Visiting Santa

We having been asking Emma if she wanted to go see Santa for about two weeks. She always shakes her head "no". Well last week she went to hang out with Tay Tay for a little bit and she thought Emma what Santa says "Ho Ho Ho". We finally decided that we would take her to see Santa and see what she did. On Tuesday I had Bradley take me to the office for a little bit and then Granddaddy went to the mall with us for our Santa trip and to ride the horses (The Carousel).

I was very hopeful when we got to see Santa. Emma was very interested in him and was even waving at Santa while we waited in line. She couldn't even look at the camera-she was too consumed with the jolly ole man!
As soon as Bradley put her on Santa's lap she lost it! She was no longer impressed with Santa and screamed until we took her off.
After the traumatic Santa experience we went to ride the Carousel. She liked the horses that were stationary compared to the ones that moved up and down. Overall, we had a great afternoon, made some fun memories and it was a great way to get my mind off of my upcoming surgery.


We came home for the hospital yesterday morning-I ended up staying over Wednesday night. I really don't see how people could go home the same day from that! I am feeling pretty good but still have some soreness (nothing some medicine can't fix!). Bradley has been a really troobper through this-he is really having to take care of two people-I can't pick up Emma so he has to do everything for her and right now is still pretty much waiting on me also.

Copy Cat

Emma has been in a real copy cat stage lately. The other day she came to me and wanted to her phone in her pocket. She walked around like this for quite a while. I can only assume she is copying granddaddy since he wears his phone on his side.

And don't ask me where she got this love of vacuuming?

Craziness

Well everyone knows that this time of year is so crazy. I have been busy with sewing and getting ready for Christmas. For some unknown reason I have done really well with preparing for Christmas early this year. Well, I guess this preparedness is going to pay off because I am now having surgery on Wednesday-crazy I know. I woke up around midnight with what I thought was horrible indigestion. I mean my stomach felt like it was in knots. Finally at around 5:30 am I decided that I couldn't take it any more and I needed to go to the ER-this was after failed Pepcid and pain medicine-I don't like go to the doctor, much less spending a lot of money at the ER!
Well after a few hours at the ER, pain meds and ultrasounds to look at my liver and gallbladder it was determined that my gallbladder is coming out! So 8am on Wednesday I will be having my first surgery-unless you count wisdom teeth, which I don't really count. I got to come home until Wednesday so I am spending time resting (sleeping b/c of the pain meds)and I figured I would update the blog. I have some pictures of Emma that I need to upload so I will probably do that tomorrow.
So when I got home this afternoon I figured I should try to finish as much Christmas stuff as possible. Let me just tell you-I think I am almost down with my Christmas shopping because of the internet. I ordered items from esty, Kodak Gallery and other various sites. I also tried to run most of my purchases through ebates.com. Does anyone else use ebates? I love it! All you have to do is start your shopping on www.ebates.com and search your stores from there. The sites will keep track of your purchases and give you money back from online shopping. Every quarter they deposit my cash back into my paypal account(they can mail you a check also)and it is yours to spend. So you are getting paid to shop! I already have over $50 built up in my account for this quarter.
Another one of my favorite websites is not for Christmas gifts but for my ease! Diapers.com is seriously the easiest website every! I don't think I have bought diapers at the store in months. I order a jumbo box of diapers once a month. You get free shipping if your order is over $49.00 and it shows up at your door in 2 days-that is so fast. If you haven't ever ordered from www.diapers.com before you can use the code EISONFAM on your first order and get $10.00 off. Oh, and an added bonus-go to ebates first and then go to diapers.com-right now ebates is offering up to 6% cash back on the diapers.com site.
Well there you have it-a surgery announcement with some rambling about my Internet sites. Can you tell the pain meds are kicking in?

Honesty...in 5 minutes, ok maybe 10 minutes

So a few days ago Mary K gave me an award. An honesty award...here is what I have to do:

1. Must thank the person who gave you the award and list their blog and link it.

2. Share "10 Honest things" about yourself.

3. Present this award to 7 others whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged you.

4. Tell those 7 people they've been awarded HONEST SCRAP and inform them of these guidelines in receiving the award.

I started this long post last Friday about honest things in my life. I think I got too much into the post and it turned into a paper...with no pictures-no one likes that. So, I have decided to try and write what will pop in my head in the next 5 minutes:

1. Why five minutes? Well, it is lunch time and that is all I have time for!

2. I just had fried chicken for lunch. It was oh so good-but really fattening! But probably not as fattening since I didn't eat the biscuit, right?

3. Just as I took my first bite of lunch, Emma woke up from her nap. Will someone inform her of eating times? I left her playing in her pack n play-she was making happy sounds so it is alright.

4. She is still in there as I am typing. In fact she might have went back to sleep because I don't hear her.

5. The other day we think-Bradley is sure-that he heard Emma say "shut up". She is really in a copy stage. He told the dogs to shut up when they were barking at the door and she repeated. Oh, fun!

6. I can't remember what time it was when I started this post so now I don't know when my 5 minutes is up.

7. We still don't have New Year's Plans yet. Last year we played Monopoly...sounding better and better as the day goes by!

8. Looks like Emma didn't go back to sleep-now I hear her on the monitor asking for dada. Guess it is time to go get her and feed her that Lunchable-wow, what a healthy meal!

Ok, so those weren't 10 things but some thoughts that popped into my head. I wanted to at least try to fulfill Mary K's award qualifications. I am going to skip on the nominations. Mary K stole mine!

Oh yeah, it is 1:30 and my child is still in her pajamas...wonderful!

Camera Problems

I have been having some technical difficulties lately. Every time I plugged my camera up, the computer did not recognize it. I worked on it this weekend but couldn't figure it out. Finally, I had to download some service pack update and now it just magically works!
Needless to say, I had a lot of pictures built up on my camera.
I did a lot of sewing this weekend. Luckily I had a "helper"
She helped me by modeling
Oh and I always needed some organization tips from an 18 month old

and just what you always wanted...one of those ball popper things in your work room

Finally I think she got tired of helping and decided to just sit and talk for a while.

I really don't have anything to say about these next pictures, except I thought they were funny.

One of our new favorites at work. Emma loves to use The Shark Vacuum! I think she probably played with this for about 10 minutes. I hope this means that she is going to love the play vacuum that I got her for Christmas. I think my goal is to teach her how to really vacuum early!

Told you she loved it!!!

I am about to go to bed but I will work on getting better about blogging.

Mary K, I got your award message and I am working on it. I haven't fogotten.

Thanksgiving Weekend-through the eyes of the iPhone

Well I went off and left my camera at my grandmother's on Thanksgiving. I wanted to do a post-since I have been lacking lately and all I have was some of these pictures on my phone. But put a few phone pictures together and I think it might make a pretty good post!

We headed over to Arkansas last Wednesday afternoon. Of course before we started the car someone needed to have all of her babies in her seat with her. You might not be able to tell but there are three babies in that carseat with her.
After the cooler was emptied and the food was cooking Thursday morning someone found an alternate use for the cooler. She thought it made a great wagon type seating for watching some cartoons.
I would love to tell you that Emma enjoyed all of the different foods that Thanksgiving had to offer but that was not the case. Her Thanksgiving food consisted of apples and plain pasta noodles. We timed her nap pretty good so that she slept while we ate lunch-it made for a relaxing meal-it is not often that we get the sit at a meal and not worry about someone else!

We headed home late Thursday afternoon to get ready for a weekend of some relaxing and some working on the house. My sister and I did some shopping on Friday. We did not get out early, more like lunch time, but I did score a good deal at Target on a portable DVD player-I even got the last one they had!!
In fact, we were so tired and just wanted to chill on Sunday that we let Emma go ahead and watch a movie on the player. Don't worry-I don't think in a month that she will remember she has already seen that present.
Why oh why were we so tired by Sunday? Well it might have something to do with Bradley and Gaines installing a new toilet on Saturday (sorry, no pics of that) or that Courtney and I painted our front door while the boys were working. Or it could be that Emma woke up everyday of our Thanksgiving break at 6:45am! Can someone please tell my child about sleeping in just a bit on the weekend? I would be happy with 7:30ish! Oh and then the little stinker was still asleep this morning at 7:15-the morning I had to get up.
My new front door. I was happy with how the color turned out. Courtney and I were very worried at first-it was looking really pinkish to begin with. But after 5 to 6 coats the color is correct and I am very happy with it! We were so lucky to have Courtney and Gaines help us out. After our work we enjoyed steaks and some Phase 10.

What else might you do if you get up at early every day or your break-decorate your tree of course! Emma is a little curious about the tree and I have had to move 1 ornament but overall I think she is doing well. I wrapped a few presents and she hasn't touched them at all. I am not sure she has even realized they are there yet.

I also got some sewing done this weekend. I have a lot of Christmas orders and I need to be shipping something out every day. Thanks to anyone that has ordered-your orders are coming and I appreciate you patience.

I should be getting my camera back tomorrow so be on the lookout for more pictures.

Fur Babies-Lilah and Cassie

This week at Kelly's Korner we are talking all about our pets. I thought this would be a great week to jump back into her blog forum and a good opportunity to introduce the other members of our family!
Delilah was our first baby. Bradley got her for me in July of 2003-right after I graduated college. I can always remember when I got Delilah because the first few days I had her Memphis experience crazy straight line winds that knocked out power to most of the city for weeks. I was standing outside urging Delilah to go to the bathroom before the storm started. By the time she had went and I got back inside to get ready to go to work, the power went out and I couldn't get my car out of the garage. I lucked out by staying in my house during the storm-instead of being out on the road!
I wish I had some puppy pictures of Delilah-I can't find any on my computer.

Delilah remained an only dog until after we got married in 2006. In July of that year we decided we needed two dogs! So Bradley went a got us a Golden Retriever. Now I love Delilah, but Cassidy has been one of the best dogs I could ever ask for-especially with a baby! Besides the shedding-I don't have a complaint about her.
And I will say she was an adorable puppy!

She quickly outgrew Delilah and now is not so much of a puppy anyone. However, she still thinks she only weighs 5 pounds and is meant to be a lap dog. She sleeps on the end of our bed every night with no regards to her being so big that it is actually like adding a whole other person to our bed.

And just because I thought it was only fair that each dog get at least one picture of just them I had to add a picture of Cassidy doing what she loves-playing in the water.
I thought I would take this chance while I am talking about our dogs to talk about a cause very close to our hearts, The Memphis Area Golden Retriever Rescue. Before we had Emma we very much enjoyed fostering Golden Retrievers in our home. These were dogs that had been abandoned and where waiting to find a forever home. We had 10 dogs go through our house in a year and being a foster totally opened my eyes to the land of rescue dogs. All of these dogs were just looking for someone to love them and that they could love back. I can without a doubt say that our next dog will come from a rescue group! If you are considering adding an animal to your family please considering adopting from a rescue. If you want more info please look in your local area for rescue groups or email me and I can tell you more about rescue.

Below is Cassidy chilling with one of our fosters. For us, one of the best parts about being a foster was that Cassidy always had someone to play with. We will return to the foster program sometime, we just took a break when we had the baby.

So yes, the baby! The dogs did great when we brought her home. They were kinda curious but honestly, I think they were just happy to have us back in the house when being gone at the hospital.
I do think the first few weeks and lack of sleep took their toll on Cassidy as well!

and just because there was a new baby Delilah was not giving up her spot in the chair.
Now that Emma is a toddler she is really enjoying the dogs. I have witnesses many games of chase between Emma and Cassidy. Delilah does not enjoy playing with Emma like Cassidy does but she tolerates the "pets" from her.

Oh and until further notice Emma has changed their names-"Lilah" and "Cassie" are now shouted quite frequently at our house!