Christmas Morning

We had a great Christmas this year.  In the morning Emerson came into our room and said "Santa come.  He bring stockings."  We had no clue that he would understand that.  So we went down to start opening presents.

Indeed Santa had filled our stockings.

 I absolutly love the wrapping from this year.  I am sad that it isn't so pretty under our tree now.

Here is Emerson's pile of gifts from Santa.  He LOVES his kitchen.  He makes us "5 dinners"  all the time.  It is so sweet.

While I have missed spending time with our family this Christmas, it has been enjoyable just relaxing and savoring the season this year.  (And not stressing about having to spend the night in the airort like we did last year.)

Christmas Tradition: Revised

Growing up, we did Gingerbread Houses as one of my family's Christmas traditions.  I love this tradition, and I felt that it was important to carry on.  However, I don't like Gingerbread, and I always feel like it is a waste of yummy candy.  So, this year I decided to change it up a little, and I loved the change...at least for this year while we are home alone.  We decided to make sugar cookies and decorate them.  Emerson gets to choose one out at night and eat it.  He was smart when he was making his because he piled on that candy.  Who cares about the design anyway when there is candy to be had, right? 

 Here is Emerson's finished product.

 This is all of our houses.  Now, I am excited to get to eat mine...

We also decorated different shapes.  Can you tell which ones Emerson did?



Merry Christmas

Pie in a Jar

For our Christmas RS Party, we decided to give little pies in a jar to each sister.  They turned out so cute.  I had my sister Emily design the instructions and make cute little labels.  I love how they turned out.  (We found the idea for these at Our Best Bites...which, by the way, everything that I have made from here has been amazing!)

Here is how we set them out.  I think they are all super cute stacked up like a Christmas tree (I did finish it, but it looked like it was going to fall, so just a Christmas tree with it's top cut off.) 

I also had Emily make this cute recipe card with the instructions on how to make your own pie in a jar. 

Thanks Emily for all your designing on this.  You are the best!

Prayer Works

The other night, Emerson had his first ear infection.  He was also running a high fever.  We decided that we should get him some medicine.  So, we went to get it and it wasn't there.  We preceded to look every where for it.  Then I had Emerson say a little sweet prayer asking to find the medicine and to get better.  About a minute later, Jason came down with the medicine.  We had been looking for red on the container, but forgot that the last one we bought was a generic brand that was just white.  I actually looked at the bottle a couple of times while looking, but it just didn't look like what I was looking for.  This was one of those tender moments that just make me believe that prayer works.

Christmas Stockings

I have been working hard on some new stockings for us this year.  I decided that it was about time that Emerson had one.  I loved how they turned out.  I just made up my own pattern and I love that they actually worked and turned out cute (that is after a couple of failed trail runs).  

All about the E.Roy.

Emerson is changing all the time.  I can't believe how fast he learns, grows, and changes.  I am LOVING all the little things that he is doing right now.  Yes, he does have his hard moments, but for now here are some of the moments that make me love him more and more everyday.

• Starting to say Absolutely "As-a-lup-lee"
• At some point during every meal he says "MMMM....delicious! Thats yummy."
• Loves to read his letters...EVERYWHERE! He has mastered his uppercase. Now he is starting to learn lower case and sounds.
• Every time we go under an underpass, he yells out "Time Tunnel" (from the show Dinosaur Train.)
• Starting to say his own prayers. And he loves to emphasize "AMEN".
• All of the sudden he loves taking pictures.
• During dinner, he will take the knife and pretent to cut with it and when he is finished he exclaims "I cook mommy!"
• Shouts “I did it” whenever he finishes as task. 
• Sings “Ring around the Rosies”, “Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree”, “Itsy Bitsy Spider”, and “Row, Row, Row, your Boat” all by himself.
• Makes up songs. And loves to sing at the top of his lungs.
• Wakes Mommy up by saying “Hi mommy. It's Reson (Emerson). Wake Up. Open you eyes.”
• When we lock our door, he knocks on the door and yells “Open the door Daddy. IT'S RESON!”
• Loves seeing fire trucks and mail trucks.
• It getting an awesome imagination. He loves to feed us pretend food all day long.
• Loves reading books. He will sit and “read” them to himself. His favorite one at the moment is a random one that Jason grabbed from the library called “Crunch Munch”.
• Is really good at cleaning up his toys (after making a terrible mess).
• LOVES money. We bought him a piggy bank, and now he will do anything for “moneys” to put in it.
• He has replaced “evermore” with “After later”.
• While sitting in the same room as us, he says “1-2-3. Here I come. Boo! I scared you.”
• Loves to play “I've got your nose”, but with every body part.
• Loves water slides. (I think that he dreams about them because it is frequently the first thing he talks about when he wakes up.)
• When playing hide and go seek, he counts and then says, “Here goes nothing!”

Remember.

Remember back in February when I won a giveaway for The Vintage Pearl?  I finally got around to ordering them.  I was wanting to wait in case I got pregnant this year, but since that isn't happening yet, I decided to just collect my winnings.  I was able to get two necklaces (I did have to pay some), and I couldn't be happier with them.  I just love them!

I guess I could have been slightly happier with Emerson's if it could have fit his whole name in the font I like.  But I still love it just the same.

Take Pictures...PLEASE!

Emerson is discovering that pictures can be fun.  He has started to ask for me to take pictures of him.  They start of all sweet and cute.

Then they most definately turn into a funny face session.  I love how he poses for pictures and will hold a funny face until I tell him I have a good one.

 (I LOVELOVELOVE this next one. I love that smile even though it is one of his "funny faces".)

Then he turns it into a take pictures of my toy session and that is when I am about done.

How, you ask, that I am able to get good pictures of this sweet boy and why he wants to have pictures taken of him?  It might be something about this hippo that I made this week to put on my lens.  My sister found someone that makes them and told me about it.  But I wanted to see if I can make my own.  So when I was recovering from surgery, I decided to try it out.  Out of the two that I made, one is really cute and one is horrible terrible, and they are definately not as cute as the girls that I am copying.  However, no matter how ugly, it still keeps attention at the camera for more than a second and with that I am happy.  I am going to make more, so we can switch them up and keep his attention longer. 

Surgery

Jason and I have been trying to have a baby for over two years.  After doing all the clomid and IUI's that my doctor would allow for the time being we had to make a decision on what to do next.  Our options were: adoption, surgeries, wait, or IVF.  I didn't want to give up trying just yet, but we didn't feel right about IVF, so we decided to do the surgeries. 

Jason's surgery was a Varicocelectimy.  It was done in September and he is still healing from it.  We won't know if it worked until the middle of December or later. 

My surgery was last Friday (November 12th).  I actually had two separate surgeries that day. They were a Laparoscopy and a Histeroscopy.

During the Laparoscopy, they will cut me open and look at my uterus's outside.  This was to see if there were any problems, such as endometriosis or scar tissues that can be preventing me from getting pregnant. It turned out that I didn't have any of those problems.  They also drilled little holes into my ovaries to help drain the many cysts that are there.

In the Histeroscopy, they looked inside my uterus to see if there were any problems in there and fix them. There was not.  They also put dye through my tubes and that was successful.  Both open!

I am recovering very nicely.  I am in very little pain and have little soreness now.  So things are good.   I should be fully recovered soon.  Hopefully between both of these surgeries, we will have a little more hope of having another baby near in the future.

Great Wall of China

 While Jason was in China last month, he had a couple of extra days to get to do some sight seeing.  So he took advantage of it to get to do some cool things that he probably will never be able to do again.  The first thing that he did was go and see the Terracotta Warriors.  Then when he went to Beijing, he took the trip out to the Great Wall of China.  He was the only one in his group that went the whole distance that was open. 

Out of this World Halloween

 Happy Halloween!

from our little Rocket Ship.

 3-2-1-Blast off!!! 

Off we go trick or treating!

Outside=Pictures

Emerson wanted me to go outside with him, and when he asked he just looked so sweet that I told him I would if he would let me take pictures.  So, out came the camera and the funny faces.

When I ask Emerson how old he is he says two, but this is how he puts his hands.  He just can't make his hands into a two.

Toward the end, Emerson wanted me to take a picture of his bum, so I did.  Just for him.

I had my camera out again taking some pictures and Emerson just had to have his spotlight in the camera.  I just LOVE these pictures.  Especially the last one.  Classic Emerson.

We have been throught two phases of pictures lately: the all behind and the no smile all funny faces.  I think I like the funny faces more, it is showing his personality with is pretty hilarious.