The Cat Is Out Of The Bag

Q: What does our family have in common with the Pentagon?

A: Just like the Pentagon we have a high level information leak within the family...

Mindy spilled the beans regarding our move back to Tucson to my sister Sarah and naturally the information slowly trickled out to the rest of my family. I hoped to break the news face to face so that we could present our reasoning and to perform damage control.

Oh well... Apparently secrets are like sushi, they can't be kept for long.

Happy (Belated) Birthday!

We finally celebrated Erin's first birthday yesterday. Why yesterday? Well Valentine's Day was Erin's due date and since there were some problems with celebrating on January 4th, we decided to throw the party on the date that should have been her birthday. We went shopping all day and bought her a bunch of new clothes (Mindy is just too practical) followed up with a nice dinner and hot fudge sundaes. As you can tell from the pic above, Erin LOVED hers.

She has come so far in just a year, from a premature baby who couldn't eat on her own to the little lovable toddler who does full flips off of the couch and just keeps on going. I must say thus far it has been a wonderful journey and can't wait to see what the next year has in store for our little Erin Reese!

Miss Smarty Pants

I realize we are biased when it comes to assessing our daughter's relative abilities, but the other night Rachel woke up late and came and sat with me on the couch while I was watching a shark week show. The show profiled the "10 most dangerous sharks" or something like that where they would show the range of all the different sharks as they profiled each one. One of the sharks, I think it was the mako, had a range that included the area around New York/Long Island. Rachel upon viewing the map said "good thing that shark isn't in the ocean by New Hampshire" which I wrote off as a typical Rachel statement. This time, however, she followed it up with "it is by New York and New York is next to Connecticut and Connecticut is close to New Hampshire so that shark might come up here!"

I thought that was pretty impressive for a 4 year old!

Can a Baby in a Bear Suit Catch a Cab?

David Letterman used to have recurring gag on his show where he would send an assistant out on the street in a bear suit and see if he could catch a cab. For some odd reason Mindy and I always found this to be hysterical.

So naturally we have dressed our kids, at least while they were young in bear suits to keep them warm in the winter. Rachel never really wore hers with the exception of one winter when Mindy and Rachel flew to Ohio to visit Mindy's grandmother. Erin, however, is a New Hampshire native and has always worn her bear suit. In fact, we bought her a new one at L.L. Bean this year. The best part is that she loves wearing them and they are extremely warm. So I thought I would post the pic of Erin in her bear suit because she is cute as can be in it.

A Photo I Overlooked

I was looking through some of our photos from this winter and I happened upon one that I thought I should post. It is Rachel and Mindy visiting the National Tree in front of the White House.




All in all I was a little disappointed in the tree as all they did was drape a cargo net like arrangement of lights on it which somewhat distorted the shape of the tree. It was fun to see, but I prefer the tree at Rockefeller Center any day!

Video Evidence of Erin Walking

Here is a quick video of Erin stumbling about...

The Big Decision 08

Keeping with the theme of this blog this is a family related post and not a political one. So we apologize if you were dying to hear who we are voting for... Instead we are pleased to report that we have decided to move back to Tucson, AZ. We debated this for a long time but when all is said and done we just can't justify supporting two homes any longer. Had the housing market been more generous to us or a better job offer come my way things might have worked out differently. Now we just have break this news to my family...

So AZ here we come! Can't wait to get some good Mexican food!

Catchup

OK so a lot of things have gone on in the past month and for much of it we were sans internet connection.

Erin turned 1 on January 4th. We didn't get to celebrate it due to my hospital stay and our move back to New Hampshire. We have decided to throw a party for her on her due date, Valentine's Day, so look for a picture or two at that time.

Speaking of Erin, she is walking all the time now but still drops down and crawls quite a bit. She is also saying a few more words now, of which her favorite is "hot". It has become her all purpose word and she uses it for everything.

Rachel has been a complete daddy's girl the past month, I think she was scared of losing me while I was in the hospital. In the interim she has become a pretty good Uno player and we usually spend an hour or so every night after dinner playing. Rachel hasn't quite grasped the whole good winner/sore loser thing yet but we are working on that and hopefully one day she will learn the joys of winning and/or losing graciously! Additionally, it appears that she is going through another growth spurt as all of her pants are high waters now. I swear this girl is going to be 6 feet tall one day!

We moved back to New Hampshire for the short term. Like the pair of geniuses we are Mindy and I forgot the big bin that contained our winter clothes - not a good thing in New Hampshire during the winter. So we are making due with the bare minimum. We bought Erin a bear suit that is quite warm and Rachel already has her winter coat with her. Mindy and I are making due with the jackets we were wearing in Virginia, which aren't made for a New England winter. We are staying in a house previously occupied by a family that we were good friends with, the Andersons, while they are in California doing an externship. So we have yet another address until May 31st! Seriously it is scary how many addresses we have had in the past few years.

Mindy's mom Regina (AKA Grammy Guzza) came out to help us out for a few weeks while things settled down. She was an immense help and I told her that will have to find excuses to get her back out here again to "help out".

School started up again and after all that time out there working I really don't feel like doing the school thing again. Its a real drag but the good news is I will have a JD in 4 months!

Mindy and I decided to go on diets, well in all honesty Mindy told me we are going on diets and so far it has worked out well for us. My appetite still hasn't recovered from the hospital stay, which is a good thing while trying to lose weight.

I'll get new photos posted soon. Sorry for the long absence.