Christmas Season in Baltimore

We were able to enjoy a few of the Baltimore-specific Christmas events this year. First we took Aiden down to see the lighting of the Washington Monument in Baltimore's Mt Vernon neighborhood (this one predates all others including the one in DC). For the last 40 years, the city kicks off the Christmas season with a lighting of the monument during an elaborate ceremony. It was really nice with live music and fireworks and of course a special appearance by our newly indicted mayor.



The following weekend we headed up to the Maryvale preparatory school for "Santa in the castle". There is a real castle on the grounds that was built in the early 1900's. It is a replica of Warwick Castle in England and has been featured in at least one motion picture (Clint Eastwood's Absolute Power). A lady I work with at the hospital is close friends with the headmistress, so we were treated to a private tour of the entire castle. Ever since Grandpa & Grandma Orr gave him a toy castle for his first birthday, Aiden has been kind of obsessed with castles so he was pretty excited. He had a good time on the tour but really didn't seem so sure about Santa (as you can see from the pictures).

The Blizzard of December '09

We know we've got some catching up to do in terms of blog posts (a lot has been going on since Halloween!) but we couldn't wait to get these pics of our blizzard up. Friends and family in Illinois may not be overly impressed with 19 inches of snow, but this is going down as the #1 December snowstorm for Baltimore and in the top 10 snowstorms for this area on record ever. Meanwhile, a few hours south in Norfolk, VA my folks were reporting 47 degrees and rain during our blizzard. Welcome to southeast coastal weather!

Happy Halloween from Aiden!

Make a Smilebox postcard

Augest and September 2009

We have had a busy end of the summer and haven't been very good about updating the blog. I have settled into my fellowship in Neuropathology which I am enjoying a lot. The hours are certainly better than residency. Aiden has started to potty training and seems to be doing pretty good with it (most days). Julie's mom came up while Aiden's "school" was closed for a week and helped get us started with all that. They had a great time and we were spared a lot of the real tough early days of potty training. We really owe her one and Aiden too as she has more patience than Julie and I put together.

On labor day weekend we were able to fit two big outings in. First, we went to the Orioles baseball game with Kennedy,Brook, and Rick. This time of year the O's sell tickets for 1 dollar a person so we thought it would be as good a time as any to hit a game. Aiden really enjoyed taking the train (light rail) to the park. Even though our seats were pretty high up we moved down to left field by the bullpen after the fourth inning. The highlight of the night was while Aiden and I watched the relievers warm up in the bullpen, one of the Rangers pitchers asked if we wanted a ball. Aiden was so proud I think he slept with the baseball for the next week. He also proudly told everyone we met on the train ride home, "I got a baseball...pitcher give it to me".

A couple days later we took Aiden to the Maryland State Fair about 10 minutes from our house. We took him on the ferris wheel, the carousel, and a little train ride. You will notice from the pictures that the train ride was the only one that parents weren't allowed on, and he wasn't exactly pleased with that fact. We also hit the animal barns and watched the horse racing for a bit. Anwyay, check out the pics below.

Aiden's 2nd Birthday

We all had a great time at Aiden's birthday party last weekend. His actual birthday was Sunday, but we celebrated on Saturday so my family could come into town for the event. My parents and brother Patrick came up from Norfolk, and my brother Andrew and his wife Tracie and their baby Dean (3 mos) came up from Gainesville to help us celebrate, and we were joined by Aiden's best friend Kennedy (turned 2 in April) and her parents Brooke & Rick, plus our next door neighbors Avi, Devorah, and Tova (almost 2), and finally Aiden & Kennedy's former babysitter/nanny AnnMarie. (Aiden started "school" in June and is LOVING it.)

Birthday celebrations got off to a somewhat rocky start as Aiden discovered the tricycle we were going to surprise him with parked behind the porch (nobody told Mommy it was there!). First Grandma and I tried to distract him and downplay his discovery, but we quickly had to shift to damage control and just try to keep the secret from Daddy....but Aiden came inside whining "bicycle! bicycle!" so we had to fess up to Daddy, and just go ahead and give the birthday boy his bike at 9:30 in the morning while Grandpa was busy cutting the lawn and everyone else was wearing various degrees of pajamas.

We had a Thomas the Train theme for the party and boy was that a hit. For those of you who aren't the parents of boys and may not have seen the Thomas videos, let me summarize: Thomas goes puff puff on a track while a soothing British voice narrates an extremely soporific 10 minute tale. In short: for adults, it's nearly impossible not to fall asleep watching them. But for some reason, little kids like Aiden can get pretty obsessed with Thomas. He went crazy over his Thomas cake, Thomas balloon, and especially the Thomas train track sent from Grandma & Grandpa Orr. Days later he is still occasionally and quite literally overwhelmed with gratitude. For instance last night, he chose to play with the train set for an extra 10 minutes instead of the usual bedtime bath (typically the bath is his favorite part of the bedtime routine). He patted the floor next to him and said "Pway, Mommy, right there". So I sat down and pulled Thomas around the track while making puffing noises, just like in the videos. He fell briefly silent, then made a big sigh and said "Fank you, Mommy". "Thank me for what, sweetie?" He looked up at my face, searching, eyes wide--how could I be so clueless?--"Thomas, train track, birthday, FANK YOU". So I guess, all in all, he had a pretty good birthday :)

There's over a hundred pictures; click on any of these to begin navigation to the full album (look on the right for a link).

Fouth of July

These pictures are from our trip down to Norfolk for the fourth of July. We had a long weekend and headed down late Thursday night. On Friday, we headed down to the "parade of sails" at the harbor. Norfolk is a big Navy town so it was pretty impressive. We stuck around for some BBQ and live bluegrass music. The next day we piled the fireworks in the car and headed down to Virginia Beach for the long standing Markham tradition of spending the fourth of July on the beach. We caught up with a lot of old friends. Aiden especially enjoyed flying a kite and building sand castles. He was a little less sure about swimming in the ocean (though Julie and I got in for awhile). Finally, as usual Steve and many of the other locals treated us to an impressive fireworks show. We had to pry the glow stick out Aiden's hand at bedtime. Check out the pictures below or click here to see the entire album.

How to see entire photo albums in Picasa

Some people have noticed that Picasa has changed the way you navigate to an entire album of photos--if you click on an individual photo, it now just takes you to that photo. To see the whole album requires one additional click--on the righthand side, click on the album title under "Belongs to:" and that will get you to the full album of photos. From that page, the link to the slideshow is in the upper left. Hope this helps.

We spent July 4th with my folks down on the beach and had a blast but only managed to take 3 photos! My mom promises to send hers and when she does we'll get them up on here for everyone to see.

Julie

June Vacation

We just returned from a week vacation in Illinois and Missouri (To see all of our pictures click here). We took advantage of the trip to catch up with lots of people we haven't seen in a long time. First we had a BBQ on Saturday, June 6 at my parent's house. We were able to catch up with a lot of old friends and their children. The kids seemed to like running around in the big back yard, and Julie and I really enjoyed seeing all our friends we left back in Illinois. Check out the pics below. I especially like the pics of Reed Mihelich, Aiden, and Zoe Hsu. We followed the BBQ up by meeting up with some friends from high school at the local Danvers bar, "the Vault".



After a day of relaxation, we backed up the car and headed down to my parent's place at the lake of the ozarks. Aiden was obsessed with the water and the local wildlife (ducks, turtles, and giant carp). He also really seemed to enjoy reading books and driving the boat with Grandpa. I think he must have read "If you give a mouse a cookie" 100 times on this trip. Check out the pics below



We squeezed in one last BBQ with my extended family back at my parents place before heading home. We had quite a good showing from both sides of the family as well as some close family friends. Again the kids enjoyed the back yard and even broke out the kites.



Exhausted, we headed back to Baltimore. Aiden was so tired that he slept the entire way back in our laps.

Finally here are some highlights from Mom and Dad's camera