Sam's First Dance Mix

Sam Dances Like Dr. Evil

So...Sam is now walking (sorry for no blog posts about that). He's also dancing. He likes carrying around toys that make music and setting them in front of us. He then plays the music and shakes his cloth-diapered booty. Enjoy! (Video editing compliments of our friend Pete.)

Annika in the Big Backyard

We just finished with Vacation Bible School at our church. It was Annika's first VBS, and our first one here on the island. I am in awe of how much we do to make VBS a wonderful week for the children in the community. Annika had a fun time, so I thought people might like to see a couple pictures of her in God's Big Backyard.

Arachno-Files (Again)

So, I'm here in Georgia while the rest of my family is enjoying city life in Chicago for the next couple of weeks. I've had a bit more time on my hands with them out of town. (Truly it has been amazing to see how much energy caring for two children takes up!)

Anyway, I found another very interesting spider (actually two of them) in our garden. It's another harmless, large spider, but it spins an incredible web. It "writes" on the web, making something called a stabilimentum, which you can see in the picture above. I've found a fun web site called What's That Bug?, so I'm trying to become an amateur spider spotter in my newfound free time. I'm sure it'll be a short-lived hobby.

So, enjoy our crazy spiders. I hope you'll hear something about the family soon, but that will have to come from the Chicago bureau.

The Big 3-0

So...I turned 30 on Sunday. I haven't been afraid of turning thirty, so I was just looking forward to having a fun day with family and friends. When I arrived at my office, I found that some church friends had wreaked a little havoc. It was their way of welcoming me to the "Dark Side."

We spent the evening together with some other friends having a barbecue. I believe that this is the first barbecue we've had since we left Princeton, and it was so nice to hang around a grill with some fun people while the kids wore themselves out. It sure helps us feel more at home to be doing something we used to do so regularly at Princeton.

Jess had been hard at work on a gift for me, and I can say that I was very surprised at the present. Let's just say that I have one more chance to visit Yankee Stadium before they tear it down. I'm in shock. It's nice to feel loved.

Five Years Old & Our Wild Kingdom

Just a quick update on our crazy lives. Samuel is growing up really, really quickly. He likes sitting in big-boy chairs, and doing just about anything he sees others doing. His latest is trying to use forks and spoons, and he thinks drinking the bathwater from a cup is just too much fun. Oh yeah, he's taking a few steps on his own now. Pretty soon he'll be walking around to do his destruction around our house.


In the midst of all of this, Annika turned five years old. We had a pirates and princesses party, but the pictures are all on Grandma's camera. We had some fun, and we're just so pleased to be her parents.


So, we finally finished putting the sod in the backyard. We spent some time out there with Annika running through the sprinkler. (We tried Sam, but he didn't like it too much.) While we were outside, we saw a three-foot long garter snake. He came back into our plants later in the day, and that's when I took this picture.


Later in the evening, I came home to find a spiny-backed orb weaver spider building a beautiful web in our front garden. I've never seen a spider that looked like a crab before, but I guess we have them. It sure is a different world down here!

In Bloom

One of the things we enjoy about living in Georgia is that we have lots of plants that flower throughout the year. It's a lot of work to keep a garden going, but it is fun to pull into the driveway and see all of the flowers. It seems like right now is a particularly good time for a garden. Almost everything is in bloom right now - the magnolia tree, gardenias, roses, pansies, bottle brush, and legustrum. In the next couple of weeks we should have blooms on our hydrangeas, camellias, and black-eyed susans. It's a lot of fun to watch it grow. (If only we could convince the weeds to stop growing!)