Parties, Plans, and Preparations…

Katie and I have spent quite a lot of time recently planning for many upcoming events. Thanksgiving, Liam’s first birthday, and Christmas. Most of the planning and preps for the birthday party are done. We have the location booked, the decorations bought and the bakery for the cake is picked. We are going to have the party at our favorite beach. You are all invited of course. We plan to have Thanksgiving with our good friends the Cortez’s. They have a 3 month old baby girl and we are really looking forward to spending the holiday with them. Katie’s folks and brother are coming back for Christmas which should be a lot of fun. When they visited last year everything was obviously centered around the newly arrived baby, but this year we intend to spend much more time out and about having fun on the island. We love that Katie’s family is able to visit so often. Our offer for free housing still stands. If any of you want to come for a visit, we will provide a place to sleep and food to eat, all you have to pay for is the airfare…which tends to be a lot. All we really need is a little advanced notice. So let the spare bedroom and couch sleeping begin! See you all soon.

Teeth! 

Sort of a "Cute Baby" meets "James Bond" kind of photo. 

Surprise!!

Liam sporting his Texas Tech cammo overalls. 

Liam and his friend Logan share some toy box fun time. 

Liam had to take a very important call. 

Nothing like a padded head rest for a quick bit of television watching. 

Yeah, he is totally naked behind there. 

Another fun way to play with the toy box. 

An Evening at the Park...

Katie and I took Liam to a little park not far from our house. For his first time on a slide, he did not do too badly. He did not think much of the slides, but there were lots of things to climb. He had a blast climbing on everything we would let him on. Even though he did not really think the slides were much fun, it gave me an excuse to go down them…which I have not done in years. A bonus to having Liam is that I can get away with acting more like a kid now. If there is something that I want to do that would seem a little odd for a “grown” man to do, I just grab Liam and suddenly I am being a great dad. Membership does have its privileges.

Wheeeee! 

Quite a climb. 

What a big step! 

My two favorite people. 

Up, up and away.

Almost to the top! 

Tunnel Slide Peek-A-Boo.

I think I enjoyed this alot more than he did. 

Poised for descent. 

Liam is not sure he likes this whole sliding thing. 

He flies through the air with the greatest of ease! 

Open Mouth, Insert Foot...

I am sure you have all seen this, but I could not resist putting it up. John Kerry....what a bonehead. 

Baby's First Halloween

We did not do the trick or treat thing with Liam this year. We decided that he is still too young to get much out of it, plus there is no way we are giving him all that candy. That being said, we could not resist the chance to dress him up in a ridiculous costume. These pictures of him in his costume are from Sears. The quality is not that great because we downloaded them off of their website. Katie’s parents were in town when we had the pictures taken and it was a blast. Liam was being so cute and funny that we were almost in tears we were laughing so hard. At first, he was not into the whole situation at all, being very cooperative but only giving us his fake smile. Since he looked so funny in his costume we could not help but laugh at him. This made him start to laugh which made for much better pictures. The entire process turned out to be even more fun than we had anticipated. He makes such a cute dragon, plus the costume made it look like he had a huge fat belly which was the cause of most of the laughs from the rest of us.

The smile is friendly, but the claws are deadly! 

His hand is actually sliding out from under him as this picture was being taken. 

These are the results of our pumpkin carving party. 

These are the Jack-O-Lanterns we carved.