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.