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.

Mina's blessing day

I don't really know why we wanted to wait until we got back to Texas to bless Mina. I guess we wanted as many of our family members there as possible. We blessed her on December 19th which made her almost 8 months old. I wanted her to wear my blessing dress, but was worried it wouldn't fit her because we waited so long and she has grown so much. Luckily, it did fit. She looked very cute, but it was not practical for her to move around in. We were also worried that she would not be quiet during the blessing or that she would just move around too much. If you know Mina, you know she is very loud and that she never sits still. We decided to let her have a bottle of juice. That worked, but she did not want to give up the bottle when we were through.

Right after the blessing with the bottle.

Just took the bottle away.

Starting to get angry.

She wants the bottle back.

There we go. All is well. What a turd.

Mina and Daddy before the blessing (before the bottle).

Those who stood in the circle. And, of course, the bottle.

We had crammed 33 people and 4 dogs into my parent's house and blessed our cute little baby. It was awesome. We're so grateful for all the family and friends who love our precious Mina and were able to come. It meant a lot to us and I am sure it will to Mina someday.

Alcatraz

On our final weekend in California we finally made it to Alcatraz. We had wanted to go there the entire time we were living there. We went with our good friends the Wilde's, the Holland's and the Roberson's. Of course it had to be rainy and cold the day we chose to go, but we think it only added to the experience. Mina lost a sock on the walk over to the ferry so Inge let her borrow her mittens to wear on her feet. It made her look very much like a monkey and Dru loved it. It was fun riding the ferry over to the island. We really enjoyed our time learning the history of the old prison. Probably the coolest part was that we had recently watched, "Escape from Alcatraz" and we got to see the cells that those particular prisoners stayed in and escaped from. We watched the movie again when we got home that night.

The Wilde's, the Holland's and the Jorgensen's.

We got yelled at for asking our friends to stop on the ramp and take a picture of us getting on the ferry.

Mina was being a bully again.

But, Ethan fought back.

Mina had a lot of fun on the ferry ride, but got a little concerned the closer we got to the big prison.

We saw a beautiful rainbow!

About to start the tour.

Standing next to a cell. So tiny.

Of course Mina fell asleep in the middle of the tour. Anything interesting puts her to sleep.

Dru and Mina sitting on the pot.

One of the fake heads and holes the prisoners dug.

Where the escapees dug their holes to to climb up and escape.

Mina wearing Inge's mittens as socks.

After our tour of Alcatraz we took a bus over to Chinatown in San Francisco and had lunch at a Chinese restaurant. On our way to the bus we happened to find Mina's missing sock all wet and cold on the sidewalk. As we were getting off of the bus a bunch of people starting coming in through the exit and before I knew it the doors shut before I got out and the bus started taking off. Dru had to run along side it and bang on the windows to get the driver to stop and let me off. How embarrassing. Then we went on a search to find a place to eat and I don't know how it happened, but all three times we went to Chinatown we managed to pick the same restaurant to eat at. We didn't know it was the same one until we walked inside each time. There must be something very appealing about that restaurant. It was pretty good. Mina happened to soak her diaper so much that it leaked out all over her pants. So, we had to change her in the middle of the restaurant and luckily Ethan brought an extra pair of pants she could borrow. She fell asleep after that. At the end of the meal the restaurant gave us all some green tea ice cream. I don't care for it, but Dru likes it and apparently so does Ethan. Dru chanted "green tea, green tea, green tea" to Ethan while feeding him spoonfuls of the ice cream. Ethan was just cracking up at Dru and gobbled down that ice cream. It was so cute.

Ethan chowing down on the green tea ice cream.

That was our day. A wonderful, wet and cold day with some good friends. Mina was wonderful in the car. Didn't cry a bit which gave us hope that she would be good on the long ride to Texas in a few days.

If you would like to see the rest of the pictures of our trip, click on the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010647&id=116900049&l=947d07a47c