Emily

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Happy 2009!




I'll finish getting the rest of Christmas and other holiday pictures up soon, but since it is New Year's Day, here are our wishes to you! Nothing needs to be said about the first picture, but I laugh everytime I see it. The second picture was the fruit left on our counter that somebody (Greg) put in a bowl in a pretty shape and couldn't wait for me to find it the other day. And the last picture was last night. Greg and I had a really nice New Year's Eve dinner at home with cheese fondue for an appetizer, salads with fajita chicken on them, and chocolate fondue for dessert. We played a couple of games (Settlers of Catan and Carcassone) between courses and then watched the crazy (freezing) revelers in Times Square on tv and watched a great fireworks display out our living room windows. Emily stayed up for our appetizer, but went to bed after that.

Greg and I remember every year our first New Year's Eve as parents. Emily was about 10 months old and had had a cold. 10-15 minutes before midnight, she woke up screaming, burning hot, and very unhappy. We got her dosed up with Tylenol and back into bed just in time to welcome in 2007 and watch the fireworks out the window. By the time we were ready for bed, she was up screaming and coughing and completely inconsolable. Finally around 2am we called the doctor's office who was able to advise us on more medication to give her so that we all could sleep a bit until we could take her in to the doctor in the morning. That night was quite a reminder that we had most definitely become parents that year and the job is never over for the night, even on New Year's Eve!

Christmas Eve

Play-doh with Uncle Nathan

Playing with Grandy

Grandy, Poppy, and Emily

Setting out the plate of cookies for Santa


CAREFULLY carrying a glass of milk for Santa

"Wow, look at this set-up!"

Laying her stocking on the table so Santa won't miss it

We had a quiet Christmas Eve at home with a lot of cooking. Emily was able to spend the day playing with everyone which she loved. Right before bedtime, she helped to pick out cookies for Santa and put them on a plate for him, carry a glass of milk for Santa to the table, and then she laid out her stocking for Santa to fill. Emily was still a bit young last year and didn't really get the whole cookies for Santa thing, but this year she certainly did!

Christmas Cookies




Emily helped Grandy, Poppy, Daddy, and me make Christmas cookies. Grandy and I made several varieties, but saved the cut out and decorate cookies for Emily to help with. She helped Grandy cut them out and me decorate them.

New Rooms

Emily's New Room




Our "New" Guest Room



We redid 2 rooms over the last couple of months at home. The motive behind everything was to get Emily moved into her big girl room so "Thumper" will have a home in the nursery in a few months. And Emily is old enough and was ready for a bed. Her new room is our old office so the office had to be relocated downstairs into the guest room. We decided that since that is one of the few rooms left that has not gotten a fresh coat of paint while we've lived here (5.5 years now), it was due for one. Everything was white, but we chose to go with an "apple crisp" color. We like how it came out and were able to move the furniture around a bit and put my sewing/scrapbooking table in there, our bookshelf, and the file cabinet. Fortunately the stuff that had to go in there was more storage related and not a big desk that we didn't have space for. It did take us a bit of time to go through all of the office stuff that had to be moved.

Once we got the guest room re-situated, we were able to start on Emily's room. It was repainted from the green color we had originally used in there and then the furniture was set up. Since we had extra space, we moved her dollhouse from downstairs into her room to give her something to play with in there and to make some more space for her toys from Christmas and baby related things that will be invading her playspace downstairs.

First Snow of the Season


We got our first big snow of the season about a week before Christmas. Emily was so excited about it. It didn't start until mid-morning so by the time there was enough on the ground, it was naptime. And then it changed over to a freezing mix that wasn't pleasant. By 4 or 5, it was back to snow and Greg took her outside to play after he finished working on the driveway. Emily got all bundled up and she and Greg took out her little sled and she had such fun getting pulled around the little hill in our backyard. We had recently checked out the book "Snowy Day" from the library so she kept saying that she was going "crunch in the snow." They also practiced making tracks in the snow and making snow angels, just like in the book! I tried to get a couple of pictures of Emily actually in the snow, but it was too dark for the pictures to come out (and I wasn't close enough for the flash to make a difference).