27 Friday Jan 2012
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In nature, animals are forced to play dead when they are in the midst of a predator in order to protect themselves from becoming the meal du jour. It is simply a matter of survival. When sharing a hotel room with a 20-month old child, the same principle comes to play.
Now it may not be a matter of life and death, but it is certainly a matter of survival especially when you want nothing more than to go to bed and not have the hotel staff knock on the door to see what is going on.
17 Tuesday Jan 2012
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Life is filled with proud moments and disappointments. I guess it is what you make of these moments that will create the lessons that are learned.
It was a highlight for my parents when I was ceremoniously inducted into the National Junior Honor Society. Maybe not quite as brag worthy was the fact that my mom tried her best to get me to dress up for school that day while not ruining the surprise, but I was stubborn and rocked out an Aerosmith T-shirt (which didn’t make me look out-of-place at all…sweet). Further disappointment ensued when I was unceremoniously removed from the National Junior Honor Society a few months later after getting a C in PE.
Twenty years later and I still don’t know how that happened. Continue reading »
12 Thursday Jan 2012
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Many people know that our adventure into parenthood started with an email from a friend asking if we would be interested in hosting an exchange student from France. We thought it was just about crazy enough to be fun and about two weeks later we instantly became parents to a teenager.
It was an exciting year, and this past summer we were even more fortunate to be able to take our family adventures overseas and visit Axelle and meet her family for an amazing week in France. It was an amazing trip and they were amazing hosts. Continue reading »
08 Sunday Jan 2012
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As an ode to the New Year, our friend George recently posted a link to the Dalai Lama’s 20 Ways to Get Good Karma. As we enter a brand new year, I thought it offered a good road map for things I would like to accomplish in 2012.
The 20 ways all offer great bits of wisdom, but there was one that stuck with Jenn & I immediately. Over the years, we have had many friends and met so many people who have faced roadblocks in their desire to start a family. Every story is different and unique, but this lesson just seems to fit perfectly.
#4: Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck Continue reading »
03 Tuesday Jan 2012
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So the Christmas and New Years festivities are now officially over and we are looking forward to another exciting year in 2012. Besides being called on to assist the man from the North Pole and save Christmas we had a lot of fun over the break.
We spent Christmas Day at my family’s house. Nolin came down the stairs and we guided him over to a section of unwrapped gifts for him (don’t worry Ba & Pop* also had plenty of wrapped gifts for him too). It included several age inappropriate gifts like a new scooter (which Nolin kept calling a bike as he would sit on his knees trying to push himself forward and then exclaim So Fast), but the first toy he went to was a puzzle.
He bypassed everything else and sat down with a wooden puzzle. He would have been content with this, but we had to get the show on the road, so we began showing Nolin some of his other gifts. He didn’t tear through anything and move from toy to toy. Instead he sat down with each one and began exploring them as we would hand them to him. This meant Christmas morning would last a little bit longer than usual, which wasn’t a bad thing. Continue reading »
