Christmas Day 2008

(See below for Part 1)

...It will come as no surprise to most of you that Emma was, in fact, a good girl this year. So Santa left lots of presents for her under the Christmas tree while we were all fast asleep. We managed to keep her from opening them until Grandma & Grandpa H and Aunt Laura arrived, but just barely! Grandma & Grandpa K stopped by for a little bit to see what Santa brought for Emma. Then the Haggerty crew came over for brunch and more presents. Emma & Nathan made a special plate for Great Grandma with their handprints on it. As Megan pointed out, they are cleverly giving the previous generation's "favorites" a run for their money. Watch out, Joe & Laura -- you've got competition!Grandpa H had the pleasure of putting together Emma's new play kitchen while the rest of us snacked and socialized.The men ended up hanging out outside......while the women sat around and talked at the kitchen table. How typical!The kitchen was a big hit once it was all put together!I swiped this one from Nathan's blog. Through the magic of technology, Uncle Don was able to get a family picture. We'll have to work on photoshopping Steve's head in there somewhere!

Christmas Eve 2008

Our apologies that it's taken so long to get Christmas pictures up. But better late than never! There will be alot of pictures today because we have lots of good ones to share. And if we have to take the time to upload them all into a Kodak album, who knows when we would get around to posting them. I'm going to split them into two separate entries, so today you get two for the price of one!

Emma had two very bountiful holiday celebrations this year. We went to Grandma & Grandpa K's house on Christmas Eve to celebrate with Daddy's side of the family. As usual, she was most excited about seeing their dog, Freddy. We didn't get any good pictures of the two of them together, but you can see Fred in the background here:Emma tried on the special musical santa slippers that Grandma got for the kids, and she loved them!Alex did a great job of putting presents under the tree when he arrived.After dinner, Grandma dressed the kids up in their special Christmas jammies and slippers. Emma loved the whole ensemble.Alex, however, wasn't such a big fan of the musical santa slippers.
The kids had lots of fun opening gifts. Emma did a great job of opening her own this year, which was a great relief to Mommy & Daddy! Alex was mostly into the bows, which turned out ok because he didn't want to let go of the roll he was carrying around either. So he went around pulling off everyone's bows with one hand and his roll in the other -- what a great helper!Alex loved the fire engine that Grandpa picked out for him. We're sure Uncle Mike & Aunt Heather are hearing the different sirens and other noises it makes in their sleep by now!Emma got an art desk from Grandma & Grandpa, and she loves to sit at it every day and color or draw. She runs into her playroom and says, "I will make a picture for you!"After an exhausting night of excitement, Emma crashed as soon as we got in the car to head home. So we put her to bed, set out some cookies for Santa and some carrots for the reindeer, and then got ourselves to sleep so that Santa could stop by with some goodies. That is, if Emma was a good girl this year...

Christmas is coming

Emma is definitely getting ready for Christmas. Yesterday, she made a little Christmas tree at Sarah's house. It had all sorts of pretty decorations on it. Sadly, by the time we got home, after being in her hands for an hour, most of the decorations were gone and it looked pretty weathered. Still, she proudly displayed it for her faithful blog readers:Grandma H gave Emma a very special Christmas ornament that we put on the tree the other day. We decided to give this one a home high up on the tree, out of reach of the "ornament patrol" -- we've had a couple of casualties, and we sure didn't want this one to end up on that list! Emma likes to look inside to see how the candle lights up. And here is the ornament patrol in action, multitasking with a soccer ball while doing her regular tree inspection. It was pretty cute when she would throw the soccer ball, and then run after it saying, "Where you going, soccer ball?"We've got a busy weekend ahead of us. We're going over to play with Jackson and baby Carley this afternoon. Tonight is dinner out to celebrate Grandpa H's birthday. Happy birthday, Grandpa! Tomorrow, Grandma & Grandpa K are coming over so that Emma can show them the tree and the lights. And it will be Great Grandma G's birthday (otherwise known as Emma Sr.) -- Happy birthday, Great Grandma! Then on Sunday, we are going to the Christmas concert at church. Emma loves Christmas music, so I think she will enjoy herself. Hopefully after this weekend, we'll have a calm few days before we gear up for the various holiday celebrations!

Happy birthday, Audrey!

It's been a week since we've posted anything, but this week didn't bring too much excitement. The only pictures we really took were for our Christmas card, which you will all be seeing in the mail as soon as the kind people at Kodak ship our order out. Since we didn't use this pose for the card, here is Emma's ornament that she made at Miss Sarah's house. She loves to hang it in different spots on the Christmas tree!Today we went over to Audrey's house to help her celebrate her 2nd birthday. We woke her up from a nap to get there in time, so she was a bit out of sorts at the beginning. Luckily, she warmed up and ended up having a good time.

Sitting with Daddy, watching Audrey (actually Niki) open presents:
The birthday girl:Make a wish!Possibly Emma's favorite part was looking out the kitchen door at their dogs, Roscoe and Hazel. She must have sat in front of the window for 5 minutes saying "Hi, doggies!" Of course, by the time we got home, she had forgotten exactly what their names were. When I asked her later, she told me they were "Roscroe and Hazie" -- close!I can't believe these girls are already two! It doesn't seem like it was that long ago when they were little babies!

Cookies with Santa...sort of

It took us about 3 days to finish decorating the tree in between our usual everyday activities, but here is our finished Christmas tree, as approved by the little Christmas elf you can see doing her regular inspection:Today, Santa Claus came to our neighborhood clubhouse to have cookies and storytime with the kids, and then take pictures and ask them what they each wanted for Christmas. We decided to take Emma, not knowing how she would respond to Santa (but having a pretty good guess).

We were told to be there by 2:30 this afternoon, so that the kids could get checked in and decorate cookies or do other crafts, and then Santa would read a story at 3:00 and then do pictures with each child. We got checked in and plopped Emma down in front of the Christmas tree to see if we could get a nice picture. These were the best of the bunch:We still had some time before Santa was scheduled to arrive, so we decorated some cookies. Emma wanted a yellow "E" and some sprinkles. Which is exactly what she got!Not super Christmasy, but hey, it's her cookie and she can do it however she wants.

By about 3:30, everyone was getting pretty antsy, with no Santa in sight. Not good when you have a room full of about 30-40 young kids who have been eating sugar cookies and drinking hot chocolate! It was getting pretty rowdy, and Emma was starting to say she wanted to go home. Luckily, we took a breath of fresh air, came back inside, and waited it out until he finally showed up at 3:40. Needless to say, there was no time for a story -- they had a 2nd session scheduled for 4:30, so they needed to hurry up and get our group out the door! I really think Emma would have enjoyed storytime with Santa, but oh well. Fortunately, we happened to be standing in a spot where Santa had to walk past us to get to his chair. He came over, looked at Emma, and said, "Hi there! How are you?" Thumb planted firmly in mouth, she cowered and turned her face into my shoulder, refusing to speak. Santa moved on and started doing pictures with the kids. While we were waiting for our turn, we asked Emma about four times if she wanted to go and sit with Santa. She said "NO" each time, so we finally decided that there was no need to stay any longer and went home. So we didn't get to see Santa for very long, but at least she got to have some exposure to him and how the whole sitting-on-Santa's-lap thing works. Maybe next year...

Tim did manage to snap a photo of Mr. Claus before he started seeing the kids. Looks like this is the only picture Emma will have to remember her time with Santa in 2008!A close-up of her holiday shirt she wore today. It says, "Good things come in small packages." Perfect shirt for a little squirt!One more cute story -- Grandma & Grandpa H brought Emma a stuffed bumblebee toy from the FAO Schwartz store when they were in Las Vegas last week. It still has the tag on it, so this afternoon, she announced that she wanted to read the bumblebee's tag. She opened it up and started, "Once upon a time, there was a bumblebee..." Of course, it doesn't say that on the tag. I guess she just figured any good story should start out that way!

Trimming the tree

Last night we decked the halls in true Christmas fashion. Emma & I started in the afternoon by getting the tree up. She liked checking every angle to make sure it looked pretty.After dinner, we all had some yummy hot chocolate and added ornaments as a family. Emma made sure to point out that, contrary to its name, the hot chocolate was "not too hot, just a little hot." Oh, and also, "Mmm...that's good!"A couple of cute poses after drinking some hot chocolate... Emma has been fascinated by the ornaments all day. This is the first year that she has really messed with them at all. We have strategically placed all of the breakable ones out of her reach, but she is doing her best to make sure we didn't miss any!

I think it's safe to say there won't be any presents under our tree until Christmas morning this year!

Gobble gobble gobble

Emma's third Thanksgiving has come and gone. Unfortunately, we failed to break out the camera once again, so we didn't get any pictures at either of the two meals we had on Thursday. Thankfully, Grandpa K was nice enough to share some of his pictures with us. If you enlarge the photo above, you'll see a weird smudge under Emma's eye. It's apparently some sort of glitch with the camera -- we promise it's not eyeliner, and she hasn't been in any bar fights lately! (At least, none that we're aware of...) In any event, we spent some good time with family and friends, and we ate more than we should have...a successful Thanksgiving by all accounts!

Sadly, Emma was also successful in picking up Cousin Alex's cold when she saw him on Thursday afternoon. Add to that some extra pain from her two-year molars coming in, and the poor girl has had a rough couple of days! Here she is, putting on her bravest face, to show off her Princess shirt that she loves so much:
Emma told a really corny joke the other day, without even knowing it. Grandpa H is sure to appreciate this one. We were having a tea party in the family room, and Emma grabbed both tea bags and raised them up over her head. I asked her what she was doing. Her answer? "High tea!"Ba dum bum.

Meowiscal entertainment

For those of you who haven't been fortunate enough to hear the kitty cat piano in all of its meowing splendor, we have a special treat for you. Behold, the musical stylings of Emma Rose:

Emma has a new face she makes when she is being goofy at the kitchen table. It's usually when she eats something that she likes, as in the picture below, where she is enjoying a plate of mac & cheese and green beans with ketchup -- still two of her faves.
What a silly goose!

Typical two year old

After three weeks of delays, we finally got over to the photography studio to do Emma's two-year pictures. This was the first time we've gone since she's been able to to walk, which definitely had its advantages and disadvantages! But overall, it went pretty well, and we went home with some very nice pictures.

Taking two-year pictures means that we have a two-year old on our hands...and boy, do we! Mommy & Daddy have had many, many chances to practice patience lately, while Emma defies us, throws tantrums, and changes her mind about 800 times a day. Lots of deep breaths and counting to 10 keep us all sane. I hope our little angel comes back after this stage is over!

I believe in this picture she was upset because she wanted to put her black dress shoes on. We tried, but they wouldn't fit over her pajamas. So, of course, she wanted to take her pj's off so that she could wear the shoes. Seeing as how we were about 10 minutes away from bedtime, I said no. Here's the tail end of the dramatic flinging herself onto the couch:The scariest part is that she skipped her nap three times in the past week. We always put her down, but sometimes lately she just lays up in her bed babbling and/or whining until someone comes to get her out. Seems like we just phased out the 2nd nap...now all of a sudden she's ready to get rid of the one? She's definitely more cranky at the end of the day without a nap. But I have a feeling our days of nice quiet afternoons of getting lots of work and chores done are numbered. Shouldn't the parents be consulted on this? We're not ready to give that up yet!

Fortunately, the tantrums are usually pretty short-lived. Here she is, about a minute later, "checking her email," just like Daddy.