A Blessing

We drove up to Kansas City, Kansas this past weekend to bless Eliza. It was a wonderful experience to be with Clark and my parents as well as my brother, Brad and his wife, Anne-Marie and family for her blessing. Clark gave her a lovely blessing. I was especially touched to hear the emotion in his voice throughout the blessing. I find it very fitting that she was blessed on our 8 year engagement anniversary. (I'll have to write about that in another post at another time.)We were both grateful that we decided to bless her in KC because my parents hit a snow storm on the way down and Clark's mother is recovering from knee surgery. All in all it was a great time.

A few pictures:

I take credit for nothing in this picture except for the darling little girl. The dress was purchased by a friend, the blanket made by Grandma Miller, the bow made by Grandma Halverson and the bracelet made by Aunt Anne-Marie.

I hadn't even considered getting her a blessing dress. When discussing it with Clark he said we should do a blessing dress so that she wouldn't feel "deprived" when she got older and realized we returned a dress instead of using it. I'm grateful for his insistence (even though he sounded crazy to me at the time) because it was so fun to see her in it.

Two adoring brothers.

Our little (?!) family. Ok maybe when we average the weight or height of our family we are still relatively little but in terms of numbers I guess we've passed the national average.

All in white

Tuckered out from the dressing up, pictures and adoration. She's dribbling a little milk out of her mouth which I find amusing.

More Smiles

I guess I posted too quickly the other day. We've now taken a plethora of pictures of Eliza smiling. She must just love the camera. Once again, I couldn't resist posting them.

I think she is grinning so happily to say, "Look Mom! I made it all the way through church without throwing up on my dress." I need to also point out, thanks to my last minute adjustment of the burp cloth before we pulled out of the driveway, I rescued her from needing a complete outfit change. She has the same tendency as Russell did with losing the contents of her tummy all over herself or others who are in the near vicinity.

(Credits: Outfit compliments of Aunts Emily and Adrienne. Blanket compliments of Grandma Halverson.)

Jaron and Russell are working on keeping their smiles nice and clean. Apparently the bathtub provides adequate inspiration. Whatever works!

A Smile

I couldn't resist posting this picture. Eliza is 4 weeks old. She has been delighting us with her smiles for about a week or more. And they are responsive smiles!! So sweet. Amazing that Clark captured this picture because whenever I would call him over to see her smiling she would always get this serious look on her face. Eliza would just start starring at Clark intently. Maybe she was trying to figure out how to best make the connection between his heart-strings to his wallet. I guess all she has to do is flash him a few more of these. (Lyrics to the song I'm currently listening to say "You'll be wrapped around my finger." Of course, also fitting the song before said "It's Friday, I'm in love.")

All kidding aside, she is such a delight. Very easy-going. She finds her brothers completely fascinating. Thankfully, I reside as the most important person in her life. Her brothers have moved their affections from me to their dad.

They're Listening

This is our little 19-month-old crazy, sweet Russell. He's picked up on language pretty quickly (at least faster than his older brother, Jaron). We tracked one day all the words he used without us prompting and it was at least 40 words. And that wasn't everything. He is also a treat fiend. While our family was enjoying a walk Clark and I were planning a family vacation. During the course of the conversation Jaron declared in that he wanted to camp and cook food over a fire. As Clark and I mused where Jaron learned about campfire cooking I mentioned roasting marshmallows. Russell, who was contently riding on Clark's shoulders and had been mum up to this point pipped up, "Marshmallows?" He looked at me like I was hiding something. "No Russell, we don't have marshmallows." Clark and I looked at each other and thought, great (or wow) he's paying attention to what we are saying.

For the next 10 minutes we amused ourselves - me to the point of tears - by carrying on a completely meaningless conversation but would periodically throw in words of things Russell likes. And every time without fail he would look at me quizzically and say: "Candy?" "Bananas?" "Chocolate?" "Crackers?" "Ice cream?" . . . You get my point. I laughed and laughed. You would think by now I would realize they are always listening. I did ask Russell when he would stop listening. He didn't respond but I'm assuming when he hits the age of 12 or 13 his ears magically won't hear us anymore. Even if we were talking about candy.

Ice, Snow and Sun

Yes, here I am, posting about the weather again. Last Monday and Tuesday we experienced our first ice storm here (although minor according to accounts I've heard from locals.) Happily Clark was sent home early from work on Monday afternoon. I was surprised when it took him 15 minutes to get up our driveway which barely has an incline. The next day he came home early also because it was snowing and lots of people at work that were leaving were surprised that he wasn't.

Jaron in particular was very happy that Clark came home since he was desperate to go outside and play in the snow. When he realized it was snowing (and it was - nice big flakes, none of these pathetic little specks) Jaron joyfully declared: "It's snowing! We can go outside and shovel the driveway and the sidewalks!!" Apparently he doesn't realize you can do some fun things in the snow. So Clark rescued me from disappointing Jaron because I wasn't about to bundle up a 3-week-old baby with a cold and take her out to play in the snow.

They canceled school here two days (not that it affected us) and by Thursday there wasn't a trace of snow or ice. By Saturday the weather was blissfully warm - almost 70 degrees. And how's this for crazy, a prairie grass fire started behind the homes of the next street over. Thankfully the wind was blowing in the other direction otherwise we all would have been battling fires. The weather is crazy here. We are too so I guess it all works out.