Visitors

Emily loves visitors!!  She likes for everyone to be in the same room, preferably watching her.  If someone leaves the room she follows them to find out where they are going and tries to bring them back.  She's enjoyed lots of extra attention from Mimi, Papa Stan and Uncle Stan while they were here visiting her cousin Jacob....she loved every minute of it!! 

Emily LOVES for my mom to read to her.  The book they were reading was acutally pretty long, and Emily usually gets up about 1/2 way through it and moves on to something else.  She actually stayed for the entire thing!

Is that not the sweetest little smile?  She calls him "Tan".  The "S" is hard to say.  Stan used to call me "Tet" so I don't think he can say anything.:) 

My dad (Emily calls him "Papa"...we're working on getting her to call him "Papa Stan", but she's still leaving off the Stan:))hanging out with his two grandbabies.:)

Earthquake!!!

Tuesday afternoon I laid Emily down for her nap and sat down to have my quiet time.  I almost always have my quiet time as soon as I lay her down for her nap b/c I'm never sure exactly how long she will sleep.  I've decided house chores can wait....e-mails can wait...phone calls can wait....my relationship with the Lord really is the most important thing to me.  Anyway, I could hear Emily through the monitor talking to herself, but she sounded like she was getting closer to going to sleep.

All of the sudden the chair I was sitting in started vibrating.  I looked around and JUMPED up!  I ran to the kitchen to see what was making a noise in there and realized the tea kettle was shaking back and forth.  Then I ran back into the living room and realized then that EVERYTHING was shaking.  I ran back to Emily's room and grabbed her out of the crib.  (She was a little confused I think, but quite pleased that she was getting up!)  We ran outside our apartment and found LOTS of our neighbors already outside talking about the tremors from the earthquake we were feeling.  It actually made me feel a lot better that other people were feeling the same thing I was.  I've definitely never experienced any kind of earthquake, and I wasn't quite sure what was going on.

After realizing that all was well we came back inside to call Bert.  He had felt the earthquake down in Raleigh too.  To Emily's dismay she had to go back to her crib and I started my quiet time again. As I was sitting there (trying to settle down from all the excitement) I was struck with just how BIG and POWERFUL and WORTHY our God is.  There was an earthquake in VA that people felt from NY to Atlanta.  Crazy!  It just made me realize how small I am and how big he is.  I need a daily reminder of that truth!

Jacob - The First Few Days

We spent lots of time visiting the Sanders while they were staying in the hospital. Here are a few pictures from our visits.  

Jacob and Papa Stan

Jacob and Mimi

Jacob and Uncle Stan

Jacob and Uncle Bert

Jacob and Aunt Stephanie

Emily looooves Jacob!  She calls him "Baycup" and talks about him all the time.  She has the biggest grin on her face every.single.time. she says "Baycup".....it's SO sweet!  

Our cousin, Kristi, came over from Durham to meet Jacob!  She even brought Emily a sweet gift...thanks Kristi!:)

A few family pictures...

The handsome little guy....

Jacob, you are one very loved little boy!!  We're so thankful for you and glad you're here!!  

Meet Jacob Isaiah

Meet Jacob Isaiah Sanders, our sweet nephew.  He was born August 9th at 3:17pm and weighed 8lbs 14oz. Katherine and Brett are amazing parents!  Jacob really is the sweetest, most precious little guy you have ever seen!  I'm one proud aunt!:)  

We had a long day of waiting for his arrival, but we could not have been happier to wait.  We were all SO excited about meeting him!  Here are a few pictures from when the family was patiently (ahemmmm....) waiting.:)  

Papa Stan and Mimi hit the road from GA at 2:30am to come and meet their first grandson.  I feel sure my dad drove too fast and he said my mom talked 90 miles a minute the entire trip....they were both pretty excited!:)  

Emily just reading a magazine...upside down of course.

Stan definitely won the award for being the most laid back.  He just relaxed a read his book most of the day.  

The waiting game.  We had our own corner which turned out to be very helpful for keeping Emily contained.

Finally!!  They called us up to get our first peek at baby Jacob.  Could he be any more precious???

Watts Visit

Bert's parents, Jeff and Linda, came up for a visit last week and we had such a great time!  They spoiled us rotten by taking all of us out to eat to all of these amazing restaurants!!  The first night they  were we went to the Japanese steakhouse in Raleigh.  Definitely one of my favorites and it's quickly becoming one of Emily's favorite's too.  

She loved watching the chef cook right in front of us.  She was very serious, but definitely enjoying it!  I don't think she could quite figure out what he was doing.  

Meet Emily's new favorite toy.  She LOVES her horse.  Linda found it at a yard sale and thought Emily might like it....and she was right!!  It's the perfect size for her and so far we haven't had any injuries.:)  Emily can make me a little nervous sometimes with how hard she is rocking, but Bert assures me she can't flip it over backwards.  

Emily and her Grandmama.  I love this picture.:) 

Emily, Grandmama and Aunt Alison

Linda and Jeff also brought Emily another surprise.  They bought her a big pad of paper and her first crayons.  So fun!!  The doctor asked me at her 15 month check up if she liked to color (scribble), and I told him I hadn't really given her the chance.  We didn't even own any crayons.  Poor kid.:)  Anyway, she quickly figured out what to do and this is where she spends a lot of her time now.  She also really likes to walk/dance on the paper.  I think it feels funny to her.:)   

Emily's first piece of art work.  15 1/2 months old.  A few of the circles in the bottom left are from us to help get her started, but I would say this is 90% her work.  So proud of my little artist.:) 

We also watched movies, played games, walked around downtown WF and just enjoyed being together.  One night Linda, Jeff, Bert and I decided to play a game of Phase 10.  For me, it was one of those games where all you can do is just sit in shock that you still haven't been able to get past phase 6.  I was stuck and it was maddening.  Linda won, with Jeff and Bert right behind her....me, not so much.  If you know me at all you know that I can get pretty competitive during games (especially with Bert).  It was a huge relief to me that Bert ended up coming in 3rd place.:)

Thanks for coming to visit, Linda and Jeff!  We had such a great time with y'all...please come back soon!:) 

Huge Help

My mom decided to make a last minute trip up to visit a couple weeks ago and boy are we glad that she did! We had such a great time with her and she could not have been more helpful.   She started out the weekend by letting Bert and me go out on a date night Thursday night.  Then, she spent most of Friday at Katherine's helping her get their house ready for baby Jacob.  She cleaned floors, washed rugs, cleaned out the pantry, cleaned out the fridge, helped organize Jacob's room, swept the garage, etc.  We had a pretty relaxing Saturday morning and then on Saturday afternoon she went to the grocery store and bought food to make us (Sanders and Watts) each 4 meals to freeze!!  How exciting is that?!  I've been sooooo nauseous lately and my absolute worst time of the day is evening.  This means Bert has taken on more of the cooking for a couple weeks, and he's done such a great job.  He's such a great cook and he's always happy to help out.  However, I'm so thankful to have a couple meals in the freezer that we'll just be able to pull out and give my sweet husband a break. 

Here we are having a cooking party on Saturday afternoon...:)

Thanks SO much for loving on us and serving us so well, Mama.  We love you!