Olive's baptism announcement

My friend Emily took some photos of Olive for her baptism announcement. I love my little Dolly.

Every fall, Olive decides this is the year she no longer wants to dance. Every winter, she changes her mind. Here she is on her first day at Virginia Tanner, right around the corner from our house. We were so thrilled with the class; the teacher was delightful, they had a live pianist to accompany their dancing, and they had art and literature elements integrated into the class. Beautiful! And her pal Grace is in the class too!

The time is drawing nearer!

here's a little update on olive...

olive is excelling in her school work in mrs. morris' 2nd grade class at opa. she has really fallen in love this school year. when oatsie came to visit a couple months ago she brought a long chapter book, and olive finished it in 3 days. since our winter break started 2 days ago she has read about 300 pages in a few different books. i pay the kids a penny for every page they read; she's going to break my bank! olive is also lucky enough to be getting private (and free!) swim coaching by our beloved instructor, mckell. she goes about once a week, and will continue to until summer when she'll try out for the swim team at the clearfield aquatic center. she is super excited to be on the team, and mckell thinks she'll have no problem making it. swimmers need to be able to swim the length of the pool in the 4 basic strokes, and olive has 3 of the 4 down pat. she has always loved the water and still does. olive's also taking private ukulele lessons once a week. it's fun to hear her strumming chords around the house. we're about 6 weeks away from her 8th birthday, and we're getting very excited! we will drive out to half moon bay and have her baptized in the same spot chris was. we're really looking forward to it. she asked santa for a pair of rollerblades this year.

here are a few photos - the first 2 are from a fancy birthday party the girlies went to last week. their buddy grace had a paris themed party and they went to a french bakery. they had fun! the last photo is of all the kids in the ward at our christmas party last week.