August

 My sister Becky came to visit us on August 4th!  

Becky, Emily and I took off for New Hampshire on the 5th and we stayed there until August 30th!

We had so much fun!

 Emily was so excited to have "Her Becky" back home.  She was Becky's little shadow all morning so, while Becky was putting on her make-up Emily was right there with her. Emily wanted to be just like Becky, so Becky put some green eye shadow on her too.  It actually looked pretty good and Emily loved it!

 

 We met up with my parents in Vermont and from there we went to dinner at KFC.  

Emily loved sitting on the tall chairs at the restaurant.

 

Emily telling Bapa stories at KFC

 Emily loves music and playing instruments of all kinds. Here she is sitting at Grandma's piano.

Grandma and Emily playing with some stamps that I played with when I was little.

Putting the stamp in the ink

Reading books in the basket

When we told Emily that we were going to New Hampshire the first thing she said was "We're going to ride horses before we go in Bapa's house!" She loves horses!  It took us a few days but she did get to ride Tucker with Becky and Grandma and she loved it!

One afternoon while Emily was napping Becky disappeared to go brush and saddle Tucker so when Emily woke up she asked where Becky was.  Grandma and I didn't tell her where Becky was and a few minutes later there was a knock at the window.  Emily looked over, saw Becky and Tucker, and ran out the door saying "It's Tigger, It's Tigger, I want to ride Tigger!"  It was so cute!

Laura, Emily, Becky and Grandma in downtown Littleton New Hampshire

There was a man who moved to Littleton from somewhere in the south and he started the Littleton Piano Project.  The town where he grew up had piano's on the street for people to play whenever they wanted and he wanted that for the people of Littleton too.  He bought a bunch of piano's, got some people to paint them, got business to take responsibility for them and to cover them at night and when it rains and now Littleton has piano's on the street for people to play whenever they want.

Here's a close up of the keyboard and music stand.

It says "Be Glad...Make Music"

The back

The top

The Old Man on the Mountain side

The moose side

I liked this side the best and Becky did a wonderful job playing the piano

Becky and Emily swimming in the lake

Becky and Emily splashing in the water!

Emily started it!

Emily had so much fun trying out all the Ukulele's at the Northern Lights music store.

I think this one was her favorite!

Grandma painting Emily's finger nails for the first time

Emily finally got her wish of having her fingernails AND her toenails painted!

I have painted her toenails before but not her fingernails.  I just felt like painting her fingernails would make her seem more grown up and she is getting big so fast as it is.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

Emily and Bapa lining up some mini Uno cards by color

Becky pushing Dad and Emily in a Wal-Mart basket!

They are way too funny!

Becky and Emily riding Tucker bareback while Bapa leads them around!

Shorty just walking around

He's such a pretty horse

Shorty and Tucker together

Aunt Ann made Emily a pretty princess dress while we were there!  Emily loves it!

She was supposed to wear it to church the last Sunday we were there but, church was cancelled because of Hurricane Irene.

The back of the dress

Bapa, Emily and Becky on the tractor preparing for the hurricane.

They were trying to make it so the driveway wouldn't wash away if we got tons of rain. Thankfully all we got was a little bit of rain.  There was no damage at all at our house, 45 minutes away wasn't so lucky though.

On the tractor!

Becky went down to the lake on a really nice calm day and took these pictures.

I love how smooth the water is

Clouds reflecting on the water

A sunbeam

We went out on the boat on a very windy day.  It was a challenge keeping the boat in one place while everyone got on.

Here I am trying to keep Emily warm after she went swimming.  Thankfully I thought to bring her a full change of clothes so she wasn't wet.  The wind was pretty chilly.

Emily wasn't sure she wanted to actually get in the water so we put her in the tube and let her float around in that.  She loved it!

Bapa, Emily and Becky swimming in the lake!

In the tube with her friend Brandon

Emily and Brandon

Becky modeling Dad's hat

She looks so cute in hats!

 Becky modeling a hat at Drumond's Ski Shop

 

Laura, Emily and Grandma hiking up the trail to Arethusa Falls in Crawford Notch State Park in NH.

 

Laura, Bapa and Emily on the traill

 Emily got a little camel pack for the hike and she loves it!  She was drinking out of it almost constantly.

It was a chilly day so we decided to wear pants on our hike but Becky and Emily got hot so they made shorts out of their pants.  They look pretty good!

Emily, Laura, Becky and Bapa on the bridge

We made it!

Here is Arethusa Falls!

Becky, Emily, Bapa and Grandma

(Emily was looking at the falls)

A closer view of the falls

It is so pretty!

There were a bunch of boys putting their feet in the water so Emily wanted to do it too.

"That water is sooo cold!"

The water was like ice!

Grandma trying to warm Emily up.

The wind was blowing and it really was cold.

Mommy trying to keep Emily warm.

We moved to a spot that was a little less windy.

Trying to walk on a log on the way back down

Becky, Grandma, Emily and Laura flying on the bridge

Emily getting a lift on the way back down the trail

(she's still drinking from her camel pack)

Stopping for a snack

Bapa, Emily, Becky and Grandma

Bapa, Emily, Becky and Laura

Emily eating her granola bar while sitting on a rock

Emily didn't really want to walk back down the trail so Bapa and Becky made a game out of it.  They would run ahead with Emily and then "Hide" from Grandma and I.

This is one of their hiding places!

Bapa, Emily and Becky after they "Scared" Grandma and I.

There was one time that they hid out of site.  We walked right past them and never even saw them.  We were looking around for them too.  They were going to sneak up and scare us but Emily started yelling "I see you!" before they had a chance to scare us. 

Even at home Emily's camel pack is on her back.

She's definitely not dehydrated!

Reading books to the little horse

Just having fun!

Emily riding on the trailer of the riding lawn mower with Great Grandma Fryer, Bapa and Brandon

Riding bareback with Becky again!

 

 Bapa, Emily and Becky with Tucker

 We got back home on August 31st and Daddy met Emily with a big bubble wand present!

Emily didn't waste any time putting it to good use!

July

We had a pretty eventful July.

J.R. gets done with his residency on July 1, 2012 so we decided to replace all of our appliances so that they would match if we decide to sell our house next year. It was a bigger project than we anticipated but it looks really nice now that it's done

 Our kitchen and dining room was a huge mess until J.R. got everything installed.

 Here's the kitchen with the old stove still in sight and the new mirowave on the floor.

We ended up putting the old stove back for a few more days because the new one was scratched.

Emily had lots of fun playing with the styrofoam padding from the new microwave!

It made a huge mess but she was really good and helped clean it up.

 She especially liked playing in the dishwashwer box!

We ate dinner at one of our friends houses and their 5 year old daughter did Emily's hair!

We were a little worried that we might not get all the stuff out without ripping her hair out, but it came out pretty easily.

Emily got this doll for Christmas last year and she is finally playing with it by herself!

She usually wants me to hold it and play with it while she watches but this time she was the one playing with it!

We went to Dollywood again and she had lots of fun as usual!

I'm glad she finally started smiling on the rides!

Emily didn't get a nap on this paticular day and she insisted that she wasn't tired.  Once I assured her that I was not going to give her a nap she fell asleep in her seat.

Emily had lots of fun playing on the Slip N' Slide!

After one of our picnics at the VA Emily and Daddy watched the ducks while I cleaned up. 

This picture was supposed to be at the top but, oh well, it's not.

Emily loved to play on the riding lawn mowers at Lowes while J.R. and I finished up the appliance shopping.  She likes the most expensive one of course!

June

It's been a while since I posted last so now I'm going to do a little catch up!

Here's what we did in June

Emily finally learned how to pump the green swing all by herself!  This has been so nice for me!  I've know she could do it by herself for a while but she just wouldn't.  I don't know what changed but I'm glad she finally decided to do it all by herself.

J.R. and Emily playing at Pizza Hut

Emily has started wanting to be bare foot a lot. She always wants to take her shoes off, no matter where we are. We were going for a walk at the park when she sat down, took off her shoes and told me she didn't need them anymore. She walked the rest of the way bare foot. She's just like her Grandma Fryer!

After dinner one night Emily started clearing the table all by herself, then she went and got a stool from the bathroom and roped Daddy into helping her do the dishes. They loaded the dishwasher together and washed some of the dishes by hand.  They both had a great time and I got the night off from doing dishes!

Emily and her friend Jonet going for a walk together at the park

J.R. has been taking Emily on Daddy Daughter Dates once a week for a while now, but he has just recently started taking pictures during them. This time they went to Toys R Us and played in the cars

Emily and I met J.R. at work for his luch break and we had a picnic by the pond.  We were invaded by the ducks!  I surprised at how close they came to us.  We were sitting on that picnic blanket and they didn't even care!  One of them even tried to take stuff out of my purse!

On another Daddy Daughter Date Daddy took Emily to Sams Club and threw her in the huge box full of stuffed animals!  She LOVED it!

One Saturday we ordered Pizza and took it to the VA grounds to eat it on our picnic blanket.  The VA grounds here are so pretty.  We sat in an area with lots of big rocks and we all enjoyed climbing on them.

Another Daddy Daughter Date!
Emily got her very first Happy Meal!
She didn't eat anything in it, but she loved the toy.  It was a little doll head with a comb.  Now she not only loves to brush the dolls hair but she loves to brush Mommy and Daddy's hair too.  She does a great job being nice and gentle.  It actually feels really nice to have her brush my hair.

Daddy got her a chocolate bar!

I got my hair cut!

I think it looks much better than it did before.  J.R. likes it too!

Emily put on Daddy's shoes and socks all by herself!
It was pretty funny to watch her walk around in those big shoes

Emily got her very first hair cut on June 17th.
I was really surprised at how little they took off.  It was pretty even already so they only took off about a 1/2 inch all the way around.

Waiting for the cutting to begin!

Here's the finished product!

Even though they only took off a half inch it looked a lot better in the back.

My Mother's Day flower is doing really well!
The primary kids had a lesson on faith and they were each given a very small plastic cup with 2 tomato seads in it.  They were told to water it and watch it grow.  Apparently Emily's cup had more than 2 seeds in it because we ended up wth 10 little plants!
Now that it's September we only have 4 plants left.  We had some pretty big wind and rain storms that killed off a few of the plants and some of them just didn't survive the transplant.

Grandma and Bapa sent Emily a cute shirt for the 4th of July!
She loves it!