3 years old

Well, it's very hard to believe, but our little "burrito baby" as we called her is now 3 years old. She is such a blessing and we're so thankful the Lord has given us the privilege of caring for her. She has grown already into a lively, very curious little girl and we're excited to see what God has in store for her. Although we have no idea what she'd like to do in the future, if we heard right, this morning on our way to church we think she said "when I grow up I want to be an engineer".

As of Aug. 3 we finally were successful in ridding our house of all the fa-fas (pacifiers). Someone from Charlie's work sent him an idea involving a fa-fa fairy so we decided to try it. Quite a few months ago I had Emily decorate a box with paint and stickers and I wrote on it "for fa-fa fairy" and the plan was to box them up and actually mail them, however, knowing Emily I thought it would be best if she were to physically see them in someone else's hands. So, I asked one of our friends who recently had a baby if we could come over and pass on the fa-fa's to her new little one and see if this baby's Grandmother would agree to be the Fa-Fa Fairy. Emily played for a little while, and then reluctantly handed the Fairy (a.k.a. Mrs. Gayle) the box and watched her give the fa-fa's to the baby. Emily was a little upset at first, but was soon distracted when we told her we were taking her to a special playground as a reward for giving her fa-fa's to the baby. All in all I think this method worked well and even though we hear about the Fa-Fa Fairy every now and then, we are free of them, at least until baby boy Groff enters the world.

3 months 3 years

Emily's 3rd Birthday

Emily had a lot of fun spending time with family this year during her birthday party. She did a lot better ripping into the packages this year than last year, but she was not too keen on moving onto the next gift. Thank you all for making Emily's party so much fun.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

More from our trip to PA and Idlewild and a few more to come

The ultimate family vacation spot

This past weekend we had the opportunity to visit with the Groff's and Byers and also to experience Idlewild - an amusement/water park that Charlie and his family have been going to in Pennsylvania since Charlie was little. On Friday we visited with Charlie's cousins and then Saturday some of us headed to the park. This park is amazing and honestly has no comparison to any park in Ohio. It has something for the entire family all at one location and very reasonably priced. We all had a blast and of course Emily did not want to leave. There's more pictures to come, but here's one of Emily and her cousin Cameron riding the cars on the kiddie side of the park.

Thank you Gimmy for the tickets and thank you Aunt Kristen for capturing this moment on film.