Weekend Visit & Party

OK we had about 500 pictures from this weekend's birthday extravaganza, so I had to pare it down quite a bit. Morgan and Emma had a lot of fun with all their family. Pepaw brought a bat and ball for Morgan. He has been interested in softball since he saw Fernando's game last week.
Emma wasn't quite herself this weekend since she bit her tongue badly on Friday. It was hard for her to eat and drink. But she looked lovely in her party dress and she really perked up once she got her hands on a cupcake.
Thank you to everyone who came to the party, just for being there and for the nice gifts.


Memaw tickles Morgie

Bella & Emma



Getting undressed for the cake...



Birthday distress...



...turns to birthday joy

Getting cleaned up after cake

Emma loves stuffed animals

Her first bracelet

Morgan moves in on the gifts



More birthday tears (we had just finished examining her tongue)

The big family shot (thanks Ryan!)

Emma Eats Cake on Her Birthday

As Ashleigh explained in the last post, we had a little family birthday celebration with Emma yesterday. Okay, we know a lot of you will be seeing this happen again on Saturday, but we thought in the meantime you'd like to see a little preview of Emma eating cake.

Happy Birthday Emma!

Emma had quite a day! Things started off with a bang this morning...I sat enjoying my coffee while the kids played in the playroom. Suddenly I heard Morgan cry, "nasty poopie!" This can't be good. And sure enough, I found it had escaped his diaper. Not only was it on the floor, his legs, and his hands, but a big smear was on Emma's face (I'm sorry, I just had to tell this story)! So they both went straight to the bath. These events will hereafter be referred to as "the incident".
At noon, I took Emma in to get her portrait made. This also turned out to be a major ordeal. Emma wasn't sure whether to be freaked out or amused by the proceedings. She played "noodle legs", refusing to stand, trying to escape, sucking her finger, crawling to me, anything but posing and smiling. To make matters worse, the photographer was in training. On more than one occasion, the other photographer and I would get Emma to cooperate only to have her say, "Wait, which button?" Seriously. Finally the other guy took over. It's a miracle that we got the shots we did.
After dinner we had a little family party. Emma looked sweet in her birthday crown and bib. She had her first cake and ice cream. She opened 3 gifts from us- a Care Bear, a My Little Pony, and a Little People castle set. Yeah, we kind of went retro on the gifts. The Care Bear seems to be her favorite while Morgan has taken to the castle set! The played together with the new things until bedtime.

Birthday Breakfast

Birthday Bath (after "the incident")

Mama & Emma

Emma got lots of calls; here she is talking to Grandma Motz

Emma loves to cuddle her Care Bear

She was fascinated by her cake...

and pleased with the taste.

Morgan reaped the benefits too.

Here they are enjoying her gifts. Morgan thinks they're his of course...

My First 10K

Today I fulfilled one of my New Year's Resolutions by running my first 10K (that's 6.2 miles for those of us who never mastered the metric system!). Since it was my first, I didn't really know what goal to set for myself, but I decided to shoot for completing the course in under 52:00. It was a beautiful day for racing and I felt great for about 4.5 miles or so. The end was tough, but I finished in 51:40. I won my age group and was the second place overall female. After the race, I heard many of the runners saying that the course was too long. Many of them had GPS watches that measured 6.6-6.7 miles. When I go home, I plotted the course online and it measured 6.7 miles like they said. I also drove it later and go the same thing. So it seems safe to say that it was at least 6.6 miles long. If that's true then my real finish time estimate, assuming an accurate course length, would have been 48:34!

Morgan Sings Popeye the Sailor Man... Toot! Toot!

Watching Popeye on the internet with Morgan has become a daily routine recently. He's a huge fan now and loves to sing the theme song. Of course, we had to catch his performance on video and share it with everyone. We thought about taking a video of him sounding out words (which he does pretty well now), but this is cuter; and that's what counts, right?

Emma's 1st time in the sandbox and other activities...

The kids played in the sandbox for the first time this year since I finally got them some fresh sand (no more cat litter box!). Emma had lots of fun and Morgan was actually pretty nice to her. He only poured sand on her head a couple of times. I also got a couple more pictures of Emma with her walker. She is getting very agile now; able to walk pretty well holding onto only one of our hands. Just a few more weeks until she's 1 - I bet she'll be taking steps on her own by then.








Morgan wore his cowboy hat all afternoon - he looks like Huck Finn!

I don't know if you can tell what's going on here, but Morgan is "feeding" all his Little People and animals with his plastic fruit. He's very interested in pretending right now.

I Ran from the Cops!

Today I ran my 3rd race, the "Run from the Cops" 5K benefiting the Midland Police Department. It was quite a bit warmer today than it was at my last race, so I was a little concerned about that at first. My goal was to take 15 seconds off my 23 :16 PR from last time. But I ended up finishing in 22:31 - 45 seconds faster than before! The crowd today was a little bigger and more competitive, so although I won my age division, I finished 3rd place overall (female). I'm very happy with my time however; it seems my extra training is paying off.
We forgot the real camera so we had to settle for the cell phone. It messed up while Matt was trying to get me crossing the finish line. But he did get a lovely shot of me looking all trashed about 10 seconds afterwards. Enjoy!