Do you know what HSM stands for?

If you do you probably live with one of the obsessed children or teenagers who love all things High School Musical. I often get strange looks from people because I let Emmie watch so much TV and DVD's. However, Emmie does not sit on the sofa like a couch potato. Here is how Emmie watches High School Musical, Jump in, Hannah Montana and any other show that has singing and dancing on it. She is the most interactive TV watcher I have ever met. As you look at the pictures think "What time is it? Summer time! It's our vacation! What time is it? Summer time! Schools Out! Scream and Shout!"

Pleeeeassssse Eat!!!

So what do you do when you have a 4.5 year old who by all rights should be hungry but refuses to eat? How about suggesting she make her own sandwich? Emmie had a small cup of fruit for breakfast this day and a single bite of pancake. At 1:30 she was so busy playing she didn't want to stop for lunch. Knowing she was about to hit the wall and get grouchy due to hunger I came up with a plan. I suggested she make her own sandwich and suddenly she was hung. After she made her sandwich she finished her entire lunch which is something she seldom does. Here is my little Chef in training creating her sandwich master piece.

First you put on the peanut butter....

then more peanut butter...

add some jelly...

and spread it around...

put the top on...

and enjoy the fruits of your labor!

Our White Christmas

I have been told that there were raging snow storms in the mid west the Saturday before Christmas. We too had a White Christmas but of a different variety. Below are some pictures of our trip home.

Pretending to boogie board! The girl needs one for her birthday I think.

Here are a couple pictures from Christmas day.

The coveted Polly Pocket Race to the Mall. Emmie REEEEEALLY wanted a car race track but she was very clear she wanted one for a girl and not a "boys race track". I got her this Polly Pocket one despite the reviews I had read on it. I figured we could return it if it was as bad as the reviews made it sound. Once we got home, I put it together for her. She LOVES it. The thing came with two toy cars and I got her 7 additional cars for the track. It has a lever that allows the cars to make a loop around the mall or to exit the mall. She puts it so the cars have to keep making a loop over and over and puts all nine cars on it and it is rush hour traffic! LOL She has a lot of fun with it.

The Marble Run was the other gift Emmie really wanted. After she opened her gifts from me before we left on vacation I asked her if she was happy with her gifts. Her response was "Yes, but I didn't get my Marble Run." I assured her that she had a few more chances. She was still getting gifts from Santa, Memaw, Aunt Colleen and Aunt Crazy. She was okay then. Aunt Crazy was the gift giver.

This is a picture of me, my sisters and Mom. Mom is in Red, Colleen is in Blue, Val (AKA Aunt Crazy) is in Burgundy and I am in Green.

A Christmas visit with a friend

The past couple weeks have been just plain crazy! We headed to FL for Christmas with lour family. We departed after half day at work and drove as far as St Augustine. We have friends that live there and it is just about the half way point driving from our house to my parents. It's always great to see friends even if it is only for an over night stay. Emmie loves Mary Ellen and her daughter Christie and has a great time when we stop by for a day or two. Unfortunately I disn't get the camera out this trip so I am posting this picture of Emmie and Mary Ellen from last April.



We left St Augustine and made another stop along the way. We stopped and visited with my friend David and his parents. It's was a bit of a nervous meeting. I have been writing and talking to David for three years. I was finally going to be able to meet him for the first time. I "met" David through his sister (my friend) Carol. I am very grateful to her for this introduction. Carol if you ever read this, Thanks!

Here are some pictures of our visit.
This is me and David taken very late at night which explains the exhaustion on my face (and in my hair). David had a refreshing dip in the pool with Emmie prior to these pictures so he looks fresh as a masculine daisy!

Here is Emmie in the pool with her goggles which seem to always stay on her forehead.

David and Emmie having a great time in the pool.
Emmie convinced David to sport a blonde wig. Here are the two of them in their wigs. David will kill me for posting this. LOL

Then she put me in a wig and had David wear the curlie brown wig.
The next day we went to see David's bee business and what he does. We got a tour of his warehouse and equipment and then went to the middle of an orange grove to see some hives. On the way, we stopped so Emmie couple pick a couple oranges.

Here is David opening one of his bee hives. I must confess I have learned more about the bee keeping business than I thought in such a short amount of time. Here he has the hives stacked in preparation of splitting the hives. Back at his house he had 130 fertilized queens in tiny boxes waiting to have hives of thier own. He brought the flats (I am not sure that is really the right term) to the window of the truck so we could see them up close and personal. He showed us the queen bee in the hive. I can never find the queen in the pictures until Emmie shows me which one is the queen. She can spot the queen easily. Perhaps one day she will be queen bee of her own bee business.

We stopped on our way back home to have lunch and take a little drive around his home town. It was a great visit to say the least.

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.