Sunday, December 26, 2010

Merry Christmas!

This year, we had Christmas at home with just our little family! On Christmas Eve, we made a roast tenderloin with bourbon-plum sauce in the slow-cooker, so it was ready to eat as soon as we got home from Christmas Eve service at church. Owen had a good time at church playing in the nursery and flirting with some older girls.

On Christmas morning, we got up and opened our presents. Owen got his first Legos, Playmobile, and Thomas toys, but he seemed more interested in the goldfish and his juice. And climbing up the steps! We made some Thai fish for lunch, and had a nice Christmas dinner out that night at Brewworks!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Walkin' Around

Owen's been walking by just taking a few steps for a while now. He would just take a few steps and then fall down. I think the hardwood floors were slowing him down. However, over our Thanksgiving visit to Papaw and Mamaw's house, he built his confidence up walking around on the carpet there. He went from just taking a few steps to walking across the room, turning around, and walking back in one weekend. And when we got home, the hardwood floors were no match for Owen anymore!

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

A Thanksgiving For the Dogs

As mentioned in the previous post, Thanksgiving this year was almost derailed by a number of illnesses. But we still had a great time visiting with Mommy's family in WV. Owen loves his uncles, and they had a great time playing with him. Uncle Rick flew Owen around like a plane, and showed him videos on his phone to keep him entertained. Owen spent a lot of time crawling all over Papaw, Mamaw, and his uncles, and thrilled his Papaw when he said "pa-pa" to him.

Betsy had fun running around with the pack (i.e., Abby and Maggie) likes she does every year. She was showing off this year by repetitively jumping over the baby gates (which she never does at home). And every time there was any sort of noise or bump, all three dogs would run barking around the house. Luckily, they never woke Owen up, but they startled us all a few times.

While we were in WV, we got to visit with one of Kathleen's high school friends Jenny (who was in Kathleen's wedding party). Jenny has three boys, including her youngest, Jacob, who is only two months younger than Owen. Unfortunately, Jacob was taking a nap for most of the time that we were visiting, so Owen didn't get to play with him much, but at least that got to meet each other before we left.

The nicest surprise of the weekend came on our trip home. We were a little worried that Owen would be awake and fussy for most of the seven hour drive. But he was really good. We played some music that he likes and he just sat in his car seat and read books. Every once in a while, he would cry a little and we'd give him another book, and he'd be fine for another 10 minutes. He took a two hour nap, we had lunch, and then he looked through some more books before we got home. And since we got up so early in the morning (with Owen at the crack of dawn), we didn't run into any traffic and we got home a little after 2pm!

Sunday, November 28, 2010

A Plague on Both Our Houses

Here's the update from the sick house. Over the past month, Owen has had two ear infections (at once - in both ears), strep throat, and a stomach virus. The week that he had the ear infections, we were all down for the count. He was out of daycare 3 1/2 days that week, so Mommy and Daddy took turns staying home with him, and then crawled into work the other days.

Somehow, Mommy and Daddy managed to get by without getting strep throat, and Owen responded quickly to the antibiotic. The Sunday before Thanksgiving, Owen got sick to his stomach. We thought it might be from the antibiotic, but they told us at daycare that there was a stomach illness going around. Then, on Tuesday night, Mommy was up sick all night. Seems that she got Owen's stomach illness - maybe because Owen had puked all over her. She unfortunately had to take the day before Thanksgiving break off, so she could rest up. (She missed the pep rally for the big Turkey Day football game!) But, she felt up for the trip to West Virginia on Wednesday night to visit with her family for Thanksgiving and we made it there without any issues. However, on Saturday, Kathleen's dad, mother, and both brothers were each feeling rather ill with a stomach illness. We are all hopeful that Owen will be well in the coming weeks - his family can't take much more!

Sleepover

Last weekend, we went over to our friend's for dinner. Since they live 1/2 hour away (which is a long way for us), we always stay over whenever we go to visit them. By the time that we get over there, have dinner, and put Owen down to sleep, we wouldn't have any visit if we didn't stay the night.

Owen had a great time playing with Abby - they both had fun chasing each other around with some walkers. We thought it would be efficient (and cute) if they both got a bath together. However, Owen was not happy in the tub - probably because it was a strange place, and well past his bedtime.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Weekend in Philly

Last weekend, Mommy and Daddy got away for a weekend in Philadelphia. We stayed at a hotel off of Rittenhouse Square for Friday and Saturday night. On Friday night, we had dinner at Monk's and then went to a comedy show, which turned out to be a really funny show. The headliner was Nick Kroll (from The League and that caveman sitcom that was on a while ago). He actually came out in character and was one of the opening acts for himself.

On Saturday, we had an amazing lunch at Amada, a tapas restaurant in the Old City. Kathleen said that it was the best lunch that she ever had. We also did some shopping for clothes for Phil, browsed a used bookstore for books for Kathleen, and took the tour at the Yard's brewery.

On Saturday night, we went to a Dave Matthews Band concert at the Wells Fargo Center. We were about as far as you could get away from the stage, but at least we weren't far off center.

When we got home, Mamaw and Papaw had Owen at lunch at Brewworks, where he was visiting with all of his waitress friends.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Francy-Pant's Weekend

The other weekend, we babysat our friends' daughter Francesca (one of Owen's girlfriends) on a Saturday afternoon while her parents (Joe and Rebecca) went to a wedding. Owen and Francy-pants are still too young to play with each other, but they both were both sleeping for most of the time that we were babysitting, so the sitting wasn't as hard as we thought that it would be.

The next day was Francesca's baptism. We didn't go to the actual baptism because it overlapped with Owen's naptime, but we did stop by their party at their place afterwards. Owen had a good time crawling around outside with the girls, who were spinning around in circles. And he was very persistent in trying to climb up their stairs outside and inside. We hung around the party for a while and were able to visit with Joe and Rebecca after everyone else left.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Presents for Owen!

This past weekend, Owen's Grandmom and Grandpop came up to visit and celebrate Owen's birthday with him (a little late, but better late than never). Owen got a lot of nice gifts from his grandparents including a little (and noisy) spinning racetrack with little roller cars that spin around in it.

But Owen's favorite present of the day was a new wagon. We strapped him into the wagon with his sunglasses and cap on and pulled him around the block. He was thrilled by the ride!

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Owen Sporting His New Sunglasses

1st Annual "Daddy & Owen" Day

Last Monday was Columbus Day and Owen's daycare was closed. So, since Kathleen had to go to work for an in-service day, I took the day off to spend with Owen. We started the day off by dropping Mommy off at work, and then got a few errands completed: dropping the car off for an oil change, and taking Betsy to the vet to get her nail checked out. After lunch and naptime, we picked Mommy up at work and got to walk through the high school to visit some of the other teachers. Owen was sporting his new sunglasses and had a good time hamming it up for the teachers.

After picking up Mommy, we stopped by Target to get a few items that we needed at home, but we also got Owen two presents: a little kid leather chair to go next to Mommy's leather chair in the library, and a Thomas playhouse/tent. Owen instantly loved crawling through the playhouse and the little tunnel attached to it!

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Harvest Fest

We had a beautiful day for Harvest Fest this year. We love Harvest Fest because we always run into all of our friends.

Owen even got to spend some time with his friend Mark.

This year, they had a petting zoo at the festival. There were some bunnies, a llama, cows, goats, a horse, and a donkey. Owen enjoyed seeing the animals, but he was a little hesitant to pet them.

He did enjoy sampling the soups from many of the restaurants along Main Street. And he had fun watching the Trouble City Allstars (a reggae band from Bethlehem) play in the Sun Inn Court.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Corn Maze

Yesterday, we went to a local farm for their fall festival with our friends and their kids. It was a beautiful clear fall day - the perfect day for a walk through a corn maze! We had a nice walk through the corn maze, which we traveled through quickly despite having a 4-year old leading us. After the corn maze, we picked out some pumpkins from the pumpkin patch. Owen really enjoyed riding around in the wagon. And he surprised us by just taking a bite out of an apple that we gave him - he was getting full use out of his four teeth!

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Celtic Fest!

Last weekend was Celtic Fest here in Bethlehem, so the town was filled with bagpipers, Irish dancers, and crazy people who think they're at the Renaissance Fair. We had some oddly warm weather for late September (in the 90s). But I guess that was better than a rainout. Owen had a great time listening to the Celtic music over the weekend. He really liked the bagpipes - he even smiled and started clapping when the piper started playing. He was also thrilled with one of the trees underneath the bridge - not sure what that was all about, but he was laughing about it!
We had some nice meals at Brewworks, where they featured a bunch of Irish specials over the weekend. We bought a travel booster seat for Owen, so we tried sitting him in the booths with us, and it worked out pretty good. He enjoyed sitting next to us, but tried crawling out of his seat a few times.

We got babysitters on Friday and Saturday night, so that we could enjoy some of the festivities while Owen was sleeping. Both nights, Enter the Haggis was playing the closing shows, so we caught parts of those shows. They really put on a great show! We also caught a traditional Celtic band (Scatter the Mud) downstairs at Brewworks. The weekend ended with show by the Red Hot Chilli Pipers that Owen got to enjoy with us.