Like Mother Like Daughters

This is the longest my hair has ever been! It reached my belt.

I had been wanting to cut my hair for awhile but hadn't gotten around to it. Well-I finally got around to it and chopped 17 inches!

Ever since we moved here, Kristen and I have often been confused for the other one. And having similar names doesn't help. We had to take this picture together before I cut my hair.


Not a great picture, but this was the only one I have (taken from my phone) that I am in the picture. I had been talking about chopping my hair for awhile, and finally did it without telling anyone. When I got home and had fixed my hair, I sent Mike a text asking him if he needed to come home for a kiss. He rarely comes home for lunch, but I didn't want to wait for him to come home at 5:30 to show him. Maybe he figured he'd be in trouble if he said he didn't need a kiss-so he came. He scooped up Brynlee and kissed and played with her. He gave me a kiss and we talked for five minutes or more without him noticing. Now, I can see that if I had only trimmed my hair-but 17 inches?! I started looking at him like he had missed something and finally held his face in my hands. Then he noticed, "Your hair!" He likes it short and his favorite is when I flip it out. Unfortunately, it doesn't work great here because of the humidity. It is typically wavy/not flipped by the end of the day. If anyone knows any tricks/products to solve that send them my way.

Because I chopped my hair, both of the girls wanted to also.

Long Hair Whitney

Long Hair Kenna

She's a little dramatic! Whitney cut off ten inches.

This was Kenna's first real cut since she grew hair (at two)! I had only ever trimmed it. She cut twelve inches.

Not long anymore!

They love having their hair short-but we all miss our long hair. Good thing it will grow back!

December

Kait's "I'm the Little Sister" shirt. I suppose it should say "littlest" sister. :)

Our first trip to the beach as a family of six.

LOVE her chubby cheeks! (And arm rolls!) Newborns are ok, but I really love when babies start to respond! What a sweet smile!

I love how she tucked BOTH babies in her arms before she fell asleep. Moving to a big bed has been a little challenging. Mostly getting her to stay in her bed, especially at quiet time. After I read to her, she gets to look at books in her bed until she falls asleep, but for awhile I had to set up camp outside her room to make sure she stayed there.

Her bow cracks me up-we decided she looks like a flapper from the 1920's.

The best part of making cookies-cleaning out the bowl!

Auntie Dolly

Us with Uncle Devin and Auntie Dolly after Devin graduated. (These are our friends who watched the girls while we were on choir tour in Asia.) They are moving to Utah now that they are both done with school. We will miss them and Mike will miss having Devin on his team at work.

Brynlee meets a "Fat Boy"

Daddy "watching" the little girls. (If you can't tell Bryn is watching something on his phone that is on his leg.) Mike keeps asking me when Whitney and Kenna will stop being "the girls" since that applies to them all now. Maybe when Bryn starts protesting that she isn't usually included in that label.

New Years' Eve tennis. I think this will become a new tradition to go play tennis on campus on New Years' Eve or New Years' Day.

None of the fireworks pictures really turned out-but here are the girls getting ready to light their sparklers. I couldn't really fix Bryn's red-eye, it doesn't look great either way.

Merry Christmas!

Brynlee liked Santa much better this year. :) When he walked in to the ward party she excitedly said, "He has whiskers!"

Yearly New Years' Eve Nativity puppet show

New Christmas Jammies
A few weeks before Christmas I had the girls shopping with me and we found Whitney and Kenna's jammies on clearance. They tried them on and loved them! But I told them I had decided that we probably wouldn't get them. They took the news much better than I thought they would. Then I sent them to take Bryn to the bathroom while I checked out. They asked me what I had done with the jammies and I told them that since I didn't have time to go back to the clothes section to put them back (which was true) I just gave them to the cashier-which was also true. I just paid for them instead of having her put them back. :) A little detail I left out. They were surprised and excited to open them on Christmas Eve when they were the jammies they had wanted.

The stockings were hung on the pictures with care. :)

Loving their new umbrellas

We love Auntie Mibi!

Bryn's new bike

Kaitlyn's new bow from Aunt Jenna.

Daddy and Bryn working on one of this year's Christmas puzzles.

This year for the Jones family service project, we were in charge and decided to assemble packages for the missionaries serving in each of our home wards. Everyone, including the kids, wrote testimonies in Books of Mormon for the missionaries to share with investigators. There were several other little things like 100 Grand candy bars to share with someone so they could remind them of their worth, etc. We also included nail polish for our sisters. The sisters in our ward were Sister Nishigaki from Japan and Sister Magno from the Philippines. We had them over for Christmas dinner and found out that they didn't have any other Christmas presents to open. Even though it was small, it was fun to have a gift for them.

Christmas dress photo shoot.
Bryn had a cold so we only went to Sacrament Meeting so we didn't spread it to all the kids in the Nursery. I didn't ever get pictures of the older two in their Christmas dresses because they were still at church for the photo session. Oops!

Bryn is so expressive! Such a silly girl!

Bryn LOVES her little sister and Kait loves her too!

It's Christmas Time Again

We LOVE Christmas time!
The day after Thanksgiving we set up our tree. Though it doesn't feel like Christmastime, we do our best to make it look like Christmas-inside at least.

Last year we set up and decorated the tree during Bryn's nap. She was so excited to be able to help put on the decorations!

The four cutest decorations!

Keeping with Tradition

We had Thanksgiving Dinner on Wednesday again with our good friends, the Kimballs. And once again, didn't take any pictures! :( At least this year we took our camera. Maybe next year we will get some pictures. Baby steps.

This years' hike was to Manoa Falls. It was beautiful! We've had quite a bit of rain so it was pretty muddy, but we still had fun. One section of the hike is through a bamboo forest that was pretty cool. We didn't stop for any pictures because we were trying to catch up to the rest of the group. I don't know that I would drive the hour to get there just for the hike, but if we were already on that side it would be worth doing again. Kait slept the whole time. I was a little nervous about Brynlee, being newly potty trained. We still have some accidents especially when she is distracted. She went before we left home, but refused at the beginning of the hike. If anyone knows how to "force" a child to go-please impart of your wisdom. I guess I was glad I had the baby and so Mike got to carry her. But luckily, we made it up and back dry-mostly lucky for Mike! :)

I suppose you could call this a "gaggle" of girls (and Kait is even missing). We went with our friends that have 5 girls! Adam and Mike feel a little outnumbered when we get together!

Temple Dedication

We had the opportunity to attend the dedication of our Laie Hawaii Temple. We were blessed with the privilege of being in the Celestial Room for the dedication session. Since Whitney is nine, she got to come with us. It was neat to be able to be in the presence of our prophet. There were only a handful of children in the room and President Monson said, "I see in this room some future missionaries, (then looking straight at Whitney) and temple marriages." One thing he said was that every child should have a picture of a temple in their room. We have a temple picture in our home, but not in their room. So we will fix that.

Kenna was bummed that she missed it by three and a half months. I took her to the Cultural Celebration the night before, instead. It was wonderful! My favorite part was at the end when 1,000+ youth filled the gym floor and a fabric replica of the temple rose out of the floor. They all turned toward the temple and sang, "I Love to See the Temple." Then they turned back to face the audience and sang "Army of Helman." That is a powerful sight!

Four Beautiful Girls in front of our beautiful temple!

Whitney-9YRS

Makenna-7 1/2YRS

Brynlee-2YRS

This was the best we could do-she wouldn't hold still for a good picture.

Kenna snapped this picture as we were walking away from the temple.

Kait Highlights

Sorry Kenna and Whitney-you don't get your own highlights posts. :)

Nov 3-Kenna liked it that Kait was holding her finger so she wanted a picture. Only after I put them on the computer did I notice how tan Kenna looks next to her.

Brynlee loves holding Kait and will sit there for 15+ minutes sometimes. And so far Kait doesn't seem to mind much. Kait-2mo

Kait first started grinning at 5 weeks-she is almost 2 mo (Nov 20) and it is easier to catch them on camera now.

Aunt Stef wanted to secure her "favorite Aunt status" from the beginning with this "My Aunt is my BFF" outfit.

Kait is so lucky to have three amazing big sisters! Whitney and Kenna have been so helpful! I am one lucky mom!

They like me to take pics when they are pretending to be asleep. They LOVE snuggling our newest little princess!

Sweet Sleeping Angel

Kait's personal Jacuzzi-though she is quickly running out of room! Check out her rolls! Chubby is BEST!