It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

November has been a month of a lot of events and travels. At the beginning of the month I ventured to Indianapolis to have our traditional "girls weekend" with my Mom and sister, Lisa, with the intention of seeing Celine Dion in concert. Sure enough once we arrived on Saturday for the concert on Sunday we found out that Celine had cancelled her show due to illness. Yes, we were bummed but true to our style we turned lemons into lemonade and went to see a local dinner theater production of the "The Sound of Music". It was a fun show and we had a blast together that weekend which is what those weekends are all about. Kyle and Grey had a wonderful boys weekend while I was away, and I handled my first weekend away from the little man relatively well.

Then a few weeks later Kyle, Grey, and I headed back to our old stomping grounds at Purdue University to meet up with my Dad and step mom, Robyne, and Lisa to see Purdue play Indiana University in the old oaken bucket rival football game. Grey stayed back and had play time with his Nonny (Robyne) while the rest of us enjoyed a chilly football game were the Boilermakers had quite a game and came out mighty victorious! Always fun to go back to college and visit some of our favorite spots - Purdue holds a special place in our hearts. Kyle and I both talk about becoming professors down the road and would LOVE to be back at Purdue eventually.....we'll see.

Then we hosted Thanksgiving at our home a few days ago. We were joined for the occasion by Kyle's parents (Daryl and Joyce), my Mom and stepdad (Joanne and Mike), and my sister, Lisa. Kyle cooked an outstanding bird and all the fixings and we enjoyed a delicious feast. Greyson loved having all the family around to play with him and give him the constant attention that he enjoys. He was a wonderful part of our Thanksgiving table and only ate part of a roll and baby food this year, but by next year we're guessing he'll be shoveling in all the food.

Greyson is growing and changing every day. His 9 month appointment is coming up later this week so we'll have updated "official" statistics then, but from using our home scale we're guessing he's between 20-22 lbs. He is a skilled army crawler - you can check out his new found ability in the video below. He does a combo of pulling forward with his right hand, then uses his left elbow while moving his right knee up. He hasn't done an up on the knees crawl yet, but he can get just about anywhere with what he's doing now so we'll see what he does in the future. He's also working at holding himself up in a standing a position - he loves reaching for his mobile while holding on to the edge of his crib. Also, his other rather amusing new habit is his favorite sleeping position. He lays his face down on the mattress in the corner of his crib and then tucks his knees and puts his tush right up in the air. Kyle and I get a kick out of it every night when we go to kiss him goodnight. What a goofball. You'll see him in all his glory in his November pictures that are linked for your viewing pleasure.

Kyle continues to keep busy finishing up his second to last semester for his masters degree in Military History. He's looking foward to only having one semester left to go with only a few more credit hours until he is done! While he is finishing up his masters, I just found out that I was accepted into Penn State's M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on children's literature program. It's an online program that will allow me to work on it while being home with Grey and while we move around for Kyle's training. I'm very excited about this program and look forward to starting my courses in May.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and enjoy the upcoming holiday season!

Happy Holidays,
The 3 H's

Our Little Man

October has kept us quite busy. We started off the month with a trip to Florida to visit with Kyle's parents. This was Greyson's 3rd airplane trip, and he's quite an excellent flyer - he gets that from his Aunt Lisa. We had a wonderful long weekend enjoying the Florida sunshine, taking some time to relax, and Greyson got lots of love and attention from his Pop Pop and Jo Jo. Check out the pictures and you'll see what a little swimmer we have. We're looking forward to our next trip down to Florida over New Year's for some more Florida fun. Other than that trip we have enjoyed some downtime at home this month. We took Greyson to the pumpkin patch, I hosted a Halloween party for our playgroup, and of course, he experienced his first Halloween. Lots of fun and lots of great photo opportunities - so check them out.

Greyson is growing like a weed and based on us putting him on our home scale he's about 20-22 lbs now and quite the arm workout to carry around all the time. He's an excellent sitter and lately he's developed a passion for rolling. He can roll from one side of the room to the other in a matter of seconds. Then when he gets stuck somewhere he pivots on his belly and rolls another way. He hasn't quite figured out the crawling thing, but we figure he's learned to get most places rolling so why crawl? I'm sure he'll figure it out soon enough, but check out the video down below to see his rolling in action. His skills are quite impressive. He's also getting more and more verbal. He says "ma ma", "da da", "na na", "ba ba" and a variety of one syllable sounds. He'll have these talking moods where he just talks and talks and sure does seem to love it. We're guessing that when he does start using his words more, he's never going to be quite. Afterall, he's got us for parents and both of us always seem to have something to say.

Kyle and I are keeping busy with work and school. Kyle did find out recently that he will be comissioning as a field artillery officer in May. He's happy with that branch and glad he'll be going back to the branch of the Army he was in before so he can apply all that he already knows. Now that we know what branch he is going to comission we also know that we will be heading to Ft. Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma for about 6 months sometime next summer for Kyle's field artillery officer training. Not particularly thrilled about living in the great plains, but it's better than many other places we could have been sent and we're only there for a short while. We will know where we are getting stationed for after his training sometime next spring and we're quite anxious to know where the next place is that we will call "home". The relatively exciting news for me is that I just recently applied to get my M. Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on children's literature through Penn State. I'm anxious to find out that I officially got in and plan on starting classes either in January or next summer. It's an online program that will allow me to still be a stay at home mom after completing teaching this year, and plus with it being online it gives me the flexibility to work on my masters while we're moving all over for Kyle's career during the next year or so.

Well, that's all for now. Enjoy the two videos - we couldn't pick just one this month. One showcases Greyson's rolling abilities, and one is a rather amusing Halloween video of Greyson as the cutest and silliest penguin....enjoy! Don't forget to check out the October pictures link.

With Love,
K, L, and G