Pumpkin Carving Party

Phil and Tara had their annual pumpkin carving party this weekend. It was great to see everyone and especially all the little kids in their costumes. Aiden was sporting his first Halloween costume, a caterpillar. These pics are going to be the first that I break out for his future girlfriends. The thing that I realized is how hard it is to get 6-8 children to sit down for a picture without at least one breaking down in tears (check the pics for the visual evidence). Without any pre-planning you can see that there was 2 caterpillars, a spider, and an entomologist. All of the "bugs" are within 2 months of each other in age (actually the other caterpillar was born less than 24 hours after Aiden). Another thing that you will notice from the pictures is some of the pumpkins are pretty elaborate (zoom in and check out James' pumpkin with a character from the movie "Cars"--now that is talent).

PS: The photos up right now are from our camera, but Phil has promised to send us the ones he took.

Aiden laughing

We don't have a lot to add this weekend, but Aiden has started to laugh. We think it is super cute for a 12 week old so we wanted to share it with our friends and family. Here is a short video of the little man laughing at daddy. Enjoy!

Congratulations

It seems like there is an epidemic of children being born among our friends and family, so I thought that I would send out a congratulations to everyone. First, to the Arbuckles (Chris and Michelle) who had a baby girl Addison Grace Arbuckle. For all you non-Chicago Cubs fans out there I will explain the name....Wrigley field sits at the corner of Addison and Waveland and Mark Grace is a famous ex-player (Chris is obviously a big fan). While we are on sports themed girl namess, I guess I should congratulate Dave and Bridget Larochelle (belated I know) who had another Chicago Bears fan in their daughter Piper Halas Larochelle (for the late great coach George Halas...Bridget vetoed Lovie I guess). I would also like to congratulate Chris's sister Nikki and her husband Craig who brought home their new boy Samual David Becker. Finally, to Chris and Lisa Hsu, who are proud parents of Zoe Joycelyn Hsu.

As all the cool kids have started family blogs/websites, you can see pictures of Chris and Michelle's family and new baby (here) and the Drs. Hsu (here). By the way, for those of you who know them, Peder Lindberg and Colleen Conley are also expecting their first baby in February. Congrats guys!

The Orrs came back to Baltimore

My mom and dad were able to come out and see us again last weekend (I have been pretty busy in my new autopsy rotation and have been a little late getting the blog post up). Anyway, we all had a great time despite a few flaws in the plan. Saturday we went to Annapolis, Maryland to see the harbor, the naval academy, and a true historical city. I also thought that I was pretty clever leaving Baltimore for the day because there was a city wide marathon and (I had heard) a boat show at the harbor. Problem was that the boat show was actually in Annapolis and nearly the whole harbor was blocked off from sight (with a very hefty entrance fee I might add). We still enjoyed walking around the historic district and having dinner at Phillip's (I recommend the crab dip).

Sunday, we decided that we would take a day trip to Sugarloaf Mountain (about 50 minutes from our house) and take in the view followed by some Maryland winery tours. The second flaw in our brilliantly laid plans was that an accident on the beltway ended up increasing our travel time with a very, very, very scenic route. We did make it up the mountain eventually and had time to hit the Sugarloaf winery at the base of the mountain for Mom and Dad's first wine tasting.

You can check out the pics from our weekend by clicking on any of the pictures below. You will notice that Mom and Dad got some really incredible pictures of Aiden also.

Welcome to the family, Don!

The final treat of our vacation was my cousin Elizabeth's wedding in Blacksburg, VA. She and Don, my new cousin-in-law (Aiden's new 1st cousin once-removed in law? woah.), met while Elizabeth was getting her master's in Aeronautical Engineering at Virginia Tech. Don also has a degree from Tech, in computer science I believe. Despite my total ignorance of either of their fields, and my sheer phobia of all things mathematical (except statistics...I know, I am a freak), I always seem to have a great time talking to these two. I knew something was up the first time I met Don, at family Thanksgiving a couple years back--I couldn't hear a word he was saying to my cousin way at the other end of the table, but he kept her giggling through the whole meal. I'd never seen her laugh so much. Big smiles were on both their faces again this past Saturday. Congratulations to you two love birds, and welcome to the family Don!

Click on the picture above to view the rest of the photos in the album.

Peaks of Otter

The next stop on our big vacation was at the Peaks of Otter with Julie's family. "The Peaks" is a hiking and camping area in the mountains of western Virginia that Julie's family often went to when Julie was a kid. We stayed at the Peaks of Otter Lodge. We had a great view of the Sharp Top mountain and lake just outside our bedroom door. The deer were so tame they walked right up to our rooms. Over our four day stay we took a hike up to "Johnson's Farm", had dinner and a campfire up in one of the mountain campsites, and hiked to the top of Sharp Top mountain. Well....ok, Aiden and we took a bus most of the way up to the top--but hey not too many 10 week olds go to the top of a mountain. Julie's grandmother Polly also went to the top of the mountain with us and told us stories of how her and her classmates use to camp out on the top as teenagers. Unfortunately for us when we got to the top we were attacked by a swarm of angry flying ants--you can actually see them in some of the pictures if you look close. Other than the ants we all had a great time and we took a ton of pictures.

Take a look at our photos by clicking on the four galleries below, including around the lodge (top left), the Johnson Farm hike (top right), camping out (bottom left), and hiking Sharp Top (bottom right). Oh yeah....don't worry there are plenty of baby pics especially in the first gallery.

UPDATE: Julie has added captions to all the photos.

Aiden visits Lexington

Julie, Aiden, and I have had a busy week. It was my first week off during residency and we spent the week down with Julie's family in the mountains of Virginia. We started the trip off with a visit to Lexington, Va home of Julie's Alma mater Washington and Lee University. Julie's grandmother (Aiden's great grandmother) still lives in Lexington where her late husband, Edward Turner, was a Physics professor. Anyway, we visited several of Julie's old professors and toured the campus ("the hill" as they call it in those parts). Julie's mom and grandmother (Polly) also offered to babysit while we had a nice evening on the town to celebrate our upcoming anniversary. We enjoyed a pleasant dinner at The Southern Inn in downtown Lexington. Interestingly, when we came back to Polly's house the two veteran babysitters (6 children between them) were looking a little battle weary and were just sitting down to dinner at 10:30 pm. Anyway, click on the pics below to see the gallery from our trip to Lexington.

UPDATE: Julie has added captions to the photos