23
Jan
12

january beach day

By jjoy729 2 Comments
Categories: Emma

Although Saturday brought snow to family in the northeast, we were enjoying some insanely summer-like weather here in Galveston.  Emma and I had a great time at the beach and were even able to enjoy the water!

23
Jan
12

san antonio weekend

By jjoy729 2 Comments
Categories: Life

MLK weekend found us on a last minute weekend road trip to San Antonio.  We had wanted to get away for a bit as a family, and it didn’t look like there would be too many opportunities for the next couple of months.  Happily, hotels.com had a great deal on our usual Days Inn for $40 a night.  Can’t go wrong there!  It wasn’t the best hotel ever, but it is an ok place to sleep.  We booked it Friday night and took a late night trip to San Antonio.  Thought that would be a brilliant idea so that Emma could sleep in the van.  Only problem was that she was completely disoriented when she woke up and was terrified of all the highway traffic noises outside the room for about an hour when all we wanted to do was go to sleep.  After the first night of sleeping with us though, she was fine in her pack and play.

Since Tim drove us most of the way there, he rested Saturday morning, while Emma and I played at McDonalds play place across the street from the hotel.  It was a fun morning activity, except part of the place is structured like a drive-thru window, not something Emma needs to get to know well when so young!

We enjoyed the animals of San Antonio at the zoo on Saturday and Snake and Animal Farm of New Braunfels on Sunday.  Since one of Emma’s favorite past times is talking about and looking at animals, she had a great time.  It is so much fun just to watch her reaction to every animal as she runs from place to place pointing out everything.  She is just so excited and joyful.

Food of San Antonio area was also good.  One notable place was the culture of the Little Red Barn, an over the top cowgirl themed steak house.  It had a fun atmosphere, but the high chairs were the most unsafe I’ve ever seen.  The first one kept sliding every time Emma leaned forward on the table.  We also enjoyed the Irish pub on the Riverwalk with some wonderful comfort food.

On the way home, we stopped at Buckee’s, a huge silly truck stop on I-10, where Emma hugged the beaver character.  We also bought her mittens and went shoe shopping.  Shoes were too expensive to buy, but Emma was so cute wanting to try on each pair!

Overall- a fun weekend, too short as always, a bit of disrupted sleep patterns when sharing a room with Emma, but a good time for the family.  We were very grateful for the opportunity to get away for a bit!

18
Jan
12

photo album of mimi’s christmas visit

By jjoy729 1 Comment
Categories: Life

We were very grateful to have Tim’s mom visit over the New Year’s weekend.  Emma had a blast and recognized her Mimi from skyping, photo books etc and greeted her with a big hug. Adventures of the week included the Festival of Lights, the Houston Zoo, and Moody Gardens Aquarium and Rainforest Pyramids.  Emma played with Mimi all week long, reading books, riding her bike, sharing stuffed animals, giving big hugs and kisses, and climbing on Mimi’s bed.  Emma enjoyed many arts and crafts with Mimi and Mommy: making apple cinnamon ornaments, painting with water, and finger painting.  One of her favorite toys from Mimi was a snowball fight, a bucket of 6 stuffed snowballs.  She laughed and laughed as Mommy and Daddy whipped them at each other and joined in the fun.  She will now attack us unexpectedly with snowballs.  It is so cute!  Thanks Mimi for a great visit!  We love you!

01
Jan
12

happy new year!

By jjoy729 Leave a Comment
Categories: Life

Grace and peace to you in 2012!

01
Jan
12

mimi’s christmas visit

By jjoy729 Leave a Comment
Categories: Life

Mimi is here until Wednesday and we are having so much fun.  Mimi and Emma are having a great time playing together and visiting many of the local Galveston and Houston attractions.  More pictures and stories to follow!

Mimi and Emma at the Festival of Lights

Lunch at the zoo

Mimi and Emma playing

31
Dec
11

Christmas stories

By jjoy729 Leave a Comment
Categories: Life

This Christmas was special to us for so many reasons.  It was Emma’s second Christmas, but the first one where she was really aware of what was going on.  It was a joyous occasion.

  • We loved telling Emma the Christmas story, sharing the birth of Jesus through song, stories, and toys.  She could identify the baby Jesus, mommy Mary, and Daddy Joseph, but she really loved all of the animals in the manger scene too.  For our family, we want Christmas to be all about celebrating Jesus’ birthday.  We are excited about future Christmases and developing new traditions for our family.
  • Emma was not sure about opening gifts.  She seemed to be unsure about tearing the paper and wondered what we were doing for the first few.  She finally figured it out but then got tired of opening them and wanted to just play with what she had.  She enjoyed playing with the paper and handing it to Daddy.  Dad and Ruth sent a kitchen that we set up for her to find on Christmas morning and she loved that as well.  With so many gifts from generous family members, we spread the gifts out over several days to make it less overwhelming.
  • We spent Christmas day with our friends Lauren and Greg and their daughter AnnDee at our house.  It was a great time- so much fun.  It is a great blessing to us to have good friends here in Texas.  It was also such a joy to watch AnnDee and Emma play all afternoon.  Neither one napped very long, so they were a bit fussier than usual, but I think they still had fun.  We sure did- watching the girls, playing with them, cooking, catching up, eating wonderful food, etc.
  • Christmas morning at Primera was bring your gifts to church Sunday.  Tim and I played a trumpet and clarinet duet of “O Come all Ye Faithful,” and Tim played his guitar and I sang “Jesus, All for Jesus” as a song of recommitment.  Different members of the congregation shared testimony, readings, Scripture, piano music, and songs.  It was a wonderful time where we offered our gifts to Jesus to celebrate his birth.  Although we were not perfect, I do think it was a joyous occasion for God to receive those humbly given gifts.  His Spirit was surely present with us.
31
Dec
11

16 months old

By jjoy729 Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

Happy 16 months old, Emma!  You are our shining star, our Emmanuella, our reminder that “God is with us!”  We are blessed to have you in our lives.  You make each day special and unique.

Some 16 month fun:

  • Lots of talking- says hi to everyone, bye too, mama, daddy, eye, no no.  She loves sound effects still- ahm for biting, mhwa for kisses, ooo, boom for falling, whee for something fun, baaaa for sheep, monkey sounds, ouch when she steps on a burr, shrill noises and screams.  Her words are starting to sound a lot more like actual words as she is learning to repeat and shape her mouth differently- buh for button, ba for ball, no for nose etc- but sometimes she still resorts to just generic short sounds ba for everything she wants.  Sometimes she says dog.  She says “pees” for please and uses the please ASL sign of rubbing her chest.  She is so cute when she does it I have a hard time saying no.  I think if I was more observant I would hear and understand more variations in her vowels for specific things, but I am too slow at times to pick up on her communication.  She is really thinking hard about answering questions.
  • gives many people hugs
  • spent most of this month in a cast- very adaptable- hasn’t stopped her at all from being active.  Finally, she got the cast off this past Tuesday.  She had a little dry skin underneath, which must have been itchy- poor baby.  Nothing that a little lotion and time won’t fix though!
  • new teeth- 4 bottom, 4 on top total
  • spent some time with babysitters- mommy and daddy finally had some date nights!
  • talks on the phone- holds it to her ear and says hi a lot
  • this game has been going on for awhile now but she loves to point to parts of our faces and then to her own- favorites are eyes, ears, hair, nose and lately teeth!
31
Dec
11

festival of lights 2011

By jjoy729 Leave a Comment
Categories: daily highlights and Galveston

Before Christmas, we visited the Festival of Lights at Moody Gardens with our friends Josh and Danielle and their kids Zoe and Zane.  Emma touched her first “snow” (ie. machine made icy slush) but it was too crazy in the snow area for her to play inside with the other kids.  We roasted some marshmallows on the bonfire and saw all the beautiful lights.  Lots of fun!

31
Dec
11

sunsets and sunrises

By jjoy729 Leave a Comment
Categories: Galveston and natural beauty

Have seen some beautiful sunrises and sunsets from my back door.  So… it’s not the beach- but I can still admire the beauty of God’s creation and worship him!

31
Dec
11

dinner with cindy and jon

By jjoy729 Leave a Comment
Categories: Life

On Thanksgiving weekend, Cindy and Jon were in town and took us out to dinner.  As usual, it was great to see them and we had a lot of fun!

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