Christmas at Kristen's House

After we opened presents at our house we went Kristen's parents' house to open even more presents. My brothers and sister and their kids were there. Opening presents at my house takes forever because everyone has to see what everyone else got before they can open another present.

Lincoln and his family couldn't wait to see what was inside of all of the presents. Apparently my dad was very amused with the present as well.

Jayla baby didn't waist any time either. She got right to work on trying to dissolve all of the wrapping paper so that she could see what was inside.

Here is Britt and Matt in their own little corner opening their presents and not really paying attention to the rest of us. Ah, I remember those days.

Here my mom is looking through the book we made her. The book is just a whole bunch of pictures of Jayla. My mom started crying when she opened it. One sure way to make my mom cry is to give her pictures of her grandkids for Christmas. She is so proud of that gorgeous Jayla Mae that she had to show that book to anyone who would listen.

My grandparents were there making their rounds. They always stop by each of our houses on Christmas.

My family is a little wierd at Christmas time. They like to give gag gifts. My parents own some storage units so this my dad wrapped up a whole bunch of odd items that he found and gave them to Michael and the rest of the boys for Christmas. My dad gave Michael a little knife. Ya, that is the perfect gift since we have a little girl crawling around, but for some reason it never made it home with us. Nathan got what we determined to be siphon and boy was he excited about it!

Christmas at our House

Christmas was a busy day of hopping from one house to the next. First we had Christmas at our house. We woke up, had a nice breakfast, and then opened all of our presents. Jayla preferred to eat the presents rather than open them. Michael bought me a tripod for our camera so that we can take family pictures. He was way excited about that gift that he gave me. We had fun helping Jayla open all of her presents.

7 Months Old

Wow, Jayla is 7 months old already and she seems to be growing really fast. She now weights 21 lbs. She has learned to growl at us and how to throw a fit to get what she wants. She loves playing, playing and playing. She hardly sits still now and is always on the go. She loves to have us hold her hands and walk around the house with her. She loves being on daddy's shoulders. She is such a happy girl! she has two teeth and loves to eat solids and suck on crackers. she has realized that things have faces, so she loves stuffed animals. She can scoot and rock on her hands and knees. She is starting to get scared of strangers, but still loves all little kids. It is still really easy to get her to smile at us. She loves to bite everything with her two little teeth including Michael's nose when he isn't looking. She loves watching us brush our teeth or make dinner. She is a very curious girl. She is our world!! We are so blessed to have her in our lives.

Birth Mom Visit

We had the opportunity to visit with Jayla's birth mom and her family. They came to our house to drop off some presents for Jayla and for us. (We decided not to post any pictures that we took that day to respect their privacy.) They sure love that little girl!! As you can see. It was fun visiting with them and watching them play with Jayla. She was excited to see them. She kept squealing the whole time. We love Jayla's birth mom and her family. We are so glad that we are able to have a close relationship with them. We have so many examples of their kindness and love towards us and Jayla. Jayla's birth mom is such an amazing person!

These are all of the presents that they brought. Jayla always seems to really like the presents and toys that are given to her by her birth mom and her family.

Merry Christmas

I couldn't decide which picture I liked the best so I picked out a couple different ones to show off Jayla's personality. I suppose this is our equivalency to a Christmas Card so Merry Christmas Everyone.

What a Babe!

These pictures are so dang cute! We finally got some professional pictures of Jayla done and they turned out so beautiful. I would highly recommend Michelle Reyes. She specializes in children photography and she does a really good job. Of course it helps that Jayla is really cute. Sorry, I'm a little biased. Here is her website if anyone ever wants to hire her....http://michelereyes.com/mrphotography/Home.html

Birthday Dinner

Here we are at my parent's house having a Sunday dinner for my b-day. I didn't take very many good pictures, but here are the few that I took. Little Vanessa kept trying to feed Jayla her bottle, then she would try to find toys for her. She is such a sweet girl!
We ate Salmon that my dad caught in Alaska. It was yummy, if you like fish. From the looks of it Michael was deep in discussion with my dad about his latest idea for a new invention. My dad is always trying to get Michael to build some crazy contraption for him, since Michael is and engineer.

Lyndon, my uncle, was in the neighborhood so he decided to stop by as well. He was in the middle of telling us his latest funny story and loving every minute of it.

There is Yvonne. Being the perfect little mother that she is, she is on the floor playing with Vanessa and Jayla. Vanessa kept stealing Jayla's beads and wearing them around her neck, so Vanessa thought that Jayla needed to wear them around her neck as well.

Can you tell that Vanessa is saying CHEESE in this picture? Jayla meanwhile had to taste test all of these different toys since she has already chewed on all of her toys at home. She was happy for something new to play with.

PARTY!!!

This is us at Michael's office Christmas party put on by his professor and boss. He always has a lot of parties for his graduate students. He treats them really well. They usually have lots of food and goodies at his parties. This time we exchanged some white elephant gifts. Jayla thought that the wrapping paper was pretty fun to play with. The couple below are good friends of ours. They are trying to adopt as well.

Army Crawling

Jayla learned to army crawl! We thought that she wouldn't even be attempting anything until after Christmas. We are so excited and she is so excited that she is able to move around now. She didn't like being on the floor because she couldn't move around as much compared to being in her walker... but she surprised us. We have been working with her for a long time today she finally did it on her own!! Maybe by Christmas she will be able to get into all of the presents! It will be so much fun! Now we will really have to baby proof our house.

Kristen and Jayla

Jayla loves to put her feet in her mouth. We have a hard time keeping socks on her. Believe it or not we were trying to get a picture of her cuddling with me since she rarely does that. She is always on the go. Even when she was a little baby she would hardly ever cuddle with us. She is way too active for that.

Poser!

I was having fun with some black and white photos today. Jayla was putting on a show so I thought that I would put them on the blog to show them off. I am trying to take advantage of Jayla's immobility while I can because as soon as she learns to crawl I will have a hard time getting her to sit still long enough to take a good picture.

Look at those long eye lashes!

I was playing around with the settings on the camera. I love black and white pictures. They look so good even when an amateur like me is taking the picture.

Happy Birthday

Well it was my birthday a while ago and why no pictures or big birthday celebration you ask.....I was SICK for my entire birthday and then some, along with sweet little Jayla. We just stayed home and rented a movie while Jayla got some good sleep. At least we finally got to see Indiana Jones..and Michael made me get all of these treats that I really didn't want that much at the time since I was sick. He tried to make it a good B-Day even though I was sick. He even wrote me a b-day letter that of course made me cry....Of course the best part of the night was when Michael's whole family called me to sing to me happy B-Day. It was quite entertaining.

Bowling

This is us bowling with the fam. Well, part of my family. I am an expert bowler. I think I bowled about 70. I could have used those blue bumpers so that my ball wouldn't go in the gutter all the time. Without fail my first try would always land in the gutter no matter how hard I tried.

This is Brittany's boyfriend. I can talk about them because I'm sure that Brittany hardly ever checks our blog. Hopefully they get married so that I won't have to go back and delete him from all of our photos....but only time will tell.

Jayla was so fascinated by all oft he bowling balls. She wanted to pick them up, but for some reason she couldn't. She was a perfect baby when we went bowling. She is so fun to take places because she always checks things out and she loves to be in new environments.

We finally put up our Christmas Tree. Jayla was so excited that she kept screaming as loud as she could. Apparently she gets bored with looking at the same things in the living room day after day. It didn't take her long to figure out that when she is in her walker she is able to grab some of the ornaments. We have had to move the breakable ones to the top, so that she cant' reach them.

Doesn't she look so guilty?