Phew, well Emma’s bday week is over. It was a lot of fun, but as most of you know since you’ve already been through this rodeo, it was a lot of work too! Totally worth it of course.
So the festivities of sorts started on Friday with Emma’s 1 yr appt at the doc. Yeah, Emma didn’t see this so much as an aspect of birthday week, I guess shots aren’t her thing, weird. She only cried for about 3 seconds and then moved on to bigger and better things. Emma was 22 lbs, 1 oz (66th percentile) ,29.25 inches( 56th) for height and 67th for head circumference. So she’s leaning out as expected, but doing it and doing it and doing it well as LL Cool J would say. You know around 1997 you bought his Mr. Smith CD and were disappointed. Okay, maybe that’s me, nevermind. Anyway, per Emma’s note sheet from day care she was “emotional.” That’s day care code for she was being a woman. . .i kid, I kid. This is where Lela would tell me that I am in a bad place and ask me if I realize that, but alas the beauty of this internet thing is no one can touch me. . . until I get home at least.
Friday we picked up Emma on our way to try to take some pictures of the grandkids (my parents, not mine, because that would mean that emma clearly didn’t follow the don’t date til 25 rule). For the record Emma is in that stage right now where if you set her down and try to get her to do something that you want her to, she gets mad. You can sit her down next to something and if you try to get her to play on it she gets mad. But if you set her a bit away from the same thing and let her find it herself, then it’s the greatest thing ever. Again, already acting like a woman. . .I kid, I kid (in a bad place, I don’t care, internet rocks!). Well the moral of that is the pictures didn’t go overly well. There was a short time when some bubbles in the air caught her eye and calmed her down, unfortunately they also caught our 2 yr old nephew’s eye also and he may have accidently hit emma in the head which turned the situation back to grim. Just so I don’t make Jacoby sound like a little barbarian, he LOVES Emma as does our niece, they love to go right up to emma about 2 inches from her face and say hi, which is pretty funny as Emma looks at them like woah, you are 2 inches from my nose . . There were a few pics that were okay but with the earlier shots, I think it wasn’t in the cards. We got Emma off to bed in order to get her beauty sleep.
Saturday was nuts. We all laugh at my Mom when she is running around the house at Christmas trying to get everything ready but I think we caught a glimpse of it Saturday. There is just so much to do, everybody was helping, we were scrambling to get everything and try to get everything right. We were collectively trying to take care of the kids, Jill was helping with decorations because she is one of those crafty party types. Right after lunch Jill, mom and the kids headed to our pool to check it out. It has a slide which the kids loved. I have now lived here a month and haven’t gotten to go down the slide. . what’s wrong with this picture! Anyway, we were putting the finishing touches on everything as people arrived but everything seemed like it would be great. We had bubbles for the kids and we were so excited that we could all go out to the yard and we could let cooper out and enjoy our big back yard while parents mingled and checked out the deck and walked around. That plan didn’t so much work as the monsoon hit. My boy, Gary Lezak said that south overland park got hit the hardest. . .thanks Gare (that’s what I call him when we have fake convos about being weather nerds in my head) we noticed. All of course was not lost, our grill was on our covered deck, so I could get the burgers done and all that and we could even spend a little time on the deck, but then the wind picked up. I felt like Tom Hanks on Joe vs the Volcano when he’s on the ship, only without his expensive luggage. The .0001% of the population who know what I am talking about is chuckling right now. But the food was served, tasted okay to me (lela’s stuff was great as always), I didn’t get any word of food poisoning so it was successful. Oh yeah, should probably talk about Emma since she was the reason for the season or day or whatever. She had a lovely tutu which her grandma and aunt had found to go with a birthday shirt and she was loving it. Well she of course ate about an entire burger, some pasta salad and then it was time for the cake. At first Emma was intrigued by it , but as you can see in the pics dug in. Special thanks to Barb’s Kolache Bakery, it was great. BKB is by where we used to live and we have had great experiences with her as have others so we were fine with sending grandpa over to Shawnee to pick it up.
Anyway, we finally pried the cake out of Emma’s grasp and moved on to presents. Everyone brought such great stuff but of course grandma brought the most ever seen. A little note about my mom. She could probably live in the toy section of target. She loves buying toys and her and dad always have new ones for the kids. When they are here alone for a day, toys appear that we didn’t know existed or sometimes that we had (because they had given to them to us). If I were more entrepreneurial, there’s a decent chance I would open up a toy store and hire mom as an advisor. You know and then attach it to my Korean BBQ restaurant with Midwestern flare. Pretty much should take it to market. Anyway, Emma got lots of loot, we are very thankful. We were reminded all night and week how blessed we are by all of the people in Emma’s life who have a hand in it and care about her, along with just getting to enjoy all the joy that there was with all the children running around. Not everyone could make it whether because they live far away or were out of town for the weekend but we definitely were reminded of all those blessings we have in our lives.
One more thing on that night. . .Emma took her first real steps at the party!!! What a little show off!
Sunday we headed to Deanna Rose, which is all of 7 min from our house . It was getting a bit warm by the time we arrived, and emma wasn’t exactly energized by the heat (see reaction to the zoo a few months back). She did liven up when we got to see the cows though. Also, she enjoyed the festivities at the goat yard or whatever its called. Not just Emma, the rest of us did also. We thought, neat, Julia and Jacoby (our niece and nephew if I haven’t explicitly said that) can give the goats milk, that’ll be fun. So Jill and Lela got in with them with the intent of feeding the goats. . .apparently goats smell fear. All of a sudden goats were surrounding the 4 of them, the kids were almost in too much shock to cry or run. Lela and Jill weren’t exactly more fluid. It was comical, especially if you looked around the rest of the goat yard to see goats much more passively not attacking others who had bottles. Anyway after we survived the great goat attack of 2010, we hit up a few more things and got out of there. Emma absolutely had so much fun all weekend and took a huge long nap. Lela and I were tired but just sat on the couch and talked for a few hours, which is something we hadn’t done in forever with all the travel and party prep and moving. It was great. We even enjoyed some time on the deck Sunday evening just talking. Its weird how now we are old and sometimes enjoy just chatting. . .of course in there was also catching up on Friday Night Lights which is something you make time for. No week is complete without a little Dillon East.
Anyway, no captions on the pics, I think they speak for themselves and I have captioned and tagged enough pictures for a bit. They also posted in reverse order, but you get the jist! Have a great week after Emma’s bday!
