Potluck & Presents

Precious little Emmie-cille helped pick out her own outfit this morning, hence, cat pants and cat onesie. She also chose to wear two hair bows. The girl’s got style, right?! 😉

I asked her if the fire was hot, so she touched it to make sure, and told me, “No Mommy, it’s cooooold.”

At work today, we had a potluck snack-lunch, and did a White Elephant/Dirty Santa gift exchange. I mixed up the sauce last night for Sweet & Spicy Cranberry Meatballs, then dumped it in my crock pot in my office, once I got to work. (That recipe is for homemade meatballs, but I just use a bag of frozen ones from Walmart, and then add the sauce mixture {made with nine random ingredients) to the frozen meatballs. Wayyy easier, and just as tasty.)

 

I let the meatballs cook on high in my office floor for 2 hours, and then moved them into the conference room with the rest of the food, once Toni & I did a taste-test to ensure they weren’t cold inside or anything…

There were 20 of us playing, and I drew #20, which meant I was the 2nd to last to choose, since we play where #1 gets final pick. I started out with a mystery pick & unwrapped a FSU-themed desktop corn hole game, which was stolen from me. Then I stole a $10 gift card to Chicken Salad Chick, and when I got up and walked to the end of our oval to take this photo, that was stolen from me! {Which is why some people are turned around staring at me.} I ended up with a soft, cozy blanket though {and a cute slot bag}, so I’m fine with that too 🙂

I actually got caught at work late today, doing a last minute emergency process. I wasn’t sure how long I would be there, so Jeff got off a little earlier than usual, and went to get her for me. I was able to go straight home, and made it to the house around 5:45. I baked our chicken taquitos, and made yellow rice and black beans, and we had Tex-Mex inspired food for the second night in a row. But no one is complaining about that! Emmie was particularly excited about the doggie on her napkin!

At one point, she handed her fork to Ryan and said, “feed me, Ryan!” Then she made him dip the rice in her sour cream for her while he was at it.

And then she pointed at Gabe across the table and told him he needed to feed her a bite too! She’s the queen, and we’re all just living in her world. Clearly.

And clearly, she was still stoked for her sour cream.

After dinner she had her piece of chocolate from the advent calendar, and then we did jammies and got ready for bedtime. She found the little red jingle bell that Santa gave her yesterday, and wanted to put it on the Christmas tree.

And she loved finding all of the little nativity characters on this tiny tree, and pointing them all out to me.

We read the caterpillar book like usual, and did prayers and bear hugs all around.

Then she wanted to chat with Mommy for a bit… For the past four or so nights, Emerson has told me all about “Andrew and William go on a plane and fly hiiiiiigh up in the sky to go see somebody.” (When she says the high up in the sky part, she waves her tiny little arm in an arc over her head, and it’s adorable.) I asked her if she missed them at school today, and she said “yes.” I asked if they were her best friends, and she said “yes,” of course. Then she said “I love them best! And I want to tell them I have puppies on my jammies.” So I took this photo, and posted it on their mom’s Facebook page.

She was a really good girl for bedtime tonight, and she was down in her crib in no time. I chose to blog first instead of washing dishes (which is opposite my usual routine), so now I have to go wash dishes, while Jeff and the boys wrap more presents. Clearly, we’re last-minute-wrappers. Maybe we’ll be better at it next year? But probably not…