another blessed day.

the newest addition to our family, lucie kay, was blessed on the second of december. my sister, julie, had a lovely gathering at her home afterward and i, of course, visually documented the occasion. here are some special pictures to celebrate the day.

isn't she absolutely beautiful. it was a very special day. and one of the most special things was that the dress that she was wearing was the dress that my sister wore at her own blessing.

i love this picture with all my heart. jake loves his baby sister so much and is always giving her kisses. but my favorite part of the picture is my dad's smile. like i have said before, grandpa loves his granddaughters more than the world. well, he loves all his grandkids. but that smile is priceless.

julie looks so pretty in this picture and so does baby lucie. they are both beautiful. love them.

my three favorite things about lucie: one--her chubby little face and neck. two--those chubby little cheeks. three--those cheeks.

this is julie's mother-in-law, her sister-in-law and the top of lucie's head. jared's whole family was at the blessing (minus a brother-in-law), along with myself and our friend sara, my parents, kris and her family, and matt and gail. plus friends and such. there were a lot of people in the tiny little apartment, but coziness never killed anyone.

this is me and lucie. our first self-portrait of many, many, many to come.

this is sara and baby lucie. sara is my friend and hairstylist extraordinaire to my sisters and i. she's like part of the family, too.

this picture shows exactly how gigantic jesse is and how small jake is. jesse is four and jake is almost three. the difference in the size is hilarious to me.

malcolm was asked to be in the above picture with jesse and jake, but he "wasn't feelin' it," so he opted to not be in that particular photo. a little while later, he decided that he wanted to be a part of that type of photo, so he grabbed a hold of jake and kept saying cheese. man, how i love these boys. so much.

this was the final shot of the day. the two goofiest members of our family and both are now proud fathers of little girls. it should be good for them.

obviously this day was for lucie, but i love to get together and just celebrate family and friendship and each other. definitely another blessed day.

ps. i decided to be the nice big sister and help julie out with food for the event. i took over dessert. and i'm not gonna lie, i out did myself.

these are simple turtle bars and lemon cream bars. the lemon cream bars were my favorite.

these are fudge brownie and peanut butter cookies. delightful, seriously.

and egg-nog poppy seed bread. the bread was a little dry. it got over baked, but i am planning on making it again, soon.