Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Fly Fishing, Turkey, King Tut and More

Time for the Super-Mega-Chritmas-Extravaganza post where we make up for two weeks of nothing with one novella of a post...

We hope everybody is having a great end of their year. We had a wonderful Christmas week with both families. We started off the weekend before Christmas by celebrating with the Suskays at the cabin. Friday night we found out that we would spend Saturday learning how to fly fish. Very cool gift from Santa Suskay.

We spent the first half of Saturday learning the history and details of fly fishing from the great folks at Unicoi Outfitters. They taught us how to tie knots, what types of rods to use and a ton more. After lunch, we suited up and headed out to the river where we spent the first hour or so learning and practicing different casts. Then we spread out a bit and spent the next several
hours fishing. Mandie did the best (she's the only one that actually caught anything, actually) but we all had a great time. We'll definitely be going fly fishing again.

The rest of the weekend was spent just relaxing and exchanging gifts. Patrick LOVED tearing through the paper and tissue paper. He got very spoiled by his grandparents and aunts and uncle.

Christmas Eve we went to mass at St. Ann's with both families and then went home to eat dinner. I also got to read The Night Before Christmas to Patrick that night for the first time. It's always been a tradition in my family that my Dad would read that book Christmas Eve night before we all went to bed and it was really neat being able to start that tradition with Patrick. We'll have to have his Uncle Jonathan teach him our other family tradition of making vomiting noises at the point of the book where it says "and threw up the sash."

In a horrible turn of events, we lost the charger for our camera and didn't realize it until the battery died on Christmas Eve. So, we don't have any pictures of Patrick opening gifts on Christmas morning or many from the rest of Christmas day. We took video of it though so we can have the memories. We had a really fun morning with him watching him get excited when the presents came out and tearing into them as soon as they were put down. We spent Christmas afternoon and evening over at Grandma and Grandpa Flowers' house with the whole crew. Patrick was spoiled even more by gifts from everyone and we were spoiled by one of the best Christmas dinners I've had. I swear the turkey was basted in angel dust and magic.

We all headed back up to the cabin for Friday and Saturday and Patrick got to go on a hike and see his first waterfall. Patrick has discovered his high voice (or, "Mariah Carey notes" as we like to call them) in the past week or two and fully exercised it on the hike. He squealed in delight every few seconds at every tree he saw, every breeze that blew and the waterfalls almost sent him over the edge.

Another gift from Santa Suskay was to see the King Tut exhibit at the Cobb Civic center. Papa and Meme kept Patrick for the afternoon while all the "kids" went to the exhibit.

It was quite the whirlwind week but a ton of fun to see everybody. It was awesome having Mandie and Tim in town from Idaho for the whole week and getting to see both families for Patrick's first Christmas. We had a really fun time watching him react to all the new things he saw and did.

Finally, here's a slideshow full of pictures from the week. If you're like me and not patient enough to wait for the slides to change on their own, you can always go directly to the whole album and view all the pictures at once by clicking here.


Wednesday, December 24, 2008

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

We hope everyone has a healthy and happy Christmas! We are enjoying time at the cabin in Blue Ridge, some family time at home and looking forward to spending time with both families on Christmas Day.


More to come after the holidays...

Monday, December 15, 2008

Christmas is Coming!

We kicked off our Christmas season with the celebration of St. Nick's Day on December 6th. It's a (German) tradition in my family to set out the children's shoes or hang one of their socks (real ones, not the Christmas stocking kind) from the mantle. Overnight St. Nicholas fills the socks or shoes with small treats for the kids. Patrick received a few teethers and a Santa nightlight that bubbles along with a small stuffed penguin. It was pretty cute to see Patrick's tiny little shoes in front of the fireplace. I think he enjoyed the tissue paper more than the gifts!

Nora, Patrick's long distance girlfriend (and our Goddaughter), and her Mom, Megan, arrived from Arizona last week. The kids played together most of the day on Sunday and it seemed like they really enjoyed each other. Mark arrives on the 23rd and then our group will be complete. We miss you Mark!

Patrick has started to sit up more on his own for an extended period of time. We think he's trying to impress Nora Jo, as she can already crawl a bit. It's so much fun to watch her be so mobile. She can go from sitting to laying to crawling. We are having a blast with them in town!


Mandie and Tim arrive from Idaho Wednesday evening and Friday we'll leave for the cabin. I can't believe Christmas is almost here!

This Christmas will be a very special Christmas for me
...(get ready to sing on Thursday Sue and Penny!)

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

I took this video about a month ago on a day when Angie was at work and Patrick and I got to hang out together the whole day (hence the Nintendo shirt and the socks that look like shoes). He spent the entire morning rolling over every time he hit the ground.


Saturday, December 6, 2008

Thanksgiving Weekend

Sorry I'm a little late on this post; it's been a busy week.

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend. It was really fun for Patrick to celebrate it for the first time (at least, it was fun for us to watch Patrick). And thanks to Aunt Wendy, Patrick was ready for the day with a stuffed turkey and a 'My First Thanksgiving' bib (which comes in very handy when you're a drooly baby like Patrick is).

We spent Thanksgiving night over at the Hopkins' and had a GREAT dinner and a lot of fun hanging out. Patrick must have just inhaled the tryptophan because he cut right to the chase and napped for most of dinner.

The next day we headed to the Suskay cabin after Patrick's morning nap. Angie's family was already there including her Grandma and Grandpa Stuck who came from Arizona. We had a great time spending the weekend with them playing games, sharing stories and eating A LOT of food. Throughout the weekend we also had other visitors from out of town. Rob, Michelle, their two kids and Aunt Caroline (and we can't forget their new puppy Mame) along with Vincent, Christine and their two kids spent Friday evening with us. It was a very full and fun house - and also made for a great horseshoes tournament and bonfire.

The next evening we had Thanksgiving dinner (Part III) with Chuck and Suzy whose cabin is next door to the Suskay cabin. You'll never meet two nicer people.

Sunday morning we got up and had a huge breakfast at The Lodge. After that, we packed up and came back home for a nice relaxing night.

Here are a few more pictures from the weekend but if you want to see the rest just click here to view them on Picasa.







Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Happy Baby

Hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. We have some pictures to post but for now just wanted to put up a video we took on my phone today.

I had to exchange some things at the store and it wasn't worth taking Patrick and all his gear in to do it so he and mommy stayed in the car. When I got back Ang had moved to the back of the car to play and he was a VERY happy baby. I was able to grab a quick video of him giggling away on my cell phone (hence the terrible quality).