Loving Our Family!

It's been too long. I know. But we've been pretty busy around here and had the pleasure of getting to see several different family members in the last month.

We'll start though with one of Miss Emma Cate's favorite activities, playing with the dogs, specifically under the bed!

Notice the furr in the right corner of this one...that's Lucy.





It makes me so nervous for her to be crawling around under there with two big dogs, but they are pretty gentle with her and she's never gotten hurt. The few times I've heard her cry under there, I've found her trying to pull something out of one of their mouths (usually one of her toys that they stole!) so she wasn't hurt, just mad!

The first visit we had this month was my sister Ali...we were spoiled and got to see her twice in two months! She came back for a friend's wedding, but stayed a few extra days to spend time with us. Emma Cate loves Ali and hated to see her go! (so did I!)

Poor Ali had a horrible time with her allergies while she was here. It's still so cold where she lives in Maryland and the pollen was really bad the week she was here. But doesn't she still look beautiful even with swollen eyes!







I love this one!





After Ali's visit, I attempted to take some good pictures of Emma Cate with our azaleas in full bloom. Let's just say this age is not great for taking pictures. She is NOT interested in the camera and runs away from me as soon as I put her down. But I tried!

This was the first expression I got - looks like "I'm going to start screaming if you don't let me out of this basket and let me run around!"



"Seriously Mom?"



But then she found something interesting.



Daddy came to help



He said something funny to make her laugh



And reach for him to get her out



And then she was really done!



And happy as she could be once I let her out of that basket to run around



So then we packed our bags and Emma Cate and I headed to Mississippi to visit my grandmother. She LOVED my grandmother's cat, Callie, who actually used to be mine and Phil's. She was our first pet. We had her in Auburn, but she needed more room to run around (we lived in an apartment) and Nanny fell in love with her so we gave her to her. She is a calico and definitely acts like one! Emma Cate wanted so badly to touch her, but she ran every time she saw Emma Cate. Finally before we left, Callie let me hold Emma Cate and carefully guide her hand to pet her. Aren't her flowers beautiful!



See Callie inside the door.



Nanny had Easter eggs for Emma Cate. She loved them and loved carrying around the basket!





And playing outside with Nanny.



And she LOVED waving to all the neighborhood animals and saying "Heeeeeyyyy!"





We loved getting to see Nanny (and eat her famous chocolate pie!)

A few days later, my Mom and Grandad came for a visit. Emma Cate loved them reading to her and we loved getting to spend time with them!





Whew! It's been a busy couple of weeks. Emma Cate decided to take a little rest in her chair!



But it didn't last long...she was back to playing in just a few seconds.





I love that smile so much it makes my heart hurt!

And we'll end with Emma Cate playing in the drawer while I cook.



She's waking up from a nap now so my blogging time is over, but watch out soon for a post on cloth diapers. Yep, we made the switch and LOVE them! I did a ton of research so I'm going to try to break it down really simply in case anyone is interested.

Happy Thursday!