Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Jane's First Birthday!

Today Jane is one year old!  It's hard to believe but it's true.

This is her a year ago on the day she was born:



And here she is today!



Jane had a great day. She had a small party this afternoon with just Mom and Dad and her two Grandmas.






Jane had opened a couple of gifts in the morning, two books from her mom and dad.  Grandma Bobbi brought her more balls for her ball pit, and as soon as she saw the bag she knew exactly what they were and got really excited!



I think she seriously has more fun in the ball pit now that it has more balls!  So we know now that:

More ball pit balls = More fun!

She got a third, special birthday book from her mom and dad, and an Elmo doll that came just yesterday. When I opened up the box she gasped when she saw his red fur, it was so cute!  She thought he was pretty cool, but then she was ready for more!



She really loved this little dog/backpack/leash that my mom got for her, she CLUNG to it and wouldn't let it go.  Grandma Bobbi also got her a cute warm fuzzy outfit with hearts and a bunny.



Grandma Carrie got Jane a cute tote bag with socks, a bug puppet with lots of legs (Jane LOVES puppets), an awesome book with flaps and tabs and all sorts of animals, and a warm fuzzy jammie.



Pretty good for her first birthday!
So it was a simple party - grandmas, gifts, cupcake.  I had really been looking forward to giving Jane a cupcake because she hasn't really had sugar yet, and I thought it would be a special first birthday treat and that we could maybe take some pictures of her covered in frosting.



Unfortunately, life has a way of not always being what we expected.  After Jane opened her presents she started getting pretty fussy and holding onto her right ear.  We realized that she had an ear infection, and how sad that it got bad right in the middle of her birthday party!  Poor girl!  We put her in her highchair and sang her happy birthday and set the cupcake in front of her.  She had a tiny taste of frosting and she liked it but then I saw her flinch and I think her ear was just hurting too bad.


After that we did a video call with Michael's brother Rodger in Texas.  (Jane liked seeing herself on the computer screen).




After awhile I noticed that Jane had calmed down quite a bit, so I took her into the kitchen to see if she wanted to give the cupcake a second try.  I sat at the table with her and I took a small bite of the cupcake.  Yummm.  Jane watched me with fascination.  So I picked up a piece and she opened her mouth and I popped it in and Yummmm.  She closed her eyes, she enjoyed it so much!  We ate that whole cupcake together right there, alone in the kitchen.  No one was there to take a picture and she didn't really get frosting all over, but she did enjoy it and I was able to give her the one treat that I had wanted to.  I took a picture of the aftermath:


Aside from her poor ear hurting, I think she had a pretty good day!

Jane,
Happy Birthday, we love you so much!
- Mom and Dad


Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Alice S. Olson playing the piano

On Christmas Eve my mother tried to play us a recording of her grandmother, Alice S. Olson, playing the piano in 1977 at 91 years old. She couldn't get it to work that day, so I've been working with it and now I'm able to put the recording here on my blog for my family members to listen to. The easiest way to do this was to make it into a video, and so I just put up a photo of piano keys there as a place holder image while the music plays.

So this is my great-grandmother playing two hymns in 1977.  She was a very talented piano player and used to improvise the accompaniment to silent movies.  At the beginning you can hear Florence, Mom's cousin, introducing Alice.  Florence has told us that there was no piano music in front of Alice while she played, so this is all from memory, and pretty amazing at 91 years old.


I will also put up a recording a little later of her voice, but for now it's just her playing the piano.