Christmas Pageant

Okay, so I am trying to catch up and I imagine that my next few posts might be quite out of chronological order - but I am just going to go along as I get the time, so bear with me.


Emily's school/daycare does a Christmas pageant every year and all of the kids, from the infants to the big kids have a chance to perform on stage. Usually the babies go with the small toddlers and they sit in bouncy chairs or are held by the teachers. The younger kids really don't perform much at all, in fact some of them cry their way through the performance, but nevertheless, us parents get a big kick out of seeing them up there. The pageant is at a local middle school each year. This is Emily's second year in the pageant.


I'm telling you, the moment that I see her hit that stage, I just start bawling, don't ask me why - so I am usually standing up near the stage crying my eyes out and snapping pictures at a furious rate. Last year, I had my video camera and my regular camera - that was quite a struggle. This year, they hired a videographer, so I bought the video and just had my regular camera to contend with.


Emily's class sang two songs, Jingle Bells and for the life of me, I can't remember the other one - I will have to watch the video. Well, anyway, here are some photos for you to enjoy....





















Here are Emily and Caleb posing in front of our little Christmas tree before the performance. I didn't put up a big tree this year since we were going to be leaving town to visit family for the holidays.














Here they are when they first came out on stage. Emily could see me up front taking pictures, so she started crying and screaming Mommy - so while I was trying to take pictures, I was also kind of bouncing up and down and making happy faces to try to get her to stop crying.














Here she is looking a bit happier and ringing her bells. Isn't that sweater adorable? I got it on sale at Macy's. She wore it again on Christmas Eve. It was just perfect for the pageant. I know you can't see it in the pictures, but the pants that came with the sweater had pink sparkles in them - so cute.














Whew, there she is finally smiling and having a good time on stage.














Here is the whole school (minus a few crying babies that had to be returned to their parents) singing "We Wish You A Merry Christmas".

No, I Actually Have Not Fallen Off the Face of the Earth

Well, yes I am still here. So sorry to be absent - the holidays were quite crazy and event filled. But as I promised, I do have photographs of the Thanksgiving platter and the Christmas platter to post. Actually, as a little back story to the Thanksgiving platter, Jeanean called me on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to let me know that they had opened the kiln to find my precious platter broken in half. I was a bit disappointed because I was planning on using the platter on Thanksgiving day, but oh well, things happen.

Of course, Jeanean was ready with several solutions to include offering to have her artist repaint the whole thing for me. But to me, the important part was the painting it myself, so she came to my house with all the materials and printed the kids again and then left the plate with all the brushes and supplies that I would need to complete it. Caleb and I did go over there the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and paint the Christmas plate and it turned out wonderful. In fact, when I saw the Christmas platter with the clean white background as opposed to the sponging I had done on the Thanksgiving platter, I decided that on my Thanksgiving redo I would leave the sponging off - so all in all, I think everything turned out for the best. So here they are, the debut of my Christmas and Thanksgiving platters......

Footprints, Handprints and Turkey Plates

A few weeks ago, my girlfriend and I both had a combined birthday party. All of our girlfriends came over and we painted pottery. It was tons of fun and so neat that this company came to our house with the pottery and all the supplies. Then they took everything home, fired it and had it ready in just a couple of days!!

Actually, the company is owned by the nurse midwife that followed my pregnancy with Emily. She didn't get to deliver Emily since Emily was a c-section baby, but she stood right there in the operating room with me while Emily was delivered. She was quite honestly a godsend because I was a nervous wreck about moving to Texas and having a new doctor after losing baby Kyle in my last pregnancy. In our first meeting, I sat in her office crying my eyes out, and she sat right there with me handing me tissues and just listening. God definitely sent me an angel when he led me to her office.

Well, anyway - she moved to a new practice after Emily was born, so when I needed to go for my next check-up, I had to Google her and found both her new practice and her pottery business. So anyway, I guess that is the long way around telling you about Jeanean and Firehouse Pottery. She and her husband run the business out of their home, so I decided to take the kids and make two big turkey platters, one with a Christmas theme and one with a Thanksgiving theme.

We went over to Jeanean's on Thursday this week and commenced the projects. Both platters use the kids handprints and/or footprints to make the design. The turkey on the Thanksgiving plate is made up of Caleb's foot and Emily's hand. The Christmas plate is going to be two Christmas trees, each made of footprints - one of Caleb and one of Emily. We went ahead and did the printing on the Christmas plate, but I will have to go back and finish that one soon as the Thanksgiving plate took a couple of hours to paint.

The kids did great doing their prints. Caleb went first and Emily was very impatient - jumping up and down the whole time and telling us "it's my turn, it's my turn". Here they are getting printed.

Caleb had his footprint for the body of the turkey in brown and then the green footprint for the Christmas tree. Emily went next with her hand for part of the turkey feathers in red and then the other Christmas tree with her foot in green.

My husband was sweet enough to take Emily after the printing and go home, leaving Caleb and I there to paint. Any of you with a toddler would know that having an almost two year old running around in a room full of breakable pottery would be a recipe for disaster.

Caleb chose to paint a VW Beetle while I worked on my plate. We had a great time and we can't wait to go back and pick up our finished projects once they are fired. All in all, a successful mother son outing. Here we are with our finished projects. Just keep in mind that the colors will look very different (and better) after firing. I will post photos of the finished products once we pick them up.

Well, I am off to pack for my road trip with the girls to Houston to see Madonna in concert...I'm sure I'll have a post for that early next week. Until then....

Lay Down, Allergy Shots, Tortilla Pizzas, Haircuts and Other Stuff

So I was pulling my hair up today whilst getting ready for work, and I noticed that one side was longer than the other - I started pulling it back a new way this weekend and the discrepancy in length was definitely noticable and disturbing. So I got to work and asked two of my co-workers about the length. Both said it really wasn't that noticeable and was probably caused by pulling the longest part of the hair on one side back, but I was having none of that. I had one of those cuts where it is shorter in the back and comes to point on both sides in the front. In retrospect, my face is really too full for that cut and somebody should have told me long ago, but oh well, the problem has now been corrected.


I promptly picked up the phone and made an appointment at a new salon for a haircut. I love it when Bob is around and I have something to do after work because that means I can have a good excuse to have him pick up the kids - so I e-mailed him, and not only did I make the deal for him to pick up the kids, but I also finagled a meal by master pizza chef Bob. He makes delicious tortilla pizzas. We go to the local Kroger that has a tortillaria (we are in Texas you know). He gets the fresh just baked tortillas and then prepares all of the toppings and we all come in the kitchen and make our own personal pizzas - yum, yum.



So anyway - I went to the salon, got a fresh new cut - I'll post pictures another day - not many pictures of me get taken because I am always behind the camera. When I got home, Bob was working in earnest on getting all of the ingredients out for the pizzas. We made pizzas, cooked and ate. Then I cleaned the kitchen while he finished eating his pizza and gave Emily a bath.


Later, I was in the kitchen giving Bob his allergy shots (no I am not a nurse, but if I don't do it, he puts them in his stomach - the sight of which stresses me out - so I have become shot administrator)....okay back to the story - I am giving the shots and it is eerily quiet. I had given Emily her sippy cup of milk before starting the shot administration, but she had wandered off to parts unknown and was not making any noise. This phenomenon is always sure to strike panic in the heart of a toddler's parent...so I started looking for her.



I peeked around the corner into our bedroom and this is what I found...

Emily had placed her sippy cup on the coaster on my nightstand and she was just laying in my bed quiet as a church mouse watching television. I had to turn on the light and get closer to take the picture, so she starts patting the spot next to her, which is technically my side of the bed, and tells me to "lay down" - How Cute!! Of course, Bob leans over and tells me that this is a sure sign that she has decided to take over our room and our bed - I wondered for a moment if we actually were in the jungle and if Emily had become the Alpha Lion, but then I just shrugged that thought off and took more photos - Bob can be so silly sometimes.

"Lay down" has become one of Emily's favorite commands for both humans and Maisy alike. Another favorite is "get up" which comes out sounding like "gee up". She likes to use that one when I am in my office typing on my computer - translation, come out here and read to me or look at me while I play dolls or dance. Another favorite is "sit down" which comes out sounding like "see down". She uses this one to lure me into a chair so that she can crawl in my lap and give me a book to read to her.

Well just a little peek into our day. Now I had better run and "lay down" - good night.

Well, here we go...

Okay, so I have gotten more and more into this blog thing - it started with a cousin - I would keep up with her and her family by reading her blog - I'm telling you, sometimes it's like a novel that you can't put down. Now I found an old college friend and was reading through her blog - so I made a decision - I will have a blog of my own. I can't promise how successful I will be - I mean I already have a full time job, two kids, a husband and a dog - but I am going to give it a whirl. I know that my parents will enjoy it since they live almost a thousand miles away. No big promises here, we will just see how it goes.




So I guess let me start with the introductions - I am Elizabeth - mother to two wonderful kids, a newly acquired miniature schnauzer puppy and wife to Bob. We live north of Dallas, Texas - we are Texas transplants, originally from Georgia - both of us military brats. But I will say that Texas is the most like home I have ever felt aside from my college days spent in the North Georgia mountains. I am an examiner for an insurance company - same employer for almost 14 years - straight out of college and I have never looked back - why mess with a good thing I say. I love to scrapbook and stamp (when I can find the time). Of course, that naturally leads to one of my other hobbies - photography. I also love to read and generally keep everyone in the house in line and semi-organized. And I have a super group of girlfriends - you can't have too many good girlfriends in my opinion - I'm sure you will hear more about them as this blog goes along. Oh, and one more thing - I love football - the Dallas Cowboys and the Alabama Crimson Tide.





There is my husband Bob - he is 10 years my senior and has two kids from a previous marriage, Leia and Chris - Leia is 21 and Chris is 19. I believe Chris is still trying to find his path in life - Leia goes to college off an on - more off than on for my taste - but that's another subject. They both live in Georgia. Anyway, back to Bob - he finished college and went straight into the restaurant industry - that has been his home for the last almost 24 years. We met in the gym, back when I was in shape - our first date was to the 1996 Olympics - he took me to a soccer match and lost the car - another subject for a later post. I will say it was pretty close to love at first sight for me, and I am still smitten. We had just shy of two whirlwind years of dating and married in 1998. Now here we are ten years later and we still love each other (most of the time anyway).

Our first child is Caleb - he's almost eight, in the second grade and plays every sport you can name. He loves football, basketball and baseball. We gave soccer a spin, but I don't really think he got caught in the current soccer craze. He just finished his first year of tackle football, is signed up and getting ready to start basketball practice and we will be registering for baseball in a couple of weeks - - - whew!!! He is a sweet boy - and very loveable. I am sure you will get to know him more and more as this blog goes on.

My second born is Kyle - he was full term and stillborn - I went into labor and at some point during that process, his heart stopped beating - so we say he was born an angel. I knew him only in my belly and wish so badly that I could have known him on earth, but God had other plans. I can't say that I understand those plans, even sitting here a little over three years later, but I have made peace with it.

My third (and last) child is Emily - she is a spitfire - words cannot describe her. She is almost two and most decidedly, the boss. I don't know what else to say. She loves to dance and she is very pleased at our recent puppy acquisition, for now there is someone in the house smaller than her that she can boss around - and boy does she? She is prone to tantrums, loves to wipe her nose, is obsessed with shoes and purses, and smiles endlessly.

The final member of the household is Maisy Daisy, the aforementioned Schnauzer that Emily is so fond of bossing around. We are still working on housebreaking and today I discovered that she does not like to go outside to use the restroom in the rain - much to my chagrin at 5:45 a.m., but she is really a sweetheart and I think she is going to make an awesome addition to the family.

So I guess that completes the introductions. I guess now all that is left is the frequent (hopefully) posts filled with news and adventures from our little corner of the world. I hope you enjoy, and maybe I can make some new friends along the way.