Merry X-mas

Hope everyone has a great holiday season.

Right now Linda's family, all 11 of them are in town and staying with us. The house is pretty crowded. In addition some of their friends are here as well adding another 4 people to the group during the days.

The kids have all been learning to ski up at Sandia and having a blast. Linda has gotten in a couple of days of skiing and I a couple of days of snowboarding. It's been quite a while since either of has has done snow sports and my experience was pretty limited anyway.

We all just finished opening presents this morning. Dylan's favorite seemed to be a shinny bag that one of his gifts came in, pretty typical really. He would put it on his head and play hide and seek.

Dylan is having a blast playing with all his cousins and being doted on by all the adults.

The whole gang made it to the ABQ Bio Park for teh River of Lights Festival which was pretty cool. They build a bunch of light sculptures, some of which move and light the Children's Fantasy Garden, it is pretty fun to walk around in the dark and see the lights, literally millions.

Music Time

Today Dylan's school had a class brunch for the holidays. So even though it was not his day to go to school he got to see his teachers anyway. The food was pretty good, it was a pot luck, I brought milk . . . not much of a cook. The kids all had fun running around and playing with instruments. Dylan really likes most all instruments and was the one who opened the boxes that had the bells and symbol rattles. Then he got to sit and play the Ukulele.

He must have been halfway decent since he had an audience, yet he was unhappy with what he was hearing so he tried to re tune the Uke.

After the party was over we headed to the Clay's house so he could hang out with Jaxon West. Happy Birthday Jaxon, he turned 2 today. They had a blast playing in Jaxon's room and had a lunch of Mac Cheese and roast beef.

Full day for the little one.

Second try with the Wave Bubble

Here is his reaction the second time we subjected him to the bubble.

Watch the video in the previous post first.

Old shots and video from Thanksgiving

Here are a couple of shots of Dylan from early last month.
Nice black eye. . .
Sweet new house slippers. . .

Yes the black eye was just when Dylan got out of hand with a marker, but it's still funny, since he did not actually get hurt.

Over Thanksgiving we headed to the SF Bay Area to vivit my family. We made it to the Monterray Bay Aquarium and the California Academy of Sciences, both very cool places to check out regaurdles of it you have kids or not.

This is some video of Dylan's reaction at the Aquarium to a glass bubble that the wave surges push water over. This is the first time we subjected him to it.

Here is a video of something that Dylan only did for about a week. I have no idea where he learned it, not school since he had not been but once for the previous 5 week so it must have been some adult.

Here are some shots from our stay in Austin, mostly stuff from Halloween since this was really Dylans first Halloween. He was too young and not walking yet last year. Here we are with a couple of the cousins, Brian and Cady on our way to a Halloween party at Cady's school.

As you can see Dylan was dressed as a Chinesse boy. Here he is diligently making a mask, marker in one hand and stickers in the other.

We did not really think about how cruel this costume could be. If you 've ever felt the fabric of this type of clothing you know that is is super slick. Here Dylan is longing to climb up the bouncy slide but keeps slipping back down. Eventually I helped him up a few times and he had a blast.

After the slide Dylan got snakes painted on his face, Cady had some face painting done earlier and Dylan was curious about it.

Here is the whole crew of cousins and a few friends that went trick or treating. Dylan who had never had candy was determined to get as much as possible and was the third to last person back out of the group.

And what Halloween post would be complete with out some gore. Lindas fingers with some sort of bite. This is actually about a week after she first noticed them and after the swelling became more localized in just her fingers, yes her whole hand swelled up. She has no idea where she got them but first noticed them the day she arrived in Austin so it was in the hotel in Louisville, the airplane, airport or in Austin at some point.Here is another scary sight for those climbers that are non parents, the crag nursery. On most days that Dylan was at the cliff in the Red River Gorge and Spain for that matter he was not the only child. We saw infants as young as 3 months out at the crag.

More about our trip to come soon.

Some Photos

Here are Doug and his girl friend Halina, you will notice the tan, not black pants that Doug is sporting.
Brian and Lahla (sp?) manhandling Dylan

Dylan saying hello to his B-Day dessertand the reaction to trying it.

Fall colors at the New River Gorge.

The New River Gorge bridge, the longest span single arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere, so they claim, 1700+ foot arch length. One day a year they close the bridge to traffic and let people walk out on it and base jump off and other such activities, thankfully this was the day before we arrived.Your choice of tasty local beverages when you are in Kentucky, Ale-8-one is basically ginger ale and not too bad, the beer, well I don't know about that.

Desperatly trying to up load images and the WiFi connection is terrible

Funny Video

Well, since we have been terrible about taking pictures on this trip, here is a funny clip of Dylan and one of his favoite foods.

What happens when he dose not get it fast enough and how happy he is when he has it. Guess what it is...

If you guessed BACON, you win, not that Linda is exactly proud of the fact that Dylan is all about BACON.

Dylan got over his fever after a few days and by the end of the week he was back to hanging out at the crag while we climbed with Chris.

Towards the end of our stay at the Red, Doug and Halina made it out from Chicago. Even though the weather was terrible and everyone that was going to come down with them bailed, they still made the trip to meet Dylan and see us. We had not seen Doug in at least 5 years so it was good to see him. For those of you that know Doug there is big news, both Linda and I made the same first comment upon seeing him, he wasa wearing pants...that were not black!!! Still had the black shirt and jacket though.

After the week at the New River Gorge in West Virginia with Chris we headed to Pikeville, KY. A friend of mine from college, Brian Sohn lives and teaches HS there. We got to see his house that he's been in for a few years and meet his fiance. We also go to enjoy some of his great cooking.

Right now we are in a hotel room in Louisville getting repacked so that Linda and Dylan are ready for their flight to Austin, TX tomorrow morning. They are both looking forward to seeing Linda's mom and all the cousins.