Merry Christmas!

It has been a whirlwind few weeks. We spent a few days in Indiana having an early "Christmas" celebration with my family. We even managed to get "snowed in" while there which was a nice change! Emma really enjoyed watching the snow come down and the few times we played outside in it. She was smitten with her new toys and clothes that she was spoiled with...Nana even found her some red cowboy boots! We enjoyed the hustle and bustle of Christmas shopping too. We hosted a dinner at our house with most of Jon's family on Christmas Eve. Emma enjoyed opening some of her presents! She wanted to wear a new shirt as pants and immediately wanted to "weed" her new Curious George books. She received an adorable beanie and booties set that was so cute on her! It seems that her Little People House and SUV are her new favorite toys from Christmas Eve.

Jon, Emma and I went to the 11:00 o' clock candle light service at church on Christmas Eve. It was so nice to be reminded of the true meaning of Christmas and enjoy some quiet time with Emma snuggled up on my lap rocking in the cry room. The program was laying in the room so I used it as a book while rocking Emma. I would ask her "Where is baby Jesus?" and she would point to him and the angels, etc. She is getting so smart and becoming such a little girl. What happened to my baby?!

We woke up early on Christmas Day and let Emma open her presents. We had gone a little overboard again this year...clothes, shoes, Kipper DVD, Little Leaps game system and games, Little Touch Leap Pad and books. Jon and Emma were playing with the Little Leaps last night and it is really neat and interactive. I knew she would love it because she loves playing with remotes and Jon's Playstation controls. lol We spent most of Christmas Day in Nashville with Jon's family...brunch was yummy and dinner was ham, rolls, and chili.

It is hard to believe that it has all came and went already. I love this time of year. We do still have a few more days of fun though...Nana and Papa are coming to visit this weekend!

I found this on Love's blog...

First Corinthians 13 Christmas Version

If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows,
strands of twinkling lights and shiny balls,
but do not show love to my family,
I'm just another decorator.

If I slave away in the kitchen,
baking dozens of Christmas cookies,
preparing gourmet meals and
arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime:
I'm just another cook.

If I work at a soup kitchen,
carol in the nursing home,
and give all that I have to charity;
but do not show love to my family,
it profits me nothing.

If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels and crocheted snowflakes,
attend a myriad of holiday parties
and sing in the choir's cantata,
but do not focus on Christ,
I have missed the point.

Love stops the cooking to hug the child.
Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the spouse.
Love is kind, though harried and tired.
Love does not envy another's home that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens.

Love does not yell at the kids to get out of the way,
but is thankful they are there to be in the way.
Love does not give only to those who are able to give in return;
but rejoices in giving to those who cannot.

Love bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
and endures all things.

Love never fails.

Video games will break,
pearl necklaces will be lost,
golf clubs will rust,
but giving the gift of love will endure.

--Author Unknown

Goodness...two days until Christmas!

I have so many pictures and things to say but there just isn't enough time. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I'll leave you with a few pictures from our trip to Indiana last weekend...8" of snow! It made me miss "home" more than ever...there is just something about being snowed in. lol Enjoy!

Our To Do List...

Hang the icicle lights around the porch
Go to the Christmas Parade in town
Wrap presents and get them under the tree
Finish Christmas shopping
Send out the rest of our Christmas cards
Upload pictures from Opryland and blog about it
Oil change and tire rotation...a wee bit overdue now!
Put up the rest of my Upper Case Living order
Promote my little Close to My Heart business (new catalog!)

A scene from a movie...

Crummy...it is just plain crummy to take away annual bonuses and not say anything to your employees until about a week before they would have been receiving them. We could have really used that money this year to get to a better place financially and to get the Nikon D80 camera that we have been looking at online for a few months. Please don't get me wrong...I am very thankful and very grateful for our good health, our beautiful baby girl, our family, our friends, our jobs, and the wonderful roof over our heads. It's just that a little bit of financial peace would have been good too.

It was such a bah humbug of a day yesterday with that whole lack-of-a-bonus news and little E*Cakes has been battling a 102.7 fever most of the evening. I think her fever finally broke overnight and Nanny is only keeping her these days so I won't have to worry about keeping her home and missing work too. She said to just bring her on over if I wanted to. I am wondering if I shouldn't call her doctor and get her an appointment to make sure she doesn't have an ear infection or something. I don't like seeing my little punkinhead sick...I do admit that I love how cuddly she gets though!

Christmas card picture...success!

I love Christmas time.

I love the reason for the season. I love the decorations. I love the smells. I love the time spent with family and friends. Can you believe there are only 23 days until Christmas?!

Emma was fun last year. She was a squirming, happy baby and it was fun. This year...is going to be more than fun. She is going to be a blast...and scared of Santa. I hope to take her to the Santa on Frankfort's square again this year. Maybe he won't be as scary. lol We took pictures of each other with Emma in front of our partially decorated tree. We still need to find a nice angel topper for our tree!


We put up our tree on Tuesday night. We have a small, artificial tree so it needed to "sit" and expand and be fluffed for a day or two. We decorated it on Thursday night. We bought the round LED lights that do not get hot and they are so much brighter than the normal lights. Emma has been in awe of the tree, the lights, the ornaments, the snowglobes around the living room and the BIG one in our yard. She cried when she had to come inside after watching it for 15 minutes in the cold outside! We are going to string the icicle lights around our porch this afternoon and hang the wreaths that Granny gave us on the two front windows.




We have only had two bad moments with Emma and the tree...the other night she walk right up to the tree and jerked on the branches, almost tipping it over on herself. She has also pulled an ornament and the beads off...we put her in time out and so far, so good. She looks at the tree and doesn't touch. If it happens again, I think we might put the baby gate in front of the tree between the two couch's arms to take away the temptation altogether.

We need to take some Christmas pictures of Emma for our Christmas cards today. I have been wanting to take them for two weeks now and my coupon for 20 FREE cards has expired now. We have a little Santa dress that I bought for like $3 the day after Christmas last year. I bought her some adorable red shoes at the Children's Place last week to go with it too. The only bad thing is that Emma's poor little cheeks are broken out badly. She scratched her left cheek on Tuesday evening in her sleep (it was pretty deep) and I have kept a band-aid over it, we rotate between Backyardigans and Elmo. I think she may be allergic to the band-aids! She has two big red bumpy patches where the band-aids were...it also doesn't help that she has horribly sensitive skin in the wintertime too. I have rubbed her Aveeno cream on her cheeks the past two days so I hope it looks better today so we can take some pics!

I'll try to upload the BIG snowglobe pictures soon!

It has been a whirlwind week!

Jon's parents and his sister Sara came over for dinner on Tuesday night. Jon made chicken and dumplings and it was quite yummy...not as yummy as Granny's though. Emma enjoyed visiting with them and then we had to pack up for our trip.


We headed home to Indiana for Thanksgiving and traffic was heavy. Emma was a very content passenger watching Elmo and the Wiggles DVD's and calling out for “Nana” and “Papa” most of the way. She did not sleep for even a second of the seven hour drive! We had a great laidback dinner on Thursday evening around 4:00 PM and we all stuffed ourselves. Kelsey, Grandma & Grandpa, Aunt Toni and the boys came over that evening too.







We decided to do something crazy and go out shopping Friday morning at 5:00 AM! We met Den, Courtney and Peytonn at the Mall around 7:00 AM after we had been to Wal*Mart and Menards. Would you believe that the craziest store of all was…Menards?! We overheard a guy in line behind us at the Disney Store say that people were throwing punches over stuff at Menards. What in the world? A sale is nothing to fight over! We found several awesome deals at Wal*Mart (the Little Leaps game...reg. $38.88 on the blitz for $20 plus an extra game!), The Children’s Place (25% off storewide plus my 15% off coupon) and Gymboree (30% off storewide plus my 20% off coupon). I love a good sale…maybe a little too much. lol It was fun though but I don’t know that we’ll ever live it down with Dad. He thinks we are all certifiably crazy! I had my camera with me but I totally forgot to snap a picture of us out at the Mall. Emma was passed out in her stroller for most of the morning and Peytonn was wide-eyed as can be. :)

We ran to Indy on Saturday to do our traditional "Build-A-Bear" with Emma and my parents. It was fun this year having Peytonn along! It was a moment to remember for sure. Emma was fussy when we got there (she is cutting THREE molars!) and Peytonn was getting sleepy. Emma created a bunny with Grandma while Peytonn created a monkey with Grandpa. Emma was more interested in getting her bunny shoes...she grabbed some pink Croc-like shoes, some brown boots and some pink boots. lol She ended up dressing her in a pink striped sweater, pink skirt and pink boots...then she had a meltdown and Grandpa took her outside for awhile. We name her Lucie. Peytonn's monkey was named Champ and was dressed as a Colts football player. Emma's bear from last year was a Colts cheerleader that we named Lizzie! We then headed over to BD's Mongolian restaurant for lunch. It was soooo yummy and Emma slept all the way through it. She doesn't know what she missed! Mom and I caught Kelsey in action at her game against Frankfort that evening...we left at half time though. It made me really wish that we could do things like that more often. I really can't believe she is a Junior too!











Amanda and Kaleb came over for a little while on Sunday morning before we headed out. It was great to see them again and Emma had fun sharing some Goldfish with Kaleb. We left around 12:30 PM to head home...Emma was sound asleep about two miles from their house. Traffic was heavy again and we stopped at Edinburgh for some lunch and I ran into the Crocs outlet since Emma was still asleep. She is such a Crocs girl...she woke up so Jon brought her in the store. She is so funny when she sees a wall of Crocs...she starts grabbing a pair in each color off the wall! She had blue, white and purple pairs in her arms within a minute of Jon setting her down. lol That is when I should have had my camera! We did get her a pair of pink/lavender sandals that I hadn't seen before for next summer. She has wanted to wear her Crocs three times this week since being at the store!




I think that about covers our four day weekend back home...can you believe it is now just 23 days until Christmas? Seriously...where has all the time gone?! I cannot wait to see the magic of the season reflected in Emma's eyes. It is going to be so much fun this year.

Handstitched Felt Hair Clippies

Our special hair clippies arrived two days ago! I joined the GymboFriends forums in September and there are so many wonderful SAHM's over there that make hairbows for so much less than the boutiques around here and are so much better quality. I love the handstitched felt clippies on Emma and they stay in so much better but they are some of the most expensive ones and most of the ones I see are small flowers. We already have three...red, pink and purple. Anyways, back to Gymbofriends.

I discovered HappieMommie on there and she makes felt clippies! She had created some and posted them to a thread over there....mostly a bunch of made to match Gymboree clippies. We only have a handful of Gymboree clothing so I wasn't too crazy about most of the clippies so I asked her about some custom designs. She had offered an amazing price just for her gymbofriends so I was interested in a cookie to go along with our new GAP outfit, a Colts clippie, a hippo to match the Island Getaway stuff from Gymbo, a Christmas tree to match our pink dress from Belk's, etc. She said she would love to create some customs for me but to give her a little time. They arrived on Monday and I absolutely love them! Thank you Heather!!


I immediately had to put the Colts clippie in Emma's hair. It is so cute and exactly what I wanted! I love that they are a little bigger than the flower clippies we have...they seem so small on her now. I took a few pictures of her wearing it and one of all the clippies but I can't figure out how to upload pictures from my new camera. Jon! lol...he is asleep because it is 4:00 AM. I will add some pictures tonight when I get home from work. I know you will fall in love with them too and immediately have to go visit Happie Mommie at her new Etsy store!

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5299965

There is seriously so much detail in these clippies...check out the ballerina slippers clippie in her store. Wow!

Elmo rocks, seriously!

We have the DVD where Elmo is a rockstar...literally, a rock who sings with Elmo eyes but the show tonight seriously rocked. They were some booty shaking monsters! Emma had a great time as did we. She laughed, pointed, danced, clapped, rubbed her eyes and wimpered "Elmo bye bye" when he left the stage. As did about half of the kiddoes there. It was so fun to watch her react to what she was seeing on the stage. Our seats were really good because the auditorium was smaller than I expected it to be and they cut it in half with the stage in the middle. The show was made up of songs that we all knew...Rockin' Robin, The Hustle, the Alphabet Song, etc. :) Bert came out at one point in a white leisure suit like John Travolta! lol

Emma passed out on the way home and I carried her in and laid her on her big girl bed. I took off her skirt and changed her diaper...she didn't even stir! I had to take a picture. :)


I'll try to add some pictures to this post in the morning. I had a surprise tonight too...an early Christmas present from Jon's parents...they bought me the Nikon S200 Coolpix camera that I had been eying! It took some great pictures and it wasn't at all aggravating like our other camera! Thank you for this evening and for my new camera...I adore it and it's red! :)

New Teeth and a Big Girl Bed

That is right...plural...Emma has two new teeth! I guess that explains the extreme moodiness last week. We knew she was cutting her second top tooth and it finally broke through the gum last night. Thank goodness for teething tablets and her teething necklace. We have seriously had to give her so much less Motrin this time around with the teething. Jon was looking at her tonight and noticed she has a bottom tooth on the side! Emma is offically a five chomper gal! :)

Please excuse the horrible coloring on this photo. I was way too close with the flash...Emma is definitely not that pale! She was hugging on Lizzie so I took advantage of the moment...we realized the tooth later! Can you see it?!

She also has a new big girl bed that is courtesy of Gamma & Papa (Emma's new names for Gramma & Grampa) this weekend. She has actually fallen asleep in it once and has slept all the way through the night in it three times (after being put there already asleep.) She doesn't even hop out of bed in the morning, she waits on us to come get her. She loves being able to climb up on her bed with her Boo Bunny, Lizzie and her books in the evening when we play in her room though. I have caught her in there "reading" several times.

Don't you just love the Colts bedding? We are going to keep using her bedding that Granny made because it goes with her room...pink, green and lavender but the Colts will stay on during football season! I can't believe how well she is doing with the big girl bed. She would scream every single time we tried to put her down in the crib...like please don't put me in that cage! She is now mama's little big girl and that is a little bittersweet. :)



Can you tell she just woke up? :)