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| Family pictures in November, 2014. |
Knowing that I needed to update the blog these past few months has become one of those things that nags at you, and the longer you wait to do it, the worse it gets. We've been busy, but I really only have procrastination to blame. So, this post will cover Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, and my 30th birthday. That's four birds, one stone!
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| Early in November, Jonathan's Dutch aunt and uncle came for a visit. It was so great to see them! |
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| Mid-November we celebrated an early Thanksgiving with Jonathan's mom's family, including Ricky who came in from NYC. Here is Quinn kissing "Aunt Chi-chi" (he can't say Rachey yet). |
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| Quinn playing with Great-Aunt Paula at Thanksgiving. |
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| This is Quinn playing hide-and-seek. Love how a 2 year-old's mind works. |
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| Jonathan playing and signing with his family at Thanksgiving. |
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| Quinn and Aunt Lydee. |
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| For Thanksgiving, Jonathan's Dad and Step-mom came to visit us. We had a great meal and visit. (And yes, the tree was already up!) |
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| Christmas Eve we spent at home. The Christmas season was such a blast this year. Quinn was totally into Santa, Frosty the Snowman, and singing all of the music. He helped me bake cookies for Santa and loved playing with the trees. |
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| Christmas morning we woke up early (nothing unusual there) and opened gifts with my mom. Quinn got a Thomas the train set, which he loves. He also got a Little People's airplane from my aunt, which is all he asked for for Christmas. We didn't really do adult gifts this year, but to keep it from being all about Quinn, we wrapped up some things around the house and gave them to each other. Quinn loved pretending to be Santa and 'delivering' all of our presents to us. |
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| The day after Christmas we celebrated at Jonathan's dad's house. Quinn loved playing Santa there, too. |
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| Quinn is great at not only delivering gifts, but helping you open them. :) |
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| January brought us some nice, mild weather, so we spent more time outside than usual. |
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| Playing outside. We played lots of tag this winter. |
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| Gotcha! |
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| Giving Quinn a 'raspberry,' which he calls a strawberry for some reason. |
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| This is the LOTR cape that Uncle Ricky and Aunt Lydee got for Quinn for Christmas. We celebrated with Jonathan's mom's family in January. Unfortunately, all of the pictures from that trip are on Jonathan's phone because I forgot my camera. But Q loves his cape! We also got to see Lydia on her way out to NYC in January. Love you, Lydee!!! |
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| Here is JJ - he is starting to go gray. He will be 6 years old on Tuesday (Feb 24). Hard to believe he has been with us for so long. |
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| This is the second Frosty we got to build this year. We had a big snowstorm the second week in February. |
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| And this is Frosty's snowpet - Sparky the snowdog. |
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| Playing in the snow with daddy. |
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| This is Quinn's latest thing. He loves watching Youtube videos of YoYo Ma and The Piano Guys. He is obsessed with the cello (and piano, and guitar, and drums). This is him pretending to play the cello. This week he loves a Star Wars video by the piano guys in which Darth Vader dances and plays the accordion. According to Quinn, Vader is a robot with gloves. So Quinn and I take turns wearing my black winter gloves and dancing like "the robot" while the other plays the cello. Ah, the cute games he comes up with! |
The entire month of February so far has been a whirlwind. Last month I posted my survey to collect data for my dissertation. I spent three months prepping it, getting it edited and through the IRB. I expected a total of 100 respondents, if I was lucky, over the course of 6 weeks, including recruitment through the University clinics. I posted it on Facebook and in the course of a week or two, I have 600 completed surveys! I never had to recruit through the clinics. I am so excited but daunted at how much great data I now have to sort, clean, and analyze for my dissertation. I am loving it. I am hopeful that I can still graduate in July, but December is more likely.
On top of my dissertation stuff, this month Jonathan has been collecting data for is dissertation, too. He has had to prep and give intervention workshops every Friday this month, do over a dozen interviews, plus working full-time and teaching on campus. Holy. Cow. He has had great feedback so far from the graduate students participating in his project. What a great thing to do something for one's degree that will help others.
Given the craziness this month, it's pretty miraculous that Jonathan was able to take my birthday off. I turned 30 this month. I had a nice, quiet day, with Jonathan and mom watching Quinn so I could go out to eat, get a massage with my midwife (thank you family, including my cousin!). The day before I had to get my license renewed, so I had a makeover at Macy's for the first time (and got to get myself some nice makeup). I had lots of well wishes from family and friends. Overall, it was a very nice day.
Turning 30 wasn't as shocking as I thought it would be. Maybe it's because I'm a mom; maybe it's because my hubby turned 30 before me so I had time to get used to the idea; maybe it's because I feel very content with where I am at this time in my life. I have so much to be grateful for, and I wouldn't trade what I have now for something different if I had the chance to do it over. I'm excited about what the 4th decade will bring!
So, please accept my apologies for the delay - but Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Valentine's Day!!
