Swinging and Swimming

It was finally nice this weekend and we got to spend some long awaited time outside. Emily had a great weekend! Tammy came over on Saturday and helped (well, she did most of the work) to put Emily's swingset together! Em was so excited and spent most of the weekend outside playing on it!

Saturday was Emily's last swim lesson of this session so daddy surprised her by taking an hour off of work on Saturday morning to come and swim with her. She was so excited!

Of course she was excited to see her best friend Emma there too :)

FINALLY!

I know..I know...It's been a really long time! Unfortunately this is not the best time of year for us and the blog takes a back seat :) Chad is busy, busy, busy at work and Em and I are trying to hold down the fort.

These first pics are from Em's birthday party at the Discovery Museum.

She's also been taking swim lessons with her good friend Emma!

And when there's nothing else to do, Emily is always up for some fun on the WII!

Bring on SPRING!!!

Emily's 2!

Just a quick post tonight. We went to Sears to have Emily's 2 year pictures taken tonight. She wasn't very cooperative, but fornunately the pictures don't show that :)

The photographer asked her repeatedly if her favorite word was no.....Her answer...........NO.

Enjoy!

Christmas

Christmas was a blast this year! Emily really started to get into the whole Christmas thing. (except for Santa as you saw on the last post :)

We stayed home on Christmas Eve this year and went out to dinner and then to church. We actually kept Emily with us during the Christmas Eve service instead of taking her to the nursery. She was a hoot! She sang along to all the songs and actually appeared to be listening to the pastor's sermon because she made a totally appropriate comment at just the right time!

After church it was home and to bed so Santa and his little elves could get to work on building her kitchen! Which was a total hit!

She woke up about 3 that morning, but we got her to go back to bed until close to 7. She loved her kitchen and all of the other goodies that Santa brought her.

Late morning on Christmas day we took off on our whirlwind of traveling. Our first stop was Grandma and Grandpa Rogers. Like always Emily had a great time there, especially with her cousins!

Then it was off to Momo and Popo's where Elmo made his appearance. She was in awe that he was telling her stories and dancing with her.

This is also where she became a princess (much to her father's dismay)

Finally our last stop was Mama and Papa Walker's where she was given the license to drive!

This is also where she was spoiled rotten for a week while.........

her parents were spoiling themselves in sunny Mexico!!

Happy New Year to all......

Breakfast with Santa

Saturday morning we headed over to the Normal Community Center to have Breakfast with Santa. Our friends Tami and Mike and their two children went with us. Emily was so excited (to see her friend Emma, not Santa) she could hardly contain her excitement.

When we got there, she got a santa picture and some crayons. Shockingly, she actually sat and colored for a while!

It didn't take long though and her and Emma were off and running!

The ramp over to the left of Emily in this first picture was where they enjoyed themselves the most.

They really liked sitting in Santa's chair (until Santa was in it...see below :)

Even though they were one of the youngest at the breakfast they weren't shy when it came time to get up on stage and sing Christmas carols. Once they stopped eating the bells, they actually had some rhythm.

But then, that scary man Santa had to come and ruin all of their fun :) Once she got off of his lap, the tears stopped immediately, she thanked him for the gift and quickly said bye-bye.

Daddy asked her if she wanted to go sit with him again, and I think before the question was out of his mouth, Emily's quick response was NO! We've got it on video, but I haven't figured out how to upload that yet!

After Santa took off, she was back to her happy self!!

I'm guessing she won't be up waiting this year to see the man in the red suit!!

Happy holidays to everyone!!

Baking Cookies

Things have been pretty busy for us lately so I apologize for the lack of posts. We traveled the circuit for the Thanksgiving holiday and visited all of our families. We have some cute pictures for you guys!

Since we've been back it seems like time is just flying by. I can't believe we're a week an a half from Christmas break!

This past weekend we had a visit from Kristy and Adam. We had lots of fun when they were here! We took Emily to the ISU basketball game on Saturday night. She actually made it through most of the game! She was a big fan of the popcorn that I did not want her to have ( of course ).
But the big highlight of the weekend was baking on Sunday. As many of you know, baking is NOT one of my favorite things to do but since Kristy, aka Martha Stewart, was here to help I thought it might be fun...and it was...for the most part. We made pretzels and cashew clusters and almost 8 dozen holiday cookies. I can finally say that they are all decorated!

Emily definitely enjoyed herself! Can't say she was much help, but maybe next year! The tradition has begun!!

Winnie the Pooh

This weekend we took Emily down to Springfield to see Disney Live-Winnie the Pooh.

She was so excited that she didn't take a nap all day. We were a little worried as to what the night would bring with no nap :)
She was pretty unsure at the beginning and true to her style, she just sat back and soaked it all in.

But by intermission, she was bouncing with Tigger, singing the Pooh song, and having a great time!!

We didn't get too many good pictures, but there's a couple below we thought you might enjoy.