in the garage and "clean" the driveway and last night she found my hard wood floor broom and cleaned the kitchen floor for me . . . I seriously considered getting out the wood floor cleaner and sprinkling some down for her so she could really clean : )


Here is yet another reminder of why I CAN'T WAIT TO BE IN A HOUSE WITH A PANTRY!!! Emily now goes and gets whatever bags she wants out of the kitchen and eats her snacks. Here she is chomping down on some pretzels and sharing with Bud: