Family photos

We went to Agua Caliente park on Friday with our friends, the Reimanns, to take family photos. They took some of us and we took some of them. We ended up with a couple hundred to sort through between family photos and individual kid shots. And here they all are. Well, not ALL of them, but there are entirely too many pictures here, but I figure since this turns into our blog book, which is mostly the only time we have printed pictures, I'll include most of our most liked pictures. We'll get a few of these printed up nice, but for the most part they'll only be printed here.

Here is the winner family picture:


And now for a million individual shots, some nice, some showing goofy personalities.

 We attempted some sibling shots with marginal success...

 Ryan and Annie were doing "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?" in the following three pictures. I think the second one is the winner of the sibling pictures.

 We had bribes on hand: M&Ms and Craisins (M&Ms was a bad choice--melts in your and and all over your face if you're 2 or under).

 And now some family shots:

The park was beautiful, and I'm very happy with how our pictures turned out. Without even paying someone to do it all for us! :)

Rachel's Birthday Party

Rachel celebrated her birthday with some friends on the Saturday before she actually turned 7 years old.  I took her and some of her friends and Annie to a movie (Dolphin Tale 2) at the cheap theaters.  While we waited for everyone to arrive the kids got to build things with marshmallows and toothpicks.

The girls had a good time at the movie.  About half an hour before the movie ended Annie was ready to go.  She kept asking (in a loud voice): "is it over yet?", "how much longer?", "is it done?".  Fortunately there were maybe a dozen people in the theater.

When the movie was done, we came back home for cake and presents.  Colette made a "Frozen" cake for Rachel. Rachel helped decorate-notice how Olaf is holding up a little "7" in his hand.

While the girls were waiting to be picked up, they colored "Elsa" crowns and decorated them with glitter.

From left to right: Lydia, Isabel, Maryanne, Rachel, and Annie.

(Change in voice from Jake to Colette)
The next day we had a family birthday celebration for Rachel and Marie at Grandma and Grandpa Knight's house with a fruit tart instead of a cake. Then on her actual birthday we had another celebration, this time with strawberries and Nutella. Between all her birthday celebrations and a package arriving a day or two after her birthday, she managed to open presents 4 different days over the course of her birthday week. Not bad.
It's hard to believe that our little girl is 7. Next year she'll be getting baptized (everyone mark your calendars for Thanksgiving weekend 2015 in Tucson) and then our little girl will be all grown up. Or at least accountable for her choices. :)
Our wonderful 7 year old is a great friend and leader at school she does a great job at listening to the teacher and staying on task even with lots of distractions around her. She is a teacher-pleaser and a great help in the classroom, as well as excelling in school academically and socially. She frequently gets 13 out of 10 on her spelling tests (there are always 3 extra words the kids don't see beforehand that are slightly harder than the rest of the words). She won the spelling bee in her class and this coming Friday will be participating in the school-wide spelling bee. Rachel continues to do well in piano. She frequently is stressed out on Thursday when she is practicing new music after her Wednesday lesson, but by Friday or Saturday she usually has the new songs down pretty well and only occasionally needs to do the same song two weeks in a row to fine tune some dynamics or a few measures. She is really great at practicing on her own without me having to nag. It may help a little that if she gets her job (chore), homework, and piano practice done by 4:30 she gets to watch a half hour show while I make dinner. She is self motivated enough most days to get everything done on her own.
She is a good big sister and one of the best at making Megan laugh. She and Annie play really well together most of the time and it's fun to see them pretending to be princesses or orphans or whatever together. Rachel likes to spend her free time coloring and reading. She can read through a chapter book in a half hour and when we get 10+ new chapter books at the library she'll be done reading them within 2 or 3 days. Even with her overreactions and freakouts over little things, we are happy and blessed to have her in our family. She's our favorite first child. :)

Megan's First "Solid" Food

Megan recently had her first taste of "solid" food: some rice cereal.  At first she was angry because she was hungry.  But eventually she was loving the cereal.

Yum!