Happy Week After Thanksgiving!

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We hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We sure did. We spent Thanksgiving day up at GnGT with DLCnM and Great Grandma and her friend, Gloria. We all ate way too much food, except, of course, for Jake who is attempting to survive on bananas, raisins, and cereal bars.

On Friday we headed over to MPnA's and spent the day with them. They had hosted a dinner at their house the day before, and were more than happy to just spend the day relaxing.

Rewinding back, a bit... on Saturday, November 17, we met Bret and Jen in East Lansing for the final MSU game of the season against Penn State. While Bret got sick and didn't get to stay through the whole game, the rest of us saw a thrilling game where MSU came back from being down 17 points and won the game!

A few days later, our friends had a big day. Jeff and Marie had their baby girl, Adela. You can read all about it in their blog here, and see their photos here. She's a cute little girl, and her parents couldn't be happier!

Fast forward to the weekend after Thanksgiving... after Jake went down to sleep, Michele and I put up our Christmas tree. We had both forgotten how nice and thin the artificial tree is that we bought last year, so we were pleasantly surprised. Jake awoke the next morning and was so shocked by the whole thing that he ended up laying back down. When he got up an hour or so later for round 2, he started to get into it! We got him dressed up and spent about the next 30 minutes trying to get a photo for the Christmas card. Luckily, this year, I didn't have to do any major editing to splice multiple photos together like last year. We found that getting him to count to three resulted in a great looking smile when he said "three".

I've also got three different videos to share with you this time (the feature is getting more and more use on our camera).

This first video is of Maiya playing happily with a couple of plastic golf balls. I can't believe how fast she's growing up, and her laugh was too cute to only capture some photos. Everyone was a little jealous because she really seemed to take an interest in me this time. I even got quite a few kisses that everyone else had to beg for!


This is a video showing Maiya chowing down on table foods. I would have videoed Jake, but it would have been him shaking his head, saying no, and then screaming if we forced the issue.


Lastly, this is a video we captured a little before Thanksgiving. Jake was having a blast splashing in the tub, so I thought I'd get it on video. What I didn't know was that he was going to bust out into an anatomy lesson. Make sure you have the sound up, and watch to the end. I'm thinking of submitting it to AFV.

Welcome to November

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Regardless of how much fun we have traveling locally or far to see friends or family, sometimes it just feels good to stay home. That's what we did this weekend. We still go to see family as my parents and Alison came down to watch the football game on Saturday. We were very excited for a little bit in the fourth quarter, but eventually UM came back and beat the Spartans. Luckily, that pain was dulled on Sunday when the Lions demolished Denver.

Aside from leaf-work, I think I performed the last of the yard work for the season. After I spent a good part of the afternoon finishing that up, while Jake and Michele played outside, Jake pretended to mow the lawn as well. One of us did a pretty good job. You can see his attempt below. (No one bothered to film my work... oh well).

To my fellow Spartan fans, while the football team is now very close to not receiving a bowl bid, at least their hockey team is undefeated in CCHA conference play, and have only lost one other game outside of the conference!

Happy Halloween

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Jake had a lot of fun in his costume this year. Like Michele has told anyone that would listen, the $20 was definitely worth it. Not only are we not as creative as Nez, but in the fall Michele doesn't have the time to make a costume either. Jake looked so adorable it was totally worth it.

We took him to a few neighbors houses where he got a couple goodie bags (we did not know that was customary, so we'll have to bust our butts to make our goodie bags next year make up for not having them this year). He then spent a good chunk of time playing on the porch, eating a banana, and helping hand out candy to the other kids.

Back from the Buckeye State

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We got back today from a weekend trip down to Gahanna. We were visiting Mike, Melissa, and their 6-month old son Eli. We had a great time even though we had to watch MSU lose to Iowa (I'm still pretty sure Mike jinxed them by calling for a loss when Iowa started to come back) and then later watch OSU beat Penn State. MSU needs to win at least one of their next three games (U of M, Purdue, Penn State) in order to be bowl eligible. On the bright side, as long as they get a win (preferably against Penn State since we'll be there), maybe they'll get an invite to the Motor City Bowl and we'll get to head downtown to see it.

While we were there, we also got to eat at Hoggy's. It was one of Michele's grand parents favorite restaurants while they lived down there. It was as delicious as we remembered it.

We had a great time visiting with them, and look forward to doing it again. We're hoping to do this at least twice a year, which is not as often as we'd like, but still better than once every other year!

Is It November Yet?

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Time sure does fly by once the Fall Season starts on TV. Work has been crazy for Michele and I as well, so we seem to alternate late working nights with picking Jake up from day care. We've got a few busy weekends ahead that should afford some more photos, so hopefully there will be a bit more regular posting in the near future.

Jake seems to be doing great besides having a cough that he can't shake. He's walking like he's done it his whole life. He's beginning to say more words. This morning, he heard the church bells, and without prompting, looked for the steeple and said "bell". While he's definitely improving on cute stuff, he's also perfecting his temper tantrums! He's begun head butting, even though we don't think he knows quite what he's doing, other than flailing around. Day care has gotten better. He tends to cry more frequently when we pick him up to leave than when we drop him off!

To, hopefully, make up for the lack of posts (maybe this is going to be the norm until Michele's home with him all day again in the summer) here are two more videos. The first is a little bit longer than usual, but the second is short and sweet. Enjoy!