Painting pictures

I mentioned that we were painting. I was able to get to the camera cable today so now you all can see what we've done. I know you've been refreshing the blog every few minutes, just waiting to see them.

The dining room, before:

The hallway, before:

The guest room, before:

The dining room, at lunch time yesterday:

(my sweeties!)

The hallway, at lunchtime yesterday:

Emily's room, before:

(see here for a better before picture)

Emily's room, last night:

The guest room, last night:

The office, aka Emily's room last night:

(I really need to store some of that stuff somewhere other than the guest room!)

Our (mostly) happy girl:

(She was such a trooper, stayed in the pack n play most of the day yesterday and today.)

Emily's room, tonight:

(all that's left is to put pictures back on the wall and put a few items back in place!)

The guest room, tonight:

If you're still reading this, you should know that we also painted two doors and the wall and ceiling behind the stove. However, those don't really make for good pictures, so I didn't put them in. Actually, I didn't even take pictures of the doors and I never thought about a before picture of the stove area. Oh well!

Painting

It's been a busy day. We decided to paint our dining room, Emily's room and our guest room. Fortunately, Emily was cooperative and played (mostly happily) in her pack n play while we were painting.

I'd post pictures now, but the cable for our camera is in the office where Emily is sleeping tonight. So, I guess you'll all have to wait!

Go vote!!

We're still here and I have a post pending about baby food. But, in the meantime, I've entered Emily's birthday cake in a contest. Go vote here.

Pictures

Emily's 1 now, so we headed to Abilene to get some pictures taken. We had some pictures done at Sears Thursday and they turned out great. Then, Thursday evening and Friday morning, we had Debbie Riggs take pictures of Emily. You can see a sampling here, but Debbie told me there are even more (and better) ones that she didn't put up! I can't wait to see them!

Visits

We had two very different kind of visits yesterday. The first was to the doctor for Emily's 12-month check up. She's healthy (as I'm sure you all knew) and weighs 17 lb, 11 oz (I really thought she'd make it to 18 lb!) and is 29" long. She's in the 50th percentile for length and the 10th in weight (as usual).

Then, we headed east to Stephenville to meet Cara and her family for lunch. We had a great visit. Here are some pictures!

PARTY!!

Emily here. Saturday was my party and I wanted to share a bit of our day.

Grandpa let me drive up to the party. I knew we'd need the car to bring home all my presents!!

Pearlie helped me stretch my legs before the party.

This is the cake Mommy made for me. She worked really hard and made four versions before she finally got it right! All my second-cousins have used this cake mold for their first birthdays, Mommy and her cousins used it, and Pearlie and her sister used it too.

Mommy helped me blow out the candle. (Mommy found the candle in a box that had been Grandmommy's--she was Pearlie's mom.)

Here's the cake after I "pawed" at it. Mommy scooped out some cake for me, but I didn't want any. The icing was okay, though.

I had to get some lovin' in on my second-cousin Reagan. She's six weeks younger than me.

This picture is for Aunt Cara. Grandpa told Mommy I needed to learn early what to do with bows at a birthday party.

I really liked to pull out the tissue paper! I enjoyed the gifts, but Papa kept taking them away from me. Fortunately, Mommy was there to keep giving me new ones!

One of my favorite gifts...a rocking chair from Grandpa and Grandma. I really like rocking in it!

I wanted to say thank you to Mommy & Papa for "the best year of my life" so I gave them an ice cream maker that goes on Mommy's mixer. Maybe I'll get some this summer!

Granddaddy, Mommy, me and Pearlie...I love these four-generation pictures!

Just look at this cool toy box my Aunt Jenni made for me. It sure does clean up the living room, but, don't worry, I've figured out how to get it open all by myself!

Yesterday, I just wanted to play with my balloons. I guess they wanted to play with me, too. They came down to my level!

Thanks for reading about my party. I wish you all could have been there. You can see more pictures on Aunt Jenni's blog here.