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.