emma at 4 weeks

I finally caught a few photos of emma smiling!  They are pretty close up and a little blurry, but those smiles usually don't last very long so I was trying to be quick! We have noticed that when Emma is awake and making faces she looks totally different then Makena did as a baby, but you get that girl asleep and expressionless and they look like twins! It's a good thing all our photos are time stamped, or in a few years we might not know who is who. We also think that the third picture in this group looks an awful lot like Grandpa VandenBos...he seems to get all the glory with our children! You may also notice that this girl has some serious acne going on right now! Oh well, it shouldn't last long and then she will have her perfect baby skin back!

first ballet class

Makena had her first dance class today! It was successful in many ways. Makena did successfully dance, she also successfully ignored almost every instruction the teacher gave her, successfully distracted other children from what they were supposed to be doing, successfully watched herself in the mirror 85% of the time, successfully made me laugh, and successfully convinced me that she needs more structured activities that involve listening to and obeying rules. I couldn't decide which video was the best to include, so I just put them all up. Some are a little long, but have little gems at the end so hang in there for the whole video!

First thing they did: Makena had me fooled into thinking she was going to listen to the teacher.

And then it begins...

What you can't see in this video is everyone else doing exactly what they are supposed to!

I had to stop this video when makena started trying to "clean-up" the other kids mats

The closest she got to participating...

Fast forward to half-way through, and then watch makena jump!

Makena at the end of this clip: "man do I look good"

In the end, the teacher said that it might be helpful if I participate next week to try to get makena to get involved in what the rest of the class is doing. Looks like I will be taking dance too!

the dancing queen

Our little flower girl danced the night away at Tim and Jessica's wedding this weekend. She danced for about 2 hours straight in the freezing cold with no shoes or sweater on. She loved those groomsmen and felt right at home being in the center of their dance circle. Her main moves included sitting on the floor and shakin it, hands on the floor and shakin it, clapping and shakin it, and well...just about any way she could manage to shake that little bum of hers!

Now, as far as her actual job as the flower girl...she ran down the aisle yelling "daddy" and didn't throw a single flower...but at least she wasn't crying the whole way like at the rehearsal!

The wedding was beautiful and so much fun, and we were so glad to get to be a part of celebrating the marriage of such good friends. Jess was very beautiful and Tim very handsome (even if he did have something stuck in his eye causing his "eyes to water"), but I am lame and don't have any pics of the bride and groom.

I tried to get some sweet videos of her shakin it, but I only had the regular camera and it was pretty dark, so these will have to do. And sorry they are sideways, I don't have the energy to figure out how to fix them...

Makena gets the whole fam on the dance floor (yes, emma is in there somewhere). Aren't we cute in our matching yellow outfits?

edited photoshoot

Click Here for all of the edited versions of Mac's photo shoot. Thanks again sis!!