Cake and cats

Nina's first birthday. She is one! (and a month and 12 days!!!!) Whether we were ready for it or not, it was upon us. Nina is growing and changing everyday and we’re running to catch up.

The theme was cake and cats. Nina has been trying to say "kitty" since she was like 8 months old at least. The earliest memory we have of her being excited being belief was when she met her first feline at about 4 months old. Cats seem to be a favorite for her and I wanted this party to be for her as much as a one year old is able to grasp. I made little cat masks for all the kids. Kendra pulled through for me and conjured up a friendly cat AND a pug! The pug, dressed in a spandex cheetah print thing with pink lace, turned out to be much more of a Nina pleaser than the cat, who hid under our bed the whole time. It was fun for some of the older kids to run around playing hide and seek with the cat and the pug.



If you can't tell from the picture, our apartment was pretty full and there was some mayhem. Including me being mask nazi, trying to get a picture of all the kids together with their cat mask on at the same time (note to self: masks are good for older kids) But I think Nina enjoyed swimming in a sea of friends and cake. She seems to do really well in big crowds of people with a lot going on all at once. Her friend Alex was super excited to sing happy birthday to "Nani", Jan said he was practicing all day. Lily helped her finish her huge messy birthday cake. There were snacks and cupcakes for everyone else and Lily insisted on pink cake like Nina's. Nina didn't mind sharing. Evan and I's favorite moment of the party was right after Nina tasted the cake, she slowly lowered her face into it. We'll post the video some time soon.


Nina, wondering what's next. Food?


The blessed cake is in sight.


First taste.





A range of reactions to the cat masks:


Nibs


Soren


Alex


Daphne


Henry and Elijah


Vaughncito


"I made them wear these?"


Blurry evidence that a pug was there

a nice saunter down internet lane

In other words, too lazy to finish my work notes or get up and finish stuff done around the house!!

Sometimes I really shouldn't visit people's blogs. I don't mean any offense. Many blogs don't really show the whole picture, just the exciting or relevant parts. There's just too much comparison, greener grass on the other side. If they were more accurate portrayals there would would be more type-os and a realistic ratio of awkward pictures. Fortunately we don't have any of those in our family. (haha) But right now I feel happy to have spent the last hour on facebook and visiting some people's blogs. Some people I DON'T EVEN KNOW. Gasp!

Let me give you a slice of what I found:

I found food

Chocolate orange cheesecake

melting... watering mouth... eat

If scrumptulescent were ever not a real word I wouldn't care, I'd still use it!!!

I also found other treasures on Lizzy House's blog like her new line of fabric, castle peeps.

Serious Pie (seattle restaurant I've never been to) which actually made me excited for pizza fresh out of my brother christian's brick oven that he built this summer and I still have not been able to try!! I can't WAIT!

I found a recipe for mexican hot chocolate on this AMAZING blog that is a new favorite. Maybe we can enjoy this alongside the woodfire pizza and chocolate orange cheesecake when we're at home in a few days.

I found one of my dear missionary companions, Lorena Acevez. This was taken during the missionary days in Utah:



So many memories came flooding back. btw she's not that short. Just kind of short. Truly one of the funnest people you could possibly meet in your lifetime.

There were other fun things too. And some less exciting things.

Now i return to the real world. A nicely tailored slice from Thanksgiving day:

Nina turned one!

Today!

Wow. Time goes so fast and one whole year has passed since Nina came to live at our house. Nina is super awesome and growing every day. We can't wait to see what comes next!

Here is a video of a recent bike ride we took with Nina!

Riding Bikes with Nina from Evan and Lindsay MacDonald on Vimeo.

Happy birthday Nina!!

love dad.

Daddy-daughter weekend

Nina and I hopped on a plane to head out to Tacoma to be with my family for the weekend of my Grandmother funeral. Nina was a real trooper on the drive from Rexburg to Boise (about 4–5 hours) and the hour and 15 minute flight.

Here is a little video of Nina doing a little expert-traveler-beek-a-boo action.

Peek-a-boo on a Jet Plane from Evan and Lindsay MacDonald on Vimeo.

On the ride home from the airport, she fell asleep while sucking on her bottle (it was a long day). I snapped this photo on my handy little cellular device.


We really miss Lindsay! Nina is doing okay tho since there is enough activity to keep her sidetracked. More to come from this trip, I'm sure!

Cheers!

While Mommy was away

Nina and Daddy Singing on Vimeo.

Nina got a little fussy so I grabbed the guitar. She started singing along instantly! So I grabbed my new camera phone thingy and caught a little of it on tape.

the rest of the last post

Nina had a great six month birthday. A package arrived with a sweet card and goodies for her. She (we are) is thrilled!

Today Nina was immunized again, the poor little one. I used to think that when moms talked about their kids getting immunized, they were talking about like a once a year thing. Nope, so far this is her fourth time. Man. She's so tough though. I have to close my eyes while I hold her legs still (i'm pretty needle phobic) and all she does is squeal for about 5 seconds. i don't know if there's anything cuter than the matching band-aids on her little thighs.

I'm realizing that this girl does not have a cap on cuteness. I thought the two/three month age was the cutest yet. I was soo wrong. The law of diminishing marginal utility does not seem to apply to babies cuteness. She's more adorable every day. Who am I kidding doesn't every mom think their baby is beautiful? I almost can't handle it. I hope she doesn't mind me squeezing the dickens out of her and smothering her. (have you ever noticed that the word smother includes the word mother? Interesting to note) I wish our family were all here to hold her every day.

She is 27 inches long and 17 lb 8 oz. I'll have to look at the growth charts and report on what that means. Alls I know is I'm getting more tired earlier in the day. I probably need to start working out to keep up. Maybe it's time to get my own yoga video, I used Jessica's a few times and loved it.


We visited Shauna David & newly arrived Clark in the hospital last week shaunaanddavid.blogspot.com


a few days before that we met Penelope Nieman at the hospital dernieman.blogspot.com Lots of new ones!

Here are some pictures from our weekend trip to Utah for Katie's wedding. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful wedding. BY THE WAY, is it possible to NOT take tons of pictures on the grounds of Temple Square? Has anyone reading this ever attempted to not take pictures on temple square grounds? It's an impossibility! Much thanks to Heather Ross & Soren for putting us up. It was so great to see them. I wish we'd taken pictures of Soren & Nina.


Nina and I stayed the night and hung out with Grandma Johnson on the way to Utah. We had a lot of fun! I am always so impressed with her beautiful home. It's one of my favorite places in the world.


Grandad went on a walk with Nina after the sealing


photo intercepted by Nick






All of us whining nina-style

Nina rolled yesterday!

Joe saw it happen. We were around the corner in the kitchen. She was on her play mat that Cassy gave her. I was so proud of her!!! So we took a lot of pictures of her on her belly. She also learned last week how to grab things andd play with them while on her belly:

Nina Laughed!

Nina's First Laugh from Lindsay MacDonald on Vimeo.

We happened to catch the tail end of her adorable laughing session. I keep trying to get her to play peek-a-boo. This time she totally got into it! More to come, I am sure.

Swimming video

This correlates with two posts ago, we're finally putting it up!

Nina at the Pool from Lindsay MacDonald on Vimeo.

eye swear...

I stole this photo of Nina from Jaqui's facebook :) How could I resist? It's from Saturday. They came up to the netherland of kenmore (it's kinda far from Tacoma) to hang out. We went to the university district and ate Pho, had fun, took photos, and other f sounding alliterations. buFFalo exchange. driving Fast. Free parking. Anyways. We love the Shumates.

Nina is now:

2.5 months old
14.2 lbs.
24.5 inches long

!!!

which puts her in the 93rd percentile in weight, and 90th in height. She's the size of an average 4 1/2 month old. Yesterday at Teresa's birthday party Teresa said that I feed Nina cream. Which explains why Nina's poo smells like butter to me. (She churns cream into butter) Too much information? sorry....

New ones!

My technology learning curve has about the same slope as kansas - it's flat. haha

That said, I'm proud of myself for learning how to convert raw images into jpgs so I can post them on here for everyone to see! It took me a while to muster the courage to learn how ... or maybe I was just lazy. I've also been organizing all the pictures into folders so we can save them in discs to store them in a safe place. (I learned that lesson the hard way after our new external hard drive corrupted 80% of my pictures from Ethiopia... unretreivable!!!) So here are some pictures, hand converted by yours truly. Reminiscing on Christmas and all of the great times we've had since Nina arrived!! We love her so much.





LOVED our charlie brown christmas tree




amazing t-shirts for Nina a la Bethany!


Another Christmas event -- Joe Jr. OR Vaughn Edward Davis was born on December 24th! Isn't he adorable? We are missing them while we're away from Rexburg. He looks like his daddy. haha If Nina and JB Stout don't work out, maybe she'll go for this handsome younger man :) haha



there's a lot more to come!! Just need to post them :)

traveling back in time to last week

Nina's week four picture. I couldn't believe that I captured one of her elusive smiles! Don't be deceived, it's probably a gas smile, crazy huh? But we think we've been seeing more real smiles!! I CAN'T believe how much different she looks from her week one picture. loves

Week three and lions

Things just keep getting better! Nina is doing so good, and getting more and more interesting. We feel like we are getting to know her a little more.

Nina and Lindsay Sleeping

These are my babes. Anyone else see the resemblance?

Eight days old

Nina is doing so awesome! Her umbilical cord fell off today and she is starting to look around so much more (we don't think they're related).

Nina's hiccups!

Nina and I were hanging out last night and she got an adorable little case of the hiccups. Thank goodness I had the video camera close by!

Meet Nina :)

It's really hard to explain, I have this new friend. I feel so connected, so much love, so much joy. This is what cameras were intended for.

New photos of the nameless wonder (and lindsay)