In July we took a trip to Ocean City, MD with Gary’s parents. As usual, the trip was packed full of activities…beach, water park, mini-golf, the boardwalk carnival, and of course feeding ducks in the canal.

(You can always count on Oma for M&Ms on the beach!)

(I think maybe he’s explaining how to mini-golf to Ava?)

Family Picture time!

More pictures from our trip here

I’m going to try to do one post per month until I get more caught up. So here is how we spent last May…

More time outside. Yay!

(There were dolphins in here)

And on a tour of a submarine at the harbor (I think Nathan enjoyed this more than the aquarium)

Later in the month we took a trip with friends to Dutch Wonderland

(I think this was his first real roller coaster)

And a trip to the Maryland Zoo

And more time outside as it got even warmer…

More May 2010 Pictures here

I was going to stop updating the site, but it just seems like such a great way to chronicle our kids lives, so I’m going to start updating again. First things first, I need to catch-up to where we are now, so here’s the first of a few posts to get us there…

Last April, besides Nathan turning 3 (!), he learned to ride his tricycle all by himself. We spent a lot of the Spring peddling around the neighborhood and up to the playground.

Nathan loved collecting things in his bike basket.

We enjoyed a trip to the circus this month, and Nathan has had more and more fun playing with this cousins.

The highlight of the month was, of course, Nathan’s Birthday. The big 3! We had family in town to celebrate for his party.

The party was at a firestation, where the kids got a lesson from a firefighter and then a ride in the firetruck! I think it was a hit.

We celebrated his actual birthday at home with hot dog octopus and an ice cream cake.

And that was April! More pictures here and here

More to come…I promise this time!

Obviously I’m very behind on updating the site. Life just gets busy I guess!

In March we had fun jumping in the puddles around our neighborhood.

Nathan showed me his grumpy and happy and excited faces.

And we went to a really fun birthday party on The Mall in DC for the Kite Festival. Nathan took his first metro/subway ride and flew his first kite, and we had a great time.

April updates to come soon…

A belated Christmas post…this is always a fun holiday, with lots of time spent with Gary’s family, and lots of food. It starts with Christmas Eve at Gary’s Grandmother’s.

Here’s Nathan getting ready.

Playing with Opa after dinner.

Gary and I managed to get a nice picture of just the two of us. This might be the first one since Nathan was born!

Christmas morning is spent with Oma, Opa, Aunt Julie, Uncle Jason, Jake & Ben. After coffee and opening presents, we have breakfast. It might be one of my favorite meals, partly because its a warm and happy morning and partly because it includes a contest to see who can eat the most. I think Opa took it this year.

Nathan broke into the candy cans before we even started on the presents. Eh, what’re you gonna do, it’s part of the holiday!

Oma has jingle bells, and Nathan made sure we all had them.

Nathan playing with one of his favorite new toys.

We got some cute pictures of the cousins this year. Nathan really loves them and it’s awesome to see them playing together. Jacob is especially good with Nathan and has a lot of patience.

Family portrait.

There aren’t any pictures from Christmas Day Eve because about an hour in to the family party the day caught up with Nathan and all that junk food he’d eaten came back up. We made a quick exit because even though Nathan seemed to be feeling okay afterwards, he’d been sitting on Gary’s lap…so, yeah, you get the picture.

Hanukkah was fun this year. Nathan was of course excited about the presents, but the best part was that he was really excited to light candles every night too, and by the last couple nights he was singing the prayers with us too. We got him a wooden menorah with candles he could put in himself and he helped us light the menorahs too.

We had Latkes on the first night and he liked them a lot. Also liked dipping them in his applesauce.

Oma and Opa came over one night, and Grandma and Grandpa Bob came for the last two nights and stayed for a few days. I think Nathan had fun celebrating with them and I loved having them all be part of the holiday.

Nathan had fun helping Grandma bake cookies.

I’m glad that Nathan is getting old enough to start to understand things about the holiday. He loved reading Chanukkah books throughout the week and even still likes to now. And we got a Rugrats Chanukkah movie that Nathan loved and wanted to watch over and over. Lucky for us, it was surprisingly not bad!

We went to a 3rd birthday party recently and it was at a Volunteer Firestation. This is the second party like this we’ve been to and Nathan was just as excited to ride in the Firetruck again. It was fun watching him run around with his buddy (the birthday boy) too. There are a few kids he’s really clicked with and Owen is one of them. They’re really cute together.

Nathan, Oma and I went to the Maryland State Fair this weekend (unfortunately Gary had to work.) It ended up being a lot of fun. We visited the animal area first and saw lots of baby animals, including adorably playful piglets and some just born chicks. Nathan got a big kick out of hearing the pigs oink…he kept telling them to do it again and then he’d giggle.

I think the rides were his favorite part, even more than the corn dog and cotton candy (he didn’t seem to quite know what to do with that.) But I knew he’d love the rides, which was one of the big reasons I wanted to take him to the fair in the first place.

Nathan’s first corn dog. He seemed to really like it, but then quit halfway through, so we’ll have to give it another try.

Rides!

Nathan loved this boat ride at first, but after a few minutes his face went from smiling and excited to a little scared and maybe feeling a little ill. And unfortunately the ride kept going and going and going. I felt so bad for him, but Oma and I just kept cheering him on whenever he came around. I was proud because he got off, wobbled a bit from turning in circles for so long, smiled, and told us he wanted to go ride the motorbikes.

The motorbikes were a big hit. Nathan went on them twice and would gladly have gone on again, but by then it was obvious he was getting tired and it was time to head out.

We enticed Nathan to leave the fair by telling him we’d go look at the helicopter out front. The Medivac had landed earlier and we ended up getting there at the perfect time…right when it was about to take off. They warned us it’d be windy, but I had no idea it would be THAT windy!

Wind blown and watching the helicopter fly away.

My brother came for a visit recently. It was great to see him, but most of all I love when Nathan gets to spend time with him because he lives so far away. Plus Nathan loves Uncle Ethan because he’s so much fun.

Besides just hanging out, we took a trip to the zoo. It was mildly successful…Nathan wasn’t as in to most of the animals this time and had more fun petting the goats than anything else. It was a little hard because he wasn’t the most cooperative toddler, but we had some fun.

We tried the carousel and started to get Nathan on an animal, but ended up with him clinging to me in one of the seats. Afterward he said it wasn’t scary, so we’ll definitely try it again soon.

Nathan will occasionally pick up one of the play phones we have and call Uncle Ethan. It’s very sweet and we can’t wait to get to see him again!

My Mom got remarried a couple weeks ago in a beautiful wedding in Ithaca, and Nathan got to be the ring bearer. We weren’t sure how he’d do because he didn’t want to sit still at the rehearsal, but he managed to have perfect timing and come back to me under the chuppah just when he needed to take the pillow to Mom and Bob. He got to wear a tux, which was completely adorable even though it was a size or two too big.

We got some nice family pictures after the ceremony. It was drizzling a little, but the setting was so nice it didn’t matter.

There was some other nice moments too.

Gary and Nathan picking flowers during the rehearsal dinner.

My Mom and I putting her veil on.

The Itkoff Family (It was so nice to see my aunts!)

Nathan loved watching the band playing at the reception; he kept wanting to see the “instruments”. And he had a blast dancing and stuffing his face with chocolate covered strawberries. He was completely exhausted by the end of the weekend, but thankfully that meant he took a pretty long nap on the way home!

Congratulations Grandma & Grandpa Bob!

*Credit goes to John Sullivan for the lovely pictures*