the gene pool

People often look at Ella and then look at me and then ask some version of, "How on earth did you end up with a child how looks like that?" Thought I would provide a little photo evidence...apparently the answer is "recessive genes." The first picture is my mom's baby picture and the second is Ella's.

And a little bit more cuteness just for good measure...the boy cousins (and Pa) and the girl cousins - Ella and Lucy.

cousins!

The annual cousin picture at the condo:And a trip down memory lane:

China girls

Yesterday we drove to Lansing after church to meet little Lucy. She is every bit as cute in person as she is in photos :). Ella really enjoyed meeting her first girl cousin and she was happy to see that Lucy has the same Baby Stella doll as she does (Lucy's is the beige version; Ella's is the peach version) I had to laugh at this picture that my brother took of Ella in her Chinese dress with the doll they brought her back...one of our favorite jokes in our family is talking about how Ella is one quarter Chinese (she really is...see...it's funny, isn't it?)

Lucy!

My brother and sister-in-law left yesterday for China to pick up their little girl, Lucy. We are very excited to meet our new niece and Dylan and Ella are excited to play with their first girl cousin. Some newer pictures of the little cutie...

Cousins

We spent the weekend at my parents' condo in Holland and the kids had a blast playing with their cousins, Isaac and Nicholas. The boys especially have fun together and Ella does her best to keep up.

Family Pictures, Take 27

After about 20 shots, I think we finally got a keeper for my parents' Christmas card. There are also a couple of cute ones my brother took...one of the boy cousins on Nana and Pa's bridge and a family picture of us with the kids--the first is how we look 1% of the time, the second is how we look the other 99%.

Second Cousins

This past week, we got to spend some time with my cousins and Dylan and Ella's second cousins. We saw my cousin Bob and his wife Melinda and their little girl Kendall, my cousin Laurel and her little girl Addie (husband Josh was at home working), and my cousin Ivy and her husband and daughter Mia. Dylan loved all his girl "cousins" since he is used to playing with only his boy cousins, Isaac and Nicko. Ella loved playing with Kendall and Addie (above) and I loved those little girls curls!