Christmas Card photo...

Thanks to our friend Brian Fleming at BrianFlemingPhotography.com we have some great photos to choose from for our Christmas card this year, but I am thinking this may be the winner!

In other news:
-Emma is growing faster than ever it seems at times. She is so sweet and girly, but also so independent and silly. Her personality is really showing itself more and more and also her sinful heart, haha. She is starting to realize that she doesn't want to share as much as she used to, but also giving away kisses so freely that it melts this momma's heart. This age (16 months) presents many new parenting challenges (ie: power struggles, more discipline, etc.), but so many new fun adventures as well! I am so thankful for my sweet girl and the reminder of God's grace that she is in my life.
-We have had a really tough month and suffered loss, but God has been so good to us and we are grateful for the never-ending reminders of His grace in our lives.

To be continued...

I have a lot to catch up on...
But, for now, here is a quick pic of Emma at the State Fair from last weekend. We went with the Smiths and Emma and Cooper had a blast looking at all of the animals! This was one of my favorite moments of the day - we found some folk/bluegrass band concert behind the Village of Yesteryear (?) and since there was a little grassy area we let Emma run around for a little while. She started dancing (i wish we caught it on video - too cute!) and entertaining everyone around.

Under the weather

All three Swains have been under the weather at some point these last three weeks, and not to mention the fact that the memory card in my camera is no longer working, so my attempts at blogging regularly were (temporarily) thrown off. I am so thankful that my mom could come visit last weekend (she only lives about 3 hours away) because Emma and Aaron had both started feeling really bad and she was able to help with housework and keep Emma for a while so we could just get out of the house. What a blessing!

On another note...
Friday marked the beginning of my favorite season of the year - Fall!
Here is a short list of things that i love about this time of the year:
10. Pumpkin Spice Lattes
9. Enjoying the fact that no one can see how pale my legs are for several months
8. Fall decorations
7. Wearing boots
6. Upcoming trip to the pumpkin patch (Emma's first!)
5. Upcoming trip to the Corn Maze (with the youth)
4. Sweaters
3. Celebrations (so many birthdays and holidays)
2. Fall smelling candles (pumpkin, cider, etc.)
1. Being outside without sweating

Hopefully the camera will be fixed soon and I can put up some pics of what Emma has been up to recently!

Favorite Blogs

Today at Kelly's Korner her "Show us your life" link up is about favorite blogs. Usually after Emma is in bed at night I like to sit down and read a few blogs. I have many that i love to read, especially my "real life" friends, but these are just a few that I never miss!

1. GirlTalk
I love reading the blog and articles that the Mahaney girls write about biblical womanhood. They are very encouraging and honest in their writing and have great resources too.

2. Big Mama and Boo Mama
These ladies are hilarious and I really enjoy reading their posts about their day to day lives. I have laughed so hard that I cried many times reading their blogs.

3. For decoration, diy ideas, etc. I love to check out tatertots and jello.
I just recently found this website but I love the step by step diys and the dollar store redos.

4. The Pioneer Woman will always be one of my favorites (if you can even call her website a blog anymore). She is so popular now and even has a show on the Food Network. I have loved keeping up with her blog for a while now. She has GREAT recipes and funny stories and I would absolutely recommend checking out her site.

Happy Weekend!

Walking!

Since her birthday party Emma has been taking steps here and there but in the last 2 weeks or so she has really taken off and almost given up crawling all together! Our camera is acting up, but I hope to put up a video soon!
Happy Friday!

Crockpotalooza/Diptacular!

I am linking up to Kelly's Korner and Boomama's blog to share some of my fav recipes. I have made these several times and can't remember the original sources because i just wrote down the recipes and eventually memorize them and adjust them to my family's liking, etc.

1. Chicken nacho dip
This is a crockpot dip that is probably a little bad for the hips, but o-so-delicious for parties, etc. The only negative is that you have to cook the chicken before hand.
-3-4 chicken breasts (cooked and shredded)
-1 pound velveeta (cut in cubes)
-taco seasoning
-1 can rotel (drained)
-1/2 c green onions
-1 jalapeno (diced)
-1/3 c sour cream
-1 c black beans (drained and rinsed)

Combine all ingredients except the beans in the crockpot for 1.5-2 hours on high (stirring occasionally) and add in the black beans for the last 20 minutes.
Serve with tortilla chips!

2. Crockpot chicken barbeque

-6 chicken breasts
-1 (12-16 oz) bottle of fav bbq sauce
-1/2 c Italian dressing
-1/3c brown sugar
-2 Tbs Worcestershire sauce

Cook on high 3-4 hours or low 6-8 and shred the chicken about an hour before done.
We love to serve this with green beans, potatoes, and texas toast.

1st Birthday!

On July 30th, we celebrated Emma's 1st birthday with a party in Burgaw. We had a great time hanging out and celebrating with friends and family! Emma had a great time and especially enjoyed having some ice cream and her first cake!

The day after the party we traveled to North Myrtle Beach, SC to spend a week with my family and we celebrated Emma's birthday on Wednesday (which was her actual birthday) by going to the Aquarium, out to eat, to the pool, and finishing off with some more cake and ice cream!

We are so thankful to have had a week to go away to celebrate and relax with family! This year has truly flown by and we are so thankful that the Lord has seen fit to give us such a wonderful gift - we love you Emma!!!

1 year!

I can't believe that it has been over a year since the day we first saw Emma face to face for the very first time! We celebrated Emma's first birthday on August 3rd! We had a great week celebrating her birthday with family. We stopped in Burgaw to celebrate with Aaron's family the weekend before her birthday. We had a cookout and Emma got to have cake for the very first time! I won't elaborate about that right now because I have plenty of pictures to put up this week, so that will be another post. From Burgaw, we traveled to Myrtle Beach, SC to spend the week with my parents. Ahh, vacation - how I miss you! We had such a great time relaxing and hanging out with my parents and, of course, Miss Emma received plenty of spoiling as well. She loves the beach, so I will be sure to put up some pics of that too.

So...what is Emma up to at 12 months?
-she is very close to walking, and even took her first two steps while we were in Burgaw at her birthday party! She is still cruising and crawling as fast as ever and can stand up on her on for a while.
-we have almost completely moved from baby food to "real" food. She loves bananas, cereal bars, green beans, chicken, and yogurt especially. She drinks water from a straw sippy cup at her meals.
-we will be working on weaning in the next few weeks and starting whole milk. Since she was about a month early, I am waiting to get the green light for this at her 12 month appointment.
-she says mama, dada, daby(baby), and I think dog. She babbles a lot, but those are the words I can make out so far.
-she can point. If you ask her where daddy is, she will point to him. She can also find the baby on her yogurt, haha. She loves looking at books and pointing to pictures and saying something.
-she has 6 teeth!! She only had 2 about a month ago and in the last several weeks her top 4 teeth have come in (causing several early mornings of discomfort as well).
-she has several "tricks" that she can do if someone prompts her by asking. She can kiss, blow kisses, wave bye-bye, clap, dance, play the drums, go night-night (lay her head down on something for about 2 seconds, haha), and love something (ie: when we tell her to love her baby, she grabs it and squeezes it tight).
-she still takes 2 naps a day and sleeps well most nights.
-she will be moving into her big car seat soon!!

Overall Emma is such a happy and content baby and brings so much joy to our lives! We are so grateful to the Lord for blessing us with such a wonderful gift!

-

Photoshoot with cousin Chloe

We have arrived!

As of yesterday the Swain house is hooked up to the internet, yay! We have wanted to get it for a long time, and it seems unthinkable to most not to have it, but we never had to have it. Since we have recently paid off my car, PTL, we thought it would be a good investment so that we can keep up with family, church, and friends more easily and I(Sarah) can hopefully do some more couponing and save our family at least the money we are paying for internet.

All that to say, this blog will now be updated somewhat regularly and there will be many picture dumps with what Emma has been up to!

Projects

Since completing (well, almost) the projects I was working on for Emma's nursery, I have one large stack of sewing projects (mainly dresses) and 1 new hobby that I am attempting to work on in the coming weeks.

This is a picture of some of the fabrics, patterns, ribbons, etc. that are on my current sewing to do list. I have set aside 1 hour each week to work on these, so I am hoping that I can conquer this stack in the next 2 months - we shall see!

Secondly, I have become really interested in learning to decorate cookies. I am always coming up with new hobbies that I want to get into, but they are all pretty expensive, so I always end up deciding it is not worth it to spend the money. Decorating cookies will be relatively inexpensive since I have most of what I need on hand already. Taking the time to make them, however, will be the challenge. Here is a picture from "sweetopia" of some super cute owl cookies:

I'm sure mine will not look like, that but I am looking forward to trying something new!

Emma at 7 months

at 7 months Emma is doing so many new things so I wanted to document them on the blog:

-she has started doing the army crawl and can drag/roll herself across a room
-she smiles all the time now and loves to giggle an has even started squealing
-she babbled “mama” this month.
-she is eating stage 2 foods for 2-3 meals a day, and nurses about 5 times a day.
-most nights she sleeps between 10-12 hours with 2-3 naps every day
-she is wearing 6 month clothing, although she is long and skinny so not everything fits just right.
-she just had her first snack this week and is working on learning how to self-feed and take a sippy cup on occasion.
-she will be moving into size 2 diapers this week
-she had her first cold last month and her first ear infection this month ☹
-she loves to be active ad on the move
-I think bananas and yogurt are her favorite foods if I had to guess, but she eats everything so far

Overall we are just grateful to the Lord for the gift of this little girl! We are truly blessed! She is such a happy and easy (in my estimation) baby. We pray that one day she will be a wonderful older sister to future siblings and most of all that she would come to know and love Jesus!

6 months!

Today Em had her 6 month appointment and everything looks great! I can't believe how fast these past 6 months have gone by. Everyone says it, but it is so true. We love you sweet Emma Grace and pray daily that you would come to know and love Jesus!

What we've been up to recently...

Now that Emma is almost 6 months it is probably time that I give a little update about what our lives have been like the past 3 months.
Since my last update we have been on 3 trips - 2 to see both of our families during the holidays and 1 for our anniversary. It was so wonderful to be able to spend time with our families, and although traveling with an infant requires extra luggage, frequent stops for feeding and changing, and adjustments to sleep patterns, it was more than worth it to see so many of the people we love and for them to be able to spend time with Emma!
So, what has Emma been up to for the last few months:
*She has been sleeping through the night since about 2 months, but she has started waking up in the middle of the night again (possibly teething). Last night was the first night in several weeks that she slept for 9 hours straight and it was wonderful!
*She started rice cereal at 5 1/2 months and has loved it. We tried solids for the first time this week and she definitely was not a fan of sweet potatoes, but apples have been a hit.
*She had to see the orthopedist recently for a click in her left hip. They did an x-ray and determined that everything looked great - what a blessing!
*She has moved into 6 month sleepers and some onesies, but she still cannot wear the 6 month outfits because the pants fall off, ha!
*She loves to smile, giggle, play peek-a-boo, grab our faces, and make lots of funny noises.

She is such a sweet joy to be around and we just praise the Lord for giving us the wonderful gift of this girl!
Here are some recent pictures:






In other news:
In January Aaron and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary by taking a trip to the town of New Bern. We stayed in a beautiful hotel, ate at some great restaurants, and explored the quaint little town. I am so grateful that the Lord has been so gracious to give us 3 years together and can't wait for many more!