Professional Santa Pics

This evening we had an appointment with our photographer for Essie's pics with Santa.  After our mall incident we knew it wouldn't be smooth sailing.  Our photographer had essie sit in a chair and Santa come out from a screen and sneak behind her.  Well she looked up right away, saw him, shrieked, jumped out of the chair and ran screaming up to me.  After much, much cohersion she finally got within 5 feet of him when he put smarties inside the pages of his book.  She would reach up and get the smarties! So here are the best of the ones we got today.

pink eye

Essie woke up with pink eye this morning.  Bless her little heart...it looks just awful! Isn't her shirt just too cute...it says "I like Big Bows and I can not lie!". 

In order to make her feel better we made some cookies together this evening!

Gobble...Gobble...aka Thanksgiving 2010

This year we repeated last year and had my family come to our house for Thanksgiving.  My parents, aunt, and niece came over Wednesday night.  We went and did some shopping and got the (unsuccessful) picture with Santa at the mall.

Thursday we cooked and ate. Yeah...that's pretty much it. 

After we ate we headed out shopping.  Travis and I braved the Walmart Black Friday madness last night...yes, we are officially insane.  We got at walmart at 10:30, loaded our cart up and hopped in line to check out before 11:00pm.  We walked out of walmart at 2:00 am.  Yes...2:00 am.  We stood in one line for over 2 and a half hours and barely moved so we jumped ship, found an almost empty line was was out in less thatn 15 minutes.  Oh was I frustrated we had wasted that 2 hours! We did get everything we were hoping for and then some.  Most of the shopping we did was for my parents for the girls!

This morning we drug ourselved out of bed and went to Cracker Barrell for breakfast (which was PACKED) and stayed far away from the stores.  After my family left we all three took a 3 hour, much needed nap!!!

Santa's biggest fan...

Essie has been wearing her Christmas jammies for weeks and each night points and squeals "Ho, Ho!".  She points at "Ho-Ho" everywhere she seems him.  We have realized that she is slowly becoming his newest biggest fan.  We've been talking up going to see Santa for awhile as well.  We've even taken her to see him from afar at the mall a couple times.  She's always so delighted to see him and nods feverishly when we ask if she wants to go see "ho ho".  So today we decided that we would journey to the mall so she could sit on Santa's lap for our photo op.  Last year's Santa photo was so cute! So we asked her before we left if she wanted to go see "ho ho".  Again she answered with a feverish happy nod.  So to the mall we went.......

and......

Essie is no longer Santa's biggest fan. AT ALL.

But please note that she is still clinging to the mini candy cane even through her terrified screams.  Once we removed her from Santa's lap we asked her to tell (through her sobs and screams) what she wanted for Christmas. Without a moments thought she pointed to the large basket of candy canes and whimpered "dose".  And she even managed to sob out a "dank dooo" for the one candy cane she still clutched in her hand. 

Bless her and Santa's hearts!!!

what keeps essie busy

So this is what Essie did for tonight for over an hour.

Yes she took her clean clothes out of the basket and put them back in.  She unloaded every bag of toys also.

And when she got bored with that she started moving her clothes into the hallway.

And while she was occupied we cleaned off the dining table for the first time in months.  It has been covered with crafting supplies!

Then we drug out all the Christmas tubs and Essie wanted to help decorate the "pretty pretty".

brad paisley, pine bluff, turkeys, and baby cooper

It feels like it's been forever since I last updated on here.  We had a majorly eventful weekend! We left out early on Friday for little rock.  Travis and I were going to use his birthday gift of tickets to brad paisley while Essie stayed with her aunt tanya.

The concert was amazing.  It was Justin Moore (a local boy!), Darius Rucker, and Brad Paisley.  They all 3 did an amazing job!

Saturday morning we went down to the RiverMarket to eat breakfast and then we went over to library to see The Kinders.  We saw them awhile back and Essie loved them!

Then we headed down to PineBluff to stay a night with Travis' parents.  All day I sat anxiously by the phone waiting on a call from Sarah...she went into the hospital Friday night so they could induce her labor.  Essie is so spoiled her peepaw and daddy put her in the swing inside the house and swung her back and forth!

Finally around 8 that night I got a text with a pic of sweet baby cooper!!!

This morning we all went to church and then after lunch we headed home. 

Once we got home we ran over to the hospital to see Baby Cooper and his mommy and daddy...oh is just perfect! Made me ache to hold a newbie like that! Essie wasn't as thrilled with him though.  I didn't get any pics of him today but I will next time we see them!

And then we came home so I could bake 2 dozen turkey cookies for a coworker.  She is taking them to her sons' thanksgiving parties! I love them...I thought they really turned out cute!