4th of July photo shoot.

Tasman loves the camera. So much, in fact, that when we take her picture, she'll pose, wait for the camera shutter sound, and then pose again. Her poses are so silly that we have to keep snapping the pictures. This series is a total of 17 photos, each displaying a Tasman original pose.

Fashion forward

When Tasman dresses herself, watch out! Here are some of her recent creations.

Socks and sandals!

Looking very cool in socks and sandals.


Tasman wearing 2 sets of pajamas, because she is cold. Hello Kitty gaucho pants over floral leggings. It's a great look.

Dancing Queen

Here is Tasman before her first dance lesson. She has been to three now and just has one more for the summer, but she really is enjoying them, so we'll likely continue for the fall. She's very pleased with how this skirt twirls and in each picture she has a new pose, because she changes position every 2 seconds. She loves having her picture taken.

She's our dancing queen AND our drama queen. This week she pitched a fit on the way home from a church picnic. She continued to cry and carry on and perseverate about the issue, which was that I wouldn't give her something she wanted. She kept hollering, "say yes! say yes!" and I kept telling her that I couldn't say yes. She finally reached over, placed her hand on the front of my head and nodded my head for me while saying, "say yes, it's easy, like this." I tried hard not to laugh, but was unsuccessful. The expression on her poor tear-streaked face didn't even change. She was completely serious. I tried to explain that I still wasn't going to say yes, so she just had to try to forget about it. I told her to put it out of her mind and while I said that I made a gesture suggesting that I plucked an idea out of my head and put it away from me. She gave me an annoyed look, reached over to the place I had placed my imaginary thought in the air, picked it up and put it back into my head. What a silly girl. We're lucky to have a constant source of entertainment.

Our busy life

So, we're officially really bad at blogging. You'd think that it would be easy to do, but we just get sidetracked with a billion other projects. It seems like our lives have been a whirlwind since Laelia was born. My sister Anna-Liisa got married April 10, so the whole month of April was busy busy, what with wedding stuff and the end of of school terms for both Sean and I. I'm not sure what happened to the month of May—we had a lot of birthdays and therefore a lot of family gatherings. Plus, since Sean was not teaching in May, I have been picking up some extra work, which we are grateful for, but makes the schedule a little crazy. Hopefully, things will slow down a little in June. I'm still working extra hours, but Sean will go back to teaching one class over the summer starting tomorrow. That might help us maintain a bit of a regular schedule. We're enjoying the spring/summer here in Utah. Everything is finally green and the flowers are blooming. The weather is cooler than normal, which I'm not complaining about. Now if we can just figure out how to keep up with the weeding and the yard work, we'll be in good shape!

We started this blog in part to keep track of Tasman's funny doings, so here's one we have told a lot. A few months ago, Tasman asked me if I remembered "that dog we used to have." We've never had any pets, so I told her no. She said, more insistently, "you remember, that dog I had when you and daddy were getting married and I lived in heaven in my house with my dog Bobisk and my friends and Jesus." It wasn't really a question—more of a statement of fact. Who knows where she came up with that, but it's pretty funny. She makes up a lot of nonsense words and says she's speaking in Spanish or she just re-names everything in Tasman-speak. We think she's hilarious.

Laelia is growing fast! She is smiley and social. She holds her head up well and she is generally a very good baby. Tasman really loves her baby sister and is a big help. It's fun to see them together.

Here are some recent pictures of the girls. I'll have to try to post again soon—Tas starts dance lessons this week!

Tasman and Anna-Liisa at the Salt Lake Temple.

Tasman with Pete Milburn, Anna-Liisa's new Father-in-law. Tas and Pete are great friends.

Tasman at the reception in her fancy dress.

Laelia in her blessing dress. This dress is an heirloom from Sean's grandma Bonnie. If I remember right, the handmade dress was one of hers when she was a baby. Laelia was blessed on Easter Sunday.

Tasman and Laelia on Easter Sunday.


Our smiley girl just a week ago.

New Arrival

I wanted to do this last week, but posting on the blog quickly fell to the bottom of the list of things to do once we got home. We welcomed the newest member of our family on Sunday, March 1, at 1:35 pm. Laelia (LAY-lee-uh) was 7 lbs 10 oz and 19 1/2 inches long. She's a good baby and we feel very lucky that she is happy and healthy and that everything went smoothly in the delivery.

I'll post some pictures, since that's what everyone likes to see!

Tasman was not sure about this baby on Sunday, but has since warmed up.

Sean gave Laelia her first bath.

For comparison: The above is Tasman a few hours after she was born and below is Tasman now—the monkey!