Miri's Decoration!

At least, that's what Elena called it!
We decided that it's important for our family to dedicate our children to the Lord-a public statement to acknowledge that these children belong to God, and they are on loan to us to raise and teach them about Him. At our church that means the family gets up on stage during the service and our pastor prays for the baby and family. We got to do Miriam's dedication on Sunday, the 24th while my parents were here! They went up with us. After the prayer Brad (our regular pastor Joe was out of town) gave us a certificate of dedication and a letter for Miriam to open on her 12th birthday. I'm curious about what it says! We just realilzed why Elena kept looking behind us-she was watching us on the big screen! While we were waiting for the service to start, I took the camera to a lady sitting in the front row and asked her to take pictures for us. Turns out she is a professional photographer. Haha! Funny, thank you Lord. So a big thank you and shoutout to Jackie. :)

A first

This has never happened at our house before, ever. With either child. So I was pretty surprised when I turned around and saw this:

Teething, diaper rash, and injuries

We are in full teething mode. M has been working on 4 yes, FOUR molars at once for the better part of a week. And whenever these girls get teeth, they always, ALWAYS get horrible diaper rash to go with it. I've read that babies' saliva gets more acidic to help break down the gum tissue for the teeth to break through. Unfortunately, this also affects um....other parts of the GI tract. And her poor little gums! They are opaque, bulging and look bruised! I wish I could massage them and help that little toofie out.
M is also kind of our little scrapper. She regularly gets stuck (can't take her to a store without having to "save" her from having some appendage stuck in the cart), smashed, wrestled (by E), fingers closed in drawers, etc. etc. Then she cries, gets comforted, and keeps on going with a smile and more determination than ever! Here's a picture of her first black eye, a self-inflicted wound with a board book

The Latest at the Tanner house

Our little baby is 1! We are trying to figure out how to do the whole Christmas/birthday thing. I think the plan is to celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, and her birthday on Christmas day, since it is, after all, her special day. Her first birthday was a smashing success! Perry & Katie flew in that day to visit and were gracious and took many many pictures so we could focus on making the party happen. Here are a few that we got.

Ahem! Here we go again

So I was just on Facebook reading a friend's post about how she has to catch up on 5 months of blogging. And I wrote to her "try seven!". So here we go again. Let's give it another whirl. Although I do find Blogger to be difficult to work with. It's too hard to figure out (especially since I have been using it very rarely!). And I just tried 3 times to put a new background up with no success. So let's just jump in and if there are any readers still out there, bear with me please. :)