February 23

This afternoon, we went over to Kathy and Brian's (aka Ellie's Mommy and Daddy) so that they could take some pictures of the princess with her cake. Big thanks to Brian. We were off to a slow start. It was almost like you could see her thinking like one of those cartoons, her bubble over her head said "I thought we already settled this issue on Saturday, DON'T LIKE THIS! Instant tears and wanting no part of it. This time, Mommy got down and held her for a while and let her eat some cake in Mommy's lap. Cake always tastes better in Mommy's lap. Mommy's clothes really appreciated cake after this episode was over. Kathy and Mommy both really like the picture above because it looks like Emma was twirling her hair.

In this picture, she was still trying to figure out exactly what to think of the cake.

She gave in, cake is good and I don't care! I will eat it even if Mommy puts me down. Breakthrough!

As you can see, Emma really got into the whole cake thing.

It was all said and done here. Emma officially likes cake now. In fact, as you can see here, she wasn't just two-handing it, she was two-handing and two-footing it.

Emma really enjoying her cake.

Nothing like a little cake in the eye!

Sweet innocence!

Shoveling it in! So now that Emma has realized that this is a good thing, we are keeping our fingers crossed that she will not forget this before her appointment Friday morning.

February 21

Well, today we had an appointment for Emma to get her first birthday pictures made. She had other plans. We got up and went out to the studio for her 9:00 appointment. As soon as she woke up, we got her dressed and out the door. Mistake number 1. She is getting over croop. Mistake number 2. We got out there and she would not let me put her down, under any circumstances. We even broke out the cake. She cried as soon as I sat her down. It was awful. Needless to say, no pictures today. We rescheduled for Friday morning, not quite as early though. She is not a morning princess. We just came home and decided to play at the house today. We all (Ethan, Emma, and Daddy) are trying really hard NOT to be sick next weekend for the big celebration.

And of course, as soon as we got home from pictures, Emma was fine and got into Mommy's gym bag, got out her water bottle, and decided it was play time. She got down and was running around and even smiling. Now she is napping and Ethan and Daddy are playing Mario Cart (a new fav at our house! Mommy is even getting halfway decent at it!)

This video, if it uploads is from a hard lesson that Ethan learned at Toys R Us the other night. He wanted a car and stood in the car aisle for about 15-20 minutes and couldn't pick one out. Finally after much debate (and many staring people) Mommy picked up a screaming Ethan and took him out of the store with nothing. We are trying to teach him that if we say if you don't pick out a car right now we are leaving we will actually leave. Well then matters got even worse. He was screaming the whole ride home. Daddy told him that if he didn't stop screaming, he would go straight to bed when we got home. Again, trying to teach a point here, he didn't stop screaming until the car was in park so...you see the video!

February 14th

On Wednesday, Mommy's friend April had her first baby, a little boy named Kaden. Mommy went out to the hospital on Thursday to visit with them.

Kaden was not a very happy camper here. He was getting hungry. It is hard being a whole day old.

Here the proud new Mommy and Grandpa.

This picture was from Tuesday. Emma climbed into the fireball raceway and then it turned on and she was very afraid. It wasn't as fun as it looked.

On the way home from Mamaw and Papaw's house on Sunday. Everyone was officially tired. Trystan had been at DWow with the youth group all weekend and apparently didn't sleep much.

Winter Storm Fun

As most of you are aware, we had quite a winter storm here over the past week. It all started Monday night and people are still dealing with the aftermath 8 days later. At first it was fun. These pictures are from Tuesday morning. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground and it was actually beginning to sleet with some freezing rain. This made for good sledding. We went to a local church that has a big hill and took the kids for some fun.

Tracy and Benjamin joined us also. Here's Mommy and Ethan getting ready to go down the hill.

Emma slept for about the first half hour and then woke up and got inside Mommy's coat. She even went down the hill inside the coat. She didn't really know what to think.

Ethan said he was done sledding but Nana decided otherwise and took him down with her. He had a good time also.

Tuesday night the weather got alot worse and many people lost their power, including us. We lost power at about 4:00 am and when Daddy called it in, there were 15,000 people without power. By morning the number was 75,000. Wednesday evening, there were over 100,000 people and that's all the recording would say. The news gave the official estimate of over 250,000 people lost power during the storm. Today, 8 days later, there are still around 50,000 people. Wednesday evening when we heard that it could be 7-10 days before we got power back we started to make calls to find a hotel room. There were none within 100 miles that had power and rooms. After making several calls, Daddy decided that it would be fun to go up to Ohio to Great Wolf Lodge. That was a very good decision. We stayed Wednesday night through Saturday. It was a little mini vacation. Nana and Grandpa Greg went with us and so did Mamaw Ann, Garrett, and Sean. These pictures are all from the vacation. We had a blast.

Ethan loved going down the slides. There were a lot of big slides and Ethan could go down all of them except one.

Daddy, Ethan, and Trystan up on the water playground.

Ethan going down the body slide, all by himself.

Ethan and Emma playing in the little fountain.

Mommy likes this picture because you can start to see Emma's curls.

This was Emma's favorite thing. She found a little fountain that she could sit down and play with.

Grandpa Greg and Garrett goofing around.

Trystan doing the obstacle course.

Ethan and Benjamin playing in the kids play area.

Nana and Emma playing in the water.

Tracy's oldest son Tyler and his friend TJ at the water park.

Ethan and Benjamin in the kiddie hot tub. That was Ethan's favorite thing.

I think that Tracy liked the kiddie hot tub the best also.

Nana with Emma and Ethan in the kiddie hot tub.