Big Ducky

Well, we had quite a fun experience tonight! We went to Brett's birthday party. You see, Brett is a HUGE Oregon Ducks football fan. The green-and-yellow kind of runs in the family! His birthday party was Ducks themed.

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Imagine all of our surprise when a special guest arrived - Big Ducky (as Brett calls him) - the Oregon Ducks mascot!

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Now, Emma may not have known who Big Ducky was, per se, but she loves mascots and she really liked the big guy!

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She kept asking Big Ducky to play Hide and Seek, but he is kind of large and that may have been difficult, so instead they played Ring Around the Rosie.

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Later Brett and Emma played Hide and Seek though - under the table!
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Then everyone got their pictures with Big Ducky!

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Wow, that doesn't happen every day!

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Christmas day

Merry Christmas! We had a great day today and hope you all had a great time with family and friends!

Emma really wanted a skateboard for Christmas. Santa found a "Scoot 2 Skate" that is a scooter than can convert to a skateboard as the child gets better at riding it. It was in front of the tree this morning when Emma came down. The rest of the day she spent practicing riding it around. It's the stopping that she really needs to practice :)




Emma and Zoe opened the fire hydrant filled with dog toys. They were both very happy!


Emma got a noisy fire truck to go with the hydrant!


Quite possibly her favorite gift was a guitar. It folds down to be a little keyboard too. She has been rocking out all day!

As always, Zoe quite enjoyed helping open anything with wrapping paper or tissue!

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In the afternoon we went to Nana and Grumpy's house to see the family and Emma's cousins. "The boys," as she calls them! They had fun with the singing snowman and weren't quite sure how to make him sing. Sometimes he just started singing when we didn't expect it!

Goofing around with Meethos and Lestat!

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'Twas the night before Christmas

Tonight as we wound down Christmas Eve, we read the story of the birth of Jesus from Luke. Emma is becoming more and more familiar with the story, thanks to nativity scenes and some of her Christmas books!



Then we set out: carrots for the reindeer (Emma wanted to leave out more than one carrot for each of the nine reindeer - what if they are really hungry?!), three cookies for Santa and a cup of cold milk.


We await a very fun day tomorrow!
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Moses the Camel

This weekend we drove through a living nativity scene at a nearby church. I was under the (mistaken) assumption that there would be a camel there. The only live animal was a sheep!

So imagine our surprise when we arrived at church and noticed a horse trailer. Someone inside asked us if we had seen the camel in the parking lot? Camel? So we hurried out before the service started, and there was one camel, two sheep and two goats!

Emma got to pet Moses the Camel. Moses is somewhat famous around here for being rescued after he fell in a sink hole a few months ago!

Later Emma's class got to come out and learn more about the animals. I'm glad we were able to get a picture though!

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Powdered sugar + Emma =

A dusting! Emma helped me make cookies for Daddy to bring to a meeting tonight. She had so much fun rolling the balls in powdered sugar before baking.


The counter got more and more messy (but fun!).

Then Emma got more and more messy! This was after we were done, so I let her play for a little while.

After a quick bath, she got to taste test the final product! She even asked me if Daddy could leave them at home instead of taking them, so she could eat more :)

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O' Christmas Tree

When we put our tree up this week, the first ornament Emma put on was the reindeer she got last week after meeting Frosty and Comet! Emma loves to decorate, undecorate, and then redecorate the tree. I put any special ornaments on the upper half of the tree, and the bottom has the less breakable stuff...

Emma had a gift for Zoe that she needed to wrap. It's a plastic fire hydrant that is filled with dog toys! The bonus part is that when Zoe gets the toys out, Emma will have a fire hydrant to add to her collection when she plays firefighter!

She brought it down to put under the tree. See, the name tag even says "To: Zoe, From: Emma"!

It is the only present under the tree so far. Emma has already "shown it" to Zoe several times that there are some tears in the wrapping. We may need to redo it before Christmas rolls around between those two!

Emma was playing with her nativity set and decided to add other characters and even more Little People! She told me they were all there for the fireworks show. In Bethlehem! What a glorious event it must have been!!

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Oh deer!

This afternoon we went to get our picture taken with two reindeer at a nursery:  Comet (left) and Frosty (right)!





She enjoyed talking to Comet and Frosty.  We learned that reindeer do not like to eat peanut butter!

The nursery took this photo of Emma and Daddy!

At the end, Emma got hot chocolate (with mini marshmallows!), a candy cane and a free sparkly reindeer ornament!  We'll put that ornament on the tree to remind her of her visit with Frosty and Comet :)

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Christmas performance

Today Emma sang in the Christmas program at our Bible study.  Ed got to come and see her sing!  She spotted us and was a little distracted at times!
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"The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid."  Hebrews 13:6


Father Noah was a famous man!


Happy Birthday to you, Jesus!


Happy Birthday Jesus, I'm so glad it's Christmas!  (She's getting a little sleepy here!)

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Lights

Today we put up a few strands of Christmas and icicle lights outside. We haven't done this in a while! I'm really glad we got out there while the weather was still nice, as Emma was very excited to have Christmas lights up!

Emma helped with the front window lights. She was a good little untangler!


Posing with the end results of her little decorated tree!

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Air and Space

Today we visited the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum, which houses Howard Hughes' famous wooden flying boat, the Spruce Goose. I learned that he detested the name Spruce Goose! Also, it's mostly made of birch, not spruce. Interesting stuff!

Trying to get a little perspective on the size of this plane:


Ed is way up there in the pilot's seat of the cockpit!


Emma gets ready for her chance to fly this mammoth!


Emma liked all the beach balls in the wings. That helped it float!


This helicopter is a little more manageable for her to fly...


Here's the Sopwith Camel - yes the plane that Snoopy himself flies when he's fighting the Red Baron!


I just had to get a picture of the Blue Angels plane!

An awesome 1967 Titan II missile.

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At the end of the day, Emma got to play outside on their space themed playground! It was pretty cold out but she didn't mind running around for a bit!

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In her own shuttle!

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I'm going to get you Daddy!

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