BIRTHDAY WIN...

We had a really good weekend here. All the family came into town on Friday afternoon. I have been wanting to get some portraits done of Dave, Nico and me and thought it would be a good opportunity to do pictures with the Bishop kids for my mom's collection. She has a very awesome set of photos of the Bishop kids going way back... so whenever we get the chance, we try to have a picture taken for her. Plus, I have been wanting my friend Jake to shoot some pictures, so it was a good opportunity to get everyone in a picture.

It was a lot of commotion. Nico was not terribly cooperative- he didnt want to be held by anyone but me... so who knows how some of the pictures will turn out. After we were done shooting pictures with the grandparents and JJ, we changed clothes and went back to reflecting pool at Maclay gardens and got some pretty cool pictures. I hope they turn out well.

Saturday morning we got things together for the first annual NicoBeast birthday extravaganza. I dont know if I mentioned it or not, but I bought a sand/water table off of craigslist a couple of months ago. We put a bunch of towels under it and filled it with water... it was a huge success... all the babies LOVED it. It is the perfect height for them- they could all stand around it and play with toys. It has a lid with a race track on it, so you can run cars around the top of it. They had a BLAST! Emme thought it would be a good idea to try to get into the water table (just like her Mom, I suppose).

Speaking of which... I dont think I have ever seen a happier baby than Emme. She and Nico played pretty well together. She is very active and loves tearing things up just like Nico. I think its going to be great- when she and Nico are 5 or 6 years old. Maddox will be 7 or 8.... but she will definitely be the boss of all of them.

Nico got a ton of clothes and toys and puzzles. So that was great. He got this one dumptruck toy that makes lots of noise and vibrates and shakes... it scares the hell out of Nico right now. He is not so much a fan. I will try to post some pictures tonight of some of the cool things he got.

He made a total mess of his cake... we were sitting on the floor doing the happy birthday thing when he thought he needed to put his feet in the cake. You can always tell amatuer hour... the rooks are always trying to do things like put their feet in the cake.

Sunday was a lot more laid back... we hung around the house. Dave and Mike ended up doing work in Nico's room getting rid of rust and mold on the old-school metal window frames while my Dad and JJ got on the roof to see what the damgage is (there is some rotting wood on the back of the house- I wanted to see what the condition of the roof was so I could tell my leasing company and also tell them I know a guy). When Dad was getting down off the roof, he brushed the gutter a bit too much and caused it to come down spilling gutter water all over JJ. It was hilarious!!

We ended up going over to the hotel to do some swims... which Nico loves. Seriously, I had to hang onto him- I thought he was going to try to swim away from me. He had a great time. Plus the cousins were all there. He was off the chain!!

It was pretty much an EPIC weekend. I submitted the first somewhat complete draft of the dissertation to IE. It still needs some work, but I am pleased with the progress so far. If I never had to deal with formatting MS Word page setups ever again, for the rest of my life, I would die happy :)

Today is Nico's actual birthday. It's weird because on one hand, I can't believe that he is already one... but its also weird because I can't believe that its been only a year. It seems like so much has happened in the last year. Its hard for me to comprehend a time before Nico was such a big part of our life. Its great.