Loving My Hubby

As I watched Emily and her Daddy snuggling and tickling each other this morning before he left for work, then joined in for a big "group hug", I thought for the millionth time what an awesome father my husband is, and how incredible the bond is between him and Emily.

Being a Daddy's Girl myself, I know how special that relationship is. Watching Josh with Emily is truly one of the great joys of my life!

I love my hubby, for a million reasons... and this is definitely one of them! :)

Spring is Here... Sundress Time!!

I am so excited Spring is here! I am a fan of dressing my Baby Girl in sundresses, and it was a LONG Winter! :)

Here's Emily before evening church, adding a little lipstick and crown to the ensemble!


And here she is before morning church, posing for the camera. :)

Thank you, Gramma and Grandpa, for her Easter money--- we used some of it to buy this precious dress!!

Brats, Not BRATS! :)

Last Saturday we got together with some church members/friends and had brats. It was a lot of fun, as usual. :) I never knew I liked brats until Ted and JoAnn (the couple's house we went to on Saturday) had a few of us over one night last Summer and made them. Ted grills them and we top them with mustard and sauteed onions and green peppers.

Below is a necklace I made for Emily while we were there out of flowers. She loved picking them and bringing them to us, of course!

Here is Emily and her Mr. Ted! :) They gave us the swing when we left... they had already planned on it, and Emily was thrilled with it!

Here's My Girl petting a neighbor's dog... she'll have to keep waiting for her own puppy!!

Emily Cleaning The Back Patio

These pictures were taken this past Saturday. (Yes, my patio is DIRTY!! I can't keep up with what the trees drop... although, lately, I've been too busy to even try!) Daddy cut the yard while Emily helped us by cleaning the patio and I cleaned the house. :)

Below, Emily is cleaning off the sidewalk chalk letters she drew on the side of our house! (I guess I didn't specify exactly what was legal to draw on the day before!)

Here she is scooping up endless pine needles...

And putting more pine needles in her bucket!

And this is just a shot taken of her gorgeous, gorgeous hair! :)

Emily's Yellow Jacket Sting

Last Wednesday at about 10:00am, I noticed a bright red, raised rash the size of the inner circle seen below. By early afternoon, it had expanded to the size of the outer circle, and had taken on a bulls-eye appearance. We called her pediatrician, and they had us come in the next day. Her doctor had the day off, but his partner said it was a Yellow Jacket (or other bee) sting. The pictures below were taken after the worst of it passed. Josh and I were getting concerned it could be a Brown Recluse Spider bite or Lyme Disease, due to the way it looked. Emily never complained about a bee sting... but, we had found a few dead bees in our house the two days prior to noticing the rash, and the night before she woke up crying in the early AM hours... so I'm thinking maybe one stung her in her sleep... anyway, Emily was adamant about calling her Grammy when we left the doctor's office to get some sympathy... and got it, of course! :) Then I took her by McDonald's for a Happy Meal to help make it better! Poor girl!!

In School This Week...

We are reading Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say.

It takes place in both the United States and Japan.

It is a touching story, and one I suspect will lead to lots of conversations about Grampy (my Daddy), since he was, and is, such an important part of Emily's life.

So I look forward to enjoying wonderful memories with her... and also, learning about a country that we haven't studied yet.

Wow... Wake Me Up, Lord!!

It is Sunday afternoon, and I am sitting here at my laptop savoring a rare time of quiet in my home. My husband is getting ready for evening church, and Emily is playing on the sly in her room (she's supposed to be napping, but since she hasn't napped in at least a month, I'll take the quiet playing!!). I decided to hop on my laptop with the goal of getting some schoolwork prepared for tommorrow and the coming week. Once on, though, I decided it was my chance to explore some sites I've been wanting to look at and do some research I've been interested in on homeschooling.

Anyway...

I just read something on another pastor's wife's blog that made me want to cry.

She said she was complaining recently to the oldest lady in her church about all the things she needed to do that day and hadn't gotten done, and the lady, whose children are all grown and long since left home, responded with this:

"Someday you'll be walking around your house looking for something to clean, because nothing will be dirty."

God, help me to CONSTANTLY see the awesome beauty in the life I have... the incredible privilege I have to care for a husband and a daughter. Wake me up to the joy of my everyday life.

Truly, I am blessed.

Is My Kid Normal? :)

Okay, so Emily is wearing me out, Sweet Thing she is... :)

She and I are home from church tonight because her teacher and classmates are all sick, and guess what she is insisting on doing?

HOMEWORK!!!

Yes, I'm serious!!!

This is the second night in a row she has begged me to do school AGAIN at night! Last night, I gave in and gave her "homework", which of course meant she was constantly calling me to show me what she had done, ask directions, and beg for more work!

Right now, she is doing it again, singing one of her school songs happily as she works!

I'm EXHAUSTED and way behind on my house/everything else except school! The only other significant thing I've been able to do today is go to the hospital to get my latest round of bloodwork! But, I'd be crazy to really complain... what mother doesn't want her child to love school that much??

I'm cutting her off in a minute, though, like I hear they cut people off in bars!! :)

My Ladies' Retreat and Emily in Her Cozumel Dress

Emily's Grammy (my mom) went on a cruise to Mexico recently and brought Emily this dress from Cozumel. Emily looked so sweet in it this past Sunday morning, and Josh is very proud of her "international wardrobe" (she has also had a dress from Paris!).

Okay, this picture didn't turn out well, but when I was at my Ladies' Spring Conference this past weekend in Jackson, Mississippi, I bought Emily this bracelet and had her name engraved on it.

Here are three of our twenty-somethings that went with us to the Spring Conference. The middle one is Tiffany, our new Children's Pastor. Emily loves her! By the way, I made them pick their noses! :)

Here are me and my roomies for the Spring Conference! :) Yes, it is a terrible picture of me, but cute of them! :) We had two other rooms of women, so it was a pretty good turn-out. We got in trouble with the front desk for being too loud when I was hanging out in one of the other rooms (with our women's ministries leader, no less!), and felt like giddy teenagers again! IT WAS GREAT!! :)

Our New Church Sign!

Our new church sign was installed on April 9th. We are so excited!! We celebrated the end of a long process by going out to dinner with some church members/friends that night (Josh and I put a lot of work into designing the sign, etc., and there was a lot of delay in getting it installed due to rainy weather--- the sign company got their trucks stuck twice!). Our church people rallied quickly to raise the money; that ended up being the easy part--- go figure! :) Ted, a sweet man in our church, was one who also spent a lot of his time waiting for the sign people to come, etc. The day it was installed was definitely a day for celebration! (Notice Emily running in front of the last picture--- our little PK!)

More School Pictures, Taken April 9th

Emily and I counted, added, and subtracted Jelly Beans for her math lesson the Thursday before Easter. Here she is showing her work to Daddy when he got home that day!

Here Emily is during the lesson...

... And here she is as we get ready to start. She LOVED this activity... especially since we ate the Jelly Beans when we were done (I'm not a Jelly Bean fan, but we used Sweetart Jelly Beans, and they were YUMMY)! :)

Easter Sunday--- Emily in Her Dress and Egg Hunts

Here is Daddy getting Emily's shoes on so she can go to an egg hunt with a lady in our church Emily loves, Miss Shirley, after we got home from morning church. Miss Shirley's family holds a big hunt every year and she wanted to take Emily!

Below, Emily is "running like the wind" after eggs in our church egg hunt, which we held during the Sunday School hour on Easter morning. :)

Here is Emily waiting for the egg hunt to begin.

Below, the kids start coming out of the church to get ready for the hunt!

Emily's Easter dress was gorgeous... here is a close-up!

Easter Sunday--- Emily Finds Her Easter Basket

Here is our "Little Easter Egg" (as I called Emily the whole week) finding and enjoying her Easter basket before church on Easter Sunday morning! :)

Emily's First Week of School, Continued...

Emily is spreading peanut butter out to "erase" the P letters she has drawn in it with her finger. This was something I did with her on the spur-of-the-moment one night, and it was so much fun!! This is one reason why homeschooling is SO COOL! :)

Below, Emily is seen making a letter P collage from magazine pictures.

Here is my baby girl, kissing the flower we picked as part of our science lesson!

Emily studying her Bible story...

... And here she is cutting out a map of China she colored! Thanks, Gramma and Grandpa, for the table you got her for Christmas 2007! It is now her official school table! :)

As Promised... Emily's First Week of School, in Pictures

These pictures were taken March 30th, her first day of preschool. Emily is showing off the cover of her first lapbook, the book its based on, the song for her letter of the week, and her Word and Song Bible that her Bible stories come from. It was such a fun day!!

Grampy Would Love This!

Grampy would LOVE this week's Five in a Row book!

It is The Glorious Flight, by Alice and Martin Provensen. It is the true story of frenchman Louis Ble'riot, "one of the truly great pioneers of aviation. He devoted the fortune acquired by his invention of an automobile searchlight to the development and construction of his high-performance aircraft, the BLE'RIOT XI. His flight across the English Channel from France (on July 25, 1909) demonstrated to the world that barriers of land and sea no longer existed for the airplane."

The flight was the first of its kind, and eighteen years before Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

See why my Daddy would love it? :)

I am learning so much along with Emily--- my days are busier than ever... but, even more rewarding, too! :)

This Week in School...

It's all about the Easter story!

We're not using a "Five in a Row" book this week, but instead are doing another book in the "Five in a Row" style. It's called The Legend of the Easter Egg and will be a great tool to teach the real meaning of Easter.

We're also doing the Bible story called The Crucifixion, and Emily's memory verse for this week is Luke 24:6, which says, "He has risen!"

This week's letter of the alphabet is E (as in Easter and Emily!).

Hope this is a special week for everyone! :)

We Made It! :)

Emily and I finished our first week of homeschooling today.

I am so proud... and exhausted! :)

It doesn't help that I got sick Tuesday night (with a bad cold, I think) and can't shake it!

But, we did school anyway and made some wonderful first memories...

(Break for me to cry about how fast my baby is growing up, lament about where the time went, and wish I could turn back the clock...)

I really am going to post pictures on here of her first week as soon as I get the chance, I promise.

Next week we start the book Lentil by Robert McCloskey. It takes place in a fictional town in Ohio, so Aunt Barb, we need you to e-mail us some basic information about the Buckeyes! :)

When Emily opened her Christmas presents from her Great-Aunt Barb and Uncle Don this year, she raised her fist and said, "Go Buckeyes!" at every one. It was VERY cute! :)