Jan 21 2013

Christmas and Other winter fun

Tag: Family,General,Holidays,Lillian,SeanAndrewPaul C. @ 1:39 pm

I had planned on writing a long blog post about Christmas and all the other fun things that went on in December, but I lost my mojo on it. It was a special Christmas – Sean came down form St. Paul and my mom and sister were able to come in from St. Louis. This was the first time I’ve seen Megan since last Christmas! I can’t tell you when the last time that happened! Unfortunately, the weather was predicted to get bad so they were not able to stay as long as they hoped.
Oh, we also had an extra house guest this time – and I don’t think Uncle Sean will be able to visit without her, or face the wrath of my kids – he brought his cat, Pinky:

Megan go to spend time with her first neice, megabyte:

And her Niece 2.0:

Uncle Sean got plenty of time with the kids (to the point where I think he was just about ready to go back to St. Louis and St. Paul maybe even a little early – potty training time with Lillian can over power the weak!):
These kids love books!
Lillian even shared her new princess hat with me:

But probably only because she got this really cool winter hat that she loves to wear:

There are more photos in the gallery. Click Here!

Will try to get more updates on here. I’m trying to use Facebook less and get more over here.


Dec 04 2012

November and December

So for Thanksgiving this year, we did something that Emily has never done in her whole life – we went to her dad and Colleen’s house in NY. Normally we bounce between St. Louis at my Mom’s and staying in Cinci with family coming into town. It was a long long trip, but quite fun! The weather held out until the very last day. We took a few pics, although we should have taken more (Emily’s dad took some so we will get a copy of those):

We left the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving and stayed in a hotel north of Erie, PA. It was Lillian’s first time staying in a hotel and she was NOT interested in going to sleep..at 1145pm. I rocked her until around 130am and she finally went to sleep.

We did the usual camp stuff – walked in the woods, road the four wheelers, etc. We got to visit with Emily’s Uncle Bob (a car enthusiast – Audi TT RS, so I got some car talk in) and Aunt Sue. Thanksgiving was delicious – stuffing with sausage in it? YUM! While we were up there, My good friend from college, Adam B. and his wife Kim drove up to visit friday – saturday. Haven’t seem him in years and it was our first time meeting Kim.

I also tried a local vodka made in Lake Placid, NY by Lake Placid Spirits called P3. This is bar-none the smoothest vodka I have ever had. So much so that when I poured it in a glass over ice, Emily actually asked me if I had watered it down! The final filtration process uses garnet! they have another vodka called 46 peaks that is filtered over diamonds. Only problem – its ONLY sold in New York!

Big thanks to my mom for lending us the Orange Honda Element for the trip!!

I flew to Minneapolis/St. Paul for my birthday this year to spend with Sean. Again, didn’t take many photos, but there will be other opportunities. We hung around his apartment a lot (because I had to work 🙁 )but we got out to the Mall of America, Best Buy Corp offices, I at a Juicy Lucy called Spanish Fly (Yum!), went to the mill district and took some photos, and we had our Birthday dinner at Manny’s Chophouse (where the maitre’d called Sean … my …”partner”. what? business partner right? hmmm). I made a small album of the photos taken. Most are from the mill district that has some “ruins” from the original mill infrastructure from the late 1800’s/ early 1900’s. Photos are not in any order because we took some with my cell phone using both normal and HDR mode; and others with my camera (well, Sean took most of those). Gallery:

We are doing Christmas in Cinci this year and I think My mom, Megan (and matt?), and Sean are coming down for that. I don’t think I have seen Megan and Matt since Christmas last year! Crazy! Will get pics up when that rolls around.


Oct 15 2010

Pumpkins & Leaves!

Tag: Family,Holidays,SeanAndrewEmily @ 6:45 pm

We walked down the street tonight to get our pumpkins. Sean picked out both his and Lily’s pumpkins. When we got home, we made a giant pile of leaves and Sean jumped in them and ran through them. He had a great time!! Click on the picture to see our fall cutie!


Jan 06 2009

The (long awaited) motherload

Tag: Emily,Family,Holidays,Paul,SeanAndrewEmily @ 5:22 pm

Ok ok ok Uncle Sean!!! 🙂

I finally got some time to edit pictures and videos of Sean from December and a little bit of this month so far. Here are three videos:

First, Christmas with Sean. Kind of a boring video, but may be nice for those who couldn’t be with the little one on Christmas day. Notice the cute red PJ’s from Stephen and Allison!

Next, his new fascination with blowing bubbles with his spit…didn’t learn this one from me…

And of course, his attempts at walking. Here are 4 attempts. I’m sure he’ll be running around the house within a few weeks. Our boy is getting way too big. Better turn down the volume or you’ll hear my “ecstatic mommy screams of encouragement” hehe.

Then, our Christmas pictures that we had taken at a local photographer. If you got a Christmas card (sorry if we missed you…I had a 3 year old address list…) you’ll recognize two of the pictures. When I was trying to order some of the pictures for family, Paul surprised me with pictures that he secretly had taken in November by Steph Carson (did Sean’s 1 month pictures and tons for Brian and Ashley). They are amazing and of course, I bawled my eyes out.

First Light:

Steph Carson:

And here are some pictures of Sean and Opa doing manly things in the yard:

And a couple from January (in the 11th month folder):


Dec 26 2008

10 Months!

Tag: Emily,Family,Fun,Holidays,Paul,SeanAndrew,VacationEmily @ 10:43 pm

We can’t believe that 10 months ago today we met our little boy for the first time! He’s growing up so fast and is looking more and more like a little boy every day, instead of a baby. He’s really close to walking; he actually took 2 steps the other day toward the cat. He’ll do 1 step and then fall forward going from person to person as well. He’s also really into doing “so big,” waving, saying “bye bye” clapping his hands, and playing with his toys. Santa was really wonderful to him this year, he got some awesome toys and very cute clothes 🙂

Sean is having a great time with his Oma, Opa and Aunt Cate here in New York. It’s funny, he slept really horribly the first few nights that we were here, and my Dad and Colleen offered to take him in his room for the night to let us get some sleep. He ended up sleeping perfectly. He slept in their room again last night and slept perfectly again. I guess he’s just tired of his mommy and daddy and wants to be with Oma and Opa! They just love it 🙂

Here are some pictures of Sean from our vacation so far, along with Christmas pictures. Notice his Christmas outfit with his name embroidered on it from Stephen and Ally (Thank you!). What a cute gift. We got it for a baby shower gift and it fit him absolutly perfectly on Christmas morning. He wore it all day 🙂

Here are some more pictures of our time here, mostly of the birds and snow. We havae about 3 feet right now, although it’s packed down on itself some over the past few days. Still…a lot more than we get in KY and it made for a wonderful white Christmas.


Dec 05 2007

First snow, 2007

Tag: General,HolidaysEmily @ 8:58 am

Today was our first snowfall for winter of 2007, a perfect followup to finishing our Christmas decorating from last night.  We got 1-2 inches.  The streets were all clear, but of course, all the schools were closed.  Just like KY.

Check out pictures of Meg in the snow; she was really excited!

 

 


Nov 30 2007

Better late than never…

Tag: Emily,Family,food,Friends,Fun,General,Holidays,Paul,VacationPaul C. @ 1:30 pm

I know I know, I should have posted this a few days ago, but I’ve been sick! 🙂
Like I mentioned earlier, Emily and I made the trek to St. Louis to visit my parents for Thanksgiving. Sean was also in town from Seattle. Wednesday night, my sister Megan and I stayed up sharing a bottle of Chateau Ste. Michelle cabernet and talking until 3:30am (430 my time!). We rarely get to do that, so it was very cool. Thursday was Turkey Day! Man I love thanksgiving…I think we should have it at least twice a year! Although, I’m sure there are a number of turkeys out there who disagree with me. Mom cooked and awesome meal for us and Emily made the famous Marshall Rolls. Aunt Karen, Uncle Ted, and Scott made it down from west St. Louis as well and it was really nice seeing them.
Sean, Manders (friend of ours and Megan’s from high school), and myself then made our trip to the movie theatre to catch our annual bad-movie-on-turkey-day which started back in the day with my selection of “Paycheck” starring Matt Damon. Sean’s selection this year was Hitman. HOO BOY was it rotten. We got to the theatre about 15 or 20 minutes late so we missed the beginning of the movie ( **cue Office Space “I wouldn’t say I was missing it, Bob…” ***). The acting was lousy, the female character in the movie probably only got the role cause she showed her boobs. What can you expect from a movie produced by Vin Diesel? But I digress…
The rest of the week was pretty uneventful – we went out to an irish pub in Belleville, IL that was nice, hung out at a local bar in O’Fallon, had an awesome hamburger at Denny’s (eggs and hashbrowns on a burger! YUM!), and hung around the house. Saturday we did a family trip to Pierre Marquette State Park to lunch on their lodge’s famous fried chicken and take some family photos.
While we were home for thanksgiving Mom and Dad presented us with some new gifts for Little Sean. As we’ve mentioned before, my dad is *very* handy in wood working. When Sean and I were born, he made us a cradle that was also used for my sister when she was born. Well, now we have a cradle of our own:

Paul’s mom has also recently dusted off her knitting needles and made a fun little hat for Little Sean:

Can’t wait to have him try them both out (only three more months to go!!). Here are some highlight photos from the trip:
me showing my approval of the baby bump:

My parents – dad looks great! (mom too!)
mom and dad

I’ll post some more from my dad’s set of photos after I process the huge DSLR snapshots from his Nikon D80 🙂


Jan 02 2007

New Year’s 2006(7)

Tag: Friends,Fun,General,HolidaysEmily @ 9:37 am

This year we went to Shimmers (formally known as Barrett’s) in Ft. Wright.  We got dinner, dessert and champagne, then hung out until the ball drop listening to Just Gravy.  Some of Jim and Cathy’s friends play in the band, we’ve listened to them before and loved them. 

The funniest part of the night was the ball drop.  We were in the ballroom of Shimmers so there weren’t any TVs.  The band stopped playing at about 2 till midnight, we got our champagne and headed to the dancefloor.  We waited and waited, but no countdown.  We started laughing because our cells phones said 12:01.  At 12:02, the manager finally came running out of the kitchen yelling “7! 6! 5!….”  Whoop-de-doo!  So we basically missed it; it was pretty funny.

We had a great time though; good company & good music.  Can’t ask for much more.  Happy New Year everyone!  And try to remember to write “07” on everything now!


Dec 29 2006

Christmas Pictures

Tag: Family,Fun,General,HolidaysEmily @ 9:28 am

Our Christmas pictures are finally up.  Click here to see them.

Some of the ones from Diana’s house didn’t rotate correctly; we’ll keep working on it.


Dec 25 2006

Tag: Family,Friends,General,HolidaysEmily @ 5:27 pm

Merry Christmas everyone!  We hope all of our family and friends have a safe and joyful Holiday!

Love,

Paul & Emily


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