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!

Capes and Castles

Emmy told me several months ago when I asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday that she wanted "Tiana, Snow White, Rapunzel, and Spiderman to come to her party.) I wasn't quite sure what to do with that =) Every year I say I'm going to tone it down and well, we know how that goes.

It's hard to believe that Emmy is 4! She swears to me that she'll go ahead and turn 5 but then she's not getting any older than that! We'll see how that's goes. She's pretty much the size of a 6 year old and surprises me all the time with the adult things she says.. and then she'll act like a 2 year old. Guess that's the beauty of 4!

Here's my Rapunzel and her little brother Superman.

As a favor for all of her guests Emmy sat for an hour and a half and hand wrote every single Thank You topper for 27 party favors. I thought she would get bored after 3 but she really got in to it. By the end her letters were much better, and what a special way to practice being grateful.This is a special memory for me.

 Emmy was very in to helping with all the preparations. Since it's a birthday, we had to have the cheese puffs! (Beckett now calls these my balls and we had to throw away all that were left over because he literally wouldn't eat anything but cheese balls as long as they were in the house. He would hunt them down and find them everywhere we hid them)

This pinterest project got al little nuts. There were almost 400 suckers on this ball. We will be eating suckers for a LONG LONG time. The Dentist will be so happy with us!

Emmy set a superhero and princess table for all of her friends to have a tea party with Cinderella and Superman. 

 We also made some photo backdrops to take pics and you know we had to have a castle!

 But for some reason the highlight of the party seemed to be Emmy's old "fat car" that we haven't played with in about 6 months. The kids couldn't get enough of it!

 After everyone was settled in and had jumped a bit, look who the mailman brought!

 Emmy was so excited to meet Cinderella. Her friend from school Perri ran SCREAMING all the way down the driveway to tell everyone the she was there.

 Cinderella started by singing everyone her story. She had a beautiful voice!Amazingly the kids sat still to hear the story.

Then Superman told his story as well. Beckett REALLY got into that. He said - HEY you look like me.

Then they all sat down for a game of Princess Superhero Duck Duck Goose. 

Then it was time for the tea party! Emmy is not one to get too excited or show a lot of emotion. She will barely even smile in a picture. Believe it or not, this is Emmy having an ABSOLUTELY fantastic time =) 

But probably the highlight for her was when Cinderlla poured pink tea for her to give to all of her friends. Nothing makes her happier than organizing or distributing things. 

 After the tea party Cinderella and Superman had time for a few pictures.

Emmy even WILLINGLY took some with Cinderella. That's when i knew we had a hit . This NEVER happens. 

I'm so glad we got to give her an experience I know she'll remember for a long time.  Emmy had a FABULOUS time! And all the little princesses agree.