Family Dinner

Yesterday afternoon, I had Bobby drop me off at my parents' so I could help Jessica and Nathan prepare dinner - all my brothers and sisters were coming over. Bobby had to go check something out for a project he was bidding on so he left Emma with me for a bit. The plan was for them to go to his parents so Bobby could get some homework done by the time everyone was supposed to show up, but by the time he came to get her from my parents', she was already playing in the backyard with Malachy and wanted to stay. Last time he was picking on her, but this time he had a crush and wouldn't leave her side.


Everyone finally made it over, and Jess and Nathan made these wonderful specialty pizzas. We bought dough, but everything else was from scratch. Mom and Dad made us all look through all the pictures from when we were growing up and take home the ones we wanted. I was looking through them, and the 80s were a bad time for fashion. Some pictures of me when I was Emma's age should probably be burned.... While we were going through these pictures I found one of Winter Formal my sophomore year. There are 14 people in this picture, including me, Bobby, his brother Brian,... and Emma's mom. Emma saw this same picture on Christmas Eve and got really excited, so when I came accross it this time I asked her if she wanted it. She said yes but became a little upset and clung to me. Sometimes she does this when she sees pictures of her parents being happy together. Seeing them the way they are now it's kinda hard to fathom. Malachy was able to distract her though.

When it was time to go Emma was pooped. She'd been swimming in the spa and eaten all this pizza... My mom wrapped her up in a blanket and then mentioned that the sheepskin on the sofa was mine to take home whenever I was ready for it. Emma heard that and thought it would be great in her room. So we packed her into the car, laying against the soft sheepskin and wrapped in a blanket. By the time we made it home she was out. We got her into the house and she and the blanket climbed under the covers. She wanted the sheepskin on top of the covers, even though I told her it would get reallly warm under there. Then I remembered the tooth and we got it under her pillow.

It's kinda hard to tell when she's asleep - her eyes don't close all the way and her eyes kinda roll back. It's kinda freaky actually. Her eyes aren't wide open, just slits of openings, but it looks weird. When we finally decide she's out, we exchange the tooth for 2 gold dollars we got from my mom. We debated giving her a raise, but then decided we didn't want Jamie to feel we were one-upping her or feel she needed to raise it next time to out-do us. Better to keep the status quo.