naomi's blessing

We blessed Naomi at church today. She wore a beautiful blessing gown and bonnet that my mom made for her with lace that matched my wedding dress. She hand-beaded the lace on the bodice and the bonnet--they were so pretty. My mother made wedding dresses for my sister and me, and she also made blessing gowns and suits for all her grandkids. While we were all content to share one outfit, or to have her make one for each family, my mom thought that it would be nice for each of our children to have something they can save for their children and grandchildren. Isn't my mom the bestest??

It was sweet of our family to come into town for Naomi's blessing. Hyeson and Curtis and Emma flew in from Arizona on Friday night and our kids are always excited to see them. They adore Emma. Curtis had to fly to Las Vegas tonight for a meeting tomorrow and he'll fly back tomorrow night so he can fly back to Arizona on Tuesday with Hyeson and Emma. Did you catch all that? My parents drove up on Saturday and will (hopefully) stay with us until the end of the week. Greg's parents came down for the blessing and we all had a great dinner together afterwards. Melanie and the kids had planned to stay in the US until later this week, but had to leave earlier than planned because they had to renew their resident visas. Apparently, with the Olympics in China, they are being super strict with visas.

I am so grateful for our family--we are blessed to have Greg's family nearby that we are able to see them fairly often, and we also enjoy the time that we are able to spend with my family, even though they are farther away. While we'd love to be able to see them more often, it's nice to have reasons like new babies and blessings to get together.

And I realized as I was going through some of the recent photos we have taken, including the ones from today, that these are the first pictures of our family of five. Sweet.