The Princess Diaries: January 2015

Q2 Shout out

2nd Quarter grades came out yesterday and Emerson is doing so well and keeping the bar set real high for herself. Pretty proud of her hard work and the goals she has set for herself for the rest of the year. She gets a dinner out tonight, a school night, scandalous. We are pretty concerned what her choice will be. Its her choice and her dinner so if she chooses McDonald's we will have to be happy about it...

Babies at the BR Zoo

The B.R. Zoo has 2 baby Tigers. Emerson and Denny checked them out. SO cute!

And a baby giraffe...

This white/albino peacock is pretty amazing. They sent a lot of time watching the baby tigers. Denny got some great video of the 2 babies playing and stalking the momma tiger. They are adorable and pretty frisky.

Emerson's New Year's Rockin' Eve

Emerson partied it up at Lila's house with a few friends for a New Year's Eve sleepover. They had a Hibachi dinner, sparkling wine, fireworks and lots of girl fun.

Old friends

The McDermott's, our friends that moved to Texas a few years ago and who also lived down the street from us when the girls were little, were passing thru during the holidays and spent several hours with us. It has been way to long since we have seen them and the girls enjoyed being together. We had a good dinner and got to catch up a little. It is no secret that Emerson is big for her age and that Isabelle is small for hers...and they are 2 weeks apart... Crazy huh!!! Gwendolyn was a little bitty baby when they moved, so it was good to see her. And to see her wearing an Emerson dress. Em and Isabelle are still into a lot of the same things. Music, Minecraft, crafts and reading. They plan to move back ASAP, so we are hoping that happens soon.

Russian Nutcracker at The Saenger in New Orleans

Emerson and her theatre buddy, Lila, spent the Saturday after Christmas in New Orleans for lunch and The Russian Nutcracker. It was so good and the girls really enjoyed it. We sat on the 3rd row, so we could see it all!

And of course we saw a friend, Ani Richardson.

I have so many pictures, but these are just a few from our favorite scenes. Emerson really enjoyed The Saenger, this was her first time there.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas everyone. Oh and Happy New Year also. Always playing catchup. The Holidays went by so fast for us. Our 2 weeks off were filled with lots of friends, parties and of course Emerson's social schedule was pretty full. Emerson spent her usual weekend before Christmas in Jackson, MS with Bella and Avery. That's a tradition we started many years ago and she looks forward to it. And it is pretty good leverage for behaving! I will say upfront that I was the WORST photographer this Christmas. Meaning I took no pictures. None of Emerson in front of the tree, none of her dressed on Christmas Eve before church, none on Christmas Day with grandparents or even with us. It was over and I realized we had no pics. Oh well, there's always next year.

I did manage to take this one pic of our Christmas tree.

Denny and I took her to ride around and look at Christmas lights one evening and we found this yard. Of course she had to get out and take a picture.

Emerson and Kaka did their usual Gingerbread house for the Holiday. Each year the Christmas one seems to get more elaborate. They made a snow covered village this year. Pretty fabulous.

It is our tradition that on Christmas Eve we make something in honor of Jesus' Birthday. When she was much smaller we called it "Bakin' Cakes for Jesus". She too cool for that now... This year we made salt dough ornaments. Emerson and I made the dough on the Eve of Christmas Eve and baked them off that evening. The three of us sat together in our pj's, listened to Christmas Music and painted our ornaments. It was a special, sweet time and we all three enjoyed it.