Reading

Both Emma and Will are little bookworms. During that "witching hour" before dinner, Will would be content to sit and have me read book after book to him. Unfortunately, since that is not especially conducive to making dinner at the same time!

Emma has stepped things up with her big sister skills lately. She has started reading books to Will, which really makes everybody happy! Will gets to hear his books, Emma gets to be in charge, and I get dinner made!

This day was especially cute...Will got himself all settled on the booster seat and Emma read through eat of his letter books - Will's favorites.

Its so wonderful to see their friendship developing even with how young they are right now!

Swings

We had some mild weather last week, so we took full advantage of it by spending as much time as possible outside! One particularly nice day we went for a long walk through the neighborhood.

Emma loves to look at the ducks in our nearby pond.

 There were a ton to see that day. Will pointing out the ducks:

After we made it a good way through the neighborhood, I took Emma and Will to the lone swingset. They had a blast!

The sky was amazing.

As were some of their expressions!

It was soooo nice to get to be outside in January!

She loves Peter Rabbit

One of Emma's favorite book to have us read to her is Peter Rabbit. She got the audiobook for Christmas, and knew when to turn the pages even without a page turn signal. Turns out, she knows a bit more of the book than simply where to turn the pages. 

(its a little harder to hear her over the shake cars in the background!)

We LOVE how much she loves books!

Snow

We had our first snow over the weekend! It actually wasn't much of a snow...about half and inch to an inch of icy slush...Emma and Will had so much fun sledding and looking outside at it though, and Will kept saying "no! no!" (snow)

Near the end of this clip you can hear him say "snow"

Emma is 3!

Emma turned 3 on Friday and we had her birthday party on Saturday. She had so much fun on her birthday, especially since she had been anticipating it for so long!

Her birthday morning was very fun - with a surprise in her room when she woke up (bunk beds for her baby dolls), a trip to Starbucks to get a special drink and cake, and time to play on the computer at the library. We also had a special evening staying up late with Emma to watch Finding Nemo for the first time!

The party on Saturday was so much fun...thanks to all of the family members that were able to come! Here are a few pictures from the day.

Emma's cake - Charlotte's Web 

(She ate Wilbur)

(and half of a chick!) 

See what's in Charlotte's Web??

Emma with her packages...she was SO excited!

Gotta love that cake!

Happy Birthday, Emma! We are so blessed to have you in our lives. Since you were first born you captured our hearts. When you turned two, you looked like such a big girl, but this last year has matured and grown you into a little lady. You are compassionate and caring, a loving big sister, a sweet and affectionate daughter, and you have a sweet love for Jesus. We are so thankful for three years of life with you and are excited to see what this next year brings!

Love,

Daddy and Mommy

A Longer Video

This is such a sweet video of both Will and Emma. You get to see Will talking - he's learned so many new words lately! And Emma is slightly obsessed with Becca's pastor's son, Kohl. They send each other "I love you" videos through Becca, haha!

Cheese!

Take a look at this handsome boy.

Curly!

Too cute!

Will learned how to say "cheese" while taking this one

Oh goodness, sometimes their cuteness is too much!

Our Family is Growing!

This year will surely hold many new experiences for our family, and we hope that one of them will be adding to our family through adoption! We are planning to adopt through the Delaware Foster Care System. We have a lot to learn, so you can be praying for us as we go through this new and uncharted territory.

A few details:

-We still need to decide on an adoption agency - our goal is to finalize this so we can move forward by the end of January.

-We would like to have a child younger than Will, but would be willing to consider a child older than him as long as they were younger than Emma.

-Also, we do not want to be "foster parents" at this point in our lives - that is, we know we will have to be approved as foster parents, but want to be in a situation where any child that comes into our stays as part of our forever family.

The cost of a foster care adoption is usually minimal, but there will certainly be other things to consider like probably upgrading from our Accord to add room for another car seat. We'll be sure to post about any fundraising we do! In the mean time, do you shop on Amazon? If you click through any of the Amazon
links on this blog or Thrifty Living and make a purchase, we will earn a small commission. I've also added a banner on the sidebar. We are putting aside any money earned this way for future adoption expenses.

It's exciting to see how God is working in all of our lives right now. Emma asks us every day to pray for "another brother and another sister"!

Counting the days

Emma's birthday is just around the corner, so we made a paper chain to help her see the time until the big day!

She is so cute and very excited. I put a few more details on Thrifty Living.