Peter's Progress

Tammy put together this video of Peter's first year of life.  (minus clips already a part of many other family events)  It's already crazy to see how scrawny he was at 6 months.  He is a delight to have in our family.

Thanksgiving in UT

Another video from Henry!  We spent Thanksgiving in UT with all of Alvin's family.  Peter has four Van Orden cousins his same age, so there was a baby Olympics and much more fun.  This video is not at all reflective of all the things we did, but it does serve to trigger memories of a whole delightful week.

Mini-Van Orden Vacations

In this fifth and final post of the day (which tops our post total for 2015), we have two road trips.  The first video features our stops at a ropes course and a fair in Virgina on the 4th of July our way to a family reunion.  The second is a trip we took to Palmyra and Niagara Falls.



We were a little nervous about putting a Christian rock song over footage from Palmyra, but when the other choice was TLC's Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls, we decided it worked.

Happy Birthday...Everyone

If you look below, you'll see that Henry got his own birthday video.  Not so for everyone else that blew out candles in 2015.  This efficient video shows Eliza and her party with the Williams, Clarissa and her trip to the zoo, Miriam and ice skating, and Tammy and the Folk Festival.



Note: There's no video of Alvin's birthday as Tammy wasn't there to document it.  (Peter was born but didn't have a birthday celebration in 2015.)

Part of Our World

Thanks to Tammy's talents Halloween is always a fun time around here.  The kids enjoyed playing up the Little Mermaid theme.  It doesn't seem like that long ago until you see how far Peter has come in his mobility.

Party with Team USA

Henry is now closer to age 9 than age 8, but his 8th birthday was a great one.  His birthday 'cake' was intended to look like the solar system, which he had been studying (and has 8 planets).  His big present was watching Team USA play soccer against Cuba. 

One of the great things about Henry getting older is that he is able to help out with the video editing.  He did this one by himself.



Note: We've now forgotten why Henry was sad before blowing out his candles.  He claims he wasn't sad, that his eyes just get watery sometimes.

Say Hey, Brays

Yikes, we've almost gone a full year without updating this blog.  Well, lucky for all of you disappointed fans out there we've been snowed in and are starting to make some progress on making videos from the last year. 

We'll be posting from random times throughout the year, so be warned that these are not in any sequential order.  For example, the first video is at the Bray Family Reunion in July in TN, and the second (done entirely by Miriam) is with the Brays over Christmas in NC.  Note that neither is an attempt to show all of the things we did or who was there, just an odd collection of moments we happened to record on video.