Emma's 1st Christmas...

We had a FANTASTIC first holiday season with Emma Grace.

Santa brought Grandpa, snow on Christmas and all sorts of GREAT gifts.

We felt amazingly blessed and absolutely elated to FINALLY have a little one on Christmas; Thank you Lord for your timing is perfect!

Enjoy some pictures of our first Christmas w/ Emma Grace!!

SNOW for Emma's 1st Christmas!

How can you ask for more than that.

It was SO beautiful and absolutely stunning.

Our frontyard... I think my Dad was loving it more than Emma:)

From our front porch! SO beautiful down our street.

Our backyard... there's a patio under there:)

Grandpa made it into town. Just in time for snow on Christmas!

Christmas Eve Service; it was beautiful!

Comfy and ready for SANTA!!

Christmas morning!

Holy cow, santa was here and took a bite out of the cookies!

Opening my loot:)

surrounded by all her presents!

W H A T????

I get to keep this!!!!

This is MY present!!

(She didn't get this til' the next day and OH MY GOSH! she LOVED it and all her expressions when we were putting it together and when we put her in it were hilarious! We don't even have any toys on it yet and she was like, "I WANT IN!!!":)

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and have a very Happy New Year!!

Christmas Party!

We had a great time at our 5th annual Christmas Party last night. I should have taken some more pics but I couldn't take my eyes of my daughter:)lol... enjoy! and
Merry Christmas!!

7 months...

Oh the photo shoots... getting harder & harder:)lol

regardless it was fun just goofing around and laughing as a family!

7 months can't believe it. So we're thinking she's got to be close to 18-19 lbs... and I know she growing taller; geesh. Crazy times!:)

Enjoy

Happy Thanksgiving...

So we hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving. We enjoyed family and friends at our house on Thanksgiving and then left the next morning for our cabin in Breckenridge. We had a great time and Emma Grace had a fabulous 1st Thanksgiving holiday! Here are a few pics.... (sidenote; do you ever just kick yourself for not taking more pics? We didn't get any of the grandparents, Emma in her highchair for the first time, the Thanksgiving table?? Not sure what we were thinking:)

Ryan, Cary & Tessa came over and hung out with us for Thanksgiving!

Looking so cute in her winter sweater... ready to brave the outlets in Breck

Had to take a family photo... she was just so stinkin' cute!

It was FREEZING... so she finally got to show off her snow suit and we hung out in downtown Breck. Very Fun!

Sitting up & Teeth?!

So it is not possible that my baby can sit up?? BUT it's true, she is sitting up like a champ and having fun toppling over. She's not quite rolling over yet but I'm not in any hurry:)...AND...

has 2 TEETH!!!!! Not my baby:(

Actually it's been so fun, she did amazing with the teeth coming in we actually didn't even know until I felt them. She was a little fussy a couple of days before but not to bad. Anyway this isn't the clearest picture but one of the only ones that you can see her teeth (bottom middle) CRAZY!!

PS that is her first try at butternut squash; she lOVED it:)!

Oh and for those of you keeping track I obviously returned the $10 squash and found a much more reasonable one that made "20" 2 oz servings.

THE $10 SQUASH!!

Ok so as you know I am making my own baby food. Well next on the list is butternut squash. Before our morning playgroup I had a quick second to run into Safeway and buy butternut squash; it's my second time looking for it and I was hoping they had it. Because I was in a hurry I didn't even look at the price, what I did notice is that it was in the "organic" section which is usually a bit higher but whatever. With it I purchased two sweet potatoes because I might as well make that at the same time. I go through the checkout and I think I see "$14.97" on the little credit card thingy but that can't be... Running in a hurry, get to the car, put Emma in and then look at the receipt low and behold the $14.97... the squash was $9.98!!!!!! What the heck; it was $1.99 a pound. WOW! 10 bucks, huh?! NO way I can't justify that so that brings me to my question of the day: Where can a girl get a decent butternut squash?, preferrably not $10:)? So I obviously didn't have time before or actually after so tomorrow my big errand is going to have to be returning a squash and finding a cheaper one! Oy Vey; why do these random things happen to me:)!
So regardless of all that Emma Grace is doing fantastic with her veggies. So far she is really liking carrots; although it took her a few days to warm up to the idea. Right now we are just doing nursing & carrots for lunch, no cereal. She just loves the cereal so much that if I try to feed her both she chows the cereal and won't eat the carrots OR won't eat the carrots because she knows cereal is coming! Smart little cookie:).... Anyway thanks for all the input, so far so good!... Now if I could just figure out where to find a butternut squash that won't cost me $10:)LOL!!

Emma is 6 months old!

SO here is how the 6 month photoshoot went...LOL!!

Mommy: Emma don't touch the sign

Emma: But I want to

Mommy: PLEASE don't touch the sign
Emma: But I have to; I can't stand it

Mommy: hysterical, uncontrollable laughter because

gone are the days of just propping her up with a cute little sign

Emma: I have to have it! I can't take my eyes off it:)!

Mommy: Waving the white flag in defeat!

I gave up on the sign and just took one of her and then one of the sign (and even then you can see her little hand trying to take the sign; she LOVED that thing.... LOLOLOL!!!!!!!:)

Starting Solids....

Ok Ladies we're starting solids tomorrow; sort of...

let me clarify we have been giving Emma oatmeal cereal for a few weeks because of some random constipation and stool issues, she's doing GREAT but now we are starting solid vegetables/fruit. So I have questions:

1. I'm making my own so if you have any tips?? I'm pretty set up but just incase I missed something I'd love your input.

2. My biggest question is "scheduling of foods"

Right now her day is nursing 4(5) times a day, cereal 3 times a day but

I know that "eventually" her day will look like this...

Bkfst: nurse, cereal, fruit

Lunch: nurse, fruit, veggie

Dinner: nurse, cereal, fruit, veggie

Bedtime: nurse, bed

So first off When will it look like that?

and second we're starting carrots for a few days, then squash for a few, then sweet potatoes for a few, etc.... so does she just have nursing 4 times, cereal 3 times and at one random meal she has this new veggie/fruit that we're introducing or once she has carrots am I supposed to now give her multiple veggies in one day?

I don't know if that made sense and I'm sure I'm overthinking it but if you understood my confusion I'd love your input?! I partly have these questions because I'm making my own baby food and I am sort of getting set up with things I need to buy, freeze, etc...

Thank You I'd love to hear what you think or what you did!

Happy Veterans Day!

I'm always so proud to say that Chris is a veteran.

His heart for this country is amazing and I wanted to thank him

and all who have served or are serving in our armed forces!

God Bless America!

Happy Veterans Day!

Halloween Fun!

So we had a wonderful halloween holiday and of course Emma was as cute as a bug:)! Right next door is Ryan, Cary & Tessa (8 1/2 months) and next door to them is Nate, Lindsay, baby in belly:) and Blythe (1 yr. 4 mos.) and we have just become the greatest friends and are now walking through this fun journey of mommyhood (and daddyhood:) so we all got together for some pictures and then some trick or treating!

So Funny & So True!

I think this is absolutely hysterical!

Now be honest how many of us does this really represent?

Oh please I'm sure everyone in the world can relate to it... LOL:) Sooooo funny! Love it!!

Snow Day!!

I don't know why I haven't gotten my butt in gear to blog but I guess nothing to eventful has been going on, until now......

We are offically having our first snowfall of the season and despite what some people might say about snow (it's cold, it's hard to drive in, it's to early for snow, etc...) everytime it snows I feel like I want to take a thousand pictures because there is just something pure, peaceful, serene and beautiful about it! So Emma and I are hanging out indoors today enjoying hot cocoa, warm fire, snuggling and just watching her face as she watches this miraculous white wonderland for the first time; it's so cool! So needless to say here are a few of my thousand pictures that I feel the need to take everytime it snows:). Enjoy!!

IN HONOR OF THE FACT THAT IT'S OCTOBER...

Well Miss Emma Grace is 5 months old!

We thought since it is October...

we'd take her 5 month pictures in her halloween costume!!!

Seriously Chris & I could barely stand it...

ENJOY!

Busy weekend so far...

Well we started the weekend with going over to our friends Zach & Katie's house for dinner. Had to post this picture because it's fall and HOLY COW there is nothing better than bundling up your little one; Welcome Fall!!Next we officially started SOLID FOOD!! We tried our hand at some oatmeal cereal today; here are some adorable pictures of Emma's thoughts on the whole thing...

What? Solid foods?? Ok I'll try:)...
What am I supposed to do with it now:)???

Ok that wasn't so bad actually,

swallowed some, played with some in my hands, made a mess not a bad morning!

Next off to the Erie Harvest Festival;

so for those of you that don't know we live in a very nice golf course community; very new blah, blah... BUT Erie itself is total podunk old school LITTLE town. It's actually very quaint. Sooo they had a small but very fun/sweet fall festival that we went to. So after getting a free pumpkin for Emma, decorating it, getting sick on fatty carnival food we called it a day and enjoyed every moment:).

Picking out Emma's pumpkin...

it ended up being a GORGEOUS fall day. sunny and beautiful and very crisp! Perfect...

After I decorated her pumpkin... she really loved it:)!