Go Frogs!

It is gonna be a great weekend! Gameday is in Fort Worth on the TCU campus. The biggest game of our season, let alone school's history (almost) is tomorrow and the Frogs are favored. We have our tickets, our tailgating plans and our purple shirts. We are all set for a thrilling Saturday!

Fort Worth's mayor named today "Go Purple" day. He encouraged all Fort Worth residents to wear purple. While Emy was at school this morning (in her purple outfit) I was out and about and I have to say that I saw a lot of purple. It is pretty cool to see the city support TCU.

After I picked Emerson up from school, we got in the stroller and cruised through the TCU campus to see all the Gameday set-up stuff. It is so cool. There were not a ton of people out there yet, but they are expecting a huge crowd to camp out tonight. I cannot imagine how fun that would be if I was still in school.

Here are some pics from the set up this afternoon.

Birthday Party Recap....Finally

****Warning- This post has an excessive amount of photos****

Emerson's birthday party was a fall festival theme. The theme started out as an alternative to a halloween-themed party (since her bday is so close to the 31st). There are so many cute things that you can do with a festival theme. I took the cute theme and literally ran with it...things got seriously carried away, but it turned out super cute.

The fall festival theme was super easy to come up with acitivites for the kids. We had crafts, face painting, bean bag toss, a ball pit and the sandbox and swingset were open for playing. There were about 16 kids, 3 and under, there. They all seemed to have fun.

Decorating with the theme was fun. We got lots of pumpkins and bales of hay. The hay proved to be useful in covering up the wet ground from the flood issues we had dealt with earlier in the week. We scattered one of the bales around the yard and it looked really great.

The party started at 4pm which is when Emerson wakes up from her nap. I woke her up a little early to get her dressed and try to prepare her for what was about to happen. Afterall, her backyard had been transformed and she had never seen so many people at our house before.

Walking outside, she was a little hesitant at first. I had to hold her for the first 20 minutes or so. After that she seemed to realize that she knew everyone there and things must be okay. I got her a juice box and some popcorn- 2 of her favorites- and life was good!


Like any two-year-old, Emerson could not wait to dive into her cupcake. She snuck in one bite when everyone was singing happy birthday and then proceeded to wait patiently until the song was over to dive into the rest of it. It was truly precious.


Right about the time everyone was leaving, she was really getting used to having all her friends around. She kept giving everyone hugs and more hugs as they left. Her friend Hayden stuck around after everyone else left to go watch the TCU game. Hayden helped open presents. It only took Emerson opening one present for her to realize that each package would contain a new prize for her. She started opening them lightning fast. I could barely keep up with what was from who.


Hayden left around 7pm and Emerson instatly looked at me to tell me she was hungry. In all the commotion, Emerson had not had anything but cupcakes and popcorn to eat. So, I whipped up a quick meal of leftover party food and she chowed down and was ready to go to bed after such an exhausting afternoon.

On to the pictures:

The welcome sign

Party favors

Cupcakes




Family photo

Bean bag toss

Banner

Food

Hey guys, what are ya'll doing?

Sweet friends

She loved this hat

Hot pink frosting. Yummy.

Sharing popcorn

Face painting

Crafts

Lots of Emerson's precious friends were able to come to the party. They are the ones who made it so much fun!

Ashley and baby sister, Abby

Jaylee

Claire (and her twin Catherine who managed to escape the camera)

Noah

Mac and little sister, Lilla

Rylie and baby brother, Brandon

Annie

Lincoln

Hayden

Ethan

Birthday girl!

After all the work that this party took, I think next year I might take the year off from party planning and simply write a check to somewhere like Gymboree or Bounce houses. It sure would be easier to let someone else do all the work.

PS- I need to give some big shout-outs to all my friends who helped out. I delegated a LOT of the party to different people and they were all wonderful. Thank you to Bethany for the beautiful banner. I got so many compliments on it and it is just perfect. Thank you to Meghann for making the bean bag toss (and all the stuff I borrowed). It was so cute and a huge hit with the kiddos. Thank you to Amber for the pictures. As usual, they are wonderful. I hope you get a lot of business from the moms at the party. Thank you to Meagan for the signs. They worked out just perfectly and looked great too. I think I am forgetting someone...if I am, I apologize, but you know who you are.

Halloween 2009

Emerson made a precious Cinderella.

Friday night we went to TCU's Frogfest. It is this free family-friendly Halloween event that they throw every year. Eventhough it was not really age appropriate for Emerson, she still had fun because she was there with her buddy Hayden.

Before we left for Frogfest, we took some pictures in the front yard using the hay leftover from her birthday party.

Mommy-daughter picture with the purple "carcrow" as Emy would say

On Saturday our friend, Kathryn, had a Halloween party. Emerson took a little while to warm up since there were so many kiddos in costumes. But, when she warmed up she had a blast playing with her friend Ashley.

In the mini-bounce house with Ashley

Drawing with Ashley on the magnadoodle

Emerson with fairy Ashley and Kathryn (also Cinderella)

Sitting with mommy before she warmed up

After the party Emerson got a special treat and got to watch a movie in bed. She insisted on keeping her costume on.

2-year check up statistics

Emerson had her 2-year check up this morning. She was so good! She sat patiently through the exam, didn't fuss getting the flu mist or her finger pricked. She even gave her urine sample by sitting on the potty at their office! I could not believe it. I was (and still am) so proud of her for this! The only time she cried was the very end when she got one shot. It was wonderful.

For record keeping sake here are her current measurements:

-25 lbs- 30%
-35.5" height- 89%
-Also, she is still comfortably in 18-month cloths. She is technically big enough for 24mo according to her stats but she has such a long torso and little legs (like mommy) that the 24mo pants are ENORMOUS on her.

During the exam when the doctor was running through all the developmental questions, there were several things she has surpassed early and then others that she is way behind on. The big one that she is behind on is still language. Can she say more than 50 words? "Nope- not even close". Does she primarily speak in at least 2-word sentences? "Nope, never". As usual, our pediatrician is not concerned. He thinks she is fine because she understands everything. Like walking, she is just taking her sweet time.

Emerson is 2 and I haven't blogged about it yet...

Can you believe I have not posted anything about Emerson's birthday yet? Shame on me! Things are crazy around here. We are recovering from a fun-filled weekend and it has been a slow recovery so far. I am so behind on everything.


I will write a big birthday party post with lots of pictures when they arrive--no pressure, Amber:) In the meantime I will just tell you that the party was perfect and Emerson had a blast.

Her actual birthday was yesterday and we spent the morning cleaning up the hay from the party and then went to Boo at the Zoo last night. Boo at the Zoo is this really cool event that the Fort Worth Zoo hosts. There is tons of candy, shows, games, pumpkins, animals, rides---oh so much to do. It was a really fun day.

Emy really loved playing in the hay piles

This is actually the last picture of the night at Boo at the Zoo- obviously Cinderella did not last all night long.
Emerson and Ashley just love each other. They are such sweet little friends.

Emerson shooting her first basket

Uh, it is alarming to me how much we look alike in this picture. Anyone else see the resemblence?

Catching a fish

Picking up colored ducks for a prize

Getting candy from a treat station

Pretty princess

Attempting to pose for a picture

Family picture before the festivities began

Just for record keeping sake, here are some things about Emerson at 2:

-Her current favorite snack is carrot sticks and celery

-She loves music and will dance to a tune no matter where we are

-Her hair is getting really long. When it is dry and curly it is a little past her shoulders, but when it is wet it goes past her shoulder blades

-She is really into wanting to do everything herself. Luckily, right now she is willing to settle for helping with a task instead of always having to do it herself.

-She loves to help clean and do laundry

-Current new(er) words are two, dirt, cupcake, read, noah, white

-She loves school and all her classmates- we talk about them all day, every day

-She likes to wear hats

-She does not feel complete without a bow- the past few days, she will literally cry until I put one in her hair

-She is super loving with her friends. She loves to hold hands with them and give hugs and kisses

-She is still a super all-star sleeper

-She is getting more and more rambunctious

-Emerson loves loves loves to be tickled by daddy- definitely her favorite thing of all time

Houston, we have problem...

We are supposed to have Emerson's birthday party back here in 56 hours. Think this will be a problem? Suggestions? Anyone have a direct line to God so they can call in a miracle?

PS- No, we do not normally have our grill and propane tank in the middle of the yard. They had been temporarily moved for another clean-up project.

Cookies!

Emerson and I made cookies together on Friday. This is one of those "mommy" things that I was so excited about doing one day. Emy is fully in the helper phase so I thought this would be a great time to try it out. It was a HUGE success. Several times during the process Emerson threw her hands in the air and squeeled "Cookies" and would clap enthusiastically. It was absolutely precious.

She loved picking out the shapes and pushing them into the dough. She hated waiting for the cookies to bake and cool-we had several tantrums during this 15 minute span. But once they were cool and ready to decorate, she was all business. It was so cute how serious she was about decorating. I had several little bowls out filled with different color sprinkles. All the cookies had to have several colors on them and most ended up with a handful of the multicolor stars on them too. Why do all kids gravitate toward the multicolor sprinkles?

Here are some pics of the decorating phase. I wish I could have had some of the cutting out shapes phase, but I was too messy to work the camera. Oh well.