Christmas Decorations

Christmas is coming and Emily is ready. Here's the tree in her room that she decorated.
I guess I'm ready too. However, the pretzels never made it to the tree as ornaments.

Christmas Morning

At 4:30 on Christmas morning I hear the sweetest little voice saying, "Mom, Santa came and he brought presents!" I sleepily asked, "he did?" She went on to say, "yeah, there is a present in my room!" At this time, I nudged Hartford and let him know that Santa had came. Out of the bed we came and witnessed pure joy in watching Emily in all her excitement.






Next year, there is going to be some type of rule that states that presents can't be opened until 6:00am. LOL.

Playing on Christmas Day

Here are some pictures of Emily playing on Christmas day.

She loves these toe socks because she and her cousin Stephanie can be sisters.Santa gave Emily a lot of My Littlest Pet Shop items. The box of accessories were one of the first things that she opened and as soon as she opened it, she asked me if she could play with them. I told her to wait and open the rest of her presents first. She agreed but as soon as she opened the pet store, she couldn't resist playing and leaving the rest of the packages unopened. She finally got around to opening the rest of the packages.

I've left these item downstairs and she plays with them nearly every day. If she happens to start to get bored, she sits down and play with these. She has moved some to the bathroom so that she can play with them in the tub. She asked this morning (January 14th) if she could take some to school to show her friends. I told her to ask the teacher. I didn't want to be the bad guy to say no but I did warn her that the answer will be no.I love that Emily is still into dressing up. I think this is a funny picture of Hartford sleeping in the background. Our frig has a mirror on it. It has entertained Emily from the very beginning and it still does. Emily loves, loves, loves stuffed animals and Santa knew it. We started giving Emily a dollar allowance several months ago. One day, I suggested that she could buy Christmas presents. She loved the idea and I took her to the Dollar Store one afternoon. She purchased an angel for me, a mini bowling kit for Hartford and this crown and earrings for herself. Not only did she wrap mine and Hartford's presents, she also wrapped her present to herself as well. I tried to explain that she could go ahead and play with her items, but she insisted that they were for Christmas.

Unfortunately, she learned a hard lesson with these items. Items from the dollar store don't always last very long. In fifteen minutes the crown and the earrings had broken. Ah, but what a glamorous fifteen minutes they were.
Christmas wouldn't be special without a tea party. Notice the new Bitty Baby picnic basket that Emily is holding. She made it special by putting stickers on it. That child loves stickers.This picture cracks me up. It could be the toe socks.

Making Christmas Cookies

If Santa wants cookies, then cookies he will have. Hartford made the cookies with Emily's help.
But she did all the decorating herself.
She had too much fun decorating them.I'm not kidding, she had too much fun decorating them. Here are the sort of finished cookies. I told you she had too much fun.Not only did Emily leave Santa cookies in the living room, she also left cookies for him in her room.

Stone Mountain Christmas

My company sponsored a company picnic at Stone Mountain Park this summer. Since attendance wasn't 100%, they had fee tickets to hand out. I grabbed three because Stone Mountain is an expensive place to visit.

I thought maybe it would be nice to go at Christmas time because they had special events scheduled. Thank goodness the tickets were free because, it really wouldn't have been worth the money. Hartford stated it best when he said that it was on the verge of being cheesy.

It was cold the night that we went and it got colder by the minute. I had put so many layers on Emily, she complained of be too warm at times.

There was so many people crammed into the place that it was really hard to move. So Emily did a lot of posing and I was willing to click away.
Emily got to visit with the snow angel. They were charging $3.00 for a little silver bell that had a blue ribbon on it. I couldn't believe it. However, it surprised me more that people were actually purchasing them. Come on people, it's a silver bell and a piece of ribbon, nothing worth wild there.
Here's a picture of the Coke tree. It was pretty.
Lights covered everything. That was neat.
Stone Mountain is being transformed into Snow Mountain. They are covering a hill with fake snow and will be charging an arm and a leg to slide down it. Emily is now into penguins because her teacher likes them.
Chasing bubbles was the funnest part for Emily.
Brr! It was so cold! Luckily, Emily was so layered that she only got a cold nose. I, on the other hand, need to be buy thicker winter clothes.

Missy Cat's Christmas

Missy cat has been with us for a lot of Christmases. She is actually older than Emily which is sometimes hard to comprehend. Even though Missy cat is considered a senior cat, she still enjoys the boxes of Christmas,.
and the paper, and the presents.
We gave Missy cat her Christmas present the day after Thanksgiving and by far, she has enjoyed this present more than any other Christmas present in the past. Seriously, how many fake mice can one cat enjoy?

The Nutcracker

The Nutcracker was performed at the Gwinnett Performing Arts Center in Duluth, GA. Emily and I had the privilege of attending. I received a corporate discount rate of $18 per seat since my employer is a sponsor of the center. The seats that we had were normally priced $47 each. The center is just a hop, skip and a jump away from my office so getting there was easy.

Here's a picture of one of the entrances to the center. Emily thought that the robot should have been a nutcracker or at least should have been decorated with Christmas lights.

We got there with plenty of time to spare so Emily had fun posing for the following pictures.







After Emily was finished posing, she entertained herself by taking pictures. She took a lot of pictures of the floor and then once we were seated and prior to the start of the show, she took a lot of pictures of the orchestra's golden drum and the projected snowflakes on the stage curtains.

The performance was very good and if things work out, we will go again next year.

Still Swimming

Emily is still going to swimming lessons.
And she still don't like them.

Visiting with Santa

Saturday morning was to supposed to be a fun filled morning with the Girl Scouts. I paid the money so that Emily could visit with Santa, and do crafts.

Here's Emily waiting for the doors to open:
It was cold out there and finally someone came around front and informed everyone that was waiting in line that Santa was in the back.

To make a long story short, Emily's troop leader didn't show up with the tickets so Emily didn't get to do any crafts. Luckily, she was allowed to visit with Santa. She gave him her letter and read it to him.
Here are two little brownies from Emily's 1st grade class. I wish Emily could be in that troop.

Dear Santa

Here's the letter that Emily wrote to Santa:
She was even thoughtful enough to draw a picture to describe what she is wanting.
Here's what she is really talking about. A fish school training kit. Not going to happen.