Family Reunion

We went to Rob’s family reunion last weekend. It was at the Mowequa Bowl in Mowequa Illinois. We had lots of fun. It was really good to see everyone. We were pretty much on "Emily chase patrol" the entire time. As you can see she had lots of fun running around the lanes and climbing on the ball return. Don’t worry those lanes weren’t on so no chance of a ball hitting her. Emily really enjoyed hanging around with Ellie all afternoon. Emily and Ellie’s grandmas are first cousins. Ellie is 6 months older than Emmy but my girl is taller. I really don’t realize how tall she is until she’s around other kids

She kept saying "down" when we took this picture.

Emily and Ellie eating gummy bears.

When there's no toys you make your own fun.

This is one of the few times she sat still all day.

Emily's "NO" faces

I’ll tell you what; my girl has no problem letting you know what she is thinking. All you have to do is look at her to know what kind of mood she’s in. She’s a lot like her mama in this way. In these pictures she is showing us what she thinks of us telling her no.

"I can't believe you just told me no"

"I know you're not tellin' me no"

You might be a redneck if....

You might be a redneck if….you use a dishpan as a swimming pool for your daughter. I bought a baby pool for her last year but I have no idea where I put it. I really have to find it or break down and spend another 4 bucks on a new one. Emily really loves to play in the water so I filled the dishpan up with water, got some of her bath toys and let her go at it. She loved it. At first she just looked at me like "are you serious, you’re going to let me play with this" but then she just went to town. Of course I forgot to put her swimming suit on her, so her diaper weighed about 20 pounds when we were done, but it was worth it.

Father's Day

Here are a couple of great pictures of Emily and her Daddy on Father’s Day. I really like the one of her looking at him so sweetly. The other picture is of a collage we made for Daddy. It has a bunch of pictures of Daddy and Emmy together.

18-month check up and a new park

Emily had her 18-month check up today. She won’t be 18 months until next week but she is getting over an ear infection so we just had it early. She weighs 24 ½ pounds and is 33 ¼ inches tall. So that puts her in the 75 percentile for weight and 95 % for height. Which doesn’t surprise me because she just towers over other kids her age. I have a lot of tall people in my family, somehow I didn’t get that tall gene but I have passed it on to Emmy. Her ear infection is gone now and she is doing really well in all other areas. The doctor was pretty impressed that she knows most of her body parts and a whole slew of animal sounds (her monkey sound is my favorite).
After going to the doctor I wanted her to get to have some fun so I took her to a park we’ve never been to before in Maryville. It has really nice play ground equipment but there is absolutely no shade so we didn’t stay for very long. She really enjoyed going down the big tube slide all by herself. The funny thing is that her hair would get a lot of static in it when she came down. As you can see, she looked pretty darn cute with her hair sticking up all over the place.

Do you think she might be thirsty?

Summer fun...a swing set and lightning bugs

Ahhhh summer, warm nights, sitting out back on the deck and lightning bugs. It just doesn’t get much better than that. Grandpa caught a couple of lightning bugs to show Emily. She had a good time trying to hold one. The poor bug got a little squashed but he was still able to fly away.

Horseradish Festival

We took Emily to her first ever Horseradish Festival. For those of you who don’t know, we live in the horseradish capital of the world, so of course they have to have a festival for it. We only went because Grandpa was there with Clayton and Madison. They made "root cars" to race. They both won medals but I don’t remember what place they finished. Anyway, Emily had fun riding the train with them after their race. They said she just kept saying "choo choo" the entire ride.

At the park with Katy and Kevin

We ate lunch with Aunt Julie, Katy and Kevin yesterday at the park. The ducks wanted to join us so Emily gladly shared her Cheerios. I’m convinced that ducks will eat just about anything. Emily had a ball throwing them food. She also tries to do this at home with Joe and Sally (it’s not so cute then). As you can see she had lots of fun playing with Kate and Kevin after lunch.

First Carnival Experience

Gas to get to the carnival…$2.79 a gallon
Cost for the ride tickets…$3.00
Watching your child scream as she rides a dragon…Priceless.

Well, I’d like to say that Emily’s first carnival experience was a good one but that would be stretching it. Let’s see…the first ride we put her on broke down, that’s never a good sign. So we tried the dragons pictured above. As you can see she was not a happy camper. She screamed just about the entire time she was on there. She calmed down for the last 2 laps around, she wasn’t happy but at least she wasn’t crying anymore. So then when we were in line for the Ferris wheel her wet diaper leaked all over the place. Of course I didn’t have any extra clothes for her so she went the rest of the night in just a shirt and diaper. I felt like such a Hoosier. Anyway, she didn’t seem to mind the Ferris wheel as long as she could keep a death grip on my shirt. Hey better luck next time right!?!