Happy Easter!

We hope you all had a nice Easter weekend. Today Claire drew 2 pictures for Aspen for Easter. I found them to be absolutely priceless treasures, so I scanned them to post here for you all to see. This one says:
"Dear Aspen, I wrote a poem about you! Hope you like it.
My Sister
by Claire
Illustreted by Claire

Having a sister is fun!
She's my sister!
I love to hear her cooh!
She's my sister!
She smiles at me!
She's my sister!
Love your only sister, Claire XOXXOOOXOOX
(At the bottom is a picture of Aspen drawn by Claire, and on Aspen's dress Claire wrote "I love my sister!")

Here is page 2, at the top it says "We are Love" and then Claire drew a picture of herself with her little sister Aspen. She drew necklaces on both of them that has hearts all over the necklace:


This morning Claire was quite excited for Easter and woke us up at 530 am wanting to get up and find her basket. I had just finished Aspen's 430 am feeding, so I convinced Claire to crawl into bed with me and she fell back asleep until 7:30 am. She was delighted to see that the Easter Bunny also brought Aspen a basket, filled with formula, which thrills Aspen to no end!

Here is a cute photo of our 2 beautiful girls on Easter, and a cute one Claire took of of Aspen IN her Easter basket.

We had a great weekend doing lots of fun activities and spending time with friends as you can see below:


Sat night, as is our tradition at Easter time, we all watched parts of the TV movie "The 10 Commandments" with Charleston Heston in it. It is a long show maybe 4 hours, so we would just watch our favorite parts. Then Sunday Claire got to sing in church, a song about the resurrection of Christ. We talked alot about Jesus and the resurrection with her today. She asked if for spring break we could go visit Gethesemene and Jerusalem....maybe next year.... or not...

Aspen Update: Well, this week Aspen has started to smile alot more at us. She has a favorite toy now, it is this little yellow and black striped bumble bee stuffed animal that is attached to her bouncer seat. She loves to look at the little bumble bee, and she even tries to reach her hand out to touch the bee. Here is a photo of them.

Though Aspen is growing quickly, she still looks tiny next to Claire...

The day before Easter, Claire was in my bathroom and she accidentally bumped her head on the edge of our bathtub and gave herself a lovely black eye! It actually just looks like she got into my makeup. I told her I'd just put make up on her other eye, but she didn't like that idea.

Aspen is growing

I just took Aspen for her 1 month checkup. She is already 2 inches longer than when she was born (now 22 inches) and has gained almost 2 pounds (now 9.4lbs.)! Aspen's eyes are looking brown, perhaps a hazel brown. Claire's eyes are chocolate brown. The doctor said that Aspen is doing great. She still wakes up usually twice each night for food, she loves her milk! We got a cute photo of Claire and Aspen sleeping together again, this time both of them had an arm up while they were asleep, it was too cute!

Here is also a cute video of Claire playing with Aspen and Aspen is just smiling away at her big sister! Click on the arrow on the bottom left twice to play the video.

Today we had a wild, crazy hail storm. Claire was scared at first, but then got over it and whipped out her camera and took photos and video. If you click on the photos you can see them larger. Aspen slept through the whole storm, what a surprise....

You can click on the arrow to watch the video Claire took of the hail storm. Claire's filming skills are in their infancy, be warned!

David took some funny photos of Claire and Aspen looking cross eyed...goofy kids!

My 5 Favorite People

This morning we were all playing together, and out of the blue, Claire said, "Do you want to know who my 5 favorite people are?" Of course we wanted to know. She said, "Mommy, Daddy, Aspen, Miss Ashley for giving me a sister and not changing her mind, and Ms. Hannah for helping Ashley find us." Well, she floored us and brought tears to my eyes. We have to agree with her sweet comments!

She's Exquisite!

The past 2 weeks we have continued to have so many friends come to meet Aspen. It has been quite overwhelming to see how much little Aspen is loved by so many! Here are a couple photos of a dear friend that came from out of town recently to meet Aspen and exclaimed "She is just exquisite!" I'd say we have to agree! I took some close up photos of Aspen, I wanted to capture her while she's still so tiny, and you can can see she is indeed exquisitely beautiful!

Last week some of Brenda's friends from church had a party to welcome Aspen!! They decorated rather elegantly, and there were so many of our friends there.

We have also had many dinner guests who wanted to come to spend time with Aspen. Everyone has been so excited to celebrate Aspen's arrival with us!!

We also enjoy the times when the house is quiet. Claire is still so enthralled with baby Aspen. I was able to capture this moment with Claire and Aspen as well as a quiet moment for David and Brenda with Aspen.....

Here is a cute, short video Claire took of Aspen.