Ham it up & Ring Around the Rosie

Will and I taught Emma how to play Ring Around the Rosie this Sunday. She had so much fun!


This morning Emma decided that she too is a ham like Will. Instead of turning her face every time I tried to take a picture, she said "Cheese!" every time I tried to take a picture...then struck a pose. Too bad she didn't start this just two weeks ago when we did our family Christmas pictures!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

In Jered's family growing up the tradition for the day after Thanksgiving is to decorate the Christmas tree. We're been trying to do that also, and this year we really did well! We got all of our inside decorations up and our living room looks winter-rific! Sadly though, this is probably our big old tree's last year. There are a couple of broken branches and the lights are sporadic. Jered says it's safe for this year, but we'll have to buy a new one next year. Since we got this one the first year we were married, I feel sentimental about it, but we're enjoying it for one more year - fritzy lights and all. The kids had a lot of fun decorating with us. Emma immediately went commando crawl under the tree, which is something Will never did! She oohed and aahed over all the lights and decorations and went around touching each ornament (only 1 went in her mouth, but she caught onto the no touching rule pretty quickly). Her favorite ornament is a ceramic pug. I put it down low so she can see it, right at eye level. She found it, started barking "Wuf wuf! This dog! dog!" then she started kissing it - SO cute!!! I wish I had the video camera on for that! Will did a great job hanging ornaments with me, and even tried to space them out and not put them all in the same spot like kids always do. He also crawled under the tree when Emma did. Monkey see, monkey do. At least I got a cute picture of them, although I you can't hear their giggles of delight :) I wanted to make sure we had time to enjoy our decorations before vacation in Texas. We are doing a small family Christmas the weekend before we leave for Texas, and I wanted to have the decorations up for that too. Very excited to see the kid's faces during the "first Christmas" here, and then again for "second Christmas" in Texas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

For Thanksgiving this year, we went to our friends, the Beckman's. They hosted several families from church and we all had much to eat and good fellowship. I got off light for cooking this year and only made pies and a sweet potato casserole. There were several kids both Will and Emma's age to play with and they had a great time. A very happy Thanksgiving indeed for counting our blessings. These pictures are from earlier this week. I finally finished Will's blanket that I started knitting when I was pregnant with him. It only took two days to finish the remaining three squares of fabric once I took it back out. I can only knit when Emma is asleep or occupied, otherwise it wouldn't have taken so long! He named it "Bob" and said that Bob is his favorite blanket and now is telling me which books and TV shows Bob likes and things like that. It's so cute. Now Will is on me to finish Emma's blanket, which is much more intricate. I might have to start and finish a more simple one for her too as she was jealous of Will's blanket and keeps trying to carry it around! I had to hunt up a similar blanket from the linen closet so she'd leave his alone. Great news in the last 2 weeks - Emma is now walking around more than she crawls! If she's in a hurry or upset, she still drops down on fours because she crawls SO fast, but she's trying to walk more. She is also an ace climber already and can get up stairs, steps, stools, couches and chairs faster than she walks, lol.

Emma Walking

Happy Halloween 2011

On Halloween Jered had the day off, so we stayed home in the morning playing "Star Wars Lego game," then we went to a late lunch at Chili's. We let Will wear his costume at the restuarant, which he thought was really cool. At Chili's Emma drank out of a regular cup with a straw for the first time! We planned to see a movie afterward, but ran out of time.

After a quick trip to the store, we went to "Trunk or Treat" at Will's preschool. We ran into the Strouses and the Penfolds there, so the kids got to trick or treat together at the school. After they finished, we walked across the street to the Strouses neighborhood and took the kids trick or treating there too. It was fun, especially because our neighborhood doesn't have a lot of kids, so we did not have much luck last year. After we returned to our house, we actually had a few trick or treaters and were able to pass out the majority of the candy we bought "just in case" someone might show up! Here are some pictures of the kids on Halloween and the jack-o-lantern that Jered carved at our party on Saturday. It is a helmet from Star Wars in case you are wondering! He did a really good job. And in the pictures - no, Emma is not eating the candy, lol. We let her chew on some of the hard plastic wrappers and hold her own trick or treat bucket, both of which kept her very occupied for 2 hours!



Unrelated to Halloween, but more exciting is that Emma stood up in the middle of the floor and started walking around yesterday! She did that about 5 times. Only a few steps at a time to get to a couch or table, but the most she has ever walked. We were all cheering her on - Go Emma! Seems like any day she will let go and just take off!