Sushi Night

Last night Jamie, Jessica, Me and the girls met up for our usual sushi and sweet potato fries. We missed Jenni, who was home sick.
As always, we had a great time catching up and celebrating Jamie's exciting news of her recent engagement.
The girls also seemed to have a great time and were hamming it up for the cameras!
Thanks for a great girls night!






And just a quick side note....the blog will probably be lacking these next couple of weeks as I am busy getting ready for Emma's first birthday party! (Focusing all my attention to the house and what we need, helps me not to think that she is about to be 1!)

Happy Birthday Sophia!!

Today Sophia turns 1! I can't believe it has been a year. I love that Sophia and Emma are only about 2 weeks apart from each other. It is so special that one of my really good friends and I had babies within weeks of each other. Whenever we are out with the girls, everybody always tells us this, and I couldn't agree more. Robert and I also talk about how Sophia and Emma truly will be life long friends. Emma couldn't have asked for a better friend. Here are some pictures of the girls over the past year.


First time hanging out together.


Realizing that they both have to get use to the camera always being in their face!


Shopping!


Eating!


Playing!


They even got to spend their first Christmas together.


Easter Parade

On Saturday we headed out to The Farm at South Mountain to celebrate the big day. Even more special then Emma and Sophia only being a couple of weeks apart, is that Sophia is only a week apart from her cousin. So in a couple of weeks, the Brysons will head to Kansas were the girls will have a joint birthday celebration. Even though Sophia will being having her party in Kansas, Jessica and Matt still wanted to make sure that all their Arizona friends got to celebrate as well. Robert had to work on Saturday, so he wasn't able to come. But my mom, Emma, and I had a great time just us girls!


Emma ready for her first birthday party! She stood a lot on her own for the first time!


One of the few pictures of Emma and I




I found this neat spot, and had to get some pictures of Emma. Unfortunately, she decided to look everywhere but at me!


The Brysons


Emma and Grandma

Cassie, Jamie, Jessica, and Sophia. (Jamie just got engaged! So exciting!!)


Enjoying her cake!


Time for presents!

Happy Birthday Sweet Girl! We love you!

Starting My 30's

Yes, it's true. I had a birthday yesterday. And not just any birthday, my 30th! It is weird to think that I am in my 30's. I don't feel any different, but the thought is there that I am getting old!
It was a good birthday. My mom took Emma and I out shopping and of course spoiled us. We had Cheesecake Factory for a yummy lunch. Emma seems to not be such a fan of restaurant food. I ordered her a grilled cheese sandwich, which she loves at home, and she didn't like it at all. I told my mom that she was probably the only kid in the restaurant that was eating her broccoli over the grilled cheese! I guess from now on, we will stick with the safe bet of plain noodles. Thanks mom for a great day!







When we got home, this was my nice surprise! Robert's mom, step-dad, and sister sent this out for me. It is from Edible Arrangements and they specialize in making fruit bouquets with some of the fruit dipped in chocolate. It is so pretty, but more importantly so yummy! This one has chocolate covered apples. Emma and I have been very much enjoying the fruit. Thanks again guys. That was very sweet of you to think of me.
The surprises kept coming when Robert came home armed with flowers and a card that was made for him to give. Many of you know that Robert isn't always the best at remembering occasions. So the card he found came armed with a card for every holiday of the year. He THINKS this means he has his bases covered!
And many of you have been asking about Emma's eye.....


Here is what it looks like now. Don't mind her expression. She is just fine. She is just tired of me being in her face looking at it all the time. We still have some bleeding, and now some clear yellowish liquid, but the doctor assured us that this was just apart of the healing process. I do think the glue lessened a bit, and the gash opened a little. Medically, this doesn't hurt her, it just means that the scar could be a little bigger then if it would have been if it stayed all the way closed. But what are you going to do? We have watched her the best that we could. How can you explain to an almost one year old not to rub her eyes, to not but her bear to her face, and not to roll around in her bed face down while she sleeps? For this reason I think I would have rather she got stitches, but who knows. Maybe those would have loosened also.
She does have some irritation on her skin from the tape. And since tomorrow will be the 7th day, starting then, I won't put tape on it anymore. Hopefully the glue will start falling off, and the scab can start to go away. I know it could have been much worse, but this was no fun!
Tomorrow we have an exciting day with celebrating Sophia's 1st birthday out at The Farm at South Mountain. I plan on taking lots of pictures!!

Grass and Some Pics of Emma

Yes it's true! We have grass! We are busy keeping it watered and "nursing" it from shock so it is perfect for Emma's party!



I know I am being silly, but these next pictures make me sad. They were taken a couple of hours before Emma had her accident.





She is always so curious and studies every little thing.


One new thing recently is that she tries to do the motion to "The Itsy Bitsy Spider".


She is starting to read to herself! She will even babble has she turns the pages.




I know she looks sad in this picture, but for some reason I like it. I caught her in a moment where she was leaning against the couch trying to figure out what she wanted to do next!

So Far, So Good!

So far the glue has held and Emma has been doing great. I, on the other hand, have had some mommy melt downs, but have decided that I have to trust the glue can handle the activity level of an almost 1 year old, and if for some reason it didn't, then Emma would still be just fine.
Isn't this picture something?! The gash isn't pretty, but I feel like this big piece of white tape is a neon sign saying "look at me"! Emma likes to route around, rub her eyes, and rub her bear over her face. The only reason why we have the tape over it, is to try and protect the glue from this. The tape doesn't seem to bother her, and most of the time she leaves it alone.
Her eye is a little swollen and discolored, and she has been a champ through this whole thing. She gets mad when we try and stop her from rubbing her eye and sometimes will hit it, and she has become very interested in my eyes. A couple times a day she will start to whimper and hold her bear over her eye, but Tylenol seems to do the trick. But really by watching her play you would never know what happened! This adventure didn't seem to phase her at all. She immediately when right back to standing and walking along the couch. Not only is she strong willed, but tough too!

First Trip to Urgent Care

Emma has been standing more and more on her own lately, and tonight that led her to falling and hitting her head on our coffee table. It bled pretty good at first, and then changed to a slow ooze. She of course cried when it happened, but quickly went back to her happy self. She really only cried when we were wiping it. I was afraid that the gash was a little too deep, and thought she might need stitches. Robert wasn't so sure, so he thought it would be a good idea to talk to his mom since she is a nurse. After we sent her these pictures.....




She thought we needed to get it looked at.

So off we headed to an urgent care. I knew that there was a medication they could use that would numb her skin when they did the stitches. But at that moment, I couldn't think and couldn't remember what the name was. Jessica's husband, Matt, works in the ED at Phoenix Children's so I gave them a call to find out what medicine we needed to ask for. Thankfully they also reminded me that PCH has an Urgent Care center out by us, so we went there instead.

We didn't have to wait too long before they saw us. The first thing they had to do was clean her wound. She didn't like this at all. I held her, while the nurse squeezed 4 huge syringes into the wound. After this was done, she had a little bit of a break while we talked to the Doctor about what we should we do. He gave us the choice between stitches and glue. They each had their own downfalls. Stitches = traumatic experience, Glue = possibility of it not sticking. So after lots of talk, we decided to go with the glue. The Doctor said that if he didn't think the glue wouldn't work for us and the location of the gash, then he wouldn't have recommended it. So wanting to keep this as less traumatic as we could, we went with the glue. She still didn't like it very much, but it is done and we are back home.
For the next 7 days we will really watch her and make sure she doesn't rub her eye, bump it on anything, or get wet. Starting tomorrow we can cover it with a band aid, so that should help some. The first thing Robert did when we got home is remove the coffee table. We didn't really need it anyway, and now Emma has more room to play!
Here are some pictures after we got home.







Dinner always makes everything better!

Playing Around Take 2!

So by the time I figured out how to format the pictures in the collage last night, it was midnight, and I was too tired to figure out how to do the background and picture edges. Today, during Emma's morning nap, instead of cleaning, I did more playing. What do you think? Do you like the color background, or the all white in the next post? Should the background be yellow instead of blue?

Just Playing Around

Almost Done!!

The tilling is done, the rock is moved, still more flowers to plant, and then of course the grass! (We decided on Sod!)

11 Months

Another month has come and gone. And this time it is our last month before we hit the big 1 year mark! Emma continues to grow, change, and make us smile every day. This past month we have seen her pull herself up to a stand and start walking along the couch. She has started to walk a little when we hold her hands, but she gets kind of a high march awkward type of walk. She has learn to play catch by rolling a ball along the coffee table and loves to dance to music. Her favorite song write now is the Bashas commercial on TV. The one that shows the lady walking through different decades. No matter what she is doing, she stops and starts dancing. She has gotten her bottom two teeth, and just started to feed herself with a spoon sometimes. (This can get very messy!) She is imitating everything we do including shrugging her shoulders while tilting her head to the side like she is saying " I don't know" and holding her arms straight up in the air when we say "touchdown". We continue to fall in love with her more and more every day


An awkward smile, but if you make the picture bigger, you can see her teeth.


I liked this one even though it is out of focus


I missed it, but she was starting to do "Touchdown"

Easter Sunday

We had a great Easter Sunday. We started the day with Emma getting her Easter Basket, and then headed over to Robert's Uncle Wally's house were we had yummy food and visited with family. Unfortunately, I didn't get near the pictures I wanted to. By the time I was able to get my camera, Emma wasn't the happiest. Now that she is more mobile, she wanted to get down and go. But of course everybody wanted to hold her and love on her, so when it came time to try and get a family picture, she wanted nothing to do with me holding her! Oh well. We will try again at her birthday!


Checking out her Easter Basket


What is in here?


A silly puppy wearing bunny ears....


And books! She has a book called Gossie that she really likes, and I was able to find some more books with Gossie and Friends.


So excited!


Daddy trying to let her play some....but also not get grass stains on her dress! We should have gotten a blanket, but I didn't even think about it.


This is the best picture we have of her in her dress.


Doesn't it kind of look like she is yelling "let me go!"

Girl talk


Robert helping Mary get set up for the blog. She hasn't been able to get on it, so hopefully now it will work for her!


Emma figuring out how her snack holder works with Aunt Sandy


And the grumpiness begins.....

It was a great day and an even better holiday weekend. I am just sad I didn't get more pictures on Sunday.

Can't believe our little girl will be 11 months tomorrow!!