Christmas 2006

We had a great first Christmas with Emily this year. We had a chance to have our own family time at our house before heading over to Mommaw and Poppaw Marshall's house. Here's Emily in a Christmas outfit from Grammy Gin.

Surrounded by love

It's getting scarier each day in today's society with regard to childcare. We, however, are abundantly blessed since my sister Randa watches Emily every day. We are so grateful she is surrounded by the love of her family and gets to grow up with her cousin Jack. Jack is so affectionate with Emily and loves to hug her every chance he gets. She looks scared in these pictures, but she really had no qualms about it.

4 months old

Emily is growing by leaps and bounds. She was 4 months old on Dec. 16. She's been cooing/talking for a while now and loves to look around at everything in sight. This was the first time I put jeans on Emily. Who knew they made jeans this small.





This Saturday Charlie, Emily and I went to Hickory Farms Tree Farm to begin the tradition of cutting down our own Christmas tree. We decided to go with a White Pine since the needles are softer. Charlie only took about 5 swipes with the saw and the tree was down. It was very strange to be chopping down a Christmas tree in 55 degree weather and no snow on the ground.

Emily's first babysitter

When Emily was a little over a month old and I went back to work we had the privilege of leaving her in the trusted hands of Patty Schmidjell. Patty was pregnant with her first child and graciously offered to watch Emily for a month. Emily got lots of attention and also had the chance to introduce herself to baby Schmidjell before she was even born. I don't know if it's the military child syndrome or mere good organizational skills, but every day when I arrived there after work Patty had Emily's "stats" all written down - what time she ate, how she ate, how many diapers she changed, etc. I loved it and it will definitely be something we put in Emily's baby book. Here's just a few pictures of Emily checking out her surroundings.










Here's a picture of Daddy and Tim Schmidjell changing Emily's diaper. The caption should read: How many men does it take to change a baby's diaper? They did such a good job.

New Job

For everyone that didn't know, today I started my new job with
Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) where I'm a computer technician. Its seems to be a really fun place. Everyone has a great personality and I'm working with computer again. I liked my old job, but the stress of working all the time and not seeing my Wife and baby girl was getting to me. Will fill you in on more later, for now I have to get some sleep.

Bath Time at Marshall/Clay home

Now that Emily has grown she seems to enjoy bath time a lot more. Randa and I were curious how Jack would respond if Emily was in his bathtub and just as expected he splashed around and wanted to get in it as well. This will be even more fun when we start including toys.