Lily is almost four!

Our little Lily is now going on four years old. She mastered potty-training (finally) a couple months ago, she recently started pre-school, and she's starting to write and read at a super-human pace (hey, it's my blog, I can brag if I want to...). She's on a bit of a "The Sound of Music" kick these days, and told her mom yesterday that next year she'd like to be Maria for Halloween. She can write her own name, as well as "Mom," "Dad," and "Audrey" (she needs a little help remembering the order of the last one). She's such a little treat in our family; we love her so much!

Yesterday Kristen took these amazing pictures of our blue-eyed blondie. Wendy said that Lily was cooperative and charismatic, and I think these pictures agree. Nice job, Kristen!






If it weren't for Lily's pinkies, I would never believe that this little beauty is mine...

Audrey at 9 months

Where has the year gone, you might ask? Tell me about it. Back in November when we last posted to this blog, Osama bin Laden was still at large, I was still working at Novell, and somehow the world was still digging 3D movies. Fast forward to July, and our little Audrey has blossomed and bloomed into a fiesty, smiley little toddler. Here is a small sampling of a little photo shoot that Kristen did for us a few weeks ago (as usual, Kristen surprises no one with her mastery of a camera lense...).

I guess Audrey went crazy for this particular leaf. We have since requested that a basket of these be shipped to our house every day.

What's funny about this photo is that she doesn't even know what a Klingon is!

I'm not really sure what to say about this one, but I think the look on Audrey's face says it all.

Little Audrey's disposition most of the time...

I liked the background on this one, as well as the subtle dimming Kristen did around the edges. I'm sure there's a name for the effect, but I'm going to call it "squinting" for lack of a better word.

Thanks again to Kristen for her patience and talent with the camera. We're going to call it divine providence that Audrey didn't figure out crawling until a few days after this shoot. Otherwise, this post would have some nice pictures of grass and bricks.

Halloween 2010

Lily looked great on Halloween as Snow White. Yes, the wig was imposing and the dress was too big, but she didn't care and neither did the neighbors as she braved the wet and cold to ask for candy that she doesn't care to eat (her loss is my gain).

Some of the other pictures below include Wendy's local family carving pumpkins at our house, for which Wendy made a delicious homemade caramel apple cider (click here for the recipe) that wowed our guests. There is also a picture of Audrey at two months. Like her sister, she's quite the beauty, and like her sister, she's a little gem. I'm a lucky guy to be surrounded by such lovely ladies.

Miscellaneous joys

As usual, I'm way behind on updating the blog. But I wanted to quickly post a few fun pictures and thoughts from the past several weeks. The most recent is the annual Christensen Halloween party that took place last night. Once again the company, costumes, and food was top-of-the-line. I only have pics of a couple costumes, but you can see the rest eventually on Jennie's blog.

Sunny and Scott flex their acting muscles as Lady Goo-Goo (a baby Gaga?) and her personal bodyguard. In all honesty, I don't think this was a stretch for Scott; I'm pretty sure he wears stuff like that to bed.

Here are the party hosts in 80s-tastic glory: Magnum P.I. and his red Ferrari (yes, the mustache is real). The only tragedy here is that as hosts, they refuse to award themselves any prizes for their always-clever costumes.

Logan and Tiffany dressed to the nines as Scarecrow and Harley Quinn from Batman. Even though they were my personal favorite costumes, I had a hard time looking Logan in the eyes; it was so creepy. T made much of the costumes herself! I think they even won second place in the costume contest. Not bad for their debut appearance at the party.

Can you guess which part of this costume was homemade? Kudos to Wendy for coming up with the not-too-far-from-our-reality theme of tree-hugging. Pete gave us the prize for most creative costume, but it could have gone to any number of attendees that night.

This is a picture demonstrating how ambitious our new mother-of-two has been feeling. Yep, two years after learning the ropes from the pro (my mother), Wendy finally attempted a fresh peach pie from scratch. Ugly whipped cream (my contribution) notwithstanding, the pie turned out delicious. If this keeps up, the next post will be of me wearing brand-new fat man clothes.


On one of my first outings with Wendy nine years ago, I stopped at Wendy's house to take her to a scary movie with friends. To my surprise, Wendy popped out of the house wearing an uncharacteristic pink visor on her head. When questioned, she said it was so she could discreetly duck her head anytime she feared something scary would happen onscreen. It doesn't make sense to me, but apparently Wendy's scary-movie instincts are hereditary, as Lily here demonstrates her favorite way to watch The Incredibles. Yes, like her mom, she uses her "lovey" to cover her eyes during the tensest moments of the movie. But don't even think about suggesting she watch something less intense...like her pink-visored mother, she prefers it this way.

Finally, a couple pics of our newest little angel, Audrey. At seven weeks old, she's a dream. She eats well, sleeps well (relatively), and seldom ever fusses. She's starting to smile predictably at all the right stimuli (including her affectionate older sister), and is packing on the curves in a way that would make Jabba the Hutt proud. Stay tuned for some pics from shoots with Erica and Kristen.

Last but not least, here's an early photo of Audrey with her Roe grandparents. They were up here again last weekend and Audrey immediately took to Grandpa Roe, who coddled her all throughout a lengthy family chat. She stared at him through the whole evening, and barely made a peep. (I think it must be his haircut...).

Lily's 2 1/2 year photo shoot

Lest any of our loyal blog followers think we've forgotten about Lily, here are a few fantastic sample pictures from a photo shoot we did with my sister-in-law, Kristen. A few of the smiles were genuine and directed toward Kristen or Wendy, but the majority of the toothy smiles are thanks to a little Lego Indiana Jones character, who inexplicably danced around to Lily's delight.








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Kristen is quick to point out that she's an "amateur," although I'd argue that these pictures are as polished as any "professional" has ever taken for us. Thanks Kristen!!!

More pics

 

 

 

 

Audrey's first visitors

 

 

 

 

Nevermind the forcep marks on Audrey's head, nor the inexplicable (because I refuse to explain it) forcep mark on MY head...

Either way, isn't little Audrey a gem? And how adorable are my little daughters together?