Emliy is 4 Years 9 Months Old!

Hi everyone! It's that time again- the monthly update on our big girl!  Shockingly, this month I have very few photos to share (read-- I hardly used my camera at home this month!)  It's been pretty busy around here and very, very, very, very rainy (did you get that part?? It's like the rainiest July on record, I swear!)  We've been cooped up inside or playing at friend's houses for the whole month and I simply haven't been taking as many photos as normal.  Hopefully some good weather is on the way- we need to PLAY! Here's what's been happening this month:

- We bought Emily a kindergarten readiness workbook from Sam's and she absolutely loves doing her "work".  She will happily sit and work on pages with you and loves to follow the directions in the book and learn new things.  So far, so good...and we are totally amazed at how she is able to defend her answers when we ask-- she has very advanced reasoning abilities, for sure!

- She stayed the night with Granny and Grandaddy a few times this month which was great- Audrey tends to sleep later so if Emily is not home, Paul and I get to sleep a little extra too!!

- She attended VBS at an area church in our town.  We have lots of friends who attend there and she went with our neighbors-- she had a great time!  She would come home each night and tell me all about how much she liked the games and stories and crafts.  Our church's VBS is next week so hopefully she'll love it just as much!

- She put my self- tanning lotion all over Audrey one day....that insured that Audrey got an IMMEDIATE bath, lol!

- She has all but stopped eating any cooked vegetables.

- She is in love with fresh peaches from the market down the road.

- She got to hang out with friends and stay up VERY late for fireworks on the 4th of July- and loved every minute! It was a great party and she had a fun time.

- She is love with poems from Shel Silverstein's books A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends. Which is perfect, to me, because I love them too! It's funny- most of these poems were written a long time ago and some of them are incredibly politically INcorrect...sometimes we have to adjust the language or the message but she enjoys the majority of them.

- She is more helpful around the house.

- She has decided (of her own volition here- we did not tell or ask her) to bring her own money to church now for her offering.  Absolutely melts my heart that she is willing to give to help others.  It's especially sweet when she talks about why we give an offering to our church-- her answer is precious!

- Our neighbors (2 of which are some of Emily's closest friends) have been on vacation for 2 weeks this summer and Emily is really missing them a lot!

- She has started to draw amazingly realistic pictures of people and things- she remember things like fingers, eyelashes, etc... It's amazing!  She loves to sit and draw with markers, cut paper, string beads, etc.

Thanks for checking in on our girl! More photos to come this month, promise!  There are some in the album that I had already posted so I'm not including them in this post. :)