Merry Christmas everyone!

This is the photo that was on our Christmas card this year. (See below)













This is to demonstrate that it took a few tries . . .

God bless you this Christmas, one and all!

Family Pic on our 6th Anniversary

It was a bright, hot day for October. On our wedding it was about 37 degrees, and this year it got up to 83. But that's why we live in Minnesota-- so we can have an adventure with the weather.

New Blog

I know, I know, you probably have enough blogs to read. But I started a new one that I'm attempting to update every day for a YEAR. So if you're upset that no one is posting anything new, check it out. The link is to the left on this page or you can go this way:
http://29thyearinpictures.blogspot.com/

I've got 21 days done so far, but the idea is to have one picture for every day of the year. I'm trying to keep my commentary down since the focus is more about the photos. I think it will be fun. Hopefully I can find time to keep it up!

Here's an extra photo of Zaria trying out her new jumper:
And look who's enjoying playing the piano. Of course she looks serious as soon as I get the camera out, though.

Trying out a video post

I just grabbed this from our California trip -- this is a short video taken while in the aerial tramway.

Fun with Family in California

We took a LOT of pictures while we were on vacation in California, so I'll upload a handful (not in order). It was a great trip, and Zaria did surprisingly well on the airplane, getting to know all sorts of new relatives including 4 second cousins (all boys), and dealing with some serious heat in the desert-- 107 degrees in Indio. We kept her in AC areas most of the time while in the desert since the heat was pretty unbearable. She was extremely observant of new faces, and only seemed to get scared when she met men with beards.Zaria playing with 1-year-old second cousins in San Diego (Amber's twins), Lucas and Nicolas. Their older brother Jaden had a lot of fun poking at Zaria's cheeks.
Zaria and Joe (son of Jamin's cousin Anne) meet for the first time.
A group shot in Oceanside, at Marc & Mimi's place. L-R: Liz, Jamin, Sara (holding Zaria), Jennie, Mimi, Marla and David
Cousin Anne, Aunt Mimi holding Zaria, and Mimi's sister-in-law Marilyn over for a celebration of Grandma's 84th birthday.
With all of Jamin's family that we visited, I also got to see my mom's cousin, Joey, who gave us a great lunch on our way out to the desert and enjoyed visiting with Zaria.

The three of us in the shade-- a hot day at The Living Desert Zoo. They actually are only open from 8 am to 1:30 pm in the summertime. We got there in time to see the giraffes finishing their morning meal. They have a baby giraffe there-- not sure how old since one guide said 7 months (same age as Zaria) and another said 11 months. Here he is if you want to guess his real age:


We took a break from the desert heat by going up a few thousand feet on the aerial tramway. Here's a group shot before Jamin, Jennie and I headed down for some hiking. We went from 107 degrees down below in the desert to 71 degrees up in the mountains. It was beautiful, and a welcome relief.

Zaria with Great Grandpa Jim


Playing with Great Grandma Mary on the floor in Long Beach.
Taking a leisurely cruise on the Duffy. There was a sailboat race going on as we went out that evening.

We rode the Aqua Link over to the Queen Mary (a permanently docked ocean liner) and The Scorpion (a Russian submarine from the 70's--both have tours) with Jamin's folks. Zaria slept on the way there in the sling. We toured The Scorpion, but had to keep someone behind with Zaria since they only had 2' holes to climb through. See me climbing through below.

Zaria absolutely loved the water, whether it was ocean, pool or sprinkler. This picture is at Mother's Beach, which is at a salt water bay on Naples Island.

Sitting in the grass

Zaria's enjoying the great outdoors, and has been doing really well sitting up. Still doesn't sit up on her own or roll quite yet, but she loves watching the world go by.

I haven't been able to post many pictures because I've had such a hard time with putting photos on the computer without losing them or being frustrated with slowness or other difficulties. Since I finally got some on from last week, I'll post a few more cute pics and then get back to work! We went to a wedding this weekend, and it was so fun. Weddings are always a good reminder to love and to honor the vows we've made. And a good time to dance if we're lucky! Zaria had fun dancing with me and watching the others, kicking her little legs along with the beat.




Happy Birthday Papa! (She's always glad to see her dad.)


Helping Jamin play Settlers of Cattan.

Swimming baby, watch out!

Zaria as the Michelin Man. Gotta love those roles. We had her try swimming a few weeks ago at our friends' condo, and she did really well.

We moved! We're settling into our new home, and we're all enjoying Zaria having her very own bedroom.

Below is a pic of the truck we loaded at the old place. It was so awesome to have lots of helpers. The work was done very fast.



But today was rather bittersweet. This morning I went to a funeral for one of my professors at Bethel, Dr. Wayne Hensley. Zaria did amazingly well through most of the service. I still had to roll her out to a side room when she made a little noise because the place was an echo chamber.

It was nice to be able to visit with a few other Bethel people and remember Dr. Hensley. He was my internship advisor, and I had mixed feelings about him. It was his last year before retiring, so I sometimes felt he wasn't working real hard. But I also had good memories of him going completely off topic in class and telling us stories about him growing up in Tennessee or about baseball. He was a huge collector of baseball Hall of Fame stuff.

Then this evening I went to Jacob T's graduation party. I was able to pass off a bunch of boxes from our move for their coming move. I try not to think about it too much, but I'm really gonna miss Jen and Jacob, who of course are moving back to Dr. Hensley's home state.

Both of these events would've been easier to handle together, but then Jamin had a flat tire and couldn't find anyone to fix it, so he won't be home until midnight. And I also realized that today would've been my parents' anniversary (39th I think?) had they not gotten divorced 20+ years ago.

I forgot to bring the camera to our Easter celebrations, but it was fun to visit with lots of Andersons. Her second cousin, Lauren absolutely loves babies and wanted to carry her around and even stayed with her in the nursery during the church service. Zaria also got to meet an aunt and uncle for the first time, Jason and Caralee.

Though I don't have pics of pink bunnies, here's a fun shot of ZJ doing some great "tummy time."


And here she's helping me with the laundry (this is from a while ago):

Moving on

It's about time one of us blogs . . . I can't believe the whole month of March just passed us by. In like a lion, out like a --whoah, what was that?

Zaria has more than doubled in size since her birth, right around 15 lbs by the bathroom scale measurement. I'm getting more used to being a mother. It is definitely a tough job, and I have to continually rearrange my priorities for doing transcription training as we prepare for things like moving at the end of this month.

Jamin and I have moved 5 times in the same number of years of marriage, and it has never been all that easy. I like to think that we've made it easier with experience, but I know it'll be way different moving with a baby. At least we're not hauling all of our things (or what remains of our things) across country this time. And I think we'll have more help than we've had for past moves. At some point I'll have to scan some of our moving pics from Portland-- it was scary. We really filled that semi cab to capacity, and I couldn't have fit our little hermit crab cage into the car with me once that got packed.

I need to go and get some sleep, but I'll try to find a cute pic or two to post:

Zaria with her cousins Becca & Tricia on a visit in late February.



Zaria and Sam on our way to our first MOPS meeting.

Early Valentines with the Great Grannies by Jamin

Happy Valentine's Dinner!

A happy greeting for guests and a gentle chide for the spouse that didn't help until the guests were there. Carefully planned seating arangements with personalized valentine cards and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. The conversation-seasoned evening was great! The coupe-de-graugh came after the hot fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies with gormet hazel-nut coffee was served: The final item unveiled was buttter-pecan and turtle-fudge brownie ice creams. Excelent and luxurious for the pallet. As we drove the ~90 year olds to their assisted-living arangements, promises to hook up for impromptu day-time scabble games were exchanged.

Seeing through the eyes of those that grew up before the great depression for an evening as they told various stories is still sparking our imaginations. Stories of the weird things they were told by health practioners on how to care for their infants, and the foolishness that most of those things have become now that we know better, and even one story of a thief that broke in while the kids were home alone, and how it turned out to be the neighbor two doors down, with the money eventually being returned.

All the cute things Zaria keeps doing has been very entertaining for her gaggle of grandmas. Sara keeps enjoying the butt-out stretching she does after a car-ride and Jamin the weird circus-seal honking she does while feeding. We're sure the day will come when her antics will stop being so cute, we just are glad it won't be for a while.

Great Grandmas

Zaria has the privilege of having several great grandparents--two of my grandparents, Grandma Victoria and Grandma Alpha (just before her 97th b-day!) are pictured below. We visited with Grandpa Ellwyn and Grandma Victoria this afternoon, which was a lot of fun. G'ma Victoria absolutely loved listening to all of Zaria's adorable baby noises. She's already doing a lot of "talking" and is a pretty noisy eater. I have to leave our room at night when she eats, because she often wakes up Jamin. This morning she woke up to eat 2 minutes before his alarm went off though, so I went ahead and stayed in our room.

I wish I could've known my great grandparents. All of them were gone by the time I was born, which sort of makes sense since I was the youngest (until a couple of younger stepsiblings came along). I think my older sister only met one great grandma, and she probably doesn't remember her since she was very small, but I've seen a picture. My great grandparents sound like they would've been fascinating people to talk to. I'm pretty sketchy on the details, but I believe it was Alpha's mom that emigrated to the U.S. from Sweden as a 16-year-old and hired herself out as a maid to make a living. I love how interesting and diverse the ancestors of Americans are. So many crazy, adventurous spirits going to make a better life, traveling across country in covered wagons, or even making a hasty exit from a country that would persecute them for their beliefs or ethnicity. I really look forward to meeting some of those people in heaven.

New Year

Late night babies on New Year's Eve. They're about the same size, but Ariel was a premie and Zaria is 2 1/2 months younger. Zaria was my good luck charm-- I won a couple of games while holding her.
One of Zaria's great expressions while taking her first bath.
Out for a walk on a beautiful New Year's Day.

Our First Christmas with 3 of us

I'm finally breaking down and getting a regular blog-- much easier to post pics, etc.

The name of the blog is our two names together, Sara & Jamin. We actually were called Sa'min one year at Sonshine because it was easier to meld our names when we were always together. Hopefully I'll have a chance to post once in a while, though our new addition, Zaria Joy, can be a bit of a handful, and I'm also trying to finish up some medical transcription training so I can work at home.