Thankful

We are thankful for sooooo many things big and small in this beautiful, crazy, fun, did I mention crazy? life of ours.

Mommy is thankful for no more rails on Madison's bed because it makes it so much easier to make, not that it happens often, for any bed in our house.  In fact when Madison sees a bed that's made she says, "mommy, did Rosa come?"  So incredibly thankful for our amazing house keeper, even if she only comes once every two weeks!

We are thankful that we got to catch up with old friends and meet some new little ones

We are thankful for a great group of friends that we like to do fun things with...

...like paint snowman Christmas ornaments

Madison is thankful for school, which she loves, especially school parties with cupcakes!

I am very thankful for these two sweet little hands that we used to make a turkey craft.  We made a bunch of these for Mimi's Thanksgiving table.

I am thankful for you, pretty girl!

And you too, my sweet little Emma!

We had great Thanksgiving at my parents house this year.  Madison spent the night with them and Mimi let her make all the sides for Thanksgiving dinner and a dessert.  Here she is adding the top to our green bean casserole before we sat down to eat.  She sang Jesus loves me for our Thanksgiving prayer.

We are thankful for camera timers that allowed us to capture this little gem for my parents Christmas card.

We are so, so thankful for Mimi and Pa and Gram and Grandad who are so willing to help out all the time.  Thank you!

We are thankful to stop and smell the roses, although I don't feel like I have a lot of time for that these days, ha!

Emma is thankful that Pa takes her outside "to touch"

I am thankful that these two truly love each other and get along so well, at least for now anyway

 We are thankful that Pa got up at 3:15 AM to start his delicious smoked turkey, YUMMY!

And we are thankful for gingerbread houses...

...And big, green tractors

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

14 Months

On Nov. 23rd Emma turned 14 months.  I ran out of storage space for pictures on the blog and had to figure out how to upgrade my storage plan so that's why I'm a couple days late.  She is quite the diva and still a mama's girl, not sure that's ever going to change!  She's also incredibly hard headed, literally.  Whenever Emma is mad or frustrated she immediately hits her head on whatever is close by, be it the couch, the wall, the floor-both carpeted and hard wood, whatever.  Most of the time she just cries harder so I have to try and intervene if I see that she's about to do it.  We are ready for her to start talking instead of grunting and pointing all the time but if she's anything like Madison once she starts she won't stop.  She does understand just about everything we tell her though, and is quite smart, I think anyway.  Here's some pictures of our little chubba wubba from the last month...

Emma figured out how to drink from a straw so whenever she sees a cup with a straw sticking out of it she has to have a sip

When Emma has a poopie she immediatly grabs her diaper to tell me she needs a change

Emma still loves to read books and we often read the same book over and over and over again

My cutie patooties in their matching dresses from Miss Megan

Gig 'em Aggies!  What an exciting season they have had!

One thing Emma loves to do is eat, in fact I'm pretty sure that's her favorite thing to do.  When we ask her if she's hungry she gets so excited and smiles so big that she actually shakes!  This girl can pile it in, pretty sure she would eat until she exploded if we would let her.

Lately she's been enjoying feeding herself her own bites once I get them on the fork even though it usually ends up incredibly messy.  She refuses to wear a bib and pulls it off faster than I can get it on.

Seriously, eating makes her soooo happy!  She still has just 6 chompers.

We enjoyed the few days of cold weather and look forward to some more so we can get a lot of wear out of our sassy, white fur boots.

Gotta love matching jammies!

Emma is extremely loving and will give kisses all day if you ask for them.  In fact when you ask her if she's ready to go nite nite she puts her hand up to her face and leans her head to one side like you would when you are sleeping and then immediately goes to find Chase and Madison to give them kisses good night.  Her other favorite thing to do besides eat is sleep so we don't have any nap or night time drama yet.  Now, Madison is a different story.  That girl is queen of procrastination and will do just about anything not to go to bed.

Both these girls love music and especially love to dance.  Here they are playing Just Dance on the Wii

Emma, "where's your tongue?"  I told you she was smart, ha!  We are working on body parts and so far she knows eyes, nose, mouth, tongue, toes, and belly button.  Although a lot of the time when she hears, "Emma, where's your"  she just sticks out her tongue because we ask her to do it so much because it's funny.

So it appears we stay in our jammies a lot, don't judge!

Happy 14 months Emma!

Soccer

About a month and a half ago we signed Madison up for a Soccer Tots mini league with our friend Alise.  I think it's safe to say that Madison is more of a dancer than a soccer player but she's doing a little better.  During the first few games she was noticeably nervous, she had a fake smile on her face because she was trying to be brave, and she cried a little when the game started because she didn't really know what she was doing.  I know she was completely overwhelmed by all the parents screaming, "kick the ball,"  "run hard," "turn it around," yes parents yell at 3!  We had to explain that its a good thing to yell and she wasn't in trouble.  I also think she would do better on an all girl team rather than a co-ed team as the boys are a little more aggressive than the girls.  Madison likes to run or should I say prance up and down the field but she doesn't want to have anything to do with the ball unless she kicks it in from the sidelines where no one will bump her.  They don't have any practices, just one game a week so we don't expect too much but thought it would be something fun for her to try.  Here's a few pictures from our last game...

 A little pre-game warm up for our left footed kicker

A little coaching from daddy

Madison did actually score a goal here after she kicked it in from the sidelines so she was very proud of herself!