Em's Actual Birthday Mini-Celebration

We celebrated Emily's birthday a few weeks ago with her big party, but we still wanted to do something special on her big 4th birthday. Kory and I both had the day off, so we let Em pick 2 activities for her day. First we went out to breakfast with Grammy and the Stampf's. That was yummy!! Then we went to her first activity choice which was....

Pottery painting...surprise surprise! They even made her a special birthday crown :)

Here is Daddy telling her how good she is doing

Mommy and Em

So proud of her light switch cover

 After pottery painting we drove out to the west side to go to Build-A-Bear...her second activity choice!!

Here she is waiting inline with her Hello Kitty she picked out

With her Daddy!

Helping stuff her Kitty

Warming her Kittys' heart...awe.....

Giving her Kitty a bath

 After Build-A-Bear we came home for naptime. Unfortunately, the birthday girl decided to throw some fits and she lost her special dinner at McDonalds :( So we made dinner at home and then just the 3 of us had cake and she opened her presents.

More presents!

Woo hoo!

Lots of books and games!

Who doesn't love Perfection?

Her special birthday cake with her 4 candles!

Daddy letting her lick the frosting off the candles...YUM!

FOUR!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have had a great Christmas and Birthday season, but I am very ready to get our lives back to normal. Emily seems to be throwing a lot of fits lately and I wish she would start behaving better. We have implemented some new discipline ideas so we're hoping it helps. Everyone keeps telling me that 4 years old can be quite the challenge. She seems to be testing limits again, kind of like she did at 2 - yet she knows better. We love our strong, independent, beautiful little girl and can't wait for her to be back to herself again soon!!!

To my Emily,
Hi sweetheart. You are 4. I can't believe you are 4. Mommy and Daddy are so proud of you. You have learned so many things this past year. You can now write out all your letters, you can tell me what each of the letters are and the sound they make. You can also write your first name all by yourself. You are an amazing artist. You color almost every day and can even stay in the lines!! You have learned to zip your coat, brush your teeth and started brushing your own hair. You even have recently started taking showers!!!

You are a great friend to your friends at school and your cousins. You make me proud. You are sensitive, caring and thoughtful. You love to give gifts. You have a sparkle in your eyes that I hope stays there forever.

You are a strong-willed young lady. You are passionate about what you want and will fight until you get it. You love to snuggle and give hugs. You are funny, hysterically funny. You will do almost anything to get a good laugh out of others.

I could go on for hours, but I just wanted to write you a little note that I will read to you when you get older to tell you how much we love you. You are so special and mean the world to both me and Daddy.

Lots of love and kisses,
Mommy & Daddy

Christmas Day 2011

Santa came!!!!! Emily got up on Christmas morning and was soooo excited to see that she had been a good girl. Santa came and left lots of presents. One of Santa's tradition's at the Marion household is he leaves each of us a new pair of PJ's and we put those on before opening presents.

Here is Miss Emily fresh out of bed excited to see the jammies Santa left for us

Here she is all changed and ready to open presents - this year was extra special as Santa left matching jammies for her baby doll!!!

Here's mommy and Emily opening our stockings

Emme helping Daddy with his stocking

Em showing off her ornament. Santa brings her one every year and I write the year on the bottom so when Em is old enough we can give her all the ornaments she got from Santa over the years. This one had her name on it and even lit up!!

Emily got the gift she asked for!!! She was so excited to receive her Baby Alive doll. Here she is giving her a bottle with a dish towel to catch the "pee pee"

We had such a Merry Christmas this year. It was wonderful to stay home in our jammies and just relax. Bonnie & Tom came over for a little while and we had lunch. Then that evening we watched the Packers v Bears game and of course the Bears lost :( Oh well. It was still a good game.

Christmas Eve 2011

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas this past week. We sure did. We are really enjoying how excited Emily is for the holidays this year. She is really into Santa this year. Santa even sent her an email and OMG! She was floored :) It was sooo cute. Pretty sure we watched it about 10x. She also has been very concerned on if she's on Santa's naughty list or Santa's nice list. It seems to work for our advantage sometimes.

All ready for her Christmas party at Gingerbread House (her school)

For Christmas Eve, we went to Kory's mom as soon as he got home from work on Saturday morning. We arrived to delicious cinnamon rolls....yummmmmmmy. It was a really fun time to hang out and watch Em and Zander open presents. They were very good!!!

Bonnie accidentally put her diamond earrings down the garbage disposal a few months ago, so Tom surprised her with new earrings....pretty sure I learned a lesson..put jewelry down the garbage disposal, turn it on, receive even better jewelry!!! LOL! As you can see, she was quite surprised

Here is Zander, Kacey (very pregnant with Maddox) and Emily

Here is Zander opening the gift we got him. It was a giant farm I'm pretty sure Kory bought it so that he could play with it :)

Em felt a need to help Zander open each present he got. This one was a huge garbage truck!!! Kory liked playing with that too :)

Here is Bonnie & Tom opening their gift certificate from all the kids. We got them a gift certificate to a bed & breakfast up in Door County.

Here is Emily with her Barbie gift She LOVED it!!!!! Her very first barbies :)

Family pic - Christmas Eve - 2011

Liz (Kory's step-sister) and her boyfriend, Kevin

Emily and Zander doing stamps that she got from Aunt Liz..such a good job sharing guys!!!!

 After nap time we headed home from Bonnie & Tom's to let Otis out. We made our food and then headed to Aunt Cori's house. It's super fun to watch all the girls open presents together.  We had a great time!!!

When we got there - we realized Braenna and Emily had gotten the exact same toy earlier in the day! (L to R: Braenna, Mikaiya, Emily)

Here is Kory drawing a smiley face on Mike's thumb bandaid

Cute pic of CeCe and Mike

Emme helping Grammy open her presents

Yay! The Walker girls all got Chicago Bears blankets! Love them mom!!!

Braenna gives the best hugs!!!!

Emme super excited (can't you tell???) for her American Girl llama...yes, she got a llama...bet you didn't!!!!

Jeff super excited to open up his gift from Victoria's Secret

Casey was super duper surprised when Mike had her open a gift and inside were 2 tickets to the Bears v Packers game on Christmas Day. They had an awesome time!! I was soooo jealous!!!

Emily got this cute purse from Aunt Cori, Uncle Jeff and the girls. Yes....she changed into her jammies 1/2 way through opening presents.

Here are the 3 girls all ready to put out their reindeer food

Emily and Braenna putting out their food for Santa's reindeer

Mikaiya got a kareoke machine....oh boy! She loves to sing!

Cori pretending she doesn't see Uncle Mike snuggling with her...oh and Bella the kitty!

We had so much fun on Christmas Eve at both families. Our Christmas Eve is always a long day, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I love being able to spend holidays with my family on both sides.

Thanks to everyone for having us and we already can't wait for next year!!!

Emily's 4th Birthday Party!!!!

We had Emily's 4th birthday party on Sunday, December 11th. We had her party at The Little Gym
it was sooooo much fun! She had 15 little friends there with her, along with about 10 or so adults. The first hour was ran by the girls that work there and they did a great job playing with the kids. The 2nd hour was in the party room where we had pizza & cake, and then we opened presents. She had a blast and all the kids were so well behaved.


Here is our sweet little angel.

This is the inside of the gym. There was tons for the kids to do. Mikaiya is in the blue top and white pants on the bars, and Isabella is in the purple next to her.

Here is a bunch of the kids and some parents too - doing some stretches!!

Here is Emily with 2 of her school friends - Olivia in pink and Abby in blue.

More friends! My niece Braenna is in the front in the pink dress.

Here is Em being the Simon of "Simon Says". She loved telling all her little friends what they could and couldn't do :)

This was fun when they blew up the slide for the kids to play on. She let them ride on it until it got big!

Lily and Nora are next to each other, baby Cayl over by Nick and next to him is Anika

Nan made Em's cake and it was beautiful! She did such a great job...oh...and it was absolutely delicious too!!!

Blowing out her candles

Then they put her on a donut so she could open her presents. Keira is standing up in the green shirt and skirt.

All the kids "helping" open presents!

We had such a fantastic time at the party! Couldn't have asked for more. Thanks to everyone who came and helped us celebrate her special day!!