Thanksgiving 2009

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We traveled to New York to celebrate the Holiday with Dan's family. First stop: The Great Wolf Lodge at Niagara Falls. Emma loved the waterslides

and hanging out in the wave pool

and Ian enjoyed the geysers


Mommy, no more pictures, I'm trying to play here
We left Niagara Falls and headed to Rochester for Thanksgiving.
We are training Ian in the holiday traditions...Including watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade,

Enjoying time with family,

And eating yummy food

Trying the mashed potatoes

What do you mean, I'm all done???
Emma really enjoyed seeing the family...

Having Thanksgiving dinner
Emma also made all the place markers for everyone,

Emma's place marker

The whole flock
On Saturday, we celebrated Christmas with the family because we will not be together in December

The tree was put up and decorated (Emma decorated the bottom half, can you tell?)

Presents were opened

Grandma knew just what Emma would like.... new princess pajamas

Emma got to read one of her new books with Aunt Tricia
I regret to say, that I did not get any pictures of Emma playing her new "Pretty Pretty Princess" game with Daddy and Uncle Scott. The jewels were really flying!
We had a really great time with family, but the vacation is not over yet.... We are currently on the train to New York City to spend a few days soaking up the festive holiday spirit. On the agenda.... A trip up the Statue of Liberty, The Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular, and a visit to the Macy's Santa. Stay tuned for pictures and updates!

S'Mores!

Emma got her first taste of S'mores.....

Bath Time, Splash Time

Ian is finally enjoying bath time, now that he is sitting up and out of the little plastic bathtub!

Testing the water

Tasting the water

Splashing!

Swinging...

We had fun at the park this afternoon....Swinging

Fall Pictures Take 2

We had a great morning taking pictures with our professional photographer. No accidents or injuries this time :) We also got out yesterday afternoon and took some good fall pictures of Emma and Ian. Any tricks to get both kids looking and smiling at the same time????

Ian really enjoyed the leaves this time

This is one of my favorites of both of them... Emma accesorized herself

More smiles

Fun in the leaves

Tasting the leaves

With Daddy

"What did you say???"

With Mommy

"Showering" Betsy and Chris

Last night, we had the opportunity to shower one of the new moms in our church small group with blessings...

This is Betsy, Chris, and Baby Hannah Grace.
Hannah is a true miracle. She was born in August at just 26 weeks. She weighed just 2 pounds at birth. Today, she is almost 6 pounds and the hope to get her home from the hospital very soon.
We had a great time with wonderful women from the church and some of Betsy's friends and family to celebrate Hannah.
This was my first time hosting a party at our new house and I think it went pretty well :)

Betsy and her Mom

The wall letters and clothesline I made for Hannah

Some of the group

Working on a memory book for Betsy

Filling out "baby bingo" to play during gift opening

Opening gifts

The beautiful cake that one of our small group girls made

The whole group
We had a wonderful time! If you think about it, please keep this family in your prayers as Hannah grows and they prepare to bring her home.

It's a Beautiful Day!

Every year our church takes a week to go out into the community and spread blessings. We call this "Beautiful Day" and there are tons of projects available from cleaning up parks and schools, to doing an "Extreme Makeover" on a home in need, to providing lunches to day laborers, to having a "Prom" for handicap children. This year, our small group chose to "Adopt-a-hero" . We baked a huge variety of cookies for a local police station and then had the chance to drop the off to enjoy. The kids were really excited about sharing the treats and meeting a real policeman.
Here is our own "police line up"

They got their own "police cars" to play with

The whole group with one of the Police Officers

How did it go???

Our photo session was this morning. We looked great! I took some of you all's advice. Emma and I wore cream colored shirts and Ian had a chocolate brown shirt. We were all happy; Ian took a good morning nap and Emma was excited and I (Sara) was actually having a good hair day. We took about 10 minutes of good pictures and then it happened. Emma tripped and bit the dust, scraping both of her knees. Emma was inconsolable Photo session over.... Rescheduling for later in the week. Emma is now recuperating watching her favorite princess movie. Thank You everyone for the great advice! Hopefully good fortune will be with us again when we reschedule :)

Our fall picture attempt

After our hike and cupcakes, we were still trying to find fall leaves, so we headed over to Google with our rake in hand. Unfortunately, Ian had not eaten in a while and he was down one nap, so he was not the most agreeable participant. Hopefully our family professional pictures will go better tomorrow!

Things do not start up well

"Oh, something to play with"

Maybe this is not that bad

Emma's turn....she was in to it!
Then we decided to try to get some with both kids.....

"What are you doing to me!!!!" Emma keeps the smile

Emma gets a little worried with Ian's look of distain

Okay, we are done!