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!