Let the festivities begin!

Emmy was SO excited to pull out the Christmas decorations and tree. She did a great job of putting all the ornaments on. In the same 1x1 foot square. Ha! Zach thought the ornaments were balls and took one and threw it on the kitchen floor. It shattered. Zach loves to turn on and off the tree lights and bat at the ornaments. And then Emmy gets mad at him. Emmy loves to show all her stuffed animals the tree. And have them sit in it to see it better.

When it was all done, she kept examining it and saying, "Beautiful!" She also watched Matt put up the lights on our house. Then kept saying, "This is so beautiful!" Oh, I love having a 4 year old at holidays!

She also wrote her first letter to Santa. She asked for a princess dress, a real kitty, a horse, and a new water bottle. Ha!

I'm not sure what we are going to do about the kitty. Ever since someone brought kittens to preschool, she has been asking for a real kitty. I told her Matt was allergic so we couldn't have one, and she said it could stay outside while Dad was home and she would only bring it in when he was at work. I am not getting her a cat, so I'm going to have to come up with something good.

She was excited to mail her letter to Santa.

I'm so excited for the Christmas season!

Thanksgiving Day race

Every year since I got home from my mission, I have done a Thanksgiving morning race. I have even gotten most of my family and several friends involved and it's become a fun tradition. This year was the first year we took the kids. I jogged with the stroller and Matt ran like normal. Even though it took me longer than usual because of the stroller, it was so fun! Emmy loved it!

She kept saying, "Go Faster Mom!" And she loved it when we zigzagged through people to not run into them. Zach just kept pointing at everything. When we got to the last quarter mile or so, Emmy got out and ran with me. She loved crossing the finish line!

And then we went back to find her cousin Rivers and she ran across again with him. What a fun tradition that we can now involve the kids in.

Family

I am thankful for my family. I'm thankful my Dad is still around after his bike wreck a few days after Emmy was born. He got a pretty bad concussion, and still has to take "breaks" like this every few hours...even at football games!

But he's still here to go to football games with and sneak silly pictures of him at halftime while he takes his "break".

And I'm grateful for these sillies. When I had to take the kids to church by myself, Emmy was so good. And she is the best little singer in Primary.

And I don't know how this is comfy, but I love this little goof too. Especially when he sleeps well!

Lazy days

We've had some lazy days around here since it got cold. I have turned into such a wuss when it comes to cold. Anyway, I have probably let the kids watch too much TV.

I did make some pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes on Halloween, and they were delicious!

We've made blanket forts a few times. Emmy thinks this is the greatest thing ever and now asks every day if we can build forts.

I've had to limit the fort building days because she wants to watch movies in there all day.

One day Emmy decided to play Primary with all her stuffed animals. It was hilarious. She lined them all up and then wrote their names on sticks so she could pick sticks for helpers. She also announced that we would have a prayer by Christy Lively. And then proceeded to whisper in my ear what I was supposed to say for the prayer. Ha! And then I had to give a talk too.

She has also started playing Family Night with her friend. What a silly!

Preschool Thanksgiving Feast

Emmy's Preschool Thanksgiving Feast was so cute! Miss Heather made all the regular stuff, and it was SO good! Then the kids all brought something. Emily insisted on bringing strawberries, but of course we didn't have any. So we all trekked to the store at 7:30 a.m. in the freezing cold in our jammies to get strawberries. (Emmy you better remember this when you say I never do anything for you!)

Anyway, the kids looked so cute in their pilgrim hats.

I don't know why Emmy refused to take off her coat.

Zach and I joined the feast.

It was great! I am so happy Emmy is loving preschool.

Halloween

Yes, it's almost Thanksgiving and I'm just now blogging about Halloween. Oh well! I love Halloween. I love dressing up and it's even more fun now that I have kids to dress up! I decided that Zach needed to be Elvis. I may or may not have spent an hour the night before Halloween adding extra rhinestones to his jumpsuit. :)

It turned out pretty darn cute though.

Matt was Jake from State Farm. His costume was a hit at our ward Halloween party. Everyone thought it was hilarious! Speaking of our ward Halloween party, the Primary was in charge of it. What a pain! It seriously was such a stress. But it turned out really cute, thanks to my amazing counselors and our neighbor who loves to do stuff like that.

Ever since January, Emmy has been saying that she wanted to be a snowman for Halloween. Frosty the Snowman. I thought it would be lame at first, but then I started looking around at ideas and we came up with this. It turned out super cute.

Emmy even said the prayer at our ward Halloween party in front of everyone. I was so proud of her. And she LOVED trick or treating. It seriously was so much fun. Sometimes she would even ask the people if she could have 2 candies. I about died. And she had a fun preschool party that morning too with tons of cute games. She was so excited about Halloween and trick or treating, it was awesome!

It took me forever to scrub off Zach's sideburns! Ha!

Anyway, I dressed up like a pirate for our ward party and then Snow White for Emmy's preschool party and trick or treating. I love Halloween!

Pumpkin carving

Emmy drew faces on both our pumpkins and Matt did his best to carve them as drawn. I think they turned out nice. We also roasted the seeds. Yum!

We finally got Emmy to play soccer

We finally got Emmy to play soccer without one of us holding her hand! The secret? We invited Rivers to come. Rivers had no problem going out there by himself and so Emmy just followed him. They didn't actually do much playing of soccer, but they had a great time running around on the field.

Rivers came to a couple of practices and games and then the last week of the season he didn't come and Emmy went out and played. By herself! And she did great! Yes, she is wearing butterfly wings. It was "costume day" and they told the kids they could wear their Halloween costumes if they wanted. So Emmy picked these wings to wear.

I was so proud of her. She played the whole game!

And I probably will never sign her up for soccer again. It was a long season. But I'm glad she finally played the last few times!

And...funny random fact...Emmy's coach was one of Scott's good friends from high school. And the coach's wife has a sister that lives in Jacksonville and I was able to connect with her and find out some really good info about Florida. So there were probably lots of reasons why Emmy played soccer this year even if she didn't really love it.

Daisy the Dog

Emmy's preschool has a "class pet" It's a stuffed dog named Daisy. Emmy was beyond excited when it was her turn to bring Daisy home to take care of her.

She showed her all the toys.

Played with her in the hammock.

And the leaves.

And the slide.

Helped her climb a tree.

And danced around the yard with her.

She REALLY loved having Daisy here for the week.

Miss Heather's preschool is so cute. They made these cute little pies one day when they were learning about the letter P.

And they had college team day. I held up both her U and Y shirts fairly for her to choose which one she wanted to wear. She made her momma proud by choosing this one.

Emmy is loving preschool so much, and that makes me so happy. In fact, we've been talking about the possibility of us moving and Emmy said, "Well can we move closer to Miss Heather's house so I can still go to preschool?" This was so sad and funny at the same time. (Miss Heather lives 5 houses away from us.)

Here is the page Emmy made that told all about her adventures with Daisy the Dog.