Just for you grandparents;)

Here's a little snippet of our daily life as of now. We were waiting for Bron to get home from work. (My favorite part of the day! Though I bet it's one of Emmy's too.) Piles of books and toys in the background, and Emmy walking with her favorite doll of the day in hand.

She has a new little trick, of snuggling her baby and giving her kisses when we say "love your baby". It's sweet to see her understand things like that. She will also go get books when we ask her to, or find her doll when we ask. So smart! Currently we are trying to teach her some sort of alternative to screaming when she would like more food on her highchair tray. That little communication is not as cute! My mom says we should say  "please", whenever she does that, then "thankyou" when giving her the food. Oh well, hehe. I'm glad she wants more food!

Not a little baby anymore.

Hello out there! I have not been posting so much these days. Summer is upon us and we are feeling so busy with life! Emmy turned 11 months old this week- that is just crazy to us! We are beginning to plan how to celebrate her upcoming birthday, and enjoying her more and more. She now has 6 little teeth, -we are all 3 quite happy for a break from teething for a little while till any next ones begin. Oh, and she learned to WALK in these last two weeks! We'll show you a video of this at some point soon but for now, here are some pictures and a video of our time at the beach.We were there a week ago.

My sister Robin has a shore house in Ocean City,NJ. Emmy and I stayed for the week with my sister Rachel and her husband and boys. Bron came for a couple days on either side of the week. Emmy just loved the water, she was so brave and funny and happy. 

I figured Emmy has the perfect body for a bikini right now:)

She would watch the waves coming in and squeal with joy as they got closer and hit her. The water was so cold!

Emmy loved having two friends to hang out with all week and give her attention. They were so sweet together.

Every morning, in the hour or so before everyone was up, I'd hang out on the front porch with Emmy and drink my tea while she played with her toys. I would call my mom too because I knew she'd be up, and she'd encourage me that I could get through another day without Bron around. (Thanks Mom!) It was one of my favorite parts of the day, and week. The city is not as consistently quiet in the mornings where we live, so this was a blessing to me:)

It was actually a total coincidence that we stopped in front of this OC boat for our pictures, hehe. My mom thought we did it on purpose.We are not that creative! :)

Bron and Emmy, jumping the waves. This one is my favorite.

^And lastly, a video of Emmy's reaction to her first time on the beach. So fun to watch these moments.

Thanks for reading and looking into our life. I am loving being a mom more than ever. Still can't believe we are almost to a year with this little girl in our life! Hard to imagine it without her now.
Ok. we'll be back soon!

Bron's birthday

 Our favorite guy had  a birthday on Friday! We had a little family birthday party at home when he came home from work. Here are a few (mostly blurry,) pictures. 

On Sunday, we had another celebration in Carlisle with the Irwins, at Nana's home. They played with Emmy for a couple hours, while Bron and I had lunch at Cracker Barrel. I think they were hoping we would have forgotten we had a child while we were out, hehe.

So thankful for my husband on his 31st birthday. If it were up to him, the day would come and go without a celebration at all. But I am happy for a chance to celebrate him. He is such a good husband and Dad. (His first birthday as a Dad!) In the mornings, he is up at 5am, reading his Bible, then he is organizing the basement or our storage room and thinking up/planning/charting ways to make our daily life easier, ...not to mention working on our house! And within an hour, he often gets Emmy up out of her crib before I hear her waking, and plays with her for a little while until it's my turn to meet the day.

He is so often encouraging me to have faith for our season in life. He wakes me up in the morning and makes me coffee. He makes me laugh, and lets me choose which documentary we will watch on our date nights. I can't imagine life without him! So happy that God has placed me here, by his side. 

My sisters were here with us this weekend! We were in their area for a niece's third birthday party on Saturday, and we brought them home to Lancaster with us for a friend's Spring party. They came to church with us the next day, and we had a pizza picnic in our backyard while Emmy napped.

Bron took all us girls to the King of Prussia mall on the way back to drop them home. He deserves a Best-husband-ever award. Here are a couple pictures he took on his iphone. The first is my dad reading Emmy a book of nursery rhymes that he read to us as kids. (He pretty much has the whole book memorized.)And the second is from his time hanging out with Emmy while the sisters shopped.

 Maddie took these of Emmy in the laundry basket. She is a zany baby.

Emmy turned 9 months old  last week. We can hardly believe it! I've been telling people that this is my favorite stage so far. She is so fun and interactive. This week, I tried for the first time to take her to a playground nearby. She LOVED it. She squealed with delight to climb through tunnels and go down the slide on my lap. She especially loved checking out all the other kids running around.

Bron was a little jealous that he missed out on all the cuteness, so we met him during his lunch break the next day and we walked to another playground close to his office. We love having him so close!

Another fun thing for me this week- we filled our freezer with lots of meat from a nearby farm! It was their Spring sale, so we stocked up for until the next sale in 6months or so. Emmy played contentedly by herself in her playpen for almost a whole hour while I separated ground turkey into 1 pound portions. It's funny how a quiet moment to focus on an activity like this can be so satisfying and pleasant, hehe. And it's so nice to have it frozen and ready for meals. One less thing to think about.

Recent fun things.

One of my favorite things about living in Lancaster is how easy it is to live simply and inexpensively! Not only is it easy, but it is also lots of fun. :)

With the dining room remodeling finished, Bron is now better able to watch Emmylou on Saturday mornings, while I go out until about noon. I have missed my Saturday mornings! This past weekend was my first day back, and it was a success. (Thanks, Husband!) I went to BBs, which is an amazing grocery outlet that I tell everyone who is not from Lancaster about. My favorite finds were gluten free bagels (I miss bagels sometimes), and a big tub of Breyers natural vanilla ice cream (Our favorite kind! Oh, and I haven't been as strict with limiting the dairy these days...it's ice cream weather! and Emmy seems to be doing alot better with that.) They do not just have food items, I also scored 2 Brita filters, a favorite brand of natural sunscreen, and a Bingo game for babysitting.

Then, on my way home, there were lots of yard sales to stop at. Yard sales in the spring and summer are pretty typical, I know. But I've never experienced such yard sale excitement anywhere else! It must be a Lancaster thing. All of these items of sweet girls clothing were 25 cents each. Can't wait to dress Emmy in these. She wore the yellow dress to church on Sunday, with a yellow bow in her hair. :)

And my major score was this little bath seat for 50 cents! It is a challenge to bathe Emmy without Bron's help, because she stands up and moves around so much. We've been wanting one of these, and now we have one.

This week was a good bit cooler than the week before, but it is still just so lovely out. We went to Roots market on Tuesday evening. That place is special for us because it was where we had out first 'real date' *as opposed to our first 'sort-of date', which was Lyndon Diner:) Here are a couple pictures from our time. I look like my mom in this picture- tired, but smiling because of God's grace, hehe. (Emmy is back to her old ways of getting up at least once a night.)

 

And we are loving the view out our front windows!