Attempting to Photograph a Two Year Old

 Tonight instead of putting Avery to bed on time, 

I took her outside and attempted to take some pictures of her.

Sean really needs some up-to-dates pictures of the girls for his desk at work.

And I'm sure the grandparents would like some new pictures too.

I only tried to take pictures for like two minutes and even that was more than she could handle.

Here's what I got...

 This next one just makes me laugh. She's so not thrilled to be there.

Those darn arms and hands are always all over the place...

 Love this next one. This pictures makes all of my efforts worth it.

Again with the arms up in the air...

And this face is just so Avery. I love it!

What do you think?

PS Have you noticed the changes I've made to our blog? 

I've been playing around with it for a few weeks now, trying to figure out what I want to do.

I still have lots of ideas. 

So check back and see what I come up with.

L-E-X-I

 Lexi has been really excited about the letter L for a while now.

She writes L's on everything! 

Seriously, there are sticky notes all over our house with just the letter L on it.

And she's been putting L's all over her artwork. 

Just look at this picture Lexi drew of my dad and the sun a few weeks ago...

We've been trying to get her to write her name for a while now.

She's been able to do the I and an X that looks more like a T for a while too.

But she's been so frustrated with trying to write E's.

But today she did it! She wrote all the letters in her name!

Here's her first attempt...

 And her second attempt. She almost got the order right.

And on her third try she got it!!!

She was soooo excited! Her face was beaming with pride.

I have to say that I felt pretty proud too.

And since she figured it out, she just keeps writing her name over and over again..

 

 

Alright, now that she's got her first name down, it's time to work on her last name. 

Haha. 

That might take a while.

Lexi's Birthday Interview (Starting a New Tradition)

I found this cute printable on Pinterest.

I decided that starting this year I'm gonna start doing birthday interviews.

I was a little late doing it this year because we've been busy, but better late than never!
I made two different ones. Which one should I print?

Reunion Weekend and Sean's Shoulder Injury

Two weeks ago, all of Sean's family came into town (minus his brother Aaron and sister-in-law Laurel).

It was AWESOME to see everyone and made us once again grateful that we live in Utah, closer to family.

I was horrible taking pictures. I did take some but I was too lazy to even upload them, so all of the next few pictures were actually taken by my sister-in-law, Val. THANKS!

...

The kids all just loved being together and playing.

Here's all of the Christensen grandkids, 

minus Lyla who was off doing her one year old thing and Eli, of course.

I'm so grateful that Val took of these great shots of Avery and Halle on the tire swing.

All the kids love the tire swing.

Here all of the granddaughters ready to go swimming on Friday.

We all headed over to the pool in Kearns where Lexi and Parker have swim lessons.

Here is Sean jumping off the 30 foot platform. 

He jumped off three times. On the third time his left shoulder pooped out of place and didn't go back in.

Kristi my mother-in-law who is an RN tried to pop it back in and couldn't. 

Then the EMTs at the pool tried several times with no luck.

Then Sean went to Urgent Care but they told him that they couldn't do it with any sort of pain medication.

At this point it had been popped out over an hour and he was in so much pain.

So he just went to the ER. 

They gave him some medication that knocked him out and then several doctors worked together and finally got it back in place.

(There is more to the story than just that but I will have to save it for another blog post).

Lexi loved the pool, especially the red water slide.

I love these pictures of Lexi and Addie playing together at the pool.

They are so cute together.

The next day we drove up to Farr West for the Christensen family reunion.

My father-in-law, Garth has like 11 siblings. So there were a lot of people. 

A lot of people we didn't know.

We ate food and played.

They had this giant blow up water slide. Lexi went down once with Devin.

The second time she got scared at the top and refused to go down. She just screamed up there.

Eventually, I just told an older girl at the top to just grab Lexi and take her down even if she is screaming.

After that she had no more interest in the slide.

The kids just played together at the park.

Minus poor little Addie who was sick. She just laid there on a blanket with tears in her eyes.

Val made this little flower crown for Lexi and took these cute pictures.

Val, once again, you are the best!

We went home for two hours and then headed to Provo for Grammy's 90th birthday.

It was so fun to get together with the Orton side of the family.

We just had a big party in Grammy's backyard.

(I took these pictures from Sean's cousins' Facebook, 

yeah, I really was a slacker in the picture taking department.)

The group shot. Look at all that posterity! Sean and I would love to have such a great big family.

And here is the little Christensen family. 

Minus sick little Adalynn who was laying on a blanket in the corner of the yard.

And of course, Aaron and Laurel.

 And here's a picture of my fabulous in-laws! It was so good to see them again.

Everyone family filled out a little questionnaire with their contact information and a got their picture taken and wrote down a message for Grammy. And it all got put into a cute little binder.

This was our picture. So Grammy won't really know what Lexi looks like. Oh well.

There was lots of yummy food and just socializing. Our whole family had a great time!

 Val took this great picture of me and Avery.

 Avery and Lexi had a great time. They loved Grammy's backyard. 

And they loved helping themselves to drinks too.

Avery always had a cup with someone else name on it.

Oh well, at least they had a great time.

And a few more group pictures.

Here's Grammy with three of her five kids.

Dave couldn't make it and Pam, Sean's mom passed away nine years ago.

 Here are the girl cousins and cousins-in-laws (and Avery).

And the guys.

It was a fun, busy, busy weekend. I wish we could have spend more time with everyone but now that we live in Utah we will be seeing our families a lot more frequently.

Lexi's 4th Birthday

July 6th was Lexi's 4th birthday.

It was a pretty laid back birthday since we already had a birthday party for her this year.

 Lexi plans out her outfits in advance for events and parties.

She was so excited to wear this dress and wear this crown.

I let Lexi pick out some balloons for her birthday.

 

Lexi's cousins Parker and Halle came over and played in the morning and then came back for dinner.
Lexi absolutely loves living by some of her cousins.

For her birthday my parents gave Lexi a gift card.

She loved walking around Target for half an hour looking all EVERYTHING.

And then Sean and I got Lexi a ream of paper, sticky notes, index cards, clip boards, markers, glue and scissors. She's loves art and craft stuff. So our gifts were a huge hit!

 Lexi wanted to do cupcakes for her birthday. 

So we did a cupcake bar with choices of frosting and sprinkles.

When Lexi this number 4 candle at the store she wanted it instantly. And she was so excited about it.  

 After presents and cupcakes we went to the rodeo.

We got there half an hour before the show was suppose to start.

They did the mutton bustin but then the rodeo didn't start half an hour after that.

So we basically waited for an hour which was hard for the girls to do but the still did great.

I have to note that Avery loved the bull riding.

She kept saying, "More bull. More bull."

Avery decided to go sit with the people in front of us.

Lexi decided to join them too.

It was very unlike them to go to strangers on their own.