Yes, I Forgot...

Yeah, so you might have noticed the picture at the top of the post for Emersyn's party... It is in fact one of the pictures from our quick shoot at JCP. And, yes, I did forget to post them after we picked them up on Friday. Oddly enough, we actually scanned them in right after picking them up. I was just so distracted with getting things ready for the party and then Michelle and the girls coming... You know how it is. :)

Anyways, without further ado, I give you the pictures from Emersyn's JCP shoot. Now, they're not Ali-Irwin quality. We'll do those soon. Between Ali's schedule and ours, it's been basically been impossible to find time to do the "good" pictures. Still though, we went in for at least a shot with the "3" for Emersyn's birthday. She was a pro, as always, so they turned out pretty good. I didn't get many of the shots though; there was just a lot of prop use, and that's not quite what we were going for. But yeah, she's a star!!

I'm uploading these to shutterfly now, so you can see them in the August album in a minute. While you're waiting though, feel free to flip through the other pictures from our August adventures!!

Emersyn's 3rd Birthday Party!!

I don't know about any of you, but I just cannot believe my baby girl is three years old. THREE! That's just crazy to me. In some ways, it just feels weird that it's only been three years. Hasn't Emersyn always been a part of my life? What was there before her? Who was I before being Emersyn's Mommy? In other ways though, it really feels like I just had her. Didn't the doctors and nurses just finally leave us alone with this gorgeous little baby? Wasn't I just adjusting the hospital bed so that I could lay down and still see Emersyn in that plastic bassinet? Weren't we just saying how we don't want to tell anyone we're home, so that we don't have to share her yet?

Where did three years go? And how did it get there so fast? What happened to those days that really lasted hundreds of hours, with the screaming and crying? Surely that had to slow time down a bit, enough to even out the really incredible days where we blinked and the whole day was over already. Right? I know time wasn't moving like this when I was pregnant with Emersyn. That's for sure!

Anyways, the day has come... and, well now it's passed... Emersyn has turned three years old. Another year has ended, and new one begun. No matter how much I'd like to, there's just no stopping the fact that Emersyn is growing up. Miracle that she is, we of course celebrated in style!

Emersyn got to pick her theme this year - another first showing just how grown up she's getting - and the little fanatic declared she wanted a Mickey Mouse party. We happily obliged!!

The day really got started Saturday night, when Emersyn insisted she wear her (almost too small) Minnie Mouse pjs to get ready for her party. Seriously, that's what she told me and would not listen to me that she's going to change before the party. Still, it's festive... especially with the Mickey ears headband she put on the second she woke up!

We "finished" decorating after Emersyn was down for her nap, but I won't bore you with the pictures of (all my hard labor turned absolutely fabulous) decor. We can't not share the cake though! Emersyn pretty much designed it herself too. I printed out a bunch of pictures I found online and she went through them picking out her favorites. This is the result...

I ended up having to go wake the birthday girl up after her nap ran longer than normal and our house started filling up with her guests. But despite telling me she was going to be shy, Emersyn was ready to see her party!

Once downstairs, Emersyn was pretty overwhelmed. Basically everyone showed up before she was even awake, so it was a lot to walk into. She basically stayed attached to me for a little while, but slowly allowed me to at least sit down around people...

It didn't take too long for Emersyn to warm up though. Soon enough she was the perfect hostess...

Then it was everyone's favorite part of any party - the time for cake!!

After Chris gave Emersyn her piece - the clubhouse on the very top - she was just too amazed to be bothered with pictures, even with Daddy.

They say a picture speaks a thousand words. I think this one is more like a million!

I won't post all the pictures of Emersyn openning her fabulous presents, but these two basically sum up the whole process for Emersyn. It was a flurry of wrapping paper, tissue paper, and really excited yelps.

When Emersyn opened up her LeapFrog LeapPad (the kid version of an iPad), it was instantly a huge hit. If you didn't see it, we actually had to take it away from her so that she'd continue on to another present.

It was clear immediately after the the last present was open that the cake was kicking in. Although it was a whole lot of fun for Emersyn and Gabrielle, when the cousin-riding started we herded the kids outside for some bubbles!

Naturally the bubbles were a huge hit. I'm pretty sure that Emersyn could have gotten only bubbles for her birthday and she would have thought it was the best presents in the history of birthdays! The other kids seemed to think the same thing!

Of course, by the time everyone was leaving, Emersyn was well past tolerating her guests. She even gave some unprompted hugs and kisses! (Oliver got the most though!)

It wasn't long after everyone left that Emersyn reminded us about something we forgot - her walking Mickey balloon. Leave it to the newly three year old to remember what her parents forgot. I think it ended up being better this way though. I doubt that Emersyn would have been as willing to share Mickey as she was with her toys... or that Mickey would have survived all the attention he was sure to receive.

As we settled down to get ready for (a really long past normal) bed time, Emersyn got to try out her new LeapPad. It was a huge hit and it's hardly been put down since!

This is one of my favorite pictures from the whole day. Emersyn has a game where you get a pet, and in order to make the pet do tricks you have to "write" a letter three times. I helped with the first two "E"s but she did the third all by herself... and you can see how excited she was about that!! (Seriously, this is before the pet did a trick! She actually missed the trick because she was so excited about writing the "E" without any help!)

Now you know we have a ton more pictures from Emersyn's birthday party. We do have some videos, but I still have at least a bazillion to go through from the last couple months. I promise they'll get posted eventually, but for now you'll have to settle on laughing along with all the pictures. And trust me, there's plenty to cause more than a little giggle.

We Show Off Our Zoo

Friday we welcomed in Chris' sister and her two girls, who made the trip in from Arizona for Emersyn's birthday. It was a very welcome visit since Emersyn has only "met" her two cousins via Skype, and she was extremely excited to have them at her house! Their flight came in later on Friday, but we got all day Saturday to hang out before the chaos of the party on Sunday...

So, big surprise coming from us, we went to the zoo!!

Gabrielle and Gianna were absolutely amazing with Emersyn. They were so into showing her the animals and making sure she could see. The result was that Emersyn walked almost the entire time, which is a total first. But she couldn't have been happier!

I won't bore you with the bazillion pictures here... but you know you can always check out the whole butt ton in the album. ;) I will however share a few random things. Like how we got to see the warhog babies who are now almost as big as their mama...

And how we got to feed the giraffe for the first time in at least a handful of visits...

I can't skip over the new "dance" that we saw the baby elephant do with (what we assume is) it's mother...

And I absolutely have to include pictures when I say what a blast the girls all had on the tree slide, which we must have stayed at for at least 20 minutes...

I can't talk about the tree slide without saying anything about the turtle shells that had all three girls giggling up a storm as they played there too...

But I will leave you with one picture to sum up the whole zoo trip, totally showing what a good time Emersyn had with her cousins...

Now, I'm sure you're questioning this post being only Saturday's adventure. After all, the party was Sunday and that's surely a bigger deal. You're right. And it is coming... very soon! Knowing us, you can imagine the amount of pictures that we have, so it's taking a little time to go through everything. I figured, better to post something than wait longer and then do it out of order. Trust me though, her birthday party post is on it's way!! I'm already making better time than I thought, so it really won't be long before you have that recap. In the meantime, have fun looking at all the zoo pictures! :)

Not So Far Behind Now

Yes, I suck... But, give me a break; it's only been a little over two months since I did a post. Okay, so that's a bit long. I'll admit it. To make it up to you, I offer the last of the catch up posts... well, for now at least. I did a recap of June, one of July, and now it's time for a quick one of August to get us back up to date. I'm not saying we'll stay totally current, especially since Emersyn's birthday is this weekend, but at least we're caught up to the right month now!

So, here goes a mini-recap of the first half-ish part of August...

First, let me start by saying that I did just get word I'm a go for a pretty dream job!! We're just working on the paperwork and official start date now, but it's definitely going to be in the next week or two. And not only is it a job, which is enough of a reason to celebrate at this point, but it's also something I really WANT to do... That's a total first for me, so I kind of feel like Christmas came early. Yay!!!

Now, back to the start of August...

I took Emersyn for an almost-totally-free quick photo shoot at JCP for her birthday. With Ali's crazy schedule this month, we just wanted a little something for Emersyn's birthday until we can catch up with Ali. Surprisingly, JCP was actually prepared for us - a huge first. Of course, Emersyn was a total star! The girl was really great with Emersyn, greeting her by name and talking to her the whole time about her birthday and upcoming party. My only small gripe is that it ended up with like every picture of having a prop... which I could have done without. The "3" was great and the little stool is fine, but then there was a chalk board and a bear... It was a little much and unfortunately I didn't realize it until the shoot was over. But still, they turned out really good. Not Ali quality, but good none the less!! I pick the pictures up tomorrow (10th) so hopefully we'll get the scanned in to share really soon.

On the topic of pictures, the only ones so far this month are from a very special trip... The Baltimore Raven's held an open practice at the stadium for a donation of $10 to a local charity. Naturally, we jumped on the opportunity to take Emersyn!! I can't even tell you how excited she was to go see "her go Ravens". On top of it, we ended up being able to take Cameron too. That just made the day even sweeter for Emersyn. And oh the fun they had... Just being able to see the Ravens "play" was awesome. Emersyn was so into it too! She had a blast yelling at the players from the seats, dancing to the music and even looking through the binoculars down at "her 5-2". Both Cameron and Emersyn got to do a little football toss - we have videos - and even did a mini-obsticle course, which is probably one of my all time favorite videos and memories ever! It was such a great day!!

I don't want to get totally general on my recap, but the whole month has been pretty basic. We finished the last couple details in the 'new' guest room and, even though it sucks to not it be Brinley's room (or any baby room for that matter), we're really happy at how it looks. I think Emersyn is the most proud since she's totally convinced she did all herself - especially the magic blue stripe. Yeah, quick side story : there's two blue stripes that go along the top the room and she thought it was magic when we pulled the tape off after doing all the brown/tan on the rest of the walls; since we let Emersyn pull the tape, she's pretty sure that she did the magic blue stripes. LOL!!

Um, what else... School is going really great. Emersyn just totally loves going and always has stories for her teachers. Most days, we even get a story or two about her day when Emersyn gets picked up too. It's a lot of fun hearing her talk about what she did... which always ends with "in the clouds" or "on a cloud". If it's not "I did this and that on the cloud" then it's "on the roof". Don't ask, we don't know! :)

Also continuing is her strong obsession with Mickey Mouse. It's almost the only that we can watch on tv any more. With the Olympics going, we've had some repreive thanks to Emersyn's decision that she's going to go to the Olympics and "swim real fast", "do those gymnastics like that girl", and "go on the horses like them". She also told us a little bit ago that "one day" she's "going to do that tennis real good" like the boys and girls at Wimbleton (sp?). But don't worry, Emersyn has followed all those comments up with something along the lines of "and you and Mommy/Daddy/continue-inserting-family-members-here will watch me and clap when I do good"!!!

The love of classical music and tutus, dancing and gymnastics has also been going strong. We had to take a break from doing gymnastics because of money and all, but Emersyn is definitely ready to go back. Hopefully we'll get in the next session, and we also want to get her into dance class. I can't even tell you how much that child dances! It's crazy!

Okay, well that gets us all caught up... minus the mad crazy amount of videos I have to go through. We're all pretty crazy getting ready for the Mickey Mouse party this weekend. It's exciting and so much fun to be planning it this year since Emersyn is really into it. I kind of feel like a little kid again, getting all excited for my own birthday party. It's just so much fun experiencing things through her eyes, especially now that Emersyn is into it and getting what's going on. In a way, I'm already excited for Christmas because of that same reason! But no rush!!! Seriously. Time is already going by way to fast. I just can't believe Emersyn is turning three. THREE! Wow...

So Far Behind ~ Part Two

Yes, I suck... But, give me a break; it's only been a little over two months sicne I did a post. Okay, so that's a bit long. I'll admit it. To make it up to you, I offer this catch up post. Well, this is one part anyway. I'll do like one recap of June, one of July and then a qucik on of August to get us back up to date. So here goes...

Part One was June, so since June...

With me still out of work (lots of promises, lots of "we want you"s, no funding...), we decided to go to Myrtle Beach for the week of 4th of July again this year. Emersyn was really excited and had even more fun than she did last year! I'd have to say that one memory I'll always have from this trip was when we went to see the tigers - you can take a picture with a baby tiger (for a fee of course) to help benefit a huge local rescue; we were all excited, but then Emersyn didn't to hold an animal for the group shot and the pictures are hysterical watching her look at Cameron (with a monkey) then Chris (with the 6 week old tiger) and then slowly start to get upset. It goes so fast though, so within about 20 seconds, the keeper was handing Emersyn the baby tiger and her smile says it all!! But anyway, Emersyn was totally into the beach and water - jumping waves and "riding the boogie board" - this year. We got to go to the lake and feed the ducks again (my favorite MB activity!), and Emersyn discoverd a little faux-rock area to play on. We also did the Old Tyme pictures, but instead of all of us, we continued the mini-tradtion by just letting the kids do it. The whole trip was pretty great and Emersyn's STILL talking about going "next weekend" or "in a few days"!!

On the 9th, Emersyn had her very first offical day of Pre-K at Slade! I couldn't believe how excited she was to go to school. I mean, I could hardly get a picture of her because she was just so ready to go. To this day, Emersyn still thinks her "school is fun" and "the teachers are [her] favorite". They have bike day once a week, water day two or three times a week, and it's just wonderful knowing that Emersyn likes it. I know all to soon we'll be posting about her first day in Kindergarten, but I'm still in a little bit of a shock that my baby is big enough to go to school. I couldn't be more proud, especially when the teachers tell me how smart she is or how good she is. It's really great!

Emersyn's also been spending even more time in the "big pool" at my parents' house. I don't think she got in the little pool at all in July, and I know the last week or so the little pool hasn't even been out. She just is really starting to gain some confidence and some trust in Chris. It's incredible to watch how she grows and learns just from week to week.

June 14th had us taking a trip (back) to the Zoo... this time with some new friends. Unfortunately, poor Ally had a reaction to the petting-zoo area and only Cameron, Emersyn, Chris and I were able to finish the other half of the zoo. But everyone's still ready for another trip... minus the petting of course!

As a kind of random note, by the end of July we were certain of one present Emersyn would get for her birthday... She has totally become addicted to Maw Maw's iPad. My mom won it in a work raffle or something, and she's loaded it with fun things for Emersyn and Cameron. I kid you not, if she's not in the pool, Emersyn only wants to play with the iPad. So yeah, that will explain why she's getting a Leap Frog LeapPad Explorer - basically an iPad for pre-schoolers!

Well, surprisingly, I think that gets us up to August. I will say that I have a literal butt ton of videos to go through, much less to upload for you. But, I'm trying and I'm getting there. At least we're at the right month now! So, head over and check out Emersyn's beach fun - or at least just go see the series of T.I.G.E.R.S pix to get the full scope of the story - and all of the July adventures. No, seriously... why are you still reading... ;)