Fall Happenings...

We have been busy, busy this fall...enjoying the amazing weather that has come with it! We have been fortunate to have beautiful weekends to go out and play and have all sorts of adventures. We have been to the pumpkin patch...Em loved pretty much every minute of it. Her favorite was the cow train, she also thoroughly enjoyed getting lost in the corn maze and looking for the perfect pumpkin in the patch.

Gma took Em on a walk by the canal, the highlight of this trip was throwing walnuts into the water and watching them splash. They ended up walking over 2 miles and Em was not even close to ready to being done!!

Last weekend we spent at Lake Williamson at YAR (Youth Annual Retreat) with loads of jr. high kiddos. Em loves every minute of this, hanging out with the big kids, running around outside and seeing all of our friends we don't see often enough! She also spent a good chunk of time playing with Ben and Jack, the other 2 small people that were there. Her and Ben thought "I get you" was by far the best game in the world!

Next weekend we are headed to St. Louis to see Martha and Nick. The big girls are spending Sat. wedding dress shopping, Em will get to hang out with Papa for the day, which I am sure will be great fun!

And now...the pictures--

Our annual trip to Ohio....

This weekend was our annual trip to Ohio--we bumped dates a little bit so Martha's fiance Nick could join us and of course had a great time! This was Em's 3rd trip to Ohio--her previous trips were blogged about here-http://emilyannslife.blogspot.com/2008/10/ems-1st-trip-to-ohio.html
and here-http://emilyannslife.blogspot.com/2009/10/our-next-adventure.html

This year's trip included wedding dress shopping for Martha as well as a trip to the Renaissance Festival again. Emily got to stay with the boys while the girls went shopping....2 year olds and wedding dresses a good match do not make. So Em watched football and played video games and we went shopping! We had a great time and found some good possibilities for Martha.

Sunday we headed to the Renaissance Festival. As usual the highlight is people watching--there was definitely a lot of that. As we started walking through the shops Em saw a carousel that she decided she wanted to go on. I wasn't really keen on paying the $3 just for her to go around in circles, and saw through the trees camel rides, so I told her we would do that instead. As we made our way through the Festival and around to the camels Em was very insistent about getting there! We finally made it and of course discovered a line. Fortunately it was moving pretty quickly--and in no time Em and Chuck were on their 1st camel ride! She was on cloud 9 and thought it was the most exciting thing she had done in a long time!

Back to school...

We are officially back to school and back into our school routine this week. That means Em is in a different place every day and loving every minute of it (well except for the get up at 6:30 to go to school on Mon. and Fri!). Yesterday was her 1st day back at preschool and she apparently never missed a beat. Here is the note her teacher left for me.
Emily had a great first day back! It was like she did not leave for the summer. We had a new Pooh Bear (her class) start today so we painted and played and read stories. We will start all of our class activities in a few days when everyone is settled. She had a great lunch (as usual)
As much as I hate leaving her every day I love the fact that she loves how she spends her days! Mon and Fri are at Kids and Co with Miss Deb, Tues are with Gramma, Weds are with Miss Tanahya and baby Molly (and possibly Brennan) and Thurs are with Papa. The girl has a lot of love coming to her from lots of different people and we really couldn't ask for a better arrangement!

Some pictures of our summer...

It is hard to believe that tomorrow is the start of the school year! Here is a small sampling of some of our summer adventures 1st in pictures--

Click here to view these pictures larger

Emily has been very busy this summer. Here most favorite activity by far has been swimming. She loves anything swimming related, slides, jumping, splashing, all of it. She has no fear and no problems going under water.
We've also spent a lot of time this summer hanging out with the high school girls from church. We had Bible study and book club at our house so the girls were here quite a bit and Em loved every minute of it!
We took a quick weekend trip to St. Louis to visit Martha and Nick--it was ridiculously hot that weekend, so we spent a lot of time in air conditioning, but we did venture out for a few hours to go to Grant's Farm which overall was a great time, except for the tram ride, when Em decided about 3/4 of the way that she was done, and repeatedly tried to tell us "all done".
Some of Em's current favorites--
roni's and hot dogs
noodles
jumping off high things and landing on soft things
running down the hill in the front yard
playing wii
repeating EVERYTHING anybody says
the phrases "I do it" and "watch Emily" (which is usually followed by some dangerous stunt)
Dora and Diego and talking in Spanish
cookies and milk with Daddy

New bed??

Apparently the new bed isn't the hit we thought it would be....last night and naptime today were both spent here--

VBS Songs...

Emily spent the last week at VBS--she is still in the nursery, but this year all of the kids in the nursery were old enough to participate in parts of VBS, so we did music with the 4 and 5 year olds. I'm pretty sure this was Emily's favorite part--she seemed to love the songs, and of course loves singing and dancing! Here is some video of her dancing from the program this morning. We started out at the back of the sanctuary, by the end of the program she was up front and center with the big kids having a blast!!

Happy 4th of July!

We spent last night with some friends who had an awesome view of the Geneseo Fireworks. Emily had a fabulous time hanging with all the big girls, she spent the majority of the time jumping on the the trampoline, I think that may be her new favorite toy. After it got dark we did sparklers--Emily was fascinated by them, but refused to hold one (probably a good thing!). We then cuddled up to watch the fireworks. She thought they were "awesome, cool, pretty, loud and boom" (all her words). She was happy as could be watching them, as long as she was safe and secure on mommy or daddy's lap!