Christmas Part 2--With Dee's Family

Before we went to New Mexico, we stopped in Allen to celebrate with Dee's family. We stayed at his sister's house, and everyone came up. We always eat so good there! Emily was so excited to visit Macey and play with her babies and princess clothes. Ty really tried to get in on the action by army crawling and rolling around. He also enjoyed a lot of TLC from his aunts and cousins. Here are some pictures:


Look at all of these princesses enjoying their dinner!


Just moments after taking this picture, Emily decided to jump of the swing in mid-air.


Ty getting some love from cousin Kirstie.


Ty being silly with cousin Meaghan.


Our "flower girl" Shelby holding her baby cuz.


We enjoyed opening presents before we left for NM.


I don't know if you can tell, but Emily was singing Jingle Bells in this shot!

Well, we only spent one night in Allen, and those were my pictures, so imagine how many I will have from spending 6 days in NM!!! I've gotta get working on those!

Finally--Christmas Update Part 1

Woo-Hoo!!! I am finally posting about Christmas! We had a great time making traditions and memories with our Trcka family and our extended families. I am going to make 3 posts for this--Christmas at our house, with Dee's family, and with my family. Warning--I have a tremendous amount of pictures!


The kids loved our yard decorations. We would play outside every evening.




This is Emily with her snowman--she knew without being told which one was supposed to be her.


We thought we did a great job on our decorations.


Unfortunately, the judges for our HOA only thought we did the 3rd best. We're slightly bitter that a house with icicle lights, blow-ups and net lights got 1st place. Nothing against icicle lights, but they require less effort.


Our tree--since I have this open area between the living room and dining room, we put our tree here, and it looked great, but we couldn't hide any of it because it could be seen from all sides.


This is our real tree, and I used it to display the decorations that Emily made at school.


The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...


My Christmas village which Emily loved playing with.


I decked my kitchen out with snowmen.


When Ty and I had to stay home because he was sick, we played photographer!








I was beginning to wonder if he would ever be interested in crawling. Enter Christmas train--he became mobile a few hours after setting it up!


The girls!


Ty's first visit with Santa went much better than Emily's first!


Emily asked Santa for a baby and a stroller and a pink care bear.


My 2 cuties!

If you lasted through all of these, I hope you enjoyed. Now I will start uploading group 2!

Deep and Wide

So Ty is clapping his hands, signing "more," army crawling like a pro, babbling like a brooke, and just being overall cute.

Emily also uses the word "ridiculous," and she asked if a card we got in the mail was "an invitation for a party." I did not know she knew those words.

She also likes to sing a song:

Deep and Wide
Deep and Wide
There's a Big Big Mountain Deep and Wide

Deep and Wide
Deep and Wide
There's a Big Big Flowing Deep and Wide

Repeat over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over......

Before I Forget Part 2

More things I need to write down before I forget….And I’m not forgetting about Ty, either. He’s learning to crawl, but we have it on video, so I don’t need to blog it to remember it ;-)

We have a new CD that we are loving. It’s Phil Joel’s Deliberate Kids. I highly, highly, highly recommend it. This is a kids CD that you will want to listen to even if you’re in the car alone. Emily almost has the Fruit of the Spirit memorized from one of the tracks, and let me tell you, I’m soooo excited that she won’t need to sing the annoying kumquat song! It’s adorable to hear her sing along.

Anyway, last weekend, we were out shopping, and I was in the car nursing Ty while Emily was sitting in the front seat listening to this CD. The last track is I Will Not Be Afraid, so in light of her nightmares and overactive imagination, I decided to talk to her about the meaning of this song. What else did I have to do since my son is a huge pig? We talked about how she can sing this song when she gets scared and how she can remember that she doesn’t need to be afraid since God will take care of her, blah, blah, blah. She paused and looked up at me. (I braced myself because there was no telling what she was going to say. You never know how a 2 y/o will interpret your conversations!) She said, “Mommy, can Daddy be God for Halloween?”

Okay. I never expected that to come out of her mouth. What do I do with that random statement asked at Christmas of all times? I said, “Why do you want Daddy to be God?” She said, “because Daddy takes care of me, and God takes care of me.”

Oh, my heart, how precious! And guess who got tears in their eyes when I told this story? My mom, DUH, and Dee, but he tried to hide it. Then, he acted all smug!

So….Emily was sick last week, and I had to pick her up early from school. I brought her to my classroom until Dee could take her to the doctor. She was obsessed with the overhead. Before my kids got in the room, I was writing something on the overhead, and she was excited about the shadow of my hand, my ring, and my pen. We were playing a game where I would put something on the overhead, turn it on, and she would look at the shape and guess what it was. So when I turned on the overhead to work some math problems, she ran over to the front of the room and is trying to put her hand up there to make shadows WHILE I am trying to teach my students about double and half angle properties for sine and cosine.

I hope she learned from this experience why Mommy’s fingers are always blue (from writing on the overhead). Every day when I pick her up from school and hold her hand as we walk, she comments on my blue fingers. She used to be afraid of them, but now she thinks they’re cool! If you ask her why Mommy’s fingers are blue, she says “from teaching Calculus!”

Well, I will have to do another post about 2 more things. I am out of time for now, and you, my faithful readers, are probably tired of reading. I would like to warn my sister Amy that Emily informed me last night that she will be cutting your hair when we get to Grammy’s house!

Before I Forget

Before I forget, I want to write down the things Emily has been saying lately. I hope that my 5 faithful readers will understand that I write this blog mostly because I want to document these things because my memory gets worse and worse every day!

Any almost 3 year old is going to be fascinated with the packages under the Christmas tree. Emily is especially interested in the biggest box, which happens to be a gift for Dee’s dad. The first few days after we wrapped the presents, she was constantly asking if she could open it. We would say “No, that’s for Papa.” I guess she got tired of hearing “No,” so she eventually tried a different tactic…One evening, I noticed her sitting on the big present. With this sweet, innocent look in her eyes, she said, “Hey, Mama,” and I said, “What, Emily?” She looked up at me and said, “I am Papa….” Well, her tactic didn’t work, but I sure got a good laugh out of it!

Emily loves to give me haircuts. She can use any toy, a plastic fork, a car, a magnet, a cell phone, as a comb, pair of scissors, and spray bottle. She puts a blanket around my neck and tells me to look at my toes. Then she styles away. When I ask her if my hair is pretty, she says, “Not yet…you’re not beautiful yet.” I don’t get my feelings hurt because when she finally finishes, she tells me “Now you’re soooo beautiful, Mommy!” And here’s a warning for my bro and BILs: I have already been telling Emily that she will have to give Uncle Brandon, Uncle Ben, and Uncle Collin all haircuts when we are at Grammy’s house. Be Prepared!!!

Sadly, she has had a few bad dreams. Two nights ago, she woke up screaming “I WANNA GO HOME!!!” Her dad went to check up on her, and she told him that she had a “bad dweam.” Over the course of the next day, she started telling me about the dream. There was a reindeer under her bed, and it scared her. And there were flags waving in the wind, and the flags scared her. Poor baby, I’ve been trying to figure out where she has seen something scary involving mean reindeer and terrorizing flying flags, but I can’t think of it. Let me know if you have any ideas!

Since the little rascal is constantly getting into things, I am constantly asking here where things are. Here are some examples of our conversations:
MT: Emily, where are the wipes?
ET: They should be over there.

MT: Emily, where are my keys?
ET: They should be in the diaper bag.

MT: Emily, where is your sippy cup?
ET: It should be in here.

I don’t know what it is with “should be,” but she loves to use this phrase over and over again!

Well, that should be enough typing for now; I still have 5 more things I wanted to remember, and maybe I’ll post on those later.

Christmas Portraits

Well, we got one more holiday chore done this weekend...Christmas pictures! These are the first prof pictures of Emily and Ty together since they wouldn't cooperate this summer when I tried. They barely cooperated today, but we did end up with some cute ones. Check them out!


This is totally her--Miss Thang!


This one was our non-Christmas background portrait to hang in our house all year long ;-)

This is not a Christmas portrait, but Emily had the wash tub picture taken around this age, and I wanted Ty to do one too. Since we were there and I needed to change him anyway, I just took his clothes off, plopped him in the bucket, he cheesed big time, and we were done!

Have a great week!!!

My New Super Stroller!!!

I am extremely excited about my new stroller. I just wanted to show off!!! When Ty was born, I resisted getting a double stroller. First, Emily wouldn't stay in a stroller for very long anyway. When I went somewhere, I would put Emily in the stroller and Ty in the Baby Bjorn. But since Emily always wanted to get out and walk, I ended up pushing an empty stroller.

Now that Ty is 20+ pounds, even though he is technically below the weight limit on the bjorn, it kills my back to have him in there. I thought that I could put Ty in the stroller and have Emily walk since that's what she wanted to do anyway. But NO...wouldn't you know, as soon as she saw that Ty got to ride in the stroller, she decided she wants in it too. So what's a mom to do?

Double strollers are so big and bulky not to mention expensive. It's hard enough maneuvering through a crowded store w/ a single stroller, so who wants a big ole double stroller? Not me! With that said, I do have a double jogging stroller from my dear friend Dawn, and it's AWESOME for walks outside or a day at Sea World. But I still needed a solution for the mall or Hobby Lobby.

Then, I found the Joovy. This is a stroller that has a spot for your older child to sit or stand on the back and a place for your baby to ride up front. It's even car seat compatible, but Ty's no longer in his infant seat. It's also extremely affordable compared to most double strollers. The best part is, Emily can sit, stand, or hop off and walk, so there's no taking her in and out of the stroller when she changes her mind. I love this thing and now try to find any excuse to go somewhere that I can use it. Dee likes it too because he doesn't have to bend over to push it. I hear a lot of tall people have this problem with some strollers.

The day we got it, Emily wanted to ride all around the house (it was raining outside). I took some pictures because the kids were having too much fun. Ty loves it, too and falls asleep. I am so happy to have a stroller that all 4 Trckas love.





And with my new skip hop duo diaper bag (I'll have to rave about that in another post), the bag doesn't hang down low in Emily's face anymore.