Things that fly

It was an picnic in the park, airplane viewing, kite flying kind of day...

Dancing feet

These ballet slippers are worn out. They saw me through two years of pirouettes, pas da chevals, leaps etc. when I was a teen, and now almost two years for Madelyn.

 Here are the new slippers...ready to see this beautiful girl through the next years of ballet.

Sunday reverence

We are working on reverence in church with these two cuties. These pictures sum up about how successful we are...

 They do have their moments though...

International travelers

We left the country...

only for 4 days and only just to Canada. 

We went to cheer for this team...

  and mainly this girl...

Who did well taking silver in the eight and bronze in the quad in which she was stroke seat.

These boys should get an award for most enthusiastic cheering section. They yell with all their might "go everett!" - and sometimes even when our team isn't racing at the moment - ya know, gotta keep the competition knowing who's the best.

The weather behaved and gave us a fair amount of sunshine with only a little sprinkling of rain.

We enjoyed ourselves on the 1.5 hour ferry ride

Eating yummy chicken at Nando's

And going for a train ride and playing at the logging museum.

 And thanks to my sister Lisa's suggestion we enjoyed our Kinder eggs and hot chocolate and doughnuts from Tim Horton's (I just didn't get a picture of those or the beautiful parliment building and fisherman's wharf that we saw). 

We even got to go to church in Victoria. It ended up being a YSA branch. I'm sure that was the noisiest Sacrament meeting they've had in a long time with our bunch in the back pew. :)

Lauren

Lauren Katherine Ahryn - February 11, 2015 - 8 lbs. 19.5"

With this pregnancy we kept with tradition and didn't find out the gender before her birth. It's surprising that we could do that since Lauren got the most ultrasounds of any of our children - I think the total was around 8 to 10. I had some hemorrhaging at the beginning of the pregnancy which cleared up, then more in December - on the drive home from Idaho with a brand new puppy -  we made an interesting emergency stop at a hospital where they wanted to keep me for the night but ended up letting me travel the last 3 hours home after an ultrasound showed that the baby and I would be okay. Lauren was breech at 37 weeks and had to be turned through a version procedure - more ultrasounds. Even with all those ultrasounds we didn't know if we would be getting a boy or girl. Aaron and I thought it would be a boy and so did all the girls. Matt and Nathaniel kept saying it would be a girl - and they were right!

Lauren is loved by all her siblings. Matt nicknamed her "cupcake". Nathaniel informs me every time he hears Lauren cry, "mom Lauren's crying" (it does happen a lot when Nathaniel starts touching her, but he hasn't made that connection yet). Alia loves to hold her and always says "oh she's so cute!" Madelyn volunteers to change her diaper frequently and loves to hold her as well. Ashlie keeps asking when Lauren will be ticklish and loves to kiss her cheeks.

Lauren smiles frequently, especially when she focuses on our face. She also laughs in her sleep sometimes.

We love you little Lauren!

Our family that came for Lauren's blessing.

Our family of EIGHT!