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!

• 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.

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!