Halloween

Newsletter

(Right) This picture of Madison was taken the day she was born. At the time it seemed like she had a lot of hair, but most of it fell out quickly. It took a while before it really came in thick, and as you know, it came in blonde.

(Left) This is my all-time favorite picture period. I was watching Madison play one morning before church and it just had to be taken.

(Right) During the early months after Madison was born, Emily became our family’s unofficial photographer. She snapped a handful of really terrific pictures including this one. We found Madison this hysterical leopard print bathing suit at the mall. She has always loved the pool. We love taking her to the gym with us in the winter time so that we can take full advantage of the gym’s indoor hot tub and pool.

(Left) This is another one of Emily’s pictures. Madison has also always been fascinated with music. It is a riot when a good song comes on the radio and she dances to it. When she was little, she used to rock out in her car seat. I am hoping she inherited some of my mom’s musical talents.

(Right) This is another adorable picture of Madison with Mommy that was taken the same day as the piano picture above. You can see Madison a little better here. The date and time on the camera when these pictures were taken was messed up so it is impossible to say exactly when these pictures were taken, but she appears to be about 6 months old.

These two pictures were taken with her cousins on Karma’s side of the family. They sat in front of the temple and took some pretty cute ones. These are two of the only ones where Madison is not crying. These pictures were taken right around her first birthday.

(Right) This was taken at Madison’s first birthday party. She wasn’t quite walking yet, but she got a “push cart” as she calls it that would let her stand up and walk around. I don’t remember whose idea it was to put the ribbon from her presents in her hair, but she sure got a kick out of it.

(Above) For Mother’s Day 2005, I was going to get Karma a nice picture frame, and this was the picture I was going to put in it. I even did some fancy Photoshop work on it, but was never really happy with the result. I ended up getting her a new blue skirt and shirt. Try not to spend two much time noticing that her shoes are on the wrong feet.

(Left) This was taken right before church on Mother’s Day 2005. Note the beautiful outfit Karma is wearing. This represents my one successful attempt to pick out clothes for my wife. I won’t include the pictures of my failed attempts. Madison is wearing her Easter dress that she got only a few weeks earlier.



(Above) You would have to be pretty stiff if you could look at this picture without smiling. In August of 2005 we took a trip to San Clemente, California. It was one of our first real family vacations. We spent most of our time at the beach. Unfortunately, Madison is not a big fan of sand, so she was grumpy a lot, but not when she went on the swing.



This was from the same family vacation as the picture above. When we went to the pier, Madison had a blast getting an up close look at the seagulls and pigeons.













This is one that I had to take. It was early one weekend morning in the fall. She was probably 18 or 19 months old. She liked the flowers we have growing in the planter in front of our house. This was actually one of the first flowers that bloomed on those plants. Now they are huge.









This picture is around the same time period. Even from an early age Madison has been a little fashionista. She actually picked out that purse herself. She still carries it around sometimes. You should have seen how happy she was when she saw the set of boots Santa brought her this year.








She has also always been fascinated with animals. This is from one of our trips to the zoo. She always gets a kick out of seeing the animals up close like this.

This picture was taken in September of 2005. It was still extremely hot outside and we had a hard time with that. If you look closely you will see her hair is dripping with sweat.





Here is Madison’s second birthday party. She was so excited for the party. It is amazing how quickly they go from being little babies to little girls!








This is a more recent picture of Madison. It was taken not long after Hailey was born. Madison and daddy were playing with the camera before church and happen to get a good shot in.



Here is another good one of Madison with Daddy. This was a trip that we actually took to the zoo, but we got there right before it closed. Immediately adjacent to the zoo is Papago Park, a nature preserve. There is a really cool mountain close by that has a huge cave near the top of it. From there you can see out over the City of Phoenix. Karma snapped this shot when we weren’t paying attention.









This is from another trip to the zoo. We stopped to rest under a shady tree and took advantage of the photo op. You’ll see a similar picture with Hailey a little later.









This picture of Madison with Mommy is classic. She loves to cuddle up to Mommy on the couch before she goes to bed.







Here she is right before Christmas, stylish as usual. We were getting ready to take her to the Glauser family Christmas party, and she was excited to see everyone. Of course she always seems to smile when there is a camera pointed at her.







This picture was taken right after we opened all of her Christmas presents at home, and right before we went to Grandpa and Grandma Christensen’s house to spoil her some more. Notice the trendy boots!







As the only grandkids thus far, Madison and Hailey always get tons of attention, and Madison eats it all up. Here Uncle Jason let Madison go to town on him with her stickers for her new paper dolls. At dinner she and Karma were sitting at the counter while the majority of the family crowed in around the table. She pointed over at them and turned to me and said in the most adorable voice imaginable “That’s my family!” It was one of those Christmas moments we won’t soon forget.


I think it is only fair to start the pictures of Hailey with this one, even though she isn’t shown directly. This picture was taken right before Karma went to the hospital for her caesarian. One nice thing about a C-section is that you get to plan everything in advance and take fun pictures like this one.










Here is daddy holding Hailey the day she was born. My first impression was that she looked kind of like Darci, or Emily, but as time went by, she looked more and more like her big sister.




Here she is with mommy. Look at how she holds up her head. The doctor’s were impressed with her muscle tone. We weren’t surprised though with how much she was squirming around in mommy’s tummy. She actually was able to roll over at only a few weeks. You can tell from the white board in the background that it took some time to decide how to spell her name.


Madison was at least as excited as we were about her new baby sister. The two had a strong connection right from the start. As this picture was taken, she looked up at me, smiled, and said “I like it.” It was a good moment.





Hailey is an amazingly good baby. She only cries if she is hungry, poopy, or ready for bed. She also sleeps just about anywhere. She will just sprawl out and get comfy. Here she is in my lap just a few weeks after we brought her home.





Here is Karma holding Hailey at the zoo.










At the recent wedding of a friend, we got the girls all dressed up. Karma actually hand makes bows for them. She is really good at it, and even sells them to people from time to time.














It is always so cute once they start sitting up and crawling. She has sat up for a while now, but in the last few weeks has started army crawling. It is hilarious to watch.









Here is a picture of Hailey and Madison that was taken not too long ago. Madison likes to share her toys with Hailey (sometimes). She loves being a big sister. The swing Hailey is sitting in here actually doesn’t work well. We usually just sit her in it and Madison will swing her the old fashion way.




Here is a picture we took of Madison holding Hailey. With how mobile Hailey is, she won’t usually let us get a picture like this in before she tries to get away.





Here she is under the tree. She has the most adorable smile!















Here is a family picture we took in September or so of 2004 courtesy of Emily. It was originally intended to be a Christmas card, but we never got around to actually putting it together.









Here is a family picture that was taken in September or so of this year. It was taken by a random person with our digital camera. As I mentioned above in one of the pictures with me and Madison, at Papago Park there is a really cool mountain with a cave near the top. The way you get to the cave is you climb around the back of the mountain, and up through this little hole that lets you into the cave on the front side. It is not the best picture of us, but the scenery is fantastic.