We now have a 4 year old!

It's hard to believe, but last weekend, Emily turned 4! It seems like just yesterday she was an itty bitty baby. We had her 1st friend party, she invited her class from school, as well as our friends and their babies. Because this group is larger than our house can contain, we had the party at the Wesley Foundation. Em had a blast. We cleared out the chapel area and blew up oodles of balloons for the kids to play in. This was by far the favorite activity. We also had cupcake decorating and an art project. The other highlight seemed to be running through the Foundation playing what appeared to be chase.
Here are some pictures of the big day!


Ok so this picture isn't actually Emily--but it is from her party, this is Payton playing with her friend Hudson while the big kids celebrated!







The following day we had our usual Sunday Supper with the college kids, and I'm pretty sure they had just as much if not more fun with the balloons than the 4 year olds did. Here is a video of Em's "party" with the big kids!



As another birthday activity, that I found on pinterest, we asked Emily the following 20 questions and will hopefully remember to ask her these questions every year and enjoy how her answers evolve. The most fascinating part of this year's process was the fact that she could answer all the questions unprompted. In fact, after we finished the 20, she came over and kept saying, "mommy you have to tell me what is my favorite......"and went through several other favorites!

Emily's 4 year old life
1. What is your favorite color?pink
2. What is your favorite toy?a lego
3. What is your favorite fruit? peaches
4. What is your favorite tv show? Diego
5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? french fries
6. What is your favorite outfit? a shirt
7. What is your favorite game? Super Why
8. What is your favorite snack? peaches
9. What is your favorite animal? care bear
10. What is your favorite song? Chicken Chew
11. What is your favorite book? Barbie
12. Who is your best friend? Nina and Jordan
13. What is your favorite cereal? fruit loops
14. What is your favorite thing to do outside? ride my bike
15. What is your favorite drink? juice
16. What is your favorite holiday? Halloween
17. What do you like to take to bed with you at night? a pillow
18. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Fruit loops
19. What do you want for dinner on your birthday? Cupcakes
20. What do you want to be when you grow up? play toys

Quick post

This is a quick post...just to record the many achievements of Payton lately. Since Christmas P is officially--
**crawling
**standing up without anything to hold onto
**crusing along furniture
**saying da and ga (and just for the record, dadada is not directed at Chuck, so it's not a first word!)
**sleeping in her crib (so far we haven't made it all night, she usually wakes up between 1 and 3, and I'm terrified if we let her cry it out it Em will wake up and it will be very bad. P and I go to the couch and usually with some mommy cuddles she is asleep and all is well).

On the Em front she is super excited that it is her birthday month and has been talking daily about her birthday party and inviting all of her friends to the party. Her current favorite activities are "dancing with Emily" and "playing cans". Dancing with Emily involves turning on spotify and face time on the computer and watching herself dance to the music. Her music is the Phineas and Ferb soundtrack and her favorite Laurie Berkner songs. Playing cans is taking all of our canned goods out of the lazy susan and playing various activities with them. She attempts to teach them to dance, reads stories to them, plays schools with them, today she was bowling with them. Who knews cans could be so much fun!

This weekend we celebrated BMac's 1st birthday--B kicked of the baby bang in our circle of friends last Jan, we will have 1st birthdays in April, May and July to round out all the babies! It was great fun to get together with our friends, the kids had a great time playing together and it was nice to have some adult time.

Hopefully I will get some pictures up soon....that will be my next goal!

Picture dump....

As promised...some pictures

This is from Thanksgiving weekend....Papa and I took Em and P to John Deere Commons to see a giant combine built out of canned food....she wasn't too impressed with the combine but had fun climbing in the tractors.
P at the daycare Christmas program...snoozing!

Emily singing...she did an awesome job!
Telling Santa our wish list for Christmas...she was thinking really hard!

And videos from their program...P's isn't the best, it is video of a video, but still cute I think.

http://youtu.be/6Zs8kLo0s1k

I have more pictures but for some silly reason blogger is only letting me put 5 up, so the rest will have to wait for another post!

Christmas anticipation...

4 years ago Chuck and I were anticipating the birth of our 1st child soon after Christmas--Chuck wrote this Advent devotional for church. As we look forward to our first Christmas of parents of 2 children I think it continues to be applicable, especially as I watch Emily's excitement over the approaching holiday! May we all look forward to Christmas with her childlike faith!!

I Think I Get It Now Chuck Hilman
�You will be with child and give birth to a
son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.
He will be great and will be called the Son of
the Most High. The Lord God will give him
the throne of his father David, and he will
reign over the house of Jacob forever; his
kingdom will never end.�
I think I finally get it now.
For hundreds of years the Jews looked
forward to the day their messiah would come
and restore their kingdom. They wrote about
their desire for him to come. They prayed
for his coming deliverance. The eagerly
expected him. I think I finally understand
their sense of anticipation.
As Sarah and I wait for our first child to
be born I am beginning to understand the
anticipation felt by the entire Jewish nation
(on a much smaller scale, of course). We
have spent the last six months preparing ourselves,
and our home, for our child�s arrival.
We have prayed for our child every day. We
have put together baby things, cleaned, and
prayed some more. Sarah has eaten and I
have taken that as a challenge to eat more
than her. I think I�m winning.
The level of excitement about Christmas
is a little higher this year because I know
what it�s like to anticipate the birth of a child.
I would like to remind everyone about
how exciting this Advent season really is.
There is a reason the whole world is not excited
about the birth of our child. He (or she)
is not the savior of the world! We are anticipating
the one who has saved us from our
sins and redeemed us from the curse of the
fall!
I pray that you would enter this Advent season
with a sense of excitement and eager anticipation.

Wow...

We have a crawler! Payton has been "moving" for about 2 weeks now...but not really in any explainable fashion, until today! Today she officially did a crawl! We are definitely in for it now. I'm convinced she will go from crawling to running very quickly, if for no other reason than to get away from her sister!


In other news Emily has officially been broken of the binkie habit! It's been a month since we took it away and we've done well! She will randomly ask for it, but accepts the answer that it is broken and moves on with life! She is also virtually potty trained. We still have a poo accident on occasion, especially now that the upstairs bathroom is torn up, but we are definitely having more successes than not! Our baby girl is growing up way too fast!
Christmas is just around the corner, so I'm sure there will be a picture filled post soon!

Stationery card

Words Of Wonder Christmas Card

Don't send boring Christmas cards , personalize them at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Emily's 1st Parent teacher conference

We had Em's 1st parent teacher conference tonight and it went well :) Her teacher described her as an inigma (sp??). She said she absorbs information like crazy, even when it appears as though she isn't paying a lick of attention to what they are doing. She knows all of her letters upper and lower, can count to 18 and knows her numbers to 11! They didn't test her on sounds, but I'm guessing she would have known most of those as well. They said she loves the book center and the science center, especially the magnifying glass, so I think we are going to add some science stuff to her Christmas list. They said she has a great sense of humor and laughs at a lot of things the other kids may not get. Her weak areas are fine motor and following multi-step directions so we are going to work on cutting, writing her name and following 2 and 3 step directions.

Some funny stories--Emily usually naps in the hallway. This is because lately she's not napping and when she does it usually involves talking and singing herself to sleep, which bothers the other kids who are actually napping. Apparently one day Miss Sue sees Emily's head poke around the doorway and Em asks her "Whatcha doin?" to which Miss Sue replies "none of your business". Emily then asks "my business??" and Miss Sue says, "no, my business, you need to be on your cot". Emily says "I am on my cot" Miss Sue comes out in the hallway and sure enough, Em's toes are on her cot :)

Emily is also horribly obsessed with the calendar and weather chart, and everyday wants to be the helper. When I pick her up every night she makes a beeline for the calendar to show me the day. She plays with one of my old calendars in her room nightly and makes me be the student while she plays calendar in the bathtub at night.

One day while playing on the playground some of the girls wouldn't let Em play with them (meanies!) so Em went to tell Miss Sue--here is the conversation that ensued-
Emily-Miss Sue, they won't let me play with them.
Miss Sue-Who won't let you.
Emily-points--them over there.
Miss Sue--What are there names?
Emily--I don't know.
Miss Sue-Yes you do, what are their names.
Emily--Runs over to the girls---hey, what's your name so I can tell on you?"
Girls--Ok you can play with us.

I'm so proud of our little peanut! I can't believe how fast she is growing up!!!