Another Christmas in the Books

First things first, here is an updated link to the Dec photos that now contain Christmas photos...

Dec 2010

Well Christmas was a little crazy as always but Megan, Finn, and I had a great time with my family in NC. The trip started out a little hectic when Finn didn't sleep well the night before we planned to leave and it looked like his ear infection was back. We paid a visit to the doctor before we left and he did have an outer ear infection. So with medicine in hand we headed out the door a few hours later than we planned. Of course, those couple of hours cost us dearly with additional traffic and we didn't arrive at my parents' house until well after Finn's bedtime.

But the next days were a blast with family and friends. We ate way too much and laughed so hard playing Wii that we should have woken up Finn, but luckily we didn't. It was really nice to get to see my family and let them see how much Finn had grown. Finn didn't hesitate during this trip. He jumped right into the mix and was running around asking for Pawpaw and Mawmaw the first day.

We had a white Christmas when it started snowing in the afternoon and finished Sunday morning with around 4 to 5 inches. We took Finn out in the snow and did some sledding. He is still a little unsure about the snow.

So, of course, Finn instinctively knows when we are leaving and had a rough night of sleeping before we left Monday morning. A little tired and happy to be home we made it through our doors last night, gave the boy a bath, unpacked, and went to bed.

I have a few days to get back in the swing of things before heading back to work, unfortunately Megan heads back tomorrow. We both hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

Love,

Hud

Pictures and Christmas

Megan is right...we have been way behind on updating, so here are a couple links for pictures. Since it has been awhile I will put a couple of links to the different albums, but of course once you take one link there you can get to them all. Just trying to help those out there that might be technology challenged (Don't worry, I won't mention any names)...

Here are pictures form Sept - Nov...

Sept - Nov 2010

And here are pics form Dec...

Dec 2010

We are almost ready for Christmas. Only a few more presents and then we are good to go. It has been really hectic and I haven't felt quite in the Christmas spirit until just a day or so ago. Now with work done for a couple of weeks and just being able to focus on spending time with Megan and Finn it does feel a little more like Christmas.

Not to go all sentimental on everyone, but my dad always reminds me to enjoy the time that I have now and not to always spend my time waiting for the next thing to happen. Enjoy what is right in front of you, the present is only here for a short time. So for those I don't see this holiday enjoy the time with your family and friends and I wish you a Happy Holidays.

Hud

Christmas is almost here!

Where has the time gone? Hud and I looked at each other and asked, where did November go? And now, it's halfway through December. We've been busy getting ready for Christmas. The house is decorated. The gifts are purchased, although nothing is wrapped. The cards are in the mail. Slowly but surely everything is coming together.

Finn and I woke up to find snow on the ground this morning. Not quite enough to play in, but enough to look pretty. I'm not mentally prepared for winter, I keep expecting it to get warm again. Finley keeps asking to go outside to eat his banana (which he did one afternoon several months ago, and now asks to do every time he eats a banana) and we have to tell him it is too cold to eat outside. Unless we go somewhere tropical it will be a few months before he can eat his banana outside again.

Hud has pictures ready to put up from the last several months, and we'll try to be better about posting.

Love, Megan

Summer has flown by...

As we are getting ready for our long trek to Canada for 2 weeks!!! I realized how quickly this summer has gone by. It seems like we just celebrated Finn's birthday a few days ago. Lots has happened this summer for sure.

Finley is running and talking up a storm. He says quite a few words now, starting with Bye. He loves to make a big deal about saying bye to everyone we see, even strangers in stores and restaurants. He also says ball, doggie, play, Hi kids (when we get to daycare), fan, light (although it sounds like bite), okay, I'll get it, and cookie. The other day I gave him a cookie after lunch and since then he has been demanding cookies with every meal. I've created a monster! A cookie monster! Early last week his daycare provider told me he had turned done a cookie at lunch in favor of getting down to play, so I didn't realize it would become such a big thing. Who knew?

We've tried to do a few fun things throughout the summer, knowing our big trip was all the way at the end of the summer. Hud and I went to a Jack Johnson concert in July. Hud took Finn to a pool party where he got to go swimming for the first time. The weekend before last we took Finley to a playground in town and had a picnic lunch. He had a lot of fun playing, and followed a couple of "big" boys around watching them play.

That's all for now, I'll try to add some more pictures from our summer to the Picassa sight, and we'll share our vacation adventures when we return.

Until then,

Megan

Walking Video and Some Pics

Wanted to post the video of Finn walking. It is a week or so old know and he is really moving now.

Pictures are from this month when he got his first haircut and the coolest bath ever. I will have to explain about the bath later.

June 2010

Enjoy,

Hud

What Have We Been Up To?

Well we have certainly not been maintaing the blog. Sorry to our families for not posting pictures from Finn's first birthday party sooner.

Birthday Year One

Quick update:

The entire family is doing well. Finn is beginning to take his first steps. Once he really gets going we will tape him and post a video. Otherwise, we are just taking life day by day and trying to enjoy every minute we can. We have had a tendency to get caught up in all the things happening that it has made things hectic...birthday, trip to Boston, work and house work. So the last couple of weekends we have tried to slow things down, but they always seemed to fill up quick with things to do. Unfortunately, updating the blog kept falling to the bottom of the priority chain. We will see if we can do a little better in the near future, but I think we have done an excellent job at setting low expectations on that happening. :-)

Later,

Hud

Happy Birthday Finn!!!

Can't believe it has already been a year...

Enjoy....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-5_92kOTjI

Love,

Mom and Dad

Wow, are we behind or what?

I know, I know, we're horrible. What can I say? We are enjoying 90 degree weather this week after record snowfall this winter, we keep going from one extreme to another.

After a couple dramatic months, we are all doing well. Finley had a bout with RSV in February, but recovered quickly and is doing great. Although I am happy he is learning to share, I wish he weren't quite so good at it. Every time he gets sick, so do I. I ended up getting sick after he did, probably with the same thing, which turned into a sinus infection. Yuck! Happily, we are all better now, in time for allergy season.

Finn is not walking yet, although he may start any minute now. He loves to walk behind his toy, or holding onto our fingers, and today even walked a few steps holding onto only one of my hands. He is a pro at cruising along the furniture and moving from one piece to another. He won't stand without holding onto something, although he has done it for a few seconds at a time, until he realizes, when he promptly sits down.

We just returned from a brief, but much enjoyed visit to Hud's family over Easter weekend. It was great to see everyone. Finley did great for most of the travel, until we hit traffic 45 minutes from home. The trip down was a breeze, and Finn even slept pretty well away from home.

Now, time to plan his first birthday party. Where does the time go? Enjoy some recent pictures of our big boy.

Love, Megan

March 2010

Is January already over with?

Alright, so we have several things to get to so without further ado...

First, here is the link to Finley's 9 month photos...the password if finleylemons

http://port77.com/weadonphotos.com/

Second, as you can see in the previous post I am starting to use YouTube for the video postings. This way we can post larger size videos and the format should be a little better. If you go to YouTube and search for hudandmegan (all one word) you can see all of our videos. But I also plan to go back and update the older post with the links as well.

Finally, below is a link to new photos we have been taking. It has been awhile so there are several.

Jan and Feb 2010

For things not directly related to Finn an update on my goals for the year...

1. Finished The Terror by Dan Simmons for my novel for January, very good and very tense, but also very dense. After completing I moved on to Dan Brown's new novel. I am sure it won't be as good as Da Vinci Code but what the heck, lets give it a whirl.

2. I haven't begun work on the closet in the bonus room yet. I am guess I will hit this one up towards the middle of the year.

3. I have been running and my longest distance so far is 4.5 miles. Not going that fast yet but I was running the whole way. Megan got me a training book, some running socks, and a gift certificate to VA Runner for my birthday to help with the training. Thanks Darlin!

4. I have been working on my Spanish but I have fallen behind on where I would like to be for this goal. It is difficult to work in with everything else that is going on. This is the one goal that I feel that I am most likely to fail at. But I will keep working on it and we shall see.

5. I made a new meal for January. It was shrimp tacos and they turned out pretty good. Maybe I will wait till it is warmer to make again so I can grill the shrimp versus broil, but still one we will probably add to the rotation.

Oh, well there is my goal update as well. Hopefully it keeps me motivated.

Later,

Hud

Tooth Fairy

Finley has been visited by the tooth fairy. She (he?) has left 2 teeth for him, and he is still acting fussy, so more may be on the way. Last Wednesday I dropped him off at daycare in the morning with no teeth, and by the time I picked him up, he had his first tooth. The second had come through by the time he woke up Sunday morning.

In other news, Finn now has a push toy which he walks around the house. He loves walking now, either behind the toy or holding on to our fingers.

He will be walking before we know it, which is exciting and scary at the same time.

When he does it, we'll post it here, stay tuned...

Megan

Christmas 09 and Goals for 2010

Well we had a great Christmas in Connecticut with Megan's family. Finn's first Christmas was full of fun moments especially now that he is on the move. Crawling here and there and pulling himself up on whatever he can use. It was a full house with 6 adults, 1 kid, and 2 dogs, but that made it fun. The holidays are always better with family all around. To get to the point and why I am sure most of the people check the blog here are the photos from Christmas this year.

Christmas 09

Megan and I talked about New Year's resolutions for 2010. We decided resolutions haven't worked that well in the past so we said we would put down some goals. Goals have some measure where you can say if it was accomplished or not. Hopefully they work better for us than the resolutions of years past. I don't know if Megan will post her list, but I am in the hopes that making them public will create the forcing function I need to get them accomplished.

Here are my 5 goals for 2010.

1. Read one book every month. I usually listen to a couple of audio books each month but haven't been reading as much as I would like or should. So this year I will attempt to read one book each month. Out of the twelve books one will be a classic in the vein of Great Gatsby or Of Mice and Men. Another will be a current literature e.g. Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The third will be a biography. The other nine will be whatever I come across.

2. Improve my carpenter skills by adding closets to the bonus room and finish the bonus room so that it can be used for something other than storage.

3. Participate in a half marathon, and actually run the whole time :-). I figure this is a better goal than just to say to get in shape. There are two possibilities for 2010 with the Marine Corp in May and the Blue and Gray in December.

4. Complete Spanish Level 1 and 2 in my Rosetta Stone program. Megan bought me this last year for my birthday. I used it for awhile and then the computer crashed. I had to rebuild and lost all my work up to that point. I never went back and started again. I would like to be able to teach Finley some phrases while he is young and can pick it up easier. It is either this or move to Mexico for a few years like my friend, but I don't think Megan would approve of that.

5. Cook a brand new meal each month. Megan and I have about 20 recipes that we rotate through in order to have enough meals for the week. We could use a few new ones so I plan to try something new each month in the hopes that we can find some that we like and add them to the rotation.

Well that is my list. I will post updates each month on how I am doing just to help keep me motivated. This will also make sure that I update the blog at least monthly.

Later

Hud