Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas eve celebrating our Savior's birth at our church's candlelight service, which was beautiful! Ben's mom and stepdad John were out here for a week celebrating Christmas with us, so they joined us along with Jen's uncle Bruce! Here are some shots all dressed up at church!!

Sweet Olivia at 2 months old! She has recently learned to smile and coo, and just learned to laugh this past weekend on the 27th of December! It's just the most precious sound! We'll post some video of that later for the grandparents to see/hear (if we can get the video to post).

This was take #3, trying to get a good shot of the girls!! Olivia finally cooperated!! :)

Madalyn absolutely loves to dance, especially when she's wearing a dress made for twirling!

Daddy read the Christmas story from Luke in the Bible on Christmas Eve, while we acted it out with our Nativity pieces. Madalyn loved hearing about Baby Jesus!

Olivia 7-8 weeks old!!

Olivia had her first smile at about 6-7 weeks. She's a bit more serious than her sister was at this age, but when she does smile, it lights up her whole face! She saved her first real smile for her big sister...she's just fascinated by Madalyn and follows her with her eyes everywhere she goes!! She's very alert and loves to look around at all the interesting surroundings! She also loves to be held...she's such a snuggle bug as you can tell in the picture below!! Olivia all dressed up for our Mom's Club Christmas Party - isn't she precious??

Waaaayyy behind.....

Well, we had such good intentions of staying on top of it with this website, but life is so busy this time of year, especially with a newborn who loves to be held all the time and a super busy 2 1/2 year old. So, instead of trying to play catch-up, we'll just post some recent pictures and then try to work backwards over Christmas break! Looking forward to Ben having off for 2 weeks and his mom and stepdad, John, will be in town for a week over Christmas, which will be a lot of fun!

These pictures were taken up at Jen's mom's house this past weekend. We awoke to about 5-6" of snow on Sunday morning at her house, so Madalyn had fun playing in the snow. They are now up to at least 10" up there--however, we've just gotten a few inches here or there down where we are and it's pretty much gone now--although the rest of the area is hit with quite a bit of snow.

This is a picture of my mom's Golden Retriever puppy, Brody! He loved playing in the snow!