Happy Birthday Paw Paw

We finished up Valentine's weekend by celebrating Paw Paw's 85th birthday. 

 All the Sansom family came in to town, and we all went to GiGi and Pops for a big party.

Emmy instantly took to her cousins even thought it was the first time she'd met them.

Be my Valentine!

Since Valentines started very very early this year, we postponed our traditional Valentine's hunt until after work. We sent Daddy a morning pic. 

 and then you know that I made everyone go outside to take our official holiday front yard pic.

 Lannie and Boppa came to eat dinner with us and RIGHT before we went to bed we squeezed in our clues.  Once again Emmy was ALL over it. Next year I'm going to have to make about 20. She has much more fun racing from room to room than she did opening her little prizes.

B, of course, was most excited about the toothpaste!

Facepainting fun

At Abby's school soc hop this year they had all kind of fun things set up for the kids to do. After eating tons of candy and doing a million cakewalks (for some reason this was a really big draw. I don't really get it. ) they decided to do some face painting. Abby told the lady that she wanted to be a cat. Emmy told the poor little middle school girl painting faces that she wanted to be a  half dog/half cat of course! 

I can say that it took everything I had not to grab the brush out of the poor girl's hand while she was painting it. Blake and I were standing there l looking at each other like "what the hell!?" She also will hopefully not pick art as her second elective, because let's face it, there's no future there. It did make a LOT more sense when Emmy finally told me what she asked for. 

As a little fun take away from this experience, you guessed it! An eye infection the very next day, just in that circled eye. SO fun!

Zoo Kids

We haven't been to the zoo in a long time so we decided to take advantage of the nice weather and head out. There weren't many people there so we ran right back to the giraffes and Beckett got to his first official giraffe feeding. Emmy is an expert so she ran right up and got her leaves in.
 

Of course a ride on the carousel was next. B wasn't so sure about it.


Then we had to head over to pet some goats. Emmy grabbed the brush and started chasing all the sheep. Beckett took a few steps in before he started saying 'no, no, no, no' and ran right back out.



He had more fun washing his hands than he did in the petting zoo. We did manage to catch a keeper's talk with the elephants where we got to watch them swim and take a semi bath.



Emmy had a great time as usual, but overall I think Becks was much more excited about the snacks than the animals;)

Singing and dancing

Emmy loves singing in the chior at church. They only do about two performances a year, so Emmy is usually enamored with the giant TV and watches it the entire time, or eats her hair, or kind of sings. She was feeling this song! She got the hip action going!!!

Her chior teacher came up to us after and said told us how surprised they were to see Emmy dancing like that on stage because she's usually so quiet at choir. We're noticing that home Emmy and public Emmy are two very different people. At home it's a nonstop performance. Wondering if performing is going to be her "thing" or if she sometimes just feels it ;)

Here's what a typical morning/noon/night looks like at our house. B is doing his best Tom Cruise and his version of "dancing" which he loves just as much as his sissy. A lot of rocking back and forth and running around. He will even copy the very dramatic hand moves that she usually does. She has some set ones that she does to all of her Princess songs and he will follow her move for move. They will dance all day long if you let them.

And proof that this song was everywhere this year, when it's on the car Emmy will sing all the words and Becket will do the "heys" and raise his hands . They sing the whole song together. I kind of love it. I hope that they will always love each other this much. 

Brusha Teef and the first trip to the dentist

Beckett has recently become OBSESSED with brushing his teeth. He will fight Emmy for the stool to get to the water and will just crack up the entire time he "brushes" them. If you can't find him, there's a good chance he's snuck upstairs and is in Emmy's room brushing his teeth by himself and laughing. We have a "brusha brusha brusha , brusha brusha teef" song that we sing (you know we do) and at the end you have to show everyone your beautiful teeth. Here's B's version. 

When we went to his year checkup they asked me if we had been to see the dentist yet.Seriously? He has like 4 teeth! Since I had to add him to the insurance anyway I figured what the hell. I thought he might be a little nervous but he was cool as a cucumber. The actual visit took all of 15 seconds. He was a champ for all 15 and gave the dentist a hi-five and had a major death grip on his new toothbrush. He wouldn't even give it up for a toy. The boy is obsessed!

Playing at Kate's House

Kate invited everyone over for a playdate at her house. The girls have gotten to hang out quite a bit over the holidays, and they immediately decided that they of course needed to dress up. Being the fashionista that she is, Kate of course had princess dressed to fit everyone. 

I'm getting spoiled spending so much time with these girls

Flu 3, Vaceks 1 (and he ran a marathon to show off)

We decided to go ahead and start the new year out with a bang and ALL get the flu, except of course Blake, who is the only one of our family with an actual immune system. After a week of sniffles I finally gave in and took the kids to the doctor. Flu B for everyone! We even managed to infect Berta, our nanny, who claimed she has not been sick in 7 years. Leave it to us!!!!! Being the brave mother that I am, I put us in to seclusion and suffered through a week of flu for me and two kids with flu. To pass the time we watched LOTS of movies, Emmy did some unsupervised testing of her new make up kit she got for Christmas (leg lip gloss is the new thing)

ate lots of popsicles, and of course, made flu cakes. I can't help but want to do some kind of testing to see JUST how many germs are in each one of these. Who wants one? 

Just to show off, Blake ran the Houston Half Marathon that weekend. He trained with his friend Josh and they ran all 13.1 in the pouring down rain and freezing cold. He finished in just over 2 hours and we are VERY very proud of him! It must've been that Olive Garden meal we ate at 11 pm the night before. Race approved for sure!

Christmas!

We came limping in to Christmas this year. At least we put all of the decorations up WAY early (my neighbor told me  " I KNEW you were an October decorator!") We've learned that if we don't do stuff when we have 5 minutes to do it, it never gets done. The house had not one but three fully decorated trees and one, empty tree upstairs with a few random things hung on it. Blake just kept finding trees and putting them up!  We had stockings,not monogrammed  but at least they were there, and even garland on the banister. Wow- look at us!

The Sansom family headed over to our house to celebrate again this year because we were asked to light the Christ Candle in the advent wreath this year and Emmy had her Christmas Choir program at the Christmas Eve service. We had to be there early so we didn't even take a family picture. Here's one of my unsmiling angel in her Christmas program and one of the dapper B.

Emmy is all about singing and dancing now, and we've listened to the CD of the choir musical, oh about 7,000 times and Emmy dances and sings to all of it. Well, it turns out that B was watching! During the musical, he stood on Pops lap and did all of the motions to the songs. The people behind us were cracking up and he thought he was hilarious!! He surprises us everyday with the things that he knows. Emmy did a great job singing (or at least doing the hand motions) Away in a Manger and we didn't light the church on fire so I call it a success!

After we were finished at church, we headed home for some eating and present opening! We went traditional this year and cooked. Felt kind of weird since we haven't done it in a long time! As usual there were WAY too many gifts. Clara wasn't really sure what to think and Beckett was happy with the first thing he opened and didn't really care about anything else. Emmy, as usual, wanted to organize and hand gifts out to everyone. She had more fun doing that than anything else.

The most exciting part about Santa for Beckett was, of course, fruit snacks. That's right. Not toys, or cars, or the giant soccer goal, fruit snacks. Emmy was SO excited to get her Tiana doll. She has wanted her for a long time. We're ALMOST finished with the entire collection.

Cookies for the Fat Man

and I'm not using another name for myself in that title. I have eaten WAY too much in the month of December. With the crazy pace of December this year, I wasn't sure if we were going to be able to squeeze in Santa Cookies, but we got it in right under the wire the Friday before. GiGi got all of the ingredients ready and Emmy decided to add a few ingredients of her own. 

I mean GROSS. We didn't tell Santa. What he doesn't know won't hurt him. Emmy came and went and basically decorated a cookie and a half and ate a couple. Not sure when she's going to care about doing stuff like this. Yes, I know the writing is on the wall that she's not ever going to. I'm in denial. 

 Clara was in a GREAT mood. Think she wanted some frosting!

 B just wanted frosting too. He has a bigger sweet tooth than me.

 Here's the final, pretty un-christmasy Santa Cookies. At least they're made!

A Little House Christmas

Emmy sometimes surprises me with what she has a tolerance for. I LOVED the little house on the Prarie books when I was little and I hoped Emmy would like them too one day. When I saw that the Main Street Theater had a production of a Little House Christmas, I figured now was the time to try. I just had my Young Adult Reader with a black and white sketch every 20 pages or so. We started reading a chapter a night and I thought for sure we would never make it past a few chapters, but we made it through the entire book. Her mind was consistently blown over what Laura and Mary didn't have in their house. When we first started reading she would randomly come up to me during the day and ask if Laura and Mary had "x" or "x" and then head off to contemplate after I told her no. Blake and I couldn't believe just how un-PC the books are now. We had to get creative on all of the Indian chapters (ok, we skipped a few that were too hard.) I was so happy that when we got there, she already knew who all the characters were and some of their story. 

Kate and Caroline joined us for a special girls day! They all got a special book for the characters to sign after the show. Emmy just loves to watch the play. Every time after we leave she says "I want to be in that play." I'm so glad that we have access to things like this to introduce it to her now.

 The girls all decided that meeting the characters after the show was thier favorite part (along with the square dancing and chocolate after.)

 Caroline got giddy everytime they said Ma's name "Caroline" on stage and got so excited to meet her after.

 And of course we couldn't leave without meeting Laura and Mary!

 After the play we had a little girls lunch at Black Walnut and a quick trip to The Chocolate Bar.

So happy to spend time with these girls (and their mommies) and so happy that they seem to pick right back up every time they see each other no matter how long it's been.

The Princess is 4!

After all that celebrating this weekend, we still saved a little for the real thing. Emmy celebrated at school with her friends, and had a special lunch with Daddy. She even got a real, big girl bike with a basket made just for her princess dolls to ride in.We ended the day with dinner and a cookie cake with the cousins and GiGi and Pops .

Bon B-Bon Bon BON!!!!

As we done in recent years, the day after Emmy's party was Bon Bon day. This was Clara's first bon bon day and I can't say that she contributed greatly, but she was really cute! Mom made adorable matching aprons for all the kids. 

 As everything gets more complicated with more kiddos, there is pretty much two people on full time kid duty. Emmy couldn't have cared less, so she was out. Maybe next year.  Beckett was REALLY good at tasting. We would catch him coming back from the dining room with chocolate fingers and chipmunk cheeks. He  must've eaten about eight or nine of them over the course of the day.

 We slacked a little this year and only made around 1300. The amount of kids seems to be inverse to the number of bon bons. Emmy is still impressed! I am what I could only classify as worn out. THAT was a long weekend!