To all 3 of you who check my blog, my apologies...

Hello folks. It's been a while I know but I have a good reason, several actually... most of them involve laziness so I won't bother you with the details.

Rather last minute like Heidi and I decided to join some of my family in Arizona for Christmas. The travel down to Midway was scary to say the least. We saw around twenty cars/trucks in the ditch. Heavy blowing winds and very icy roads made getting to Chicago an adventure in and of itself. Mercifully once we got into Illinois the roads were much better and the winds not as severe.

Traveling with a six month old is not something I'd recommend. Yes it was worth it in the long run but if you thought flying was a pain already it only gets worse. On the way back from Arizona we had a run in with security and ended up having to wait more than 2 hours just to get on the plane since Midway was restricting landings due to wind and ice conditions. Zach was amazing on the flights, not a peep out of him even when the plane was swinging left to right and the wing tips were tilting up and down during our landing he was totally chill. After we landed the pilot gets on the P.A. and assuringly announces "Whew, we made it!". Not what I want to hear considering I'm going to fly again someday and may experience weather like that again!

Our time in Arizona was fun. We were able to hang with my brother Steve's family and my sister Debbie's fam as well. Everyone loved Zach and he was pretty good while we were there, save the last day when he started getting sick. Sunny days will throw you off when you're coming from two feet of snow to sixty five degree weather. It was excellent walking around in a t-shirt shorts and sandals, while everyone else is talking about how "cold" it is.

Christmas was fun watching all the kids tear into their stuff. It's been a long time since I've been able to experience that and it made me look forward to the time when Zach and his future younger sibling(s) will be able to do that. Besides all the cool stuff he gets will probably have to be put together first and I'm ace at that! Tom and Deb's kids got a wii. Bowling is a lot of fun. So much so that after the kids went to bed the adults would stay up to play. The bummer is that Deb and Steve both got pretty sick and had to miss out on some family time which stinks. Steve and Karen are excellent hosts and made us feel welcomed and loved. It was a great time to be with the family.

Peep some video I shot of Christmas morning...





After we got home we had a day or two to try and recoup, with Zach being sick that wasn't very easy. Heidi's family came for our Christmas celebration with them and that was cool. We had her parents and her sister and brother in-law stay the night. Got up the next morning and did the gift exchange. We are very fortunate to have such generous families. We were given much more than we should have and Zach made out pretty well to. We took Zach to the doctor late last week and he had to put him on Prednesone and we had to do 3 nebulizer treatments a day for a week. It is miserable administering this stuff to your kid. He's doing a little better now but is still having a hard time getting a good nights rest (and so are we).

Since the third it's been back to work for both of us as we try to figure out how to manage our time better. Heidi and I still have need for alone time, time together, time with friends, etc. Certainly neither one of us has ever been terribly selfish with our time with exception to our time with each other. But there's just such a steep learning curve with parenting you tend to unintentionally neglect each other's needs in favor of your new child's. Hopefully this is something we can look to friend's and family for advice and grow in this area of our marriage.

Saturday we had some pictures taken of Zach that I'll hopefully have some examples of here in the next week or so.

Monday Heidi took Zach in for his six month check up and we now have the okay to go ahead and torture our son with pureed vegetables. Here's a three part video series to see just how that went for the very first time...








I'll have more video and pictures to share later.