Charlie

It was a small gathering, but you'd never know it by the mountain of presents!
We all had cake and ice cream, and Emily didn't have to have a bath with all her clothes on this year -
by now, she knows what cake is and what to do with it!

She got a Sesame Street Alphabet Bus from Nana Jo & Grampa.
They took her to Toys R Us and let her play, then bought the toy she played with most!

She also got a cool little bowl with a spoon & fork from Aunt Meaghan & Uncle Michael.
She really liked trying these out - they're just her size, and they have fishies on them!

Emily's a Guitar Hero!

New Year's Day 2009

Daddy wasn't home on New Year's Day;
he had to go to California for school.

So Emily & I stayed home and ate ham & black-eyed peas
and watched the Rose Parade.

From the Desk of Emily B.

Another neat Christmas gift that Emily got was a little art desk. The desktop folds up to make an easel, and there's a markerboard on the other side. It's got buckets and cubbies for crayons & markers, and there's even a little stool that goes with it. Emily loves to sit at her desk and color.

Excuse me, I've got to go...it seems the purple crayon is broken, and it's Mama's job to "fixit" whenever any of the crayons gets broken (as they frequently do.) Plus, the coloring looks like fun...I better go see if Emily needs some help!

Christmas 2008

Possibly Emily's favorite present of all was this little piano. She plays with it all the time; some days, she gets as much fun from turning it on and off as she does from playing music on it!

She also got a kitchen set; it has Elmo and Grover and Cookie Monster and the Grouch, and Bert and Ernie all making lots of kitchen noises and silly sounds. It also has food to go with it, and a menu and cash till so that it can work as a restaurant. She likes "cooking dinner" and feeding pizza and milk to me, Ken, and all her babies.

This is MY favorite gift that Emily got - and it's certainly been the most useful. It's the "Color-it" (aka Magna-Doodle) We keep it in the car and it keeps Emily well entertained, and distracts her (sometimes) when she's upset because she wants a biscuit, or some milk, or something else that we don't have in the car at that moment.

Jackson and Emily played hard over Christmas weekend. Jackson had a new Mickey Mouse pillow, which came in very handy for taking brief rests between play sessions.

Jackson and Emily both got lots of books for Christmas, too. One of Emily's favorite things to do these days is to climb up into every chair she can find - so it was great fun for her to share a seat with Jackson and read her new book for Mamaw.