Ballet Recital

Grace finally had a chance to participate in a recital with her ballet class. She LOVES ballet and was so excited. I thought she might be nervous being in front of so many people but she didn't even bat an eye. I tried to take a video of the performance (it was pretty bad, we were far away, it was dark and my hand was shaky so I will spare you). I didn't therefore get any pictures with my regular camera but here are a few pictures from her practice in the morning.

A group picture. She is 5th from the right with her hands over her head.
She LOVED watching the other groups dance. Afterwards she kept saying "That was a really good recital." Of course, it is the only recital she has ever been too, but she was impressed!
Gunnar saved the day that day as when we got to the school in Escondido, we realized that in the rush we had forgotten her shoes at home. There wasn't enough time to go all the way home so Gunnar braved the mall (on a Saturday no less) to pick up another pair of shoes. Grace was mortified at the thought of having to dance in her regular shoes (her teacher said it was okay) so she was SOOO happy that he got the right shoes there in time!

Why is your arm so short?

One of the things I find fascinating about babies is how short their little arms are relative to their heads. Thank goodness it doesn't stay that way! Hair fixing (not to mention light blub changing) would be very difficult!

Easter Dresses

My mom made the granddaughters Easter dresses this year. All her hard work paid off, as they looked super cute!

More and more we are realizing that taking groups of pictures of children is harder than it looks. Individually, they are super cute, and together they are even cuter. But getting a picture of them together where they all look like their cute selves proves to difficult.

I think the key is to take enough of them and finally we have gotten a few of them.
Why look at the four adults who are jumping and clapping when there is grass to look at?

Sweet little angels.
And a few with Grandma and Grandpa.
I love how the kids all love each other so much!!
Lastly, I love this one. All the girls are so concerned about baby David!

The way church should be

I love our church. So much. One of the things that I love about it the most, is the love that we have for each other. A few weeks ago when Grace's goldfish didn't survive the great fish tank fiasco of 2011, Grace (with tears in her eyes) called Miss Pat on the phone for prayer. And last week, when Miss Pat's dog had to be put down, Grace made her a card. Miss Pat wears the bead necklace that Grace made for her to church almost every Sunday (for the last 6 months), talk about love, I mean I am her mother and I won't wear Grace's creations out of the house!! :) I love the fact that even though we are not related by blood, in Christ we are family!

Gunnar, celebrity in our midst

The first two weeks of May were quiet exciting at our house. After the killing of Osama Bin Laden, Gunnar blogged about his perspective as a pastor and a SEAL and all sorts of people wanted to talk to him about it. He was on three different local news channels, on a bunch of different radio stations, got to speak at his alumni banquet, and was in the local paper and his blog was featured on a couple other online news sources. In the grand scheme of things I guess it wasn't that big of a deal, but of course it isn't every day that your husband is featured on the BBC, so I was pretty excited about it! Here are some pictures from ours (and by ours I mean his) 15 min of fame.

The alumni banquet:
The local paper, and it wasn't even the second page, which is our good friend Dan is the editor for! :)

And the TV interviews. I even made it on for a half a second once. Back from when we were young and skinny.
Grace enjoyed watching her daddy on TV.
And a couple shots from the interviews, all of which were done at church.
I particulary like this one. Old Gunnar watching young Gunnar on the screen. Handy channel 8 still had footage from when he was 19 and in BUD/S.And the other two interviews.
I really like this one too. Especially Ellie's tiny pony tails peaking out over the chair. This one was my favorite interview.

New kids on the block

Ever since we moved to the country we seem to have developed a propensity to collect animals. Our most recent additions came from the pet store. Gunnar just couldn't resist those blue eyes. The girls of course are excited to have kittens around (or "meows" as Elizabeth calls them), and Gunnar has high hopes of them getting the gopher that has been eluding him in the front yard.

These pictures are from their first few days here and they have grown quite a bit already.

This is Tuna, he is the nicer of the two.
And this is Tigger, most likely to cause Grace to run screaming of refuse to go outside without boots.
The girls enjoy playing with them until someone gets scratched. :)

The most wonderful time of the year

Some people mistakenly think that Christmas time is the most wonderful time of the year. These people have obviously have never stood on a sunny hilltop, with a gorgeous view, snacking on warm blueberries while picking delicious perfectly ripened berries. This is the good life!
I put Ellie on my back so I could get in touch with my fruit picking roots. I come from a long line of fruit pickers.
When she got bored, I set her on the ground with a bowl of blueberries and shew was quite content.

A turn on Tia's lap is always fun too. :)