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!
january beach day
san antonio weekend
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!
- Ready for a late night road trip?
- Bird!
- Perfect size slide
- Silly face
- Play place fun
- Climbing stairs
- Fun pose
- Drive thru window
- Waving hi
- Lunch at a diner
- Fish fascination
- Trying to touch the coi
- Flamingos!
- Bear!
- Watching close bear
- Friendly bear checks us out
- Bear is a favorite
- Petting lizard
- Hugs for the lizard
- Walking with Daddy
- Feeding the fish
- Hippo
- Monkey
- Close with daddy
- Pretty bird
- African Overlook
- Fun posing kangaroo
- Emma likes the pigs
- I can brush them?
- Trying to get close enough to brush
- Like the goat too
- Brushing the goat
- Child’s wonder
- Wait goat!
- Snack time
- San Antonio Zoo
- What is with this unsafe high chair?
- Eating at Little Red Barn
- Yummy steak, shrimp, and potato
- Checking out the snake
- Ooo a lizard
- Hi lizard
- So excited about all the animals
- Hanging on the fence
- Buffalo
- Hyena
- Watching the animals
- More pigs
- Trying to pet the goat
- Bowl becomes a kiddie cup
- Eating Irish stew
- Super awesome park job
- Look- a beaver!
- Hugs for the beaver
- Cute mittens on sale
- Mittens are fun to chew on
- Admiring shoes while shoe shopping
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!
happy new year!
mimi’s christmas visit
Christmas stories
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.
- Playing with ornaments
- The wiseman makes it to the top of the nativity
- Christmas sweetie
- Playing with the tree
- Opening gifts with Daddy
- How do you open them?
- Emma and AnnDee play with the kitchen
- Emma cuddles with Lauren
- Snacking on cheese
- Opening more gifts
- Reading with Lauren
- Playing on the floor
- Playing with the rolling toy
- Tunnel fun
- Checking out the tree
- Cuties at the door
- Looking out the door
- Monkey
- AnnDee goes for a ride
- Daddy cuddles with Emma
- Baby attack
- Higher Daddy
- Whee
- Sliding on Tim
- Acrobatic AnnDee
- Please share your headband
- AnnDee celebrates while Emma pouts
- Christmas kisses
- Finally gets the idea of opening gifts
- Silly face
- Tear it open!
- What’s in here?
16 months old
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!
- Playing with Daddy on the floor
- Daddy’s shirt is too big for me!
- Silly face
- A little angel?
- Climbing on outside stairs
- Telling me something important
- Special find in the yard
- Lunch time nap
- Play hard, sleep hard
- Back to the doctor with Mommy
- Ugh… cast for a few weeks
- Admiring stickers on the scale
- Micah is a great babysitter
- Reading time
- Red Tim matches the upholstry
- Mommy and Daddy finally had a real date night
- Hiding
- Climbing in my tunnel
- Chasing Barkely
- Playing with a tiny ball
- Running around the yard
- Please give me back my ball
- Teasing
- Bath with my cast
- Casts can’t keep us from having fun!
- Cast acrobatics at 15 month appointment
- Helping Mommy cook turns into a snack
- Ball
- Playing with the curtain at the ortho doc’s office
- Peekaboo
- Running as far as she can into the sheet
- Cold night to play
- Phillies had is a funny shape on her oval head
- Silly mommy!
- Funny face
- Like my Christmas frog
- Mommy thought it would be fun to do a photo shoot
- Come get me
- A bit of a meltdown
- Just chilling
- Snowgirl
- Sharing stuffed animals with Grammie
- Monkey tail from Arantza
- Not sure what to think of my tail
- Why can’t I have the remote?
- Deconstructing the shelves at BabiesRUs
- Mommy thought it would be fun to do a photo shoot
- Playing with the snowman
- Playing with the props
- Playing with the nativity
- Out to Sunday lunch
- Carrying her cup
- Helping Mommy with Welsh cookies
- Stages of cookie making
- Riding new bike
- Riding bikes is fun
- Poor baby slept on her arm
- Dipping fries in water?
- When it’s time to put away the exersaucer
festival of lights 2011
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!
- Emma’s penguin visits the aquarium
- Silly girl
- Getting ready to enter
- Watching the nativity story in lights
- Checking out the lion
- Riding in the wagon with baby Zane
- Snow in Texas
- Touching the snow
- Holding snow
- Ready to go
- Drawing on the cast
- More cast fun
sunsets and sunrises
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!
dinner with cindy and jon
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!
- Girls side of the table
- Emma loves Cindy
- Boys side of the table
































































































































































































































