Emma's Reading!

Emma loves books, so it wasn't all that surprising when she started memorizing parts of her favorites. However, we were thrilled when she picked up "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See" and "read" it cover to cover!

Fun with Friend Maci!

Todd, Emma and I got together with friends from church for a game night. Their daughter Maci is just 5 months younger than Emma, so they get along well. However, they were more interested in playing with their new Christmas toys, swiping our game pieces, and eating than in interacting with each other. Right before we left, the girls finally decided to play together by chasing each other back and forth!

Christmas!

After all of our holiday travels, it was nice to be home for Christmas! Emma slept until 11 AM!!! (We certainly don't expect a repeat of that on Christmas again until she's about 15!) We still had plenty of time to open gifts from Santa. Emma's main gift was a kitchen, which she loved and begs us every chance she gets to "pway kitchen"! My family came around 2, and with everybody chipping in, we had a nice ham dinner (not something we could have pulled off by ourselves after several days out of town). Emma also enjoyed the cake she'd asked for, and we all sang happy birthday to baby Jesus!

The Grand Tour of Ohio

We have a lot of family spread out across Ohio, and each year we attempt to see them all. This year we went to Toledo first to visit Todd's family from the 21st to the 24th. While we were there, we saw some of Todd's extended family as well, including his aunt and uncle from North Carolina and his cousin who is studying in Texas. We also took in the zoo lights and Children's Wonderland, a beautiful display of animated Christmas characters. In this picture Emma's checking out Cindy Lou Who from "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" (who, appropriately, is "no more than two" and sports pigtails suspiciously like Emma's)! Emma got to ride the Christmas train and play in a "toddlers only" inflatable fort at the Wonderland place as well. We headed to Mansfield on Christmas Eve for a visit with Papa Isch's family. So Emma wouldn't miss Santa, we arrived home around midnight Christmas Eve. Luckily Emma handled the travel and gatherings well. In fact, she seemed to enjoy the extra attention and even warmed up to family members she hadn't seen in a while!