ThankXmas/Birthday

I know, it's been forever. I'm sorry. Please, stop looking at me that way.

A lot has happened since my last post, and I'm not going to do it all justice, so here's a link to photos from most of it. (I forgot to post up the Malone Thanksgiving pictures, and I'm sad about that. I'll do it soon and post a link when I do. A special thank you to everyone who contributed to fly Rachel and I out to Canton and then drove us all around. You guys are seriously amazing. I can't believe what good friends I have. I'm not going to do my gratitude justice by talking about it, but you all know how grateful I am.)

Anyway, because Rachel posted on ThanXmas at the McCowins, I'll leave her blog and the pictures to talk about it. Suffice it to say, as always, I enjoyed my time with Rachel's family. It really is fun getting to mix about with all those kids, and I never get sick of making robot noises.

After celebrating Norah's birthday in Canton, and again in Beaver Falls, we decided to celebrate at home on Norah's actual birthday as well. Before I get into it, let me start by saying that I've always thought it was pointless to sit around baking some elaborately decorated super awesome cake for a one-year-old baby who can't tell a slice of Castle Grayskull from a dried up toenail stuck in the carpet.


Instead of doing that, I left school early on Wednesday, came home and spent all day baking a cake, making eight cups of frosting, coloring different portions of the frosting, and elaborately decorating a super awesome Dora the Explorer cake. I guess things change when you finally have one of those little buggers...

Here are some pictures:

Here's a close up of the cake. It's no Castle Grayskull, but I still think it was pretty sweet.

Clearly, Norah is super freaking excited to eat the cake I spent all day baking and decorating.


The beginning...


The middle...


The end.

Yeah. that was good.

Okay, so Norah didn't seem to care if it was a bowl of rice or a super awesome cake. But I had fun making it.

The day after Norah's birthday, Rachel and I decided to decorate the apartment for Christmas. Now, our Christmas decorations amount to a ton of crap to put on a tree, and a six inch snow man figurine or something. So, there's not a ton in the apartment now, but once we get that tree up, it'll be awesome. Expect more pictures later.

Though we didn't change the feel a bunch with Christmas Decorations, we did move the furniture around and HOLY COW! It's like we have a new apartment. I don't know what we were thinking with our old layout.

Here's the old layout that some big stupid dummy head came up with.

And here's the new layout that Rachel came up with:

Yeah, we totally have room for a Transformers Vs. Deceptagons wrestling match in there now.

That's pretty much everything. (Oh, my first quarter of gradschool is over in a week. That's cool.) To close, I'll post some of my favorites from the pictures I just uploaded to Flickr for all of you who don't have the thirteen days it takes to look at pictures on Flickr.

I just liked the lighting on this one.


Here's our new place for the wine butler. Norah's excited about it.


Oh yeah! Norah's riding facing front now! It was a blast to change the seat, she really enjoys looking forward instead of at the back of the seat like she used to.


Here's a shot of my bald spot hanging out with my nephew Caleb.


Awesome.


I'm not all about princess stuff... but this could persuade me.


Here's Norah's cousin Emmet (probably the sweetest human being alive) giving Norah a kiss on the cheek.


Quickly followed by Norah looking very excited.


And then, well I guess she doesn't know quite how she feels.


Here she is playing in a laundry basket with her cousin Ellie.


And here she is trying to stare her down.


And what would ThanXmas be without everyone getting in the tub together? I'm pretty sure Norah's unlces and I will do this the next time we get together for a holiday. I can't wait. I'm totally packing a duck.

And finally, some pictures I took of campus the day after a pretty snow:









That last one is Swift Hall, where most of my classes are.

Okay. That's enough for now. I have to go buy a Christmas Tree!!!!!!