N - Home Court Advantage

Joel is gaining confidence every day in walking.  I estimate that he walks at least 50% of the time he wants to get somewhere while at home.  However, I've noticed that other places (church, friend's house, etc.) he rarely walks.  He usually drops straight to the familiar crawling position.  I wonder if others have noticed this in their kids.  At any rate, I'm proud of the boy.  He's growing up fast.

N - Belated Christmas Pics

We had a great Christmas and New Years with our family.  The weekend before Christmas we went up to Tulsa.  The weekend of Christmas was spent in Houston.  New Years weekend was spent at home.  Houston was warm and muggy as you might expect.  Despite passing around various illnesses (strep throat - Mary, Jill, Michaela, Danny, Brian, possibly Neil; pneumonia - Joel) we all had a good time.

The pics below are Joel at the park in Kingwood, Christmas morning with new basketball and football, our Christmas in Edmond, and with Santa Claus at Oklahoma Christian's Lighting of the Commons.

Winding down at the end of a busy day

N - Some Videos

Joel has been experimenting with various stages of mobility for awhile now but he finally decided to take things completely, and without assistance, vertical.  The video below from about 2 weeks ago shows the early stages - still a bit shaky.  Mary and I noticed tonight that he walked just about everywhere he wanted to go.

This video is Joel ham'n it up for his aunts and grandma while in Houston for Christmas.

M- 1st Birthday

I can hardly believe this little boy recently turned 1.  We had a house full of family for the big day.  It was a lot of fun having both sides of our family together for the party and dinner afterward.

Here are a few pictures of the party.  

Joel had a little help opening some of his presents.

Granny (Neil's mom) made this awesome cake.

It tasted just as great as it looked.

Joel wasn't sure at first if he was allowed to eat it, but once he started he really had fun.

So much fun, that it ended up in his belly button.

N - Halloween

Mary found a sock monkey costume for Joel. The hat makes the costume but Joel will only tolerate it for about 2 seconds. That means if you want a picture everyone has to be posed and the shutter has to be pressed down halfway before you drop the hat onto his little noggin. Mike was able to snap one good picture. You may notice the My Little Pony treat bag. Rest assured that is Joel's cousin Katie's. He's just trying to "help Katie share".

PS - It's too bad that Joel can't eat his candy this year. I wonder who will help him with that???

N - Thunderstruck

Queue AC/DC . . . NBA basketball in OKC is officially underway!


Mary and I were able to attend the first ever game of Oklahoma City's new NBA team, the Thunder. For a sports fan, it was really exciting to be a part of history. Who knows, 20 years from now no one may care but I like being able to say "I've been there" or "I've seen that". That's why I'm road-tripping to North and South Dakota next year. I'm going! You wait and see!

The loudest applause during the player introductions went to former OSU Cowboy Desmond Mason. My brother and I were at Gallagher-Iba when Mason was a freshman and broke the backboard with a slam dunk during the first Cowboys basketball practice. I've enjoyed watching him ever since. Although there were few Thunder highlights on Opening Night (the team has a ways to go) but Mason had the best and I happened to catch it on camera. Enjoy!