Happy First Birthday to Our Darling Boy!

We honestly can't believe that TODAY Greyson turns one! We are so in awe of how much he's grown and developed during the past 12 months, and know that he will continue to amaze us every day! Happy Birthday to our baby boy - yes, we know he's one, but he'll always be "our baby". Enjoy this little video montage I whipped up in honor of his special day.

We love you Greyson!

Mommy and Daddy

Is He Really About to Turn One?

Be shocked and awed that I'm actually getting around to the January website update BEFORE the end of the month - go me! The truth is I've had the past two days off work due to ice and snow and had more free time than usual which is much appreciated. This month has been more laid back, with the exception of our trip to Gatlinburg (east Tennessee) to have a reunion weekend with the girls I've taught with and their husbands/kids. We had 10 adults and 4 little boys which made for a rowdy good time. Greyson is really starting to love interacting with other kids and he had a blast hanging with the big boys (Connor - soon to be 3 and Patrick - 1 and half). He even got to play around in a jumpy jump house and he had a ball! We also had a great weekend spending time relaxing in a luxury cabin nestled in the mountains with great friends. Makes us realize how much we miss having them in town now that they've moved on to other places, but these reunion trips are a blast and a tradition we plan to continue.

Greyson is growing and developing at rapid speed. He has become quite the speedy crawler and he's pulling up on anything and everything. He's even getting gutsy and reaching from one object to the next while he's standing up. I think walking isn't too far in our future - oh how our world will never be the same. Another exciting event was the arrival of Greyson's FIRST tooth. Yes, he's been a bit behind in that department, but there is no really rhyme or reason when it comes to baby getting teeth. Last week his bottom left middle tooth made it's appearance. Bringing with it a few days of a not so happy baby who was in a bit of pain, but he's doing much better now and we're expecting to see some more teeth come along soon. We'll keep you all posted.

I've been keeping busy being back at work and working on the preparation for Greyson's first birthday party. I cannot believe it's already been a year - people always say time flies, but this is truly unbelievable. He's grown so much and become this little man and I can't believe I'll soon be telling people my sons age in years instead of months. We're looking forward to his birthday celebration. I'm doing a joint party with a great friend of mine who's little boy is 3 days younger than Greyson. We're in the same playgroup so we'd be inviting the same people so planning it together makes it a lot easier. My mom and stepdad, Mike, and sister, Lisa, will be joining us for the celebration. Should be a blast to watch him get cake everywhere and to celebrate his amazing first year of life.

Kyle is back in grad school and surprisingly not too busy seeing that he only has 2 grad classes this semester which is a nice change for him. Hopefully it will be a more laid back semester of just finishing up and getting ready to graduate and commission in May. We're anxiously awaiting to get Kyle's "official orders" sometimes toward the end of February/early March that will tell us where he is going for training and where we will be stationed after that. We have our fingers crossed for a few places, but it's up to the Army at this point so hopefully all will work out well.

Hope you all are doing well and we send our love! Enjoy the January pictures - I'm now using Picassa (yes, I know I was a bit behind) but it's a great program and this way you can save and print the ones you want and not have to order them like through Kodak Gallery. Enjoy!

Love,
Kyle, Lindsey, and Greyson

P.S. Two videos for your enjoyment - one of him being Greyson the pilot....of course enjoying his Pooh plane x-mas gift from Aunt Lisa and the second is Greyson "the cat hunter"....pardon my bad Austrailian accent but just had to capture him stalking his prey....too bad the hunt didn't end very successfully.

It's "Big Boy" Bath Time

We've had many requests (especially from those loving grandparents) to see Mr. G now playing around in the "big boy" tub. It's quite the sight so we wanted to give you a little glimpse before the regular end of the month update. Enjoy Mr. Splashy having lots of fun free and clear to make a mess now that he's free of the baby bath tub :)

Time to Ring in the New Year!

Happy New Year to all of our fabulous friends and family who read our monthly blog updates! Hope you had a fantastic holiday season and are settling back into the daily grind in the new year. We had a VERY busy, but fantastic month of December. We enjoyed a few down weeks at home in TN at the beginning of the month. Had some great friends come and visit from Louisville and celebrated Kyle's 27th birthday (I keep teasing that 30 is just around the corner now). Then the weekend before Christmas we headed up to Chicago for the holidays. I love getting the chance to go home and Christmas is and always will be cold and snow to me, but the major downside of going home is the 8 hour road trip. Especially now that Grey doesn't exactly fall asleep in the car all the time like he did when we he was younger. We left at about 5am so he would at least sleep for more of the trip and made both legs of the trip with only having to stop once. So, overall not to bad, but God bless portable DVD players because when Grey was hitting the wall with exhaustation and tired of being in his car seat good ole "Baby Einstein" was just the trick to calm him down. We spent a week in Chicago - seeing my family, going to Kenosha to visit Kyle's grandma and aunt, and celebrating the holidays. Greyson throughly enjoyed his first Christmas and now our house is starting to look like a playground with the many toys he recieved, which he is throughly enjoying. Gone are the days of stylish home decor and now we function with toy baskets in each room and many a colorful plastic sound making gadget laying around.

After our Christmas trip to Chicago we came home for about 2 and half days, and then left again to fly down to Florida to visit Kyle's parents for the new year. The warm 70-80 degree temps were a welcome change after the bitter Chicago cold and we had a really fun visit. Took Greyson to his first mini petting zoo which was a big hit with him. He loved seeing all the animals and we had to laugh when the only animal he got vocally excited about was a farm cat running around after seeing all these big cows, llamas, and crazy looking turkeys. Guess that cat reminded him of his buddies at home. Check out the pictures to see what a good time was had by all.

We're now happily back in TN for awhile and only have one little trip in the forseeable future - which we're rather happy about it. We have been all over the place the past 6 months so some down time at home is just what we need. We realized that our trip to FL was Grey's 4th round trip flight in his 10 months of life - he's quite the jetsetter. Speaking of Grey moving all around he is now a crazy crawling monster. When he is up he literally never stops moving! He is a speed crawler and pulling up on anything and everything he can get his hands on (see video below to check him out in action). He's starting to walk moving along a table or furniture and getting pretty gutsy with letting go with one hand. Walking is definitely coming in our near future - I'm already exhausted thinking about how much chasing around we'll be doing. Overall, he's doing fantastic....continuing to grow like a weed and weighing in around 22-23 pounds. We just can't get over what a "little boy" he's becoming, especially now that his first birthday is approaching quickly. Check out the pictures to see what a little man we have now.

Hope this New Year finds you healthy and happy and we wish you all the best that 2009 has to offer!

With Love,
The 3 H's

Happy Holidays from the H's

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

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