The Taylors

Jules was blessed July 24th, 2011. My parents drove to Oregon from Alberta for the event (and then drove on to California for my niece Kenley’s blessing the following week). Chris’s parents wanted very badly to be here for the blessing as well, but life circumstances prevented them from coming. Chris’s mom Celeste and his sister Tiffany were incredibly sweet and went on a shopping trip just for little Jules and sent the beautiful outfit that Jules wore for her blessing. What a lucky girl to be so loved by so many :)

(Unfortunately, Jules wasn’t interested in looking at the camera for her photo shoot.)

(7/24/11)

(7/15/11)

This is a picture of Chris, Grae, and Jules enjoying a conversation with Chris’s family via video chat on a laptop computer. When we live far from both the Taylor and Christensen families (Utah, California, and Alberta), video chat is an incredible blessing for us – we can visit as though we are all in the same room. Because of video chat, Grae knows his grandparents well enough that he is immediately comfortable with them when we visit them in person, instead of needing a few days to warm up to them (which he often does require for family members that he does not see as frequently in person or through video chat). While I certainly do wish that we lived closer to our families and could spend more time with them in person, video chat makes the fact that we live far from our families bearable, because they can regularly interact with our kids and see how they are changing on a weekly, or at least monthly basis, instead of only once a year when we travel to their homes. I frequently bemoan the negative effects of various type of technological advances on families, and children in particular, but the use of video chat to stay in touch with family is a positive that I am extremely grateful for.

(6/25/11)

The following pictures are by no means candidates for www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com, but the first of the series is just awkward enough that it inspired me to search for “Awkward Family Photos” in Google Images – hilarious! A few minutes of laughing and snorting at terrible photos of other families is so therapeutic :) These pictures are fabulous in comparison…

Note that Grae wears sunglasses, but insists that they must be worn on top of his head, upside-down.

(6/4/11)

The past few months have been a bit rough for me, so I have taken a break from blogging and the like. I think I might be seeing light at the end of the non-sleeper-baby+jealous-toddler tunnel, so I am going to attempt to catch up. Thus, the pictures you will see for a while are going to be a bit dated. Hopefully still fun, though :)