(Great) Grandma Elaine's 100th Birthday Party

One of the absolute highlights of our most recent visit to Washington, was celebrating my Grandma's 100th birthday! Between our family being there from Wyoming, and my brother and his family there from Hawaii - we successfully pulled off a perfect surprise! I think there were several of us who failed to remain dry eyed at her surprise and excitement to see us all (sniff sniff!).

Anyway - here are a TON of pictures, and a couple of videos from the day!

First up - successful surprise! Can you see how happy she is?

Some of the decorations:

Deanna presenting the photo book she made as a gift for her:

The birthday girl!

The cake:

Friends from Seattle who were charter members of the church that she and my Grandpa started many years ago:

With my mom:

The Hawaii family:

The Wyoming family:

Rick and Sylvia:

A few with her son, my dad:

Just love this for some reason!

Like mother like son...actually, no - I don't see the resemblance here! (heehee...)

The birthday girl again - and beautiful flowers:

My nephew and sis-in-law - ah, the age of not wanting your picture taken with your mom! 

Amy and her great-grandma:

...and Katie with her great-grandma:

Joe and Grandma:

One of the BEST parts of the day - Grandma and my big brother playing hymns together. I can't describe how beautiful it was. Every person in that room lit up and sang along, and I was reminded again of the incredible heritage of faith that exists in our family. And how beautiful the hands that have seen a hundred years, and still playing their praise to the Lord. 

Hands young and old - making music to the Lord:

One of the many favorite songs I taped - Power in the Blood. LOVE her smile in the middle! I will try to get more uploaded soon:

And my oldest nephew - who has been learning to play from his Dad, playing with his great-grandma...a beautiful moment:

Happy Birthday Grandma!!!

Music Recital

For the Grandmas, Grandpas, Aunties, Uncles, Cousins, and friends who were not close enough to attend - here a couple of pictures and videos of the girls first Music Recital - they each had a piano solo too!

First up is the guitar portion:

I took these pictures afterwards of them at the piano, because I was recording them playing and didn't get pictures then! 

Amy's video is a little blurry - the focus was messed up when I started recording, and to fix it I would have had to stop recording. Grrr...but you can still here her playing!

And Katie's posed pictures from afterwards:

And her song - she hadn't practiced singing until she was performing, and just decided on the fly to sing along! Harder than you might think!

And last up - they performed a song with the bells - beautiful!

Amy's teeth are a bit more sore today with her braces - but she is still doing great..she still says they are fun, except for when her teeth hurt!

New Braces

Well - today was the big day! Amy got her braces on! I have to admit, I will be a little sad to see her adorable crooked toothed grin - but I know the results will be wonderful for her and her poor mouth! She was SUCH a trooper - never complained once! And hasn't complained about them hurting either. Here is her beautiful new smile:

The string in all the pictures is one of the balloons they gave her.

Could she be any more adorable? I know I'm biased...but I could just squeeze her forever!

In other news - we have been enjoying a beautiful (and compared to last year!) WARM January! Temps have hit in the high 30's nearly everyday, and barely gone below zero. Last year it was a good day if you got UP to zero, let alone over it. I ran to town today and realized that I didn't have to wear snow boots - I could get away with just my tennis shoes. Weird to say the least. I guess you know you live in Wyoming when you think it is SOOOO warm when you get over 30 degrees, huh?

It is so tempting to think that it will just stay this way - but I'm am trying to guard myself from expecting that and being disappointed when February rolls around! Just watch...my next post will be pics of tons of snow and super cold weather, right? Hope not...