July Highlights 2009

Here are just a few of the pictures from our fun times in July. Emma's 2nd Birthday was also in July so there will be a separate post dedicated just to her birthday. For now, enjoy our pictures from July!

Emma eating a lollypop in her new beautiful chair from Aunt Kimmie!

Amy and Emma during Amy and Sam's visit to GA! Emma was in love with Aunt Amy! Isn't it obvious???

Emma helping me make some 4th of July brownies! She's such a big helper!

Our little helper again assisting her daddy in recovering the kitchen chairs!

What a face! I just had to include this one! Precious baby (and belly)!!!

June Highlights 2009

Until I can manage a little more "Me" time, there will only be monthly updates to our blog and...well...I'm 2 months behind! So, here are just some highlights from June!

Here's us all ready for church! Family pictures are rare so I had to add it!

Emma playing in the water hose! What can I say, you can take the girl out of Rockingham, but you can't take Rockingham out of the girl!

Emma showing off her precious shirt made by a friend of mine! We Love it! And Em loved posing to show off her new shirt!

Our little artist after a fun day of playing in her finger paints. Thanks to GaGa visiting and letting Em get into everything, this paint was in places unimaginable. But hey, what are GaGa's for???

HOLLYWOOOOOOOOD!!!

Heading to the pool!

Stay tuned for July highlights! Maybe I'll get to them by October!

Sesame Street Live

Today we went with our friends to see our favorite monster, Elmo, LIVE!

Emma was totally impressed with Elmo and all the characters! Richard was just as impressed!

Emma and her sweet Daddy!

Our friends Ashley, Jonathan, Bryce, and Ava. They loved the show as well and Ava wanted to be up there WITH Elmo!

All of the Sesame Street cast. It was a great show and we all enjoyed it so much! The kids did great and we're looking forward to seeing another live show with Emma Bess!

SeaWorld

We decided to take a weekend trip down to Orlando to let Emma experience SeaWorld and we were not disappointed! We all had a blast!!!

Our family! Emma couldn't get enough of the animals and the shows. She truly enjoyed everything!


We had to change outfits at naptime because Shamu got us SOAKED at the Believe show. Em was a little upset by that but she quickly recovered when Shamu started doing tricks! Unfortunately a lot of our pictures are on our underwater camera and I haven't gotten them developed yet.

The Bledsoe's posing with the real Shamu! Yeah, not so much, but we think it's a cute picture!

Emma loved the Mannatees. She kept saying "I wanna touch it!!!" Of course she couldn't touch but our next stop was feeding the dolphins. She loved that, too and wasn't even grossed out by the dead fish you feed them! Again, the pics are on my water camera.

We had a fantastic trip and we can't wait to go to Disney in the Fall!

OBX Vacation

As I mentioned in a previous post, the weather was anything but spectacular during our vacation in the Outer Banks, but we had a great time with our family!

Josh, Wendi, Richard, Austin, Aunt Kimmie, Emma, and Justin on the Nature Hike. We actually cheated and drove to a spot, took a picture, looked at the water then got back in the car and drove to the lighthouse. It was WAY too cold to walk :)

The Corolla Lighthouse. Isn't it beautiful?

Emma loved when Austin and Justin rode in the backseat. She always wanted to hold their hands!

Emma and Grandma Gwen braving a few minutes on the beach. Although we didn't get to stay on the beach long we did get to fly the kite for a minute, play in the dirt for a second, and see a wild horse a thousand feet from us! Hey, it's the experience that counts, right?

Emma on a not-so-freezing day playing tee ball. She'd make Papa Ernie proud!

Emma and her Daddy flying Opie, the Octopus kite!

Em in action! She was chasing a balloon and I happened to get this cool shot!

And on our stop-over in Fayetteville heading home, the weather was beautiful, of course, and Em enjoyed the pool at the hotel!

Emma chilling with her Daddy. Doesn't she just look like an amazingly happy little angel? Precious baby, wonderful Daddy, priceless memories!

Our Easter

Since we spent Easter in Corolla, NC and the drive was 10.5 hours, we stopped over in Fayetteville and lucky for us, Aunt GeeGee and Grayson decided to join us for the night!Emma kissing sweet, precious Baby Grayson. She was wonderful with him! She loves him so much and was such a helper! She wanted to kiss him as much as I did!

Richard, my mom, and WeeWee watched the kiddos for Jennifer and I to go out to eat. Mama said the babies were wonderful and Emma was a sweetie! Of course Grayson was super laid back, and Richard and Grayson bonded! Jennifer and I were super grateful for the girls night!

Then we completed the drive to OBX! Here are Emma's, Justin's, and Austin's Easter baskets from the Easter Bunny!

Right when Em woke up we went upstairs to see what the Easter Bunny brought! She couldn't wait to get to the Cadbury Eggs! Here she is with her mouth stuffed with a mini-Cadbury at 6:30am.

And after the sun came up she was ready to wear the bunny ears to head outside with Aunt Kimmie and brave the EXTREMELY cold temps!

Although the weather was horrible for our week in Corolla, we are so very grateful to have been able to spend it with family. Once you move away you really take for granted having family right next door. So it was truly a blessing to have family around to celebrate Easter with Em. Now it's time for the Billingsley side to plan a big vacation!!!

Start of Easter Festivities

Our Easter was filled with so many fun activities! In fact, we've been so busy that I haven't had time to update our blog recently.
Here's my attempt to summarize the last month...Enjoy!

Here's Em at the Spring Festival at Bright Beginnings. She had a ball playing with her friends in the hay, participating in the games, jumping in the bounce house, and riding the hay ride!

Emma and her Daddy at Connors Amazing Acres. Now this was certainly a treat for Em and all of us! We had a blast!

The first thing Emma notices as we enter? The farm dog! She petted and kissed this dog for the first few minutes. I had to practically pry her off of him. He was a trooper, though! She LOVED the corn box! When she got out she had kernels in her shoes and between her toes! Again, she didn't want the fun to end.

And the egg hunt begins...she did great hunting the eggs! She got a ton, until she noticed the toys! Then she was ready to play!

We had a great day visiting with the animals, playing with friends, hunting Easter eggs, and sliding down the huge slide. Our little princess is definitely a country girl at heart!

St. Patrick's Day Playdate

On St. Patrick's Day we had another wonderful playdate at Deanna's! The kids had a blast, of course!!! We started off the morning by doing lots of playing in Kate and Gabe's fabulous back yard!

Here's Emma enjoying the playhouse! She must get her domestication from her mommy ;)

Here's the host himself about to take a slide down the sliding board! Weeee!

And then it was time for our green lunch! We had green grits, green eggs, green pancakes, green fruit, green dip, green juice boxes, green everything! It was so much fun!

And here's Brycie so very excited about her green paint! Deanna gave each of the kids their own smock with their names embroidered on them! It was such a sweet and cute surprise! And boy did they come in handy when it was time to paint the shamrocks!

Here's Emma thinking "I wonder if anyone will notice if I paint the fence?!"

Ava is such a great artist she doesn't even have to look at her canvas! Beautiful, Ava!

Emma's showing me the paint on her finger. 3.5 seconds after I snapped this shot that green paint went directly in her hair. She was covered! But she didn't get a drop on her clothes thanks to the smock! Maybe next time we should have her wear a hairnet!

Mardi Gras

A few weeks ago I decided to take my mom, my sister Candi, and Emma to downtown St. Mary's to attend the (family-friendly) Mardi Gras parade. It was much better than I originally expected! Here's just one of the many cool floats:


It was a beautiful day and it was incredibly crowded for the tiny town of St. Mary's, but we had a blast! Emma was totally mesmerized by the floats, dogs, and people throwing candy and beads at her!

Emma and her Aunt Can-Can watching the parade. We were so glad to have her, Tony, and "Gah-Gah" Rita in town!

She finally decided to get brave and get down to wave at the people and say "Hi!"

Here she is mid-wave! Hoping for more candy and beads, I'm sure!

Farm Day

Today we decided to head to Folkston, GA with our friends Mrs. Ashley and Ava and Bryce. We had no idea what to expect and boy were we pleasantly surprised! Ashley's in-laws have a beautiful vineyard and farm. Emma loved visiting all the animals and spending some time with her pals!

First stop: The new puppies! Emma fell in love with them and one of the pups especially loved Em!

It was love at first lick!

Then on to the horses which were absolutely beautiful! Emma was amazed by them and she wasn't scared at all! Of course Ava and Bryce are old pros with the horses so I think Emma followed their lead!

Mr. Kriner let the girls feed the gorgeous horses some treats. Emma was a little hesitant about letting them eat out of her hand but she had no problem tossing them!

This is the best we could do with the 3 of them! It's certainly a task to get one to be still, never mind 3! They are some precious animal-loving babies!

After playing outside for a bit we all went inside to enjoy some yummy southern cooking thanks to Mrs. Kriner. I felt like I was back in NC with my fabulous family! We enjoyed ourselves so much and are so grateful to Ashley, the girls, and Mr. and Mrs. Kriner for having us over! We had such a great time! We still haven't stopped talking about it!