Happy Birthday Emma!

It's official. Emma is 5!!! She loved her birthday party this morning at Bullets. It was a lot of fun, and I think she felt special. By the way, isn't she just adorable in her birthday shirt made by her Aunt Samantha? Thanks, Samantha! Before we left the house, we gave her our present, which was a pink and white TV and a DVD player. She was super excited. It sure will make TV watching at our house easier. Now everybody's happy.

In addition to many friends from church and daycare, she had fun playing with her sissy and cousins.

She loved her Tinkerbell cake.

We love you Emma!

Another Birthday Party

In addition to her own birthday party this morning, Emma also attended a birthday party for a friend at the Y tonight. She had so much fun. I can't believe she was swimming tonight and could be playing in the snow tomorrow.
They also had a jumper at the party. Tons of fun!

Ready for Birthday

Tomorrow is Emma's fifth birthday. She is so excited. Today she took a birthday cake to daycare to share with her friends. No, I didn't make it. I am not talented like my three SILs. This was an already decorated cake at Walmart and I just had them add her name. She was so excited to take the cake to school today and to wear her Tinkerbell/5/Emma shirt. I got this shirt off of Ebay. It's really cute, but not near as cute as the one her Aunt Samanatha made her that she will wear to her party tomorrow.

Mardi Gras Beads

Susan, a friend of mine from work, had some cute pictures of her kids on her blog (http://www.lollarfamily4.blogspot.com/) with a tons of Mardi Gras beads given to them by some friends. She was so sweet to bring the bag of beads to me at work today for me to borrow. Thanks Susan. I hope you don't mind, but I totally stole your cute idea. Anna Kate and Emma had a ball playing with the beads.

An Award and a Boo-Boo

Tim and Anna Kate had a special geocaching day planned for Saturday. It was special because the local geocachers were gathering in Starkville to honor those who had recently reached a milestone. Tim was honored for finding 1,000 caches. In fact, he is over 1,100 now. So proud of him. (If you don't know what caching is, see one of my earlier posts about Tannyhill.) Before he and Anna Kate attended the event, they did a little caching. As they sometimes do, they drove as close as they could to a cache and then rode their bikes the rest of the way. Anna Kate had a bad wreck. She has banged up knees and elbows and scratches and cuts in other places, including a really bad cut on her thumb, but the worst of it is her chin. As you can see from the picture, she has a pretty bad cut and bruising. Believe it or not, Tim said she did not cry. I can't believe it because I almost cried just looking at her boo-boos for the first time.

Our Little Tinkerbell

I can't believe our baby turns 5 one week from today. Time flies, and I don't like it. I would really love to just freeze her at this age and enjoy her this way forever. Such a precious child, both of our girls are. Below are pictures I took of her a few weeks ago for her photo birthday invitation. She still loves Disney Princess, but she has expanded that to include Tinkerbell. She really loves Tinkerbell. When she told me she wanted Tinkerbell for her birthday theme, I couldn't have been more pleased. I found this Tinkerbell outfit on clearance. We put her hair up in a bun like Tinkerbell, and I added a little makeup. She was just gorgeous, and she knew it. She had so much fun taking these pictures. Sometimes I have to beg, bribe, and threaten to get my girls to take pictures for me, but not this day. Emma was the perfect photo subject, and I am pleased with the results.

Dance Picture Day

This afternoon was picture day at Susan's Dance Studio. Emma had so much fun getting all dolled up for the pictures. She loved having her hair fixed. The instructions were to put it into a high ponytail and curl it. Both of our girls have very straight hair like me, so curling it and it staying is not an easy task. After 30 minutes of curling with a curling iron and lots of hairspray, we finally got it. She looked so pretty. Here are a couple of shots of her hair before we left the house.

I love how she did a ballet move for me. She was having so much fun.

She wore the white outfit (ballet) for her individual shot. She wore this pink outfit (tap) for the group shot. Before leaving Susan's, I snapped her picture outside in front of our van. You can tell that her curls were about gone.

Love this smile.
I couldn't believe it, but after I took those couple of pink outfit shots, she decided she wanted to switch back into the white outfit for a couple of shots. It was a lot of changing, but it was worth it.

Seeing her in this white ballet outfit reminds me of Anna Kate. She took dance at Susan's at this exact age and also wore a white outfit for her ballet routine. She was so beautiful, and so is Emma. Precious memories.

Ready for Church

Here are some sweet pictures of our girls in Valentine red before we left for church this morning. They are holding pink poodle Webkinz that my parents gave them for Valentine's. They love Webkinz. Tim's parents mailed them cards with $5 each. They love getting mail, and they are excited about spending their money. These two little girls are so lucky to have four wonderful grandparents.

Valentine Activities

Yep, you are seeing this correctly. Anna Kate has on a swimsuit because she went swimming on Valentine's Day. One of her best friends had her birthday party at the Y, which has an indoor pool. They had a blast. I think Anna Kate is so ready for summer to get here now.
While she was at the swim party, Emma and I went to McDonald's. I wanted her to have a fun time too.

Happy Heart Day

We hope you all are having a great Valentine's Day. Here are some of the pictures I took last Saturday to use for Valentine's cards for grandparents. The girls loved the stuffed sweethearts, and they made great picture props. Love to all!

Famous Mississippian

Anna Kate's class studied famous Mississippians this week. She was assigned author Willie Morris to do a typed report, complete a profile and make a bottle figure. Not the most fun project, but I think she did good. I see now that it might have looked better if we had added a strip around his neck to make it look like the collar of his shirt. It probably would have made the tie look better. Oh, well. The interesting thing about this is that I met Willie Morris not long before his death. He spoke at an event where I work. Very interesting man who was friends with Eudora Welty who I also had the pleasure of meeting once. When I met him then, never could I have imagined that my child would make a bottle figure of him in fourth grade social studies.

Valentine Cards

The girls had so much fun doing their Valentine cards for their friends. Anna Kate chose "Camp Rock," and Emma chose "Tinkerbell." It's funny because those are the themes for their birthday parties this year. Anyway, they can't wait to take their Valentine cards to school tomorrow.

Valentine's at Church

Our church got in the Valentine's mood tonight. There was a red rose in a vase on every table in the fellowship hall tonight for supper. The one with a sticker on the back of his or her chair got the rose at that table. Emma was the lucky one at our table, and she was so excited. She just had to have her picture made with our pastor, Bro. Steve.
The girls both got "goodies" in their mission classes tonight.

Poor Baby

Our sweet little girl got shots today. The State is now requiring that all daycare children under the age of 5 get a Prevnar shot. I believe this is a recent addition, and nobody around here seemed to know about it. The State recently made random checks at the daycares, including our daycare, and found that lots of kids are missing this shot. Emma was one of these. Poor thing. She is less than three weeks shy of being 5 and wouldn't need the shot at all. When I took her to the doctor today, he said she could have her daycare shots too. I decided it might be easier on her to just do this one time so she had them all today, but I didn't realize it would be five shots. Yes, I said five. Our sweet baby had five shots today. She did so good, and we were so proud of her. I can't believe how brave she was. However, she has enjoyed the extra attention today and has played it for all it's worth. I haven't minded it at all. I'm just glad it's over. I'm sure she is too.

The first three shots.
And the last two.