Party Time!

Nina has been enjoying the life of a guest at birthday parties lately.  First, Jimmy's turned two and he had lots of games, inflatable jumping areas, pools, and a pull-string Woody doll that made Nina laugh heartily.  Secondly, we got to see many little friends at Kristin Tranby's birthday party.  We loved all the great food that Cory made.  Finally, we went to the Highland Aquatic Park and Nina spent the first 20 minutes afraid of the water.  She ended up having a good time, and we're excited for the Como water park to open next year.

Happy about her new swing

coming soon...

We were working on a movie about Nina's development seen through our time spent in the Como area.  This movie has gotten long and we therefore decided it needed a short theatrical trailer to keep people anticipating its release.

Sadly, we're not at Como right now because Nina went to daycare today and she is tuckered out from reuniting with all her little friends.  Daycare and Jimmy's birthday party tomorrow!

Hungry Girl

Nina is still growing and eating and we thought we'd compile a quick list of her diet from the week.  It's hard to imagine her going through a stage where she won't eat anything as it's currently impossible to go outside without her trying to grab tomatoes out of the garden.  It has helped her learn colors as she now follows the direction of only picking the red ones.

Breakfast - 1 Banana, 2 cups of cheerios, and apple juice
Lunch - Bowl of Rigatoni and milk
Snack - Peanut butter toast with cherry tomatoes
Dinner - whatever we're eating with more milk
Snack - Toast & applesauce for dipping and some cheese

Funny story about yesterday's snack:  Nina's toast disappeared off her high chair and fell on the ground.  When we asked her, "Where's your toast?" she pointed to her toes.  ;)

The following pictures are from our trip to the Roseville Nature Center, where Nina loved looking at the turtles and smelling all the flowers on the prairie.

Randomness

The weeks are flying by and we've been slow to update the blog lately so we've got a fair amount of footage and photos for you now.  Enjoy!

Videos...

If you're tired of the fuzzy videos on blogger which sometimes make it hard to discern Nina from our air conditioner, then we suggest you get on google+.  If you want an invite, we'll send you one.  We like that the videos stay private and can be watched in HD.  The website is:  https://plus.google.com/

Here's a video that we made this morning of Nina's favorite new activity.

New computer!

After 4 good years with our Gateway laptop, it has gotten to the point where it can't handle any more Nina pictures and it moves at a snail's pace, so the Naks have decided to try a Mac. So far we have been amazed by its speed, laughed at the photo booth, and have made a quick movie of our vacation. While we can watch it in lovely 1080 HD on the computer, blogger won't let us post at near that quality, but you can at least get a taste of what it can do.

Here are some of the weird photo booth pictures we've taken too ;)

Alien Dada--------------------------Chipmunk Nina

13 Months

We've returned from a wonderful week thanks to Northern Pine's Family Camp in Green Lake. We can't get over the amazing opportunity it was to spend time learning, playing, eating, worshiping, and even some Nina-free time. We'll probably put together a short video of our time when we get a new computer and we'll also post some keynote links when the camp makes them available.

Anyway, here are some photos of our 13-month old who had a lot of fun playing with other kids, but also relished some of her time with Mama and Dada:

Julie Kirschling is Ben's generous coworker who brought our family out to the camp. We are deeply indebted to them for all their kindness and insistence. Her father, Art Tangwall, is the former White Bear Young Life Area Director and one fun guy. He always saved us seats and was amazed by Nina's ability to get her money's worth at the buffet meals. Bibs, being useless and easily torn off, wouldn't work; Nina needed a smock to handle the onslaught of food and, much to Art's delight, a shovel by the last day to maximize intake.