Big Brother Caden

We were initially a little worried about how Caden would react to having another Pater Tot in the house, but those went away quickly. So for he is turning out to be a great big brother.

Some early pics of Lainy (without the birth filth)

she's here!! (the 1st preview)

Alaina (Lainy) Harper Pate was born today. Everyone is fine. More pictures coming soon. I'm tired....and I did the least amount of work today.

This is a post birth picture. It ain't pretty...buts its real.

As you can glean from above, we have landed on Harper as the middle name. In keeping with a literary theme for middle names (Caden's is Crusoe), Harper comes from one of my favorite books To Kill a Mockingbird (highly recommend the movie too if you haven't seen it). Harper Lee is the author.

Eviction Notice

double click on the picture to enlarge

yeah, we're that poor

Caden has been watching a little too much Bob Ross

We think he may have a drug problem

O.C.P.

Naive Art

Here are some canvases I painted for the nursery. We decided to go with an Eric Carle theme (famous children's books author). These are based on the book covers of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and "The Grouchy Ladybug" (we gave ours a smile though).

thank God he is a firefigther

Jason (one of my old college roommates), Angie and Maddy came down for Janelle’s first baby shower. The first night we broke out the new fire-pit. Although now I am wondering if it is a good idea to have a fire-pit on a wooden deck….so close to the house. But then again, J is a part-time firefighter so I guess we were safer than usual that night.
I’m quite jealous of Jason being a fire-fighter. It just sounds cool. It’s my intention to volunteer at our local fire station once I finish my MBA.
Partly because it reclaims that sense of adventure that we tend to lose in the daily grind of life.
Partly because I assume it would be a catalyst for adrenaline rushes….I can’t remember the last time I had one of those…..can you? Sometime when I go to J’s house, we stop by the station and he lets me get in the truck and practice with “Rescue Randy” but that is as close as I have gotten so far.

Talk back: What do you do for “adventure” and adrenaline rushes?

7 months in the hopper

Merry Christmas

Hope Christmas has been good to all of the PPO3 visitors. We started ours with a road trip to Ohio. My first Christmas present was given to me by a stranger. Somewhere in West Virginia on our way to Ohio as I was cruising along when a jeep got right in front of me….going the speed limit. I was quite perturbed until I realized that there was a cop ahead and this jeep was purposefully slowing me down. Thanks mister jeep guy.
Plus, on the way back, a stranger in front of us paid our toll.

It was good to be in Ohio with the Poff clan.

The mystery Christmas gift that Janelle and Mandy have been keeping a secret was a trip to NYC in May. Turns out the clues they gave were not entirely true. I’ve only been to the big apple once and only for an afternoon so I haven’t covered much ground. If you have any suggestions about what we go/see/do while we are there leave a comment below.

boys and their toys

I have written before about the value of making Christmas fun instead of functional.

This year my brother and I got laser tag with a twist.....when you get shot, it shocks you.

We also got indoor r/c helicopters.

Here's caden with his giraffe yet to be named

If he is anything like me...he'll always need the rim to be lowered to dunk it.

Charleston Wedding

The Pate clan headed south to my cousin’s wedding in SC.

The New/Old House

Janelle and I closed on our new (actually 80 years old) house and first home last week.

Things are a bit busy around here (as I am sure there are at your house). Between moving into a new house, getting in the swing of Christmas, (for me personally) finishing up a grad school class, the Pate clan is alittle hectic.

Here are some pics:

Front yard & Dining room (not our table)

Storage building in back yard & Janelle's favorite part of house (dishwasher)

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone’s Thanksgiving went well. Here are some highlights from ours.
Everyone gathered at my parents’ house which got crowded fast. Here is a pic of an assortment of aunts, uncles, cousins and grandmothers.

It was good to see Kait again (whom faithful blog readers and friends will remember is my cousin that lived with us last year). She is doing well and recently made the honor roll.

Long overdue, I borrowed my cousin’s skateboard and proved yet again that my athletic prowess knows no bounds. Don’t I look graceful?

The highlight of the day easily was spoon wrestling. If you aren’t familiar with this gag here is a video clip I found on youtube to see it in action.

Matt introduced me to this game in college. I usually played his accomplice. We even did this to one of our college professors once.

Basically 2 people are given spoons and told to face each other. One player will put his head downward (facing the floor) and the other will put the spoon in his mouth and hit the other player in the back of the head with it. They trade off hits until one gives up. This proves to be exceptionally hard to do with any force. This time I was the referee while my brother played against our new victim, my cousin Brandon. Here is the rub (its easier to understand to watch the video above)….Chris (my brother) was in on it and when it was his turn to hit Brandon I would grab another spoon from my back pocket and whack my cousin in the back of the head (pretty hard) and then slide it back in my pocket while he was still facedown and unable to see our little ruse. This inevitably proves frustrating for the victim because he is getting whacked pretty hard while being unable to counter his opponent with any real force. Always great family fun. Here is a pic although it isn’t a great shot.

On a side note, I was just reading an article on Slate about there being a new rally cry against “the secularization of Thanksgiving.” Much like a few years ago when the “War on Christmas” was in full fervor, the new focus is on Thanksgiving. I have one objection……I have never assumed Thanksgiving was a religious or Christian Holiday to begin with….therefore it would be hard to secularize it. I don’t even recall ever seeing a church do a special event for Thanksgiving. What do you think? Religious holiday or just another holiday?

halloween pics (the janelle version)

Janelle spread her creative wings and tweaked some of the pics from the slideshow posted last week. I think you will be as impressed as I was. Here are some of my favs: