Miss Pattycake

Emily and I went to see Miss Pattycake tonight at Shades Mountain. Emily...loves Miss Pattycake! She is so bright and colorful, and she sings everything, which Emily is into. I love Miss Pattycake b/c she has a good message, much better than some other things she could be watching!

It was a Pajama Party, so Emily got to wear her PJ's, I let her pick them out. This was her waiting for Miss PattyCake to take stage...

Miss PattyCake, in action...

Emily stood in my lap for the most part, but she enjoyed peaking over the chairs at times...Then we stood in line for over an hour to get a hug and autograph from Miss Pattycake. This is Emily seeing her up close. I don't think she understood why we were in that line until this moment...We saw friends from church there...Ems and PattyCake!

P.S. My camera flash is still messed up, so all of my pictures are either "grainy" or out of focus! I must take it in to get fixed.

Fun Day

We spent most of the day outside. The wind was blowing, it was a mild temp. and it only rained here for 15 mins. or so.

I purchased this water table from craigslist last week for $15, and Emily LOVES it. So sad I waited to get one. We played with it this morning, and after her nap she saw it from my bedroom window and asked to play with it again...so off we went.

BTW - This is the face she makes when she says "beach", or anything with a "ch" sound in it.

While playing outside this afternoon, she started saying "mommy, whats that", "mommy, whats that?" I looked around to see what she was asking about, saw nothing, so I asked her to show me. She only repeated herself "mommy, whats that"?...Then I heard it...the ice cream truck. When she saw my smile, she smiled and I said, "what do you think it is", she just grinned and said "ice cream man". If you remember, this is not her first "rodeo" when it comes to the ice cream truck...see here (bottom row of collage) for a picture of her eating a bomb pop from the "beach" ice cream man (she and Troy chased him down for 1/2 a mile to get it.

Sadly enough, he never made it to our neighborhood. He just teased us with his high pitched chimes...so mommy caved and gave her some frozen yogurt, with chocolate. She was a happy girl!

Cute Ponytail

I just had to share this because I thought her pony was so cute that day.

Brewers and Jump Zone

Quick visit Monday night with the Brew Team...

Kisses from Iceman (Top Gun name Troy has given him)

Fun at Jump Zone. Let me just say that it was not fun for the first...hour or so. Emily was a tad overwhelmed by all of the excitement and huge blow up contraptions. She basically cried for the first hour and would not let me put her down for more than 3 seconds. She finally decided it was something to have fun with, and she did...

Skye - Sliding down this HUGE slide. I went down it with Emily and it totally took my stomach away!

Skyesphia (Emily's name for them)

All the kids climbing the slide...(Ems did not make it all the way up)

Grandma and Poppy

Grandma and Poppy came last week for a visit. Emily loves, loves them! It was sweet of them to take their last few days off, to come visit us, here in the "heat" of the summer.

Every morning Emily would wake up and ask for them...and this is what we did: Friday - spent all day at Oak Mountain ~ canoeing, visiting the petting farm, and the wildlife rescue center; Saturday - trip to the Bham zoo, then they babysat for us while we enjoyed a nice dinner sans the "almost" 2 year old; Sunday - church, then lunch before they drove back to Ozark.

Zoo - we actually encountered the butterflies for the first time this visit. I have to say it is a pretty neat thing to do. Should have done this before.

First time for the carousel too...

New Friend

We met a very nice couple a few weeks ago at a restaurant. Since then we have gotten the girls together a few times. "M" is 2.5 and full of life. She has an awesome head of curly blond hair, such a sweet girl.

Last week we decided to go to the zoo.

We watched Sea Lions...Fed the Giraffe...Learned that the giraffe on the right is pregnant...learned to swing from metal bars...but we did NOT play in the splash pad...Emily boycotts this event every time we try...

Hummingbird Juice

We love to watch and feed these guys.

22 Months Old

I had a hard time getting her to pose for these, so there are all sorts of shadows on her face, etc. but I took what I could get. She is a busy child!

Can you believe I am so late in posting these?? I have good excuses, really!

She looks so grown up in these pictures, and truth is, I know that in a year I will look back at these and think she had such a baby face.

Emily continues to be such a loving child. She wants to hold the hand of, and hug, every child that appears to be her age. She ask for and constantly talks about her friends from church: "Sara mommy", "I anna see her"...and this goes on many times a day(including all of her other friends names, etc. It tells me that she gets attached to people, and I am praying that God will cultivate that. I want her to "get" the greatest commandment: Love God, Love People, not just understand it, but "do it". I want that for Troy and I too. We have been asking Emily, for a while now, who she wants to pray for, after we are finished praying for and blessing her. She list a string of people "um...Mawmaw" and we pray for Mawmaw..."Um...Paul" (Paul Jarvis, a friend of our had surgery last week, and we went by to see them. For one solid week, she wanted to pray for him at night, without any direction from us to do so. I thought that was stinkn' sweet. She will continue to list people for almost 15 mins. Again, with the loving people...

I know I sound like a broken record, but the child is smart. I will leave the details for her baby book, but she does and says things that I cannot even believe. She is such an easy learner, and loves to sit and show you that she understands a concept. It is fun to teach this child.

So, for the above reasons, this is my plan for this school year: I enrolled her into Kindermusik one day a week, we will try to visit the library story time once a week, and I will intentionally make play dates for her at least one day a week.

Emily loves to be at home with me, but she truly enjoys other children.

I will be posting other pictures real soon...

This picture is from 1 year ago ~ 10 months old

Meet Rainbow

Our own neighborhood donkey. Her name is Rainbow, and Emily loves her. She is a Jerusalem Donkey, and very friendly. Pretty sure this might be a daily routine for a while...