More Holiday Fun

While my parents were here, we took a little road trip down to Nashville to eat some wonderful German food at the Gerst Haus and then after a little shopping headed on over to Orpyland Hotel to see all the lights.  They really know how to decorate for the holidays. 

There were multiple VERY large trees.  This one was in the Delta.

We decided to go ahead and make our way out to the front of the hotel to see if they had turned the lights on out there yet.  When we first got there, they were off, but by the time we made our way to the front, they had just turned them on.  WOW!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  This year they had a beautiful Nativity set up.  They may have had it for a couple of years, but it was the first time that we had ever seen it.

 

Emma was once again, not the most cooperative when it came to getting her picture.  She was too busy being goofy or looking at all of the lights to pay attention to the camera!

 

Our little family of three...

 

Emmaline being goofy with Mimi & Papa.  She WOULD not look at me when I was trying to take this!!!

 

 

After we had traipsed around outside long enough, we headed back in and made our way through Cascades and the Conservatory.  It was beautiful!!

Finally, when we got to the big fountain in the Conservatory, after giving Emma some money to throw in, she gave me a big smile.  Does this mean I have to pay her every time I want a decent picture???

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We even managed to get this picture after we walked under the waterfall.  Of course, she had also just had a cookie :-)

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once we had seen everything we wanted to, it was time to head back to the car.  We had parked over by the mall since it now costs $18.00 to park at the hotel (unless you do valet and then that only covers the first hour).  Since Emma had walked a lot that day, her Daddy decided to give her a little ride.  She loved it!

We used to go down to see the lights every year, but this was the first time we had ever taken Emma.  We are going to make sure we do it again next year!

It was a Merry Christmas

  I am finally getting around to posting some pictures from Christmas.  It has been a little hectic around our place :-)

Emma was so excited that Santa was coming to her house.  She helped me bake cookies for him and was on her best behavior all evening.  We tried to put her to bed a couple of times and finally gave up.  She laid down on the couch to "wait" for Santa and within a couple of minutes, was sound asleep.

Here is the tree after Santa came.  He was very thoughtful too and used Princess paper on most of her gifts.  She LOVES her princess'.

Santa also was very hungry and ate almost all the cookies and drank most of the milk.  When Emma saw that the cookies and the milk were almost gone, her eyes got big and round!

 

 

 

It was still dark outside when Emma realized that Santa had been there.  She had been out in the living room for a while playing with her new dollhouse before she came and woke us up.

Emmaline had asked Santa for a Sleeping Beauty dress and the DVD.  She was very happy to get both, along with a few other things.

 

 

As soon as we were done opening Santa's gifts, she had to put her new dress on.  And watch her movie.  We went back to bed for a couple of hours since we had been up 1/2 the night.

 

Once we got up and got ready and started cooking for Christmas dinner we sat down to open our gifts.

 

This is one of the better pictures of Emma taken Christmas Day.  She just would not cooperate with the picture taking process at all :-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is one of my favorite pictures.  We took it after we had eaten at Grandma & Grandpa's.  We were trying to get a good picture of Emma, Ethan & Sydney (that didn't really happen), but I did manage to snap this one.  Emma loves her cousin Sydney. 

Emmaline really got into actually opening her gifts this year and checking out what each one was.  But once she had looked and figured each one out, she was ready for the next one.

To cap the season off, my parents came the day after Christmas and just left today.  We opened presents with them the first night they were here.  Here is Emma cuddling with Mimi and Papa to get them ready to watch her rip into some more paper!

We had a busy weekend while they were here, so I do have more pictures, but since this post has gotten rather long, I will save those for another day.

Merry Christmas!

What a busy day we had!! I stayed up way to late playing "Santa" and then Emmaline got up before dawn to discover that Santa had been there. The excitement on her face was priceless. (I will have to post pictures later). I tried to go back to bed once she had seen what Santa brought for her, but she was too excited and wanted me to help her play......so I did! I started cooking, getting ready and we opened the rest of our presents and by noon, we were dressed, packed up and headed to Grandma's house. It was a day spent with family and experiencing the joy of the holiday through the eyes of two toddlers. I loved it!!! Tomorrow my parents are coming to spend a few days with us and we are going to celebrate Christmas with them tomorrow night. But first, I have to get up before dawn myself and do a little after Christmas shopping with my SIL.

I hope everyone had a wonderful day and have a great week-end!!!

It's Party Time

Emma's last day at school was last Friday. She was able to dress up and they had themselves a little party to celebrate the season. Mrs. Alex had made little centerpieces for the tables and they had "table clothes" and all sorts of goodies for them to munch on.
Once they were done eating, they had their pictures taken with "Santa Clause". Mrs. Alex made this from plain white paper in just a couple of hours. She is pretty talented!

This is Emmaline with her little friend Mallory.

The artwork up by Santa's head is Emmaline's. She painted it and then told everyone it was a tunnel another tunnel and the Grinch. I think she was talking about the ICE Exhibit with the Grinch that we went to earlier in the week. (Of course I only just figured that out about 5 minutes ago :-))I want to wish all of my family and friends a very Merry Christmas!!

Bah Humbug

We went with Michael & Patricia (Steven's sister) to Nashville on Monday to celebrate Patricia's birthday with dinner at Macaroni Grill (YUM!) and to take Emmaline to see the Grinch....in ICE!! She loved it! But boy was it COLD!! Click on the collages to view them larger.

It was amazing to me what they could do with the ice. We found out that they come in every night with their little spray bottles of colored water and respray a lot of this to keep the colors nice and bright.

It was a wonderful night. I hope you had a wonderful birthday Patricia. Thank you for letting us celebrate with you and thank you Michael & Patricia for giving Emmaline such wonderful memories! She is very blessed to have you for her aunt and uncle!

Christas Card 2008

I was having trouble not only finding time to do Christmas cards this year, but figuring out what to do. So I came up with this. (Thanks to Scrapblog). But, true to form, once I had them printed out, I couldn't leave it alone, so the finished product that I mailed was this mounted inside of a card with Santa's hat and the phrase "Yes Emmaline, there is a Santa Clause.." on the front. Maybe next year, I will finally quit having to be so difficult and just buy a box of cards and mail them....yeah, right :-)

Fa La La La ...La La La

Tis the season to be jolly,  Fa La La La...La La La...

Emmaline had her Christmas Program at school last night.  I had no idea what they would be doing, except that they were supposed to wear pajamas.  (Of course, I had to go and get her some new, cute holiday jammies :-) )  I began to get the idea as to at least one of the songs she was going to be singing on Wednesday night, when every time that Ferrero Rocher (a chocolate) commercial came on, she would sing along ....Fa La La La...La La La, Tis the season....and of course she would get aggravated each time the song would stop in the middle.

 

They had the children walk in one at a time.  It was funny to see which ones went slow and looked around (that would be Emma) and which ones came in, saw all the people and run down the aisle as fast as they could.

This year, instead of doing each class individually, they had all the kids on stage at the same time.  It made the program short and very sweet :-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emmaline was actually enjoying herself up there on the big stage! She usually won't perform on command, but she actually sang.  I was very impressed!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then I guess she had just had enough.  It cracked me up to see her standing like that. 

 

 

But then she started to get into again.  At the end they had all the kids wave.  Notice at this point, Emma is still standing right where her teacher put her, but the rest of the kids have migrated over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was really cute when she realized that Mommy was out there taking pictures.  She just stood there and smiled.  What a sweet girl!

 

Emma with Mrs. Alex.  I just love how she deals with the kids.  I am very thankful for her.

 

Afterwards, instead of staying for the refreshments, we went ahead and left and decided to stop and get Emma a waffle from Waffle House.  It is one of her new favorite places.  And I do have to admit....their waffles and their hashbrowns are pretty yummy!

Sorry this post is so long, I really didn't intend it get this long, but I am just so proud of her.  Hope everyone has had a good week and has big weekend plans!

Holiday Happenings

We had an eventful weekend. Saturday night after a yummy Mexican dinner, we took the kids out to Beech Bend Park to see the Holiday Light Show and for the kids to ride a few rides. They had a BLAST!!!

Just one of the many light displays that were out there. This was one of the last ones before you park and go into the amusement park.

Emma and Ethan going for a little "drive" on the school bus.

We had to keep Sydney all bundled up. It was COLD!!!

As soon as Emmaline saw the "Let's Go Round" she picked out the blue horse. She could hardly wait until her Daddy got the tickets so she could get on it.

Ethan and Emma at the end of a fun filled frosty night.

Sunday, after church and lunch, we took Emmaline up to Smiths Grove to see our favorite Santa Clause. She was beyond excited and couldn't wait to tell him what she wanted for Christmas.

Emmaline posed for a couple of pictures before we left for church.

I just love the look on Emmaline's face in this picture. It's like she was daydreaming about what she would get from Santa on Christmas morning :-)

This one is just a good picture of the two of them. I got so many good ones this year it was hard to choose.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Can you believe that Christmas is ALMOST here! I am going shopping tomorrow with my DD, SIL and MIL. We are going to spend the day in Nashville, so I am hoping to get the bulk of Christmas shopping left done. I can dream can't I?!?!

Giveaways

5 Minutes for Mom seems to be getting a little too busy, so they have started a new blog called 5 minutes for Giveaways. To kick off they are offering a 8" Kodak Digital Frame. Just click on the link (there is also a button on my sidebar) and check them out.

I think that this has become Emmaline's favorite word. At least it is the word I hear out of her mouth the most. She has gotten to where she will disagree with anything you say (I wonder where she gets that stubborn streak?). Now that it is cold and she has to wear a coat, she insists that her coat is too tight in the car, that the straps on her seat won't stay up, that her pants are coming down - she fusses and fusses and if you try to talk to her at all, she just goes 'NO'! It is soooo frustrating. If it was only in the car, I guess that would be one thing, but over the last couple of weeks, it is constant. If you ask her to pick something up......"No", if you tell her it will get taken away if it doesn't get picked up......."No it won't", if you start to go ahead and pick it up to take it away..........."NOOOOO". She gets herself so mad and worked up over the littlest thing that she literally will argue with you that the sky is NOT blue.

This is Emma in the middle of all of her "no's". She always gets so upset and I just can't figure out why or how to keep it from happening.

She finally has calmed down and decided that she needed her hat up to make it all better. Her hair had been fixed really cute and I knew that her hood would mess it up, but at this point, I didn't care. I just wanted her to be happy again and to smile.

FINALLY!! By the time I pulled into Grandma's driveway, she smiled. It didn't last for long, but at least I got one. :-)

Two Great Giveaways

If you haven't been over to 5 Minutes for Mom in a while, head on over there and check them out. Right now you can enter for a $500 Home Depot Gift Card and a $100 Visa gift card.

Fun with the Family

This year we stayed home and spent Thanksgiving with Steven's family. There usually would have only been 10 of us, but this year, Steven's oldest brother and his family came down, so there were 20 of us. Our niece and her husband came down the night before with their daughter (she is 3 weeks younger than Emma), so we took Emma over so the two of them could play. They had a great time!!! Emma could hardly wait to get back over there the next day so they could pick up where they had left off.

Here are a few pictures from Thanksgiving Day.

Emmaline loves to help me cook, so I gave her the job of mashing and stirring the sweet potatoes. She said is was "really hard", but she worked hard at it and did a great job.

I guess all that hard work wore her out. By the time we got to Grandma & Grandpa's house, it didn't take long for her to go to sleep.

On the plus side, since she was asleep (along with her cousin), and the food was all ready, we went ahead and ate. I actually was able to eat my entire meal uninterrupted. I just knew that she was going to wake up, so I have to admit, I ate a little to fast. Oops!

After we ate and got things cleaned up, the kids woke up and we set up their little table so they could eat. Then we opened the door and let them run. After they wore themselves out, we made them stop so we could get some pictures.

Three very happy little cousins. Emmaline, Leah & Ethan.

I had the best time watching these two together. They were so happy to just be around each other. I wish we lived closer so they could spend more time together.
Since this was the first time in a long time that we were all together, we took advantage of it and asked the neighbor to come over and take our picture.

Our family.