True Optimism

A1 saw her first large rainbow the other day. It was bright and had all the colors. We explained to her that a rainbow happens when it rains and then the sun shines on the rain. Now every time she sees it raining outside, she smiles and yells, "Hurray! It's raining! Now I can see a rainbow."

The Perfect Day

We recently spent a couple weeks in Utah with our families. It was a great vacation - the amount of fun we have is in direct correlation to the amount of weight I gain, and I gained a lot of weight!

We decided to spend one day communing with nature near Smith and Morehouse - a favorite camping area. A1 and A2 loved spending time with the grandparents and learning something new. And I loved being named "King for the Day" - I caught the first fish, the largest fish, and the most fish (a Triple Crown Clean Sweep in fishing); I only need to do that another couple hundred times to unseat the True Fishing Champion, Grandpa Jensen.

R and A1 showing off the last fish of the trip

We love fishing!

Don't worry - A1 made sure that we didn't hurt any of the fish and insisted that we throw them all back.

Lazy Saturday

We took ourselves a nice, relaxed, lazy Saturday today. What did we do? Well, R taught A1 how to kill the boss at Cleyra (that's Playstation talk, if you didn't recognize it; can you guess which game he was playing by that small clue? Some kind of prize to those who can).

And while R was distracted with that, A2 took the opportunity to prove why we can no longer leave him alone - he goes straight for the good stuff.
A2 is in the first stages of crawling. He can try really hard to move barely inches, so he'll try to a while and then give up to go across the room the fast way - by rolling over and over and over. How he does that without getting dizzy, I'll never know.

And what was I doing during all of this? Taking pictures of the fun, obviously, but also looking at one of my new favorite blogs, CakeWrecks. Check it out; it's hysterical!

Hair Style #8

This was my first attempt at keeping the short under-hairs from falling out of a ponytail. I tried a "hair headband" - basically, pulling the hair all the way around the head in one long progressive "ponytail," which I then pulled up to combine with the rest of the hair in five flippies and then into a ponytail.

from the front (with her bear)

from the side (to show off the hair headband)

from the back (to show off the flippies)

I don't think this turned out quite as well as Hair Style #3. The headband doesn't flow into the rest of the hairdo as well as the flippies, I think. What do you think?

Hair Style #7

This is my favorite of all A1's hair styles. I think she looks so cute with these progressive pigtails down her head.

from the front

from the side

from the back

I attempted a variation on this, something I call shoelace progressive pigtails. Crisscross the hair down each side of the head, instead of just rubber bands, with barrettes at the crossing. I don't know if it turned out as well as the simpler version.

from the side

from the back

Which do you like better - the simple version or the crisscross version?

Hair Style #6

This is called "smocking" (actually a sewing term, for you non-sewing people out there). It looks cuter on girls with thick hair (like A1's cousin Carmen - just adorable on her).

from the front

from the back

Hair Style #5

Another invention from trying the keep the short under-hairs from falling out - this time from pigtails. Three flippies on top and three flippies underneath, all split between two pigtails.

from the front

from the back

In case you can't tell, our lovely model was very angry and throwing a tantrum while I was trying to take these pictures (I think she was mad because I wouldn't let her take the pictures by herself).

Hair Style #4

I love this hair style as a simple one for church: just five little flippies with flower clips to flourish each one. You can leave the back simply down or pull it into two pigtails.

from the front

from the side

as pigtails

As a side note, when I laid A1 down for her nap on the day I did this hairdo, she laid still for about 2 seconds. Then she jumped up and called, "Mommy, we need to take pictures!" It's a good thing she remembered.

Hair Style #3

This is my favorite for really hot days. Sweet A1 has strange hair: it's long enough to look great as a ponytail, but the under-hairs (those closest to her neck) are too short to stay up. So this just started as a way to keep those small hairs up in the ponytail.

I pulled all the small hairs into flippies all the way around her head (for 10 small flippies), then combined every two of those into bigger flippies (for 5 medium flippies), then combined all those into a ponytail. I have left it as a ponytail (see Hair Style #8), but in this case I pulled it into a messy bun (which is hard to do with A1's VERY thin hair).

from the front

from the side

from the back

I did the same thing when she wanted to be a ballerina, except I pulled the ponytail into a tight bun and added a bow:

Hair Style #2

This is called "Diamond Head." Start with the front hair pulled up into one rubber band, split that between two rubber bands (pulling more hair into the rubber bands), split those into three rubber bands (pulling up more hair), split those into four, combine those into three, combine those into two, combine those into one (all the time pulling more hair in as you work your way down the head).

from the front (she closed her eyes just as I was taking the picture)

from the back

Hair Style #1

As promised, I have been testing my creative palette on A1's hair and have finally taken pictures of the results. I started by creating a little "crown" of hair all the way around the top of her head (which I forgot to take pictures of!), but I branched out into two little "crowns," one on each side. I combined the dangling ends in to a crown clip to complete the look.

from the front

from the back (kind of)

from the side

A couple days later, I did this style again (with more rounded crowns), but I didn't combine the dangling ends. Rather I put barrettes on each one, which made it look more elegant in my opinion. Unfortunately, A1 was not in a picture taking mood that day, so I can't show you what it looked like. Believe me, it was cute.