Adventures with Emily: Post-Christmas Update

As with most families, the Christmas season kept the Hypes family very busy this year. Tom stayed busy at our store during most of December. Ryan took up skateboarding recently and has been happy to have a mild winter so he can practice learning new tricks. Emily and I have been hanging out at the house quite a bit and did quite a bit of Christmas shopping together. I love shopping with Emily because she's usually pretty good riding in the cart and with her facing me while we shop we get a lot of bonding/talking time in. She also makes a lot of people smile in the stores because she's constantly saying "Hi!" to everyone we pass and blows quite a few kisses as well. Some day we'll tell her this isn't particularly appropriate behavior, but at her age it's very heartwarming and this time of year a lot of people can stand to smile at a small child.

Emily and I went to the Isler family Christmas get-together on the Sunday before Christmas. (Tom opened the store for several hours in the afternoon to try to boost business a bit and he wasn't able to join us. Ryan had family stuff going on and would be joining us the day after Christmas for our vacation.) At 94 years old, my (Jenni's) grandma still spends all year long
quilting pillows to give away to family members at Christmas. This year she had over 60 pillows so I believe all of her children, their spouses, kids, grandkids, etc. all got pillows. Here's a picture of Grandma Isler and her pillows from this year!

All of Grandma's kids were able to join us this year. All of her kids live within about 2 miles of her except for one and he lives in Wisconsin. He usually makes it home for Thanksgiving but this year he joined us for Christmas. Here's Grandma in the middle and my mom and her 5 brothers. (Jim, Harold and Howard [twins], Grandma, Nancy and Chuck [twins] and Fred... yup, Grandma had 2 sets of twins!)

Emily had a great time playing with her cousins and aunts and uncles. We spent most of the afternoon with the family and then went home after supper and went to bed early. It was a long, napless day but we both held up pretty well. Here's Em with her cousins Brooke and Abby.

On Christmas Eve, we traveled to celebrate the season with Tom's family. Once again, we had a nice relaxing evening with family. Emily loved her gifts and after warming up to everyone she was laughing and teasing along with everyone else. If I remember correctly, she surprised Keegan by sneaking up on him and tickling his toes. She entertained Mama and cousin Rachel and blew kisses to everyone when we had to leave. She was certainly a busy body on this night and kept me hopping!

Emily's cousin, Rachel,thought she would make a good Christmas present!

On Christmas day we took our time waking up and then ventured over to Grandma and Papa Gaston's house for brunch and presents. Unfortunately, I don't think I took my camera out of the bag so I don't have any pictures of the event. Emily was a pro at opening presents by this time and had quite a bit of fun playing with her new toys. She's still not a holy terror at unwrapping gifts. She takes it pretty slow and makes sure she gets every piece of paper off the present... just like her mom!

On the 26th, we packed up our bags and headed out of town for a week with Ryan. We took the family to Townsend, TN and had our family Christmas down there. We gave Emily some of her presents while down there and she really got into a couple of her new books and like the new piggy bank she got as well. She practiced her skills of being a "big girl" and found great pleasure in sitting on the stone fireplace all by herself and practiced crossing her arms with pride.

It's no wonder she loves her RyRy... look how cute he is!

Emily handled the 7 1/2 hour trip to TN pretty well again. She took her regular morning and afternoon naps in her carseat and spent the rest of the time perusing some of her new books, looking out the windows and watching her brother sleep.

And, just for the record and because I haven't included any pictures of Tom in this entry yet... this is what he looks like when he surprises me with an Orange Crush from the store and tries to sneak in a Grape Jones Soda for himself. What a nice guy.

Here are some fun shots of Ryan doing some skating while on vacation. I haven't been able to see him in action myself yet, but from the pictures it looks like he's getting pretty good!