Baking Day 1

We mixed up the dough for our Christmas cut out cookies and then baked some peanut butter cookies tonight. Here are a few pictures. Emmie loved helping me bake the peanut butter cookies. I mixed the dough and rolled them into little balls. She then rolled the little balls in sprinkles and flattened them with a fork.

Christmas Part One

EmmaLi is fortunate to have a mommy who lets her have a long Christmas holiday. She gets so many toys for Christmas she doesn't get much time to play with them due to holiday travling and is pulling out gifts a month after Christmas that she hadn't even played with yet. Because of this I let her open her gifts from me a week or so before Christmas. Today was supposed to be the day she opened her gifts. I asked her if she wanted to open them last night and she said "No, Thank you." I was quite taken back by that answer. I was starting to wonder where I went wrong considering I cannot wait to open gifts. I cannot wait for HER to open her gifts.

About an hour later she said "Mama, Can open 1 Christmas present?" I said "Sure! Which one do you want to open?" She said "I think I want to open all of them." as she grinned real big. So below are the pictures of her opening a few of her presents from Mommy.

The tree before she started opening.

This is one of her favorite gifts and she didn't even ask for it. She asked for a Marble Run which her Aunt Crazy is getting for her. After she was done opening her presents I asked her if she was happy with her gifts and she said "no." I asked why? Her response was I didn't get my Marble Run. She now plays with this like a Marble Run. She sets it up and then turns the crank to make the wheel turn which cause the stop sign to hitthe boot which tips the bucket sending the marble down the stairs to the curvy slide which hits the pole that knocks the marble into the bathtub and down a hole which drops on one end of a teeter totter which sends the man at the other end of the teeter totter head diving into an empty bucket which tips the pole holding the net, knocking the net off the top and down the pole to catch the mouse!

She absolutely HAD to have this new computer with a mouse. I sort of played with it a bit and it's not easy to figure out what you are supposed to do. We'll see if my brillient child can figure it out. I am sure she will.

With her soccer training kit. She was very excited to get this to go along with her new pink soccer ball. She loves playing soccer and now she has a goal to practice kicking the ball into.

Hugging her new Webkinz beagle puppy. I asked her what her new puppy's name is and she decided her puppy is a girl and her name is Dolly Parton.

Just what I wanted! She loves this tent and tonight she will be sleeping in this tent with her sleeping bag. She wanted to sleep in it in the living room last night but then realized there is no night light in the living room and it is very dark in there at night. LOL

Now Ms Emmie is whining at me that she wants more presents. She wants to open some of my presents for me. Hmm.. doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I tell her she needs to wait until Christmas morning and she says she doesn't want to wait. It is hard to wait. My poor baby! It's tough being four and excited for Christmas.

The Story of the Candy Cane

EmmaLi's school had their Christmas program tonight. All along I have heard she was going to be a sucker. and it was in a candy shoppe. I wasn't sure that the theme of a candy shoppe fit her school since it is a Christian Day Care. This afternoon it dawned on me they are probably doing the Story of the Candy Cane. Sure enough they did.

The program was cute but the stage was small and they had all of the kids on the stage at the same time. That meant there were too many to have a couple of rows of kids they had like four or fivce rows of kids and Emmie was in the back row. They also had an older boy who was school age standing in the front holding a poster board picture with food on it the entire time. He blocked the view of many many kiddos. Some of the three year olds are bigger than some of the four year olds. Emmie was wedged all the way in the back. One of the taller 3 year olds kept stepping in front of Emmie every time I thought I could get a picture of her head. I ended up with lots of pictures of that little girl instead. Some of the two year olds were taking their costume (round pieces of poster board so they could be gumballs and hard candy) and holding them up over their heads again blocking the view of all of the kids behind them.

In the end I have a few pictures I can share. These were taken AFTER the program was over.

Emmie with her teacher Ms Rose.

In case the words are too small, Ms Rose is on the far left and the other arrow points to where Emmie was placed behind all of the taller three year olds.

Another busy weekend

This weekend was no different than any other. We had a pretty busy weekend. Saturday night we went to the Christmas Pageant at First Baptist Church of Columbia. We have attended that church a couple times. We sat in the nose bleed section but had front row seats in the balcony so we actually kneeled on the floor up next to the railing for a good bit of the show. It was a bit long for a 4 year old. Emmie liked it but said they sang too long. LOL

Afterwards we went out to dinner together. We finished the night by finishing our Christmas shopping! YES!!!! Dec 8th at 8:30pm I finished the last gift for this years gift buying season. Everything is wrapped and ready to go. Now we can enjoy the rest of the holiday festivities without the stress of knowing there is more shopping to do.

Tonight we went to do "something fun" as a reward for EmmaLi letting me get some work done without interruption. For the most part she did earn it. I was going to go to the zoo for The Lights Before Christmas. We have gone every year since 2004. However, she decided she didn't want that for a reward, she wanted to go bowling instead. LOL So we went bowling tonight. She loves bowling so much. I think a lot of it has to do with her sensory issues. One of the recommendations we had from the occupational therapist was what was called "load work" or carrying and lifting heavy objects. It puts compression on the joints and makes people with sensory issues have a better sense of their bodies. Almost like they can finally feel their arms and legs and where they are in relation to the rest of their bodies. A woman at the bowling alley with her teenage daughter having a birthday party was shocked Emmie lasted as long as she did and did not get tired. After two games Emmie wanted to play more. She is actually getting pretty good at it too. After a few frames, she started throwing the ball by herself and while it took a little time to get there, she was knocking down pins all over the place. She even made a few spares without my help. She now wants her own bowling ball for her birthday. She asked if we could go bowling next Saturday. I told her we would see. Anyone know where you can find a child's size bowling ball?

Color me shocked!!!

Last night I was showing Emmie some of the gifts we had bought for her Memaw. She loved each and every one of them. Afterwards she was helping me wrap them. We were chit chatting about whatever came to mind as we wrapped. We started off talking about how excited she was for our vacation. She sang one of the songs she is learning for her Christmas program at school, what ever came into her mind we talked about it. I was on my hands and knees, cutting a strip of paper to wrap a certain gift and out of no where Emmie very matter of factly says "Mom, I broke up with Trent today." If I had been drinking something I would have spewed my beverage all over the paper and her just like in the movies. I very calmly said with as straight a face as I could keep (looking down at the gift wrapping so she couldn't see my face). "I didn't even know you were dating anyone. Why did you break up with Trent?" She replyed "Because he doesn't play with me very much. We were on the play ground running and laughing and playing and I turned around to look behind myself and he wasn't there. I looked around and he was sitting down being hot." I asked what she meant by being "hot" hoping she wasn't referring to being sexy hot like she has heard on Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. I was very relieved to find out he had simply gotten over heated. She then proceeded to tell me that "When he was sitting there being hot, I had a little talk with him and he said he didn't want to play because he was hot. Well that hurt my feelings and I think he should still play with me even when he is hot" I said "If he was running around he probably did get hot. Some people cannot run around as much as you do and they don't like to get hot." She then said "Well, If he doesn't want to play with me I don't know what to do." I said "I think you did the right thing in breaking up with him. You need to find someone who can keep up with you on the play ground. Please tell me if you are seeing anyone else in the future. I would like to know before the break up." She said "Well, I will think about it but you never know. A girl has to have some privacy you know."

Good Grief! What am I in for when this child hits the teen age years. Preteens will be the death of me for sure.

Christmas is here!!!!!

We know the Christmas holiday has started once the Christmas parties have started. This weekend we had two of them!

Saturday was our Families with Children from China's Christmas party. We had a nice time. It is a social event with crafts, finger foods and of course, Santa! Santa is the same Santa we have had at our FCC party for the past 8 years. He loves doing it and he loves watching the girls and boys grow up. Here are a few pictures.

Sunday we went to the Santa Clause Parade of Lights. Our AFG (Adoptive Families Group) had their annual Christmas get together in the usual fashion. We have a family that lives directly on the Parade of Lights route. They set up bleachers on their front lawn for their family and friends and also for the AFG group. This was our first year attending as it usually conflicts with our FCC Christmas party. All day EmmaLi wanted to know if it was time to go to the parade. She begged me to let it be time for the parade. At 4:00pm it was time to get ready to go and she suddenly did not want to go. She had a little melt down over it. She hasn't had a melt down over anything in about a year. In the end we made it there and she had a FABULOUS time. She loved it despite herself. LOL She had two cups of hot cocoa, popcorn, and caught candy they were passing out from the floats. She also got to see Santa for the second time in a single weekend. Below are some of the pictures.

The West Columbia fire trucks.

The Mayor and River Walk float. We love the Riverwalk too.

The big guy himself.