Day 119: Looking back

Today is the last day of 2007. So I decided to look back. At Zaria in the rear-view mirror, now that her seat is facing forward! She's busy making police siren noises with her steering wheel. Luckily I realize this, and have only pulled over to take a photo, not because of the sirens coming from the back seat.

Day 118: Dictionary

Yes, we do feel free to use the dictionary while playing Scrabble, or in this case Upwords. I feel it's more educational if you get to learn new words, although it's taken some practice for Jamin to recognize the value of using normal words in Upwords so that it's easier to build up from them.

Day 117: Family time

New Christmas tradition started today: The weekend after Christmas, we spend family time together and go shopping for one last present, taking advantage of the after-Christmas sales. We started out by brushing teeth as a family, on the couch of course. Jamin and I have brushed and flossed together from the very first time we ever hung out. He had eaten at my place, and we'd had corn on the cob, so it was necessary to floss. Jamin's also known for brushing his teeth all over the house, and mentioned that his old roommate Rob would get a kick out of this photo.

Day 116: brushing teeth

Look who's trying to figure out her toothbrush! She only has 4 teeth so far, and the top two aren't even out all the way, but I thought it was good to start getting in the habit of trying out the toothbrush.

Day 115: Climbing up and down

Zaria performed a major task today for the first time: she climbed all the way down the stairs. I am such a proud mama.

Day 114: Something musical in the mail

Zaria tried on her new sweater from Marla, and we found one more package from Jamin's grandparents in California. Zaria loves musical toys, and was mesmerized by this one that has little dancing animals that move to the music. Gives me flashbacks to working at Circus Pizza.

Day 113: Happy Christmas!

The above photo makes me laugh-- they were just laughing about something and you can see my dad in the middle of making one more wise crack. Grandma Alpha also has a nice smile here.

Below Zaria does a little people-watching in between present-opening. She's holding some fuzzy socks she got from my mother-in-law, her Grandma Marla. It was pretty neat to be able to bring Jamin's folks with us to have Christmas dinner with my dad's side of the family. Marla often has to work on holidays, but had today off. She enjoyed sharing a bit of her family history that went back to Red Wing, where we celebrated. Her family is currently in California, so it was interesting to hear a little of her Minnesota roots. We missed Jamin's siblings today, all of whom are now in Colorado. They also got together to celebrate and we talked to them briefly over the phone.

Day 112: Lumberjack boys

It's Christmas Eve, and after several stories of hunting adventures and misadventures, it was nice to see these four men get red lumberjack shirts to keep them warm and make them more visible to hunters. Left to right: Dave (my stepdad), my stepbrother Brian, my brother Jason, and Jamin. I told Brian I was impressed that he was wearing Christmas colors with his Wild hat. Jamin was feeling much better today. We still took it a little easier, but today went well and we enjoyed time with family. Zaria really seemed to get the hang of opening presents, too. She has had practice recently with her birthday after all.

Day 111: Silly jumper

Sure enough, Jamin got sick this morning. We also had a major winter storm that made the roads very treacherous, so the Christmas get-together we had planned at my dad's is officially postponed. I was feeling much better, so Zaria and I had fun playing and hanging out. Notice where her hands are in the photo--she found out she could stand up and poke them through.

I was still on the mend, however, so I napped when she did and continued to eat real slow. Jamin had trouble with that Jello he made yesterday, so he's in rough shape.

Day 110: Jello for the sick

I was so sick today. I woke up at 5 am with nausea and had a miserable day of ickiness and trouble with food. So Jamin took care of Zaria all day, including making me some Jello, and I stayed in bed recovering. Please let me be better for Christmas! I wonder if this is related to what Zaria had on Tuesday?

Day 109: Swim time and boxes start

We're waiting until Christmas to open presents, but we've already had fun opening up boxes. Later at the Friday Night Group, we had a little swimming time. Zaria wanted to stay real close to her papa, but still enjoyed some time in the water, along with her pals Gideon and Sam.

Day 108: Reading together

It runs in Jamin's family that everyone loves to read, and so appropriately, Zaria was enjoying reading her own book while we read tonight. It was very cute. She was feeling much better today, but was a little crabbier than usual.

Day 107: Stockings are hung on what?

Zaria just got her own stocking tonight, a gift from "Auntie" Cassie. It's very lovely, but perhaps it's strange that we've hung our stockings up on our china cabinet.
"Their stockings were hung on the China cabinet with care, with hopes that the dishwashers soon would be there."
On another note, Zaria was very sick today. Too much partying, perhaps? Anyway, she ralphed a few times, but seems to be out of danger now, and didn't show any dangerous signs of dehydration. It was interesting because at Mother's Fellowship this morning we volunteered at Feed My Starving Children, and my poor baby couldn't eat today!

Day 106: Dancing with the grandmas

Zaria got the musical bug in her tonight. Maybe it was because she got a xylophone for her birthday tonight with Grandpa Lee and Grandma Dawn. My Grandma Alpha enjoyed the show, too. Maybe it was that I kept singing "baby" songs to her all day, inspired by the baby shower last Thursday. Maybe she just has the joy of the Lord in her. She was certainly a delight tonight.

Day 105: Zaria's First Birthday!

Yes, she had cake and enjoyed it very much. No, she wouldn't leave her "It's my first birthday" hat on, even for a quick photo op (see below). Wow, how did it get to be a year already?

Some of Zaria's favorites/milestones:
Favorite words/sayings: "Uh-oh" or "a-bib-a-bib-a-bib-el"
Locomotion: She pulls up into standing position and walks well with support from persons or objects, and has climbed stairs successfully. Has a bit of a funny leg-dragging crawl because she likes to push off with one leg.
Music: Loves to dance by shaking her shoulders and head, loves to pound on drums or other things that make noise.
Food: Still not real picky, but she loves mangoes, tomatoes and peas.
Sleep: She sleeps through the night and is happiest with about 3 hours of nap time, usually a shorter nap in the morning and longer in the afternoon.
Teeth: Just two bottom teeth so far, but a top one is just starting to show up.
People: She is very observant. She takes a little time to warm up to most people, but enjoys playing and will warm up almost immediately to other children.

Day 104: Singing Maria

Here's Emil, Maria and Zaria all playing the piano at the same time. Yes, they made beautiful music together.
And Maria, the musically-named and always cute 2-year-old. We celebrated her birthday with her today, though her birthday is the 6th. She and Zaria have a good time together.

Day 103: Cards and cookies

Zaria enjoyed some birthday cards she got in the mail today.
And at FNG, Aidan helped me out by making sure I didn't forget my snowman cookie cutter.

Day 102: Making cookies and baby shower

Sadly, I don't have any pics from Angela and Barry's baby shower. I was in charge of games, so I ended up being a little too busy between heading stuff up and keeping an eye on Zaria (or making sure Jamin or someone else was). It was a lot of fun to get a baby boy name game together and hear everyone try to think of songs with "baby," "born" or "birth" in them. This was a variation from a shower the Friday Night Group did for me. I thought it would be a little easier to have the 3 words to think of since they're in a lot of Christmas songs, but I think I only heard 5 or 6 Christmas songs. We only made it around the group 3 or 4 times, but it was a pretty big group so that's understandable. It was pretty funny that Pastor Matt ended up winning the game with "Baby Got Back." Angela & Barry are cloth diapering, so we got them a bunch of Fuzzi Bunz, and the last game was a diaper-changing contest that Jamin won. (=

I also baked cookies today with my mom, which was really fun. I made some pretty complicated cookies-- Bittersweet chocolate cream cheese cookies which you coat with vanilla flavored candy coating and sprinkle with peppermint candy bits. I also did some cinnamon and some spearmint for color and taste preferences (there's a couple of people at the cookie exchange that don't like mint). I ran out of vanilla candy coating, so ended up finishing my bag of chocolate chips and using the melted chips for topping. They looked beautiful and Christmasy, but it was a LOT of work. I was glad to have Mom's help to take trays out of the oven and watch Zaria while I had fun making candy cane, snowman and Christmas tree shapes out of the dough.

Day 101: Christmas lights

Oh, how I love Christmas lights! They totally make up for it being cold and dark outside in December. So these are the Christmas light I put up above our garage. Of course I waited until we had our first big snowfall, which was a cold time to choose. I thought it was fun that you can also see my car gages in this photo, taken while I was pulling out of the garage to go do some Christmas shopping. I think by this time, Zaria and Jamin were both already down for the night, and I did some major grocery shopping late at night after getting a couple of presents.

Day 100: Baby games with Grandma Glenna

Zaria had so much fun with Cassie's Grandma Glenna, who came to the condo late last night to join us. She came right before dinner, and the boys all left after dinner, so it was just the girls today. I taught Grandma and Cassie to play Mexican Train Dominoes while Zaria tried to sleep--she had some bad teething pain today, so didn't nap real well. There sure were a lot of baby things to haul into the car before we left in the evening, but we did have a lot of fun.

Day 99: Christmas wordfind

It's easier to read on the above photo-- Cassie and I did a Boggle-type word find out of the Upwords board with all Christmas words. Some of them are more of a stretch, like bud and neck, but all of the words are supposed to be related to Christmas. Some to look for: Emanuel, Mary, Bethlehem, Vixon, Jingle Bells, Comit, Cozy. Like the cozy fireplace we sat by.

Day 98: Gametime up north

We joined Cassie, Derek and Dave up at Cassie's timeshare condo for a fun late weekend of games, hot tubbing, and relaxing. I learned this new game they're playing in the photo, Tripoley, which is pretty fun. It's like a mix of poker and Michigan Rummy. Zaria did pretty well, but she didn't like to be ignored for real long.

Day 97: Shawna, Phil and lots of frogs!

Above is Zaria admiring the amazing frog collection of Shawna's. She thought it was very cool and enjoyed touching several fuzzy frogs. Below is Phil and Shawna, who celebrated their November birthdays a bit late this year by having a turkey and a bunch of friends over with potluck items. It was really fun! Mostly FNG folks, but also several other friends of Phil & Shawna's that we got to meet. Phil was a bit camera shy and hid behind some flowers.

Day 96: Candidate Shawn & Silly Zaria

Here's Zaria making faces at me in her new shape-finder toy (an early b-day present from me). She's also wearing Kelly green, which is the main color for Shawn's campaign. I volunteered to meet and greet people at the door at his fund raiser party. He's running for the DFL party spot for Minnesota Congress, district 51A, I think.

He had a speech just as I had to go downstairs to feed/change Zaria, but I was able to hear most of it. His big issue is the treatment of veterans and their rights and benefits. He's the same age and has the same red hair as my stepbro, Brian, so he feels a bit like a brother to me. I'm generally an issues voter and probably don't vote DFL most of the time, but I definitely wanted to support my "brother". Go Shawn Hamilton for State Representative!

Day 95: Shoveling snow

I bought this tiny car shovel at Target last Saturday when it snowed a bunch-- it's actually nice for having in the car, and it helped me shovel Cassie's walkway when I went to visit her on Monday (after that I used a real shovel for the driveway and got completely worn out before I even finished). I didn't use it as much today since I forgot my gloves when I was out and about, and it's only snowed a couple of extra inches. Jamin used it to shovel in front of our garage when I was putting up Christmas lights around our garage door. I'll have to get a picture of that another day.

Day 94: Coon Rapids

I spent some time at a friend's place in Coon Rapids, helping with a little cleaning. We are also looking at bidding on a place in Coon Rapids, so I've been up there a lot lately. The sun was going down as I got this shot from my car, and I liked how it reflected in the water tower.

Day 93: Car seat

In just a couple of weeks, Zaria will be old enough for me to face her car seat forward! I'm thinking about jumping the gun, just because it'll be so nice to be able to see her in the rearview mirror. My mom watched her again during Mother's Fellowship, so she is very tired in this photo after a long morning of chasing after Princess (or Boo, as she's often called), the dog.

Day 92: Snow play

I tried out this snowsuit on Zaria for the first time today-- she was a bit unhappy about not being able to get her hands out, so we'll have to work on that. I was pretty excited to get out into the snow, and I did show her how to make a snow angel for the 5 minutes we were outside. She'll probably have more fun when she can get around and explore a little better.

Day 91: Cruising around town

On our way to church this morning, we saw several early morning (like 9:30 am) Vikings fans already milling about downtown. I hope these folks got a great breakfast deal, because it was cold this morning.We cruised around town for a few hours looking at houses again, including a condo we may actually bid on. Zaria was having a blast cruising around our legs while we played Rack-O with my mom this evening. I apparently still had the camera in night mode, but I thought I'd include it today.

Day 90: Christmas picture outtake

"Zaria! Look at the camera!"
I dressed up a bit for the Women's Tea at FBC this morning, so I convinced Jamin and Zaria to dress up for a picture with me before I left. This was one of our outtakes, as the title would suggest. And by the way, we did have lots of snow today as predicted.

Day 89: Golden Birthday Girl

It was Sarah's golden birthday yesterday (same age- 29), so she's wearing gold here. I guess there was supposed to be a prize or something for whomever wore the most gold. I missed that memo, and I wore gray and green. Sarah's an amazing woman, a friend from Cassie's dorm long ago that I don't see very often. It was fun to hang out with Sarah and her gang of friends, many of whom work with youth or missions. I also happened to find Jhonessa at the party, whom I haven't seen in about 2 years, and then it was a random meeting at a library. She was an old Bethel friend of mine, so it was fun to catch up with her and find out she's going to seminary these days. She's the one in this photo with the pink pants. I was actually attempting to get Sarah's feet in this shot and do one of those funny perspective photos, but after several tries I gave up.

Day 88: Rental car and cherry pie

I did a little editing on this one so there wouldn't be any phone numbers, but this was my rental car yesterday and today. It took a little extra time for them to finish the maintenance stuff on our Hyundai. We're almost at the 60k mile mark, which is when our warranty expires, so we thought it best to get that ol' timing belt and accessory belt replaced. When Jamin and I moved out to Oregon, it was the timing belt that broke on both of our cars on our way out there, so I hope to never have that happen again.

Below is the cherry pie I made to bring to small group. It turned out really well for my first try. Of course, I used canned filling and refrigerated crust, but it still looked really pretty. I heard it's supposed to snow a lot this weekend, so I decided to have fun with the snowflake cookie cutter.

Day 87: Sunlight on mobile

I love that they have fun artwork at the local libraries. While I was there I picked up some photography books to see if I find any fun ideas.

Day 86: Coats are in play

As you can see, we have a mass of pink coats that have invaded our downstairs coat closet. Thankfully, we also have a gold coat that is the major winter weather coat for Zaria, and it happens to be a very similar coat to mine, though mine is less shiny. So it's kind of fun to go around in our matching winter wear. Thanks go out to Mom for picking out Zaria's coat and my stepmom, Dawn for picking out my coat as a Christmas present last year.

Day 85: More Taiko, more happy

I put Zaria at the Taiko Drum Master game to see if she might get some of the hits *accidentally* but my scientific methods weren't very great because I helped her a bit. I'm sure at least 2/29 correct hits must have been from her! Anyways, it was a great exercise to help wake her up from her afternoon nap. In case you're wondering, she does wake up very happy most of the time. Unless she gets too little sleep because we have to go somewhere. It might be hard to see, but she is showing her two little bottom teeth in this smile. I keep thinking she'll bust out with more, and even dreamed that she woke up with a full set of teeth (which was a nightmare!), but so far only two with a whole lot of drooling and chewing.

Day 84: Jamin plays his horn again

Jamin played his french horn at church today, the first time he's performed for some years. I didn't catch him during the performance because I was up working the soundboard today. I found out that's a terrible place to take pictures from for lighting, and Zaria didn't help much by trying to grab the camera from me. I'm lucky I got this shot while they were practicing for the Christmas show.

Day 83: Moon rising

We took a little walk just as the moon was rising, which is insanely early these days. It was a beautiful big moon, but it looks so small when you actually take a picture of it. Jamin got more of the sky's color in his shot of me.

Day 82: Holidazzle

We went downtown today to see Macy's 8th floor holiday display (though I'll always think of it as Dayton's 8th floor) of The Nutcracker, and then went to the skyway to watch the Holidazzle parade. Towards the end, Jamin and I went outside so we could hear as well as see some of the floats. So behind us is Santa's sleigh. One of my old high school teachers was Santa Claus for many, many years. Mr. Jaegers actually allowed us to call him Kris Krinkle or Santa Claus in class, so it was a strong part of his identity. It makes me sad to know he's been replaced after his death, which was over 10 years ago now.