Our growing baby

Shawna Marie is doing what all babies do and is doing it very well.  She is growing!  At four months she was nearly 16 pounds.  She loves to smile and to be held by her mom.  She is very alert and loves to suck on anything that gets close enough to her mouth.  Her hands are a favorite.  Here are a few from about the first half of December of last year.

Wonder Girl and Super Girl

One of the gifts Sylvia and Vivian got for Christmas was a cape and mask.  Sylvia got red and Vivian got blue.  It was an instant 'like'.  I think it's one they will use for a long time.  They love playing super heroes.

Snow on Christmas 2012

Our first Christmas in Texas and it snows! Benjamin had to work that day so we celebrated the day after.  I've never waited until the 26th of December to actually open presents but that was when we were all together. Such is the life of a hospital nurse.  The girls...well Sylvia loved opening all the presents.  She didn't even wait to look at the name on the gift.  She just started ripping everything open.  It's so fun to see how much young kids love the magic of Christmas.  I took these with my new Holga lens.

New Resolve and Birthday Fun

As I look back through my pictures I see many of them with different eyes.  The great thing about technology especially with photography is that you can take a seemingly unlimited amount of photographs to really be able to capture the emotions of a moment.  I keep nearly all the pictures that I take and even the ones that are taken by the pint-sized photographers of the household. I also look back on these posts and my own journal and feel regret that haven't kept a better personal history.  I started writing in my current journal in 2008.  I guess I'll just have to reach back into the recesses of my memory for the moments that seem to stick out.  So since this is a new year and I reflect on resolutions I really only have one that I truly want to improve at.  I want to keep a better personal history.  I plan on doing this by writing something every day in my journal or this blog or in a notebook for each of my children about my children.  So here goes.

We've been in Grand Prairie Texas for a few months now.  Sylvia has become very interested in butterflies.  There were a lot of them around before the weather got cold.  She has a book that was given to her a few years ago by our dear friends Liz and Tracy Grandlinger from the Fancy Nancy collection called Bonjour Butterfly.  We got her a fishing net which she used to catch butterflies. So for her birthday she wanted a cake in the shape of a butterfly.

The kids also had fun jumping in the leaves.

We gave out lots of invitations but not many people came.  I gave them out to the only people I know; the ward members.  We go to a Spanish-speaking ward.  I learned that day that most Latinos are used to parties in the afternoon.  I scheduled Sylvia's birthday party for 10:30 in the morning in the hopes that people would come by 11 am.  I also later found out that some people said they were sorry they couldn't be there because they had something going on at 6 pm the same day.  They just assumed it was in the afternoon or evening without looking at the invitation.  Ah well.  Such are the cultural differences.  It didn't even matter to Sylvia.  She had a great time.  Our next-door neighbor's granddaughter also happened to be visiting and we invited her over too.  I had thought about preparing an activity for the kids to do as part of the party then we just decided that jumping in the leaves would be less work and more fun.  It was a beautiful day.  Sylvia's birthday was on Thursday the 6th but we didn't have the party until Saturday the 8th.  Sylvia didn't believe that she actually turned 5 until she blew out the candles on her birthday cake even though on the 6th I made her a big pancake and put candles in it for her to blow out.  To her it wasn't the same.