Happy New Year

Emily kept saying that she wanted to stay up until midnight for New Year's Eve.  I explained that when she was a little older she could do that but now she is too young and she would be too tired the next day. So we had our New Year's celebration with Emily this year at 12:00pm. We made hats and decorated a cookie cake and little chocolate chip cookies to look like the clock at midnight or noon.  Here is Emily after we decorated the cookies.  She is ready to ring in the New Year.

I wanted to make sure she knew what 12:00 looked like on a digital and analog clock.

  Jeff set up a special count down for Emily since we didn't have Dick Clark to help us at noon:)

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1    Happy New Year!!!!!!!!!!!

Emily LOVED her (and I quote).... "fancy, sparkly, New Year's juice"!!!!!

After our "party" Jeff had to leave to go to work, there was a symphony performance tonight at church.  It was a beautiful day so Emily and I played outside and went for a walk.  Then we went by the church to watch the symphony rehearsal.  I just love that Emily is able to be exposed to this at such a young age.  During the break she was able to meet some of the musicians.

Then it was close to dinner time but we weren't very hungry yet so we headed to Chick-fil-a for some play time before dinner.  After Chick-fil-a we drove by to see some Christmas slights I had wanted to go see all season.  A street in town puts lighted balls up in the trees at EVERY house on the street.  It is so beautiful!  They have signs up that say "shine a light on hunger" and they have a place set up to collect can goods.  It was really amazing and everyone, including me was pulling over to take pictures.  Of course, this picture doesn't do it justice at ALL but here it is anyway.

Then we headed home and we pulled in our driveway at 7:09pm.

Here is my little girl who wanted so much to stay up until midnight to ring in the New Year!

New Year's Eve is much different these days than it used to be but I wouldn't change it for anything!  Happy New Year everyone!!!!!

Sweet Treats

We have had a crazy amount of cookies, cakes, and candy in the house over the last couple of weeks and we still do.  Here is Emily eating her ginger bread house.

Here she is eating the giant hershey's kiss that Santa put in her stocking.

Wordless Wednesday

Christmas 2011

We had a wonderful Christmas!  We spent Christmas Eve day doing last minute preparations for Christmas day.  Late in the afternoon, we went to a friend's house to visit for awhile.

Then we headed to church for the Christmas Eve service.  After church we came home to get ready for Santa's visit.  Emily had to get Santa's milk and cookies ready. I put the milk in a measuring cup so it would be easier for her to pour on her own.  She insisted that Santa should have chocolate milk this year.

She also drew a picture for Santa and wrapped it in a box so that Santa would have a gift to open.  What a sweet girl!

Because we don't have a chimney, we leave a key for Santa in a special box on the front porch.  Next we had to take care of the reindeer.

She was running around the front yard sprinkling her magic reindeer food:)

Then it was time to get ready for bed.  Emily wore her new pajamas that Twinkle, our Elf on the shelf brought her, and then Jeff read "Twas The Night Before Christmas" to Emily has he does each Christmas Eve.

Then she checked the stockings before going to bed.

She was so nervous about falling asleep so Santa could come and I was too but to my surprise, she fell right asleep.  Santa was able to come a little earlier than he expected.  In the past, Santa has always put her Christmas toys under the tree unwrapped.  This year she asked Santa to wrap them so he did except for her stocking stuff.

Because Christmas was on a Sunday Jeff had to work.  Our church had one service at 11am but he had to be there around 9am so we had to wake up in time to open the Santa stuff and have breakfast.  Emily was still sound asleep at 7am so I got up and turned on Christmas lights and music and made a little noise and then I ran back to bed so she could come in and wake us up.  She found her stocking first.

Then she ran to the living room to see what Santa left under the tree.

After she opened her Santa gifts we had breakfast and then Jeff had to leave for work.  My dad and his wife came over a little later in the morning.  When Jeff got home around 12:30pm we opened some gifts and then had Christmas lunch.

After lunch we finished opening presents and then we had dessert.  I made two cakes that my grandmother and sometimes my grandfather made every year.  One is a coconut cake and the other is a chocolate cake that we called candy cake.  These cakes always tasted great but they were always ugly.  My dad says that the original name of the candy cake was the ugly cake but it was renamed candy cake because it's icing is hard like candy.  Anyway, we used the coconut cake as Jesus' birthday cake this year. 

Later in the day we were able to skype the grandparents who couldn't be with us for Christmas which was great. 

Here is a look at the gifts from Santa and family and friends.  Emily didn't have a big gift this year on her list.  Her Santa list consisted of: Olivia house, dancing baby, dog in a bag, and bath tub crayons.  She got everything on her list and more.  I bet Santa wishes her list would always be this easy:)

Emily was very sad when the gifts were all unwrapped.  We kept talking to her about being thankful for what she had and then she asked for us to re wrap some of her gifts so she could open them again.  We realized that she wasn't wanting more gifts necessarily but she really likes to unwrap the gifts.  She said, "I got all the toys I wanted and more."  She was happy but didn't want the unwrapping to stop:)  She also kept checking her stocking all day.  One time she found something she missed so then she checked more often hoping she had forgotten something else:)

Here is a picture of her today with her Dancing Baby.  This baby is adorable.

If you want to watch Dancing Baby and dancing Emily, you can watch this video.

Even Callie and Barney had a good Christmas.  Here is Callie with her new catnip toy.

Here is Barney snuggling with his new Christmas monkey:)

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Twinkle

We have an Elf on the shelf.  Her name is Twinkle.  She was given to us by some friends for Christmas 2009 (Emily was two).  We named her and she got her "magic" last Christmas when Emily was three.  Emily enjoyed Twinkle last year but she LOVES Twinkle this year.  Twinkle showed up the day after Thanksgiving and Emily wakes up each morning to search for her elf.  Here are some of the places we have found Twinkle so far.

Twinkle found another elf in the house to hang out with.

We have watched the Elf On The Shelf movie many times and Emily noticed that all the girl elves have skirts.  She asked Twinkle to ask Santa for a skirt and the next morning this is what we saw.

  Doesn't she look cute and sassy:)

  One morning Twinkle brought  Emily a North Pole Breakfast.  This was a big hit!

Twinkle didn't say anything about it being a healthy breakfast but it was a fun treat!

Sometimes we found Twinkle just hanging around.

We found Twinkle in some really silly places!!!

On Christmas Eve morning we found Twinkle and a gift!

Emily was excited to have new Christmas pajamas to wear.  Tonight we said good-bye to Twinkle because when Santa arrives at our house she will travel back with him to the North Pole.  We will look forward to seeing her again after Thanksgiving next year!