Oregon open house.

I took almost a million pictures of the girls because I took some pictures for the open house, and we were there early, and no one else was…so my girls got a lot of pictures.  This is a small sampling of them, believe that or not. Ha!

Elna LOVES to dance more than almost anything else.  We really really need to get her into ballet.  She danced almost the entire night away!

I love the dip!

These three!

I love how happy Brian looks here!  He is with his high school friends Stacy (left) and Ellie (right) and their significan others.

Have you seen a sweeter girl?

 

Dancing with her daddy.

Catching up with another highschool friend, Liz.

We brought the girls jammies and put them in them when we were taking everything down so that we could put them right to bed when we got home.

Love this picture!!

Instead of a sign-in book, they had everyone sign a jenga block.  Elna spent a lot of time writing her name on more than one of those blocks (you can see about 5 in the picture above)

When we walked into the primary room and saw the girls writing on the chalkboard, we were super concerned as we figured they were using permanent markers ( from the jenga blocks), but luckily they were dry erase markers and came right off.  Elna loves writing her name!

It was such a fun night celebrating Jared and Deborah and seeing so many friends!  We are so happy Jared found such a great match and happy she has joined the family!

Georgia—7 months.

Georgia looks super happy and charming in these photos, but 7 months was not her best month.  She had a cold for most of the month and went from sleeping through the night (for about a week!) to waking up every hour, all night long—google tells me it was separation anxiety, but who really knows.  Between Brian and me, we were up all night for most of December and into January.  She still only has 2 bottom teeth.  She’s eating a little bit more.  She’s mostly happy during the day, unless I try to put her down for a nap, and then she usually screams.  I nursed her to sleep almost always, just to get her to sleep a little bit—but often she still woke up as I put her in her crib.  It was a hard month, but it’s hard to be too discouraged when I see these sweet pictures of her.  We love her so! 

Some O Holy Night outtakes (that are worth watching and kind of hilarious, in my opinion)

The girls sang O Holy NIght all month long in December.  They are still singing it in January.  Though Elna was the main star, Harriet was pretty awesome too—especially for a 2 year-old.

And this next one has us laughing every time we watch it.  It gets better and better, so just stick with it:

The "fall on your knees" part was my favorite part.  And I'm kind of crazy about the fact that Harriet is nursing her baby the whole time too.

O Holy Night

A few weeks before Christmas Sunday, Elna was singing O Holy Night at Brian’s parents house during dinner, and doing a pretty good job.  Chris, who was asked to sing O Holy Night in our ward on Christmas Sunday, wondered if she wanted to sing part of it with him, and she said that she would.  She practiced her sweet little heart out, and did such a beautiful job on Sunday.  We were so, so proud of our little girl!  She is such a brave, beautiful girl!

Here is a clip--it is mostly just Elna, though Chris sings for a bit after.  He continues to sing for another 5 minutes or so without Elna, which I don't have on video.

The next day we went to the temple to see my cousin, Marilyn, play the harp in a Christmas recital.  She played O Holy Night.  She played it again after the concert so that Elna could sing with her.  It was so sweet!

Bumblebees.

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