Blake compared it to the day we got married. His recap...." I was smiling, I was talking to all these people I haven't seen in forever, we were cutting the cake, and then all of the sudden it was over. " I completey agree. And on that note.... IF YOU TOOK ANY PICS, WILL YOU SEND THEM TO ME? We were so busy running around we didn't get to take as many as we wanted with everyone....even though I think there's 500 pictures on this blog post ;)Emmy has just recently starting "prissing." I put her over the top birthday tutu on last week just to make sure everything fit and she put her hands on her hips and starting prissing around the house! 
I guess little girls are born knowing how to priss. She LOVED the crown, well most of the time. 
We had quite a spread of food and cake. I always plan something that's completely within reason in my head and it ends up getting totally out of control pretty quickly.
I guess little girls are born knowing how to priss. She LOVED the crown, well most of the time. 
Emmy had a "gymnastics" party at K2 Academy. All the kids had a great time playing on the equipment. The big kids loved the zip lines and trampolines and the little kids hung out in the ball pit. Emmy LOVED the gigantic bouncy balls. There was so much fun stuff to play on for the older kids and they took in the trampolines, rings, and zip line.
We had quite a spread of food and cake. I always plan something that's completely within reason in my head and it ends up getting totally out of control pretty quickly.
Emmy was cutting not one, but TWO, teeth the day of her party and I fought her for an hour to make her take a nap and she finally won. This was her earlier in the day...
SO for a little girl with no sleep and two new teeth she did pretty good.... until the cake. We had been looking forward to this since we've been doing cupcakes every month. We thought she'd dig right in. This picture pretty much sums up the cake experience....
She finally calmed down a little bit and crammed a little icing in her mouth. She never actually made it to the cake but she did have a complete and total meltdown so we couldn't take any real "after"pictures with her.
She got into her gifts and would say "uuuuuuh" and point at everything we opened. This little girl is definetly loved. Thank you to everyone for the fun toys and cute clothes! She gets so excited when we pull a new one out.
Kate, Lance, and Michelle came to spend the night and the girls had so much fun playing together. As you can see, three little girls means the house is a disaster, but it was so cute to see them playing together. How amazing is it I that I have friends I've known for 20 years and now all of our little girls are friends!
We feel so blessed that we have all of you to celebrate this special occasion with. Thank you so much for making this day special for us and for Emmy!
Emmy helped make the dressing. Mom justified this by saying that it would all go in the oven so any of the "nasties" that Emmy added would be baked off. She was so worn out from all this dressing making that she actually slept through lunch!
Well, except my sister. Here's her pathetic Thanksgiving dinner plate... Emmy's was actually bigger I think! 
Emmy ate so much of that plate that she not only had to unbutton her pants, she had to take them completely off =) It would be nice to have that option sometimes I think.
We also celebrated Sean's 26th bday! The desert Gallery will let you have half a cake, and it's really enough since there cakes are SO rich and yummy you can just eat a little bit. It just makes for some really funny pictures. My favorite part is that they squeeze Happy birthday onto the top. It looks like....happy birthday, here's your half eaten cake. 
This is him at the beginning of his birthday cake 
I think he got into it the most of all the Graesser kiddos. For some reason it was REALLY fun to rub into his eye. 
We were also celebrating the new engagement of my cousin Blake. He was presented with the East "ball and chain." My grandfather gave it to my father when he married my mom. From that point on it's passed from marriage to marriage. This is it's 7th pass. That's pretty amazing considering all the moves and houses it's been in. 
By the way, it's very strange to me that my "little"cousins are now starting to get married and bring their boyfriends to family events. I'm think I'm having my quarter-life crisis about five years late. Life is moving WAY too fast. These are my formerly "little" cousins. To give you a little perspective on my freakout...when Blake and I started dating, Leslie and Heather were in pre-K and now they're graduating from high school and Courtney (in the middle) was about two!!!!!
We ate WAY too much as usual. My aunt Michelle and cousin Courtney made tons of yummy gourmet fixins. Here's Courtney with a new tradition, the 2nd annual Thanksgiving Rice Crispie Treat Tukey. Hey, I never said we weren't strange =) 
Today we maet the Graessers at the mall to start planning a potential 30th bday/7th anniversary trip together! Anything with 1 kid is difficult, but with 4 it's pretty near impossible! The girls wrangled the kids while the boys planned away. We did manage to squeeze in one trip around the mall in the train.
Emmy and Ben took a romantic fireplace shot for the wedding album. 
It's pretty ridiculous to me that the mall is already fully decked out in Christmas gear, but I guess i better get in the spirit. It'll be here before we know it! 
We finally got there and there were a whole lot of other Mommys and Gigis there. There were a few Daddys there but none of them looked very happy. After we walked around a little while to look at sparkly things, Gigi and I sat down on the floor to have lunch. She was nice and let me eat her tato and play with her bottles. 
After that we went to look at more sparkly things and things that look like mommies toys she keeps around the house. You know, all of the stuff mommy and daddy say no no when I try to take it down and play with it. Since daddy wasn’t there, mommy even let me ride on her shoulders for a little while! 
I looked at lots of people and pointed at the ones that I really liked. They liked me too and told me my bow was pretty. I don’t know why everyone likes these bows so much…I just like to take them off my head. I even decided it was time for an outfit change. I wanted to show everyone my versitility.
After we were there for a couple days we took a ride on a train. I got to point some more and dance a little bit. 
Everyone liked my dancing. Mommy, Rara and Gigi looked really tired. I guess they aren’t used to going all day without their nap. I will have to teach them how to do that one day. I don’t know what the big deal about this whole nutcracker thing is but I liked seeing my Gigi and my Rara and getting held by my Mommy so much! Maybe next year Mommy will let me bring that house home! 
