Bowling on New Year's Eve

Mina is sick today and sleeping a lot so I'm catching up on a little bit of blogging. These pictures are from New Year's Eve. We went cosmic bowling and were supposed to have stayed to watch fireworks, but it was extremely cold, I didn't feel well and Mina was tired. Mina got to bowl for the first time though. She enjoyed it and she didn't do too shabby either.

Look how perfectly down the middle that ball rolled! Go Mina!

Are you sure we're in Texas?

This last week we had almost a foot of snow fall on us. It was the perfect kind of snow, too. Perfect for making snowballs and snowmen and forts. It was so sticky. I loved it! Because it fell during the week, Dru wasn't here to enjoy it with us, but we sure had tons of fun anyways. Well, Mina didn't enjoy it so much, but I 'm sure it was because she's been a bit sick lately. I bundled her up into her snowsuit and sat her in the snow. She cried until I picked up some snow in my hands to show it to her. She was outside less than 10 minutes before we brought her back in to warm up. But, the rest of us built a couple of snowmen and played with the dogs out there.

Mina just loved the snow!

Can't you tell?

She looked cute in her snow suit though.

She was a bit more content when we showed her what the snow could do.

What is this stuff?

Momma and daughter in the snow. She's so cute!

Me and my cousin's daughter Averie starting the balls for the snowman.

Averie. Is she not the cutest 5 year old you have ever seen?

Ayden. He likes to eat snow.

Our tribute to Calvin and Hobbes.

This snowman didn't stand for very long. I was told he just fell over, but I think someone pushed him.

He was funny looking anyways.

Whitlee, Taylor and Keyana. Yes, Taylor was out there in practically underwear.

Mina's teeth

In the last month Mina has cut 3 new teeth, bringing the grand total to 5 teeth. One more is just about to cut through. Also, for the past couple of weeks we have had my cousin, Laurie and her 5 cute kids staying with us. They are moving down to Texas and are in the process of finding a home. It has been both crazy and loads of fun having such a full house. There is never a dull moment and Mina absolutely loves it. There is always something going on. Games, movies, outings, walks, it never ends.

A crazy face my cousin's daughter, Kirsten, caught on camera. Mina is so funny. You can see her bottom teeth and the two on the top to the sides of where her front top teeth will be.

Mina has also been standing on her own, with no support, for longer and longer periods of time every day. She walks with her little walker toy across the living room and I know any day now she is just going to take off on her own two little feet all of the place. She is starting to eat more and more "real" food. Last night she enjoyed a meal my sister, Meagan, made which consisted of rice, broccoli, cheese and chicken. She went to town on it. She loves any chance to climb up the stairs and loves to point. She still loves making goofy faces and copying us. And, my favorite thing of all, as of late, is that it is getting easier and easier to make her laugh. It's so great to hear such wonderful noise come out of her so often.

Christmas

So I thought I would finally get around to blogging about our Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve at Dru's parents' house. We had a lovely dinner there. We put on our Christmas pajamas-- my family has a tradition of getting pajamas each Christmas Eve so we brought ours to the Jorgensen's house to wear that night. Mina looked so cute in hers. On Christmas morning we had a little program and gift exchange. We played the bells, sang songs and Dru and I did a silly skit with some "Chinese." Dru didn't speak any actual Chinese, it was just silly. It was a fun time with lots of loving family. After that was all wrapped up, we headed to my parents house to open more gifts and to have a delicious ham for dinner. It was delicious. I haven't had my mom's ham in years. I don't know how I've managed to miss so many holiday meals with my family. I guess going away to school and then getting married will do that to you. I'm just grateful we have the next few months to spend with our families.

Mina got lots of new toys and some cute clothes. She wasn't much interested in opening the gifts herself but was very excited to see and play with her toys. She gets really excited and almost impatient while waiting for us to take them out of the packaging. She had a lot of fun with all of the people around and commotion going on. I'd say it was a good first Christmas for her.

I didn't take many pictures on my camera. I'm kind of upset with myself for not even getting a family picture of us on Christmas. But, here are some of Mina and William. It's impossible to get a good picture of them together. Mina is either trying to steal something away from William or just being crazy, or William is falling over or crying for his pacifier. Haha. Got to love babies.

Mina decided that she likes to climb over people now. Even her little baby cousin. We don't question her motives. And William doesn't seem to mind all that much.

It's also been a while since all of my siblings have been in one place at one time. Nicole and her husband didn't make it here until the day after Christmas, but we were all together once again. Good times. Here we are:

And here is the whole family plus spouses (minus Adam's wife Jess who is pregnant and Whitlee's soon to be spouse, Josh) and babies:

Mina's cute cousin, William

My sister Meagan has some awesome in-laws who have a nice camera they let me borrow AND a really cute baby. Here are some really cute pictures I took of Mina's really cute cousin, William.

Growing up too fast

Our sweet baby girl.

Mina standing with her new toy.

We got to Texas on December 18th. Since we have been here she has learned to do so many things. For weeks Mina had been so close to sitting up all by herself. On December 20th she finally did it at Grandma and Grandpa Jorgensen's house. It's so amazing that it just takes one time doing something and then she can just do it like she's been doing it her whole life. She's also finally got "real" crawling down. I think she still prefers to army crawl because she's much faster that way, but I think she'll switch over permanently soon enough. She mostly real crawls on the tile and I think she does because she doesn't like how cold it is on her belly. She also attempts to crawl with her legs straight so that her knees don't touch the ground. It's pretty funny to watch.

She's also been trying to pull herself up the last couple of weeks and finally accomplished it all by herself last night. Yesterday when I went to get her from her nap, she was in her pack and play crying on her knees with her hands against the side netting. Today she woke up from her nap and stood up in her pack and play crying trying to look over the top (and surely trying to figure a way out of there). She also climbed up the stairs today. When we first got here she had successfully made it up one step and stopped at that.

Mina standing in her pack-n-play. (Taken with a cell phone. Sorry for the poor quality.)

She's gotten very good at copying and can mimic many noises and faces that we make at her. She also is very good at clapping to "If You're Happy and You Know It." It's really great to see her wait for the right moments to clap. She's so smart. She's very good at reading books to herself, too. Today she climbed under her bouncer like it was a little tent and pulled a book under there with her and just had a blast turning the pages and "reading." She loves to play peek-a-boo and likes to pull the blanket to cover her eyes all by herself. She's really good at keeping herself entertained. Many times when we let her play by herself, we look over to see her with no toys, but talking to herself and waving her arms just as happy as can be.

This is Mina's favorite face to make. It's usually accompanied by her breathing very hard and slowly out of her nose.

We tried to get a good picture of Mina and her cousin, William. You can't tell by this picture but Mina was the one who wouldn't cooperate that day.

Mina is just a very happy baby. She's the one thing in this world that can brighten my day at any moment. Dru and I love her so much and we couldn't have asked for a better baby. Even when you know she's in pain, like now with about 4 teeth ready to sprout, it seems as if she's on top of the world. I love it. I love her. I love my family.

My beautiful baby girl.

Mina the bully

Mina is a bully. She steals everything away from other babies. It doesn't matter if she is perfectly content playing with a toy on her own. As soon as she sees that another baby has something, she takes it away, or at least tries to. A lot of the time she will just take it, set it behind her and continue playing with whatever toy she has. She did this mostly with Ethan while we were living in California. Now we're in Texas where she gets to play with her cousin, William, who is 4 months younger than her. She is constantly trying to take his pacifier from him. She has tried to get a few different babies' pacifiers in church on several occasions, too. Yesterday, Mina was playing with her new toy. It is this walker thing. It has lots of buttons and shapes and colors on the front to sit and play with, but she can stand and hold on to the other side to try to walk. So, it was big wheels on it. The wheels aren't technically to be played with, you know, they're just so that the toy will move forward when she walks with it. Well, William came over to play with it next to Mina and he started messing with the wheels. Mina saw this and immediately started to try take the wheels from him, but of course, couldn't. It was so funny. Hopefully, she will outgrow her selfishness.

Mina trying to take the toy away from Ethan that she gave him for Christmas.

Success.

Trying to steal William's pacifier for the millionth time.

We tricked her into stealing her own pacifier from him. Haha. It only worked until we gave William back his.