Emily picked to swim for her birthday party. She also picked her party theme to be a Snow Princess party. To be a Snow Princess she got a special blue dress with pom-poms sewn on to make it ‘princess-y’.

We went to a local heated pool to have her party. We started off with some running around a gym, followed by decorating princess shoes with gems (Aiden got a frog to decorate), then lunch of pizza and cupcakes, and lastly all the swimming the little ones could handle. Emily had a lot of fun at her party. She is already planning her next one.

The birthday girl – she was having a good time despite the serious face.

A little pre-party game of tag. They do not understand the game and just had fun running away from Ms. Rachelle.

Craft time

Emily was serious about her shoe decorating. She had been planning for days which shoe she wanted to decorate.

Julia took her gluing seriously. She spread it all over her shoe like she was icing a cake.

The frog turned out pretty cute!

Our table of goodies

Emily enjoyed a lot of freedom in the pool because she was willing to kick herself around on the kickboard. She seemed to have the hang of the kickboard more this day than she has before.

Julia was pretty busy in the pool. Every time the camera came out she seemed to be turning her back to it. She had a great time just playing.

Aiden and his Mama – what a great photo. They both have great grins.

Elena floating on her own

Maeve’s eyes seem to always have such a sparkle

The little girls floating and having a great time together. It is nice to have friends.

Oh Julia, how you make Mama laugh! When you went to bed last night you wanted to lay on top of all of your blankets. It is January and chilly, so Mama figured when you got cold you would just climb underneath to warm up. This is not what you did. You got up and found the pile of play blankets and drug three of them to your bedside and wrapped yourself up in one of them. Also with the blankets looked to be the clothes you had selected for yourself to wear the following day. Mama came in to check on you after you fell asleep and chuckled as she covered you with another play blanket to be sure you would be warm all night. Mama hopes your dreams were good ones, with your morning organized and your body toasty.

Emily’s birthday fell on a Sunday this year which made one of the activities for the day going to church. Afterwards we went to lunch with Grammy, Granddaddy, and Mr. Joseph. Emily picked Chinese to eat so we went to PF Chang’s for dinner. She was a bit excited and had trouble focusing much on her dinner. Not to worry, we took home the leftovers which she demolished the next day for lunch. After dinner we went home and ate cake and opened gifts. The rest of the day was spent playing with the different new toys.

On Thursday when we went to Thursday school, Ashley brought cupcakes for both girls to share with their class. Everyone seemed to enjoy their little cupcakes. I love Emily’s cheesy grin!

Emily has been looking forward to this birthday a lot! She asked for a Snow Princess themed party and has a blue snow princess dress for the occasion. She asked to go swimming for her party too, but as long as she gets to play with her friends she will be happy with any activity.

Emily is our fun loving, active, princess-crazed, prone to emotional outbursts daughter. She is starting to make wonderfully fun comments about the world around her and it is enjoyable to interact with those comments. She also doesn’t miss much of what is going on and secrets are tough, but still possible.

Julia is her favorite playmate in the world. They will play Rapunzel and take turns playing different characters. The new bunk beds make for a wonderful tower in this play. The girls also still love to run the circle of our house; although, Emily is quite certain she wants to win and makes them into races. They also pretend to play that one is the Mama and the other the baby and then take care of each other. Emily loves her sister and enjoys introducing her and finishing her sentences.

Emily is pretty content to play by herself too. Emily loves to take the doll dress-up clothes and dress all of her favorite stuffed animals in the different clothes whether or not the size is quite right. She will drag all of her bedding around the house setting up new places for house. She has taken to building campfires from the building blocks and inviting her stuffed friends to come for camp-outs.

Some of the fun or funny things she is often found to talk about are: her surprise (not-so surprise) birthday party that we are going to throw for her, her future plans for running a hotel and all the detail that are going into its design and management, fascination with different ballet stories and the different variations of the stories.

Some of her other favorites are:

• favorite color – blue
• favorite princess – Cinderella
• favorite food – peanut butter sandwich & sweet and sour chicken (not together)
• favorite place to go out to eat – Chinese
• favorite activity – dressing up like a princess
• favorite clothes to wear – dresses
• favorite blanket – her "baby mouse" blanket that she has had since birth. Thank goodness Mama’s aunt made it big and she can still fit under it although it is starting to get thin now.
• favorite thing to draw – princess’s dresses
• favorite craft activities – coloring and scissor practice
• favorite playmate – Julia (although she would tell you it was Elena)
• favorite person to pester – Julia
• favorite music to sleep to – Baby Einstein – Lullaby Classics
• favorite music to dance around the house to – the Nutcracker
• favorite new discovery – that there is a place called Disney World near Aunt Jolie’s house where Cinderella’s castle is. She is advocating starting a savings fund, so we can go and visit the park.

We planned a family trip to visit the Aquarium in Gatlinburg while Daddy had some time off. As life does not always go to plan, he was sick and unable to join us girls on the trip. We went on and made the most of our day without Daddy. The girls took naps in the car on the way. After they woke up, we ventured inside to see all the fish.

Emily was very intent on getting down to an interactive area and hardly looked at the fish exhibits on the way. Julia seemed interested in looking at most things for a few minutes each. Once we got to the lower level, the girls chose to ride through the sea tunnel and watch the fish. The moving floor was a huge hit with the girls. Both girls seemed to really watch the different fish and sharks around us.

Then the girls played in the interactive area for quite a while. They were very busy and just turned knobs, flipped switches, slid windows, and ducked in and out of a dark room to their hearts content. In the past we have visited and attended a preschool program, and Emily was curious why we weren’t seeing Jessica and doing a craft.

When we were finally done in the play area, we ventured into a new part of the exhibit about sharks. And then caught a ray feeding while we had a snack. After the excitement of the play area, the girls were most looking forward to seeing the penguin habitat. They have several tunnels to crawl thru and observe the penguins. The girls were a bit disappointed to find the penguins not active and hanging out in the warmer room of the habitat. The idea that it was near the penguin’s bedtime was too hard for them to grasp.

The last treat of the aquarium was Mama allowing the girls stay in the gift shop for a long time checking out all the fun trinkets and books. Normally the stay in the shop is brief, but for a treat we stayed a bit longer.

We went out for dinner on the way home and enjoyed warm bread with dipping oil and pasta. The only thing that could have made the day more perfect was to have Daddy with us. We decided that in about a month we might try the day visit again taking him with us.

Chris the scuba-diver and fish feeder. When he ran out of food to feed the fish he did a few tricks to entertain us. We caught two of his feedings, one with the Rays and the other in the Reef tank.

Emily checking out the penguin habitat. They loved climbing thru the tunnel.

The girls checking out a shark overhead. They found a lot of sharks to watch in this tank.

Julia peeking up at the penguin habitat. I think she was as excited to be able to look back and see Mama as to see the penguins.

Julia is our transportation girl. If there is a train or plane near us, she is pointing it out to us. On our last day at Dollywood, she found a helicopter in the sky over the park. After pointing it out to Mama, Mama thought it would be a good idea to let her practice saying the word. I said it slowly, in my own southern accent, and broken into syllables “say He-lo-cop-ter”. Did she repeat the word? No, she turned and looked back up at it and waved. She had heard me tell her to “say hello (to the) copter”.