Sunday Walk

Instead of trying to resposibly catch up for all of the time we've neglected the old blog, we thought we'd post some pics from the day's outing,

A walk along the Charles in the pleasant afternoon.


And then into Harvard Square to buy P some "proper" running shoes, not pictured below.



Finally getting ready for bed...or rather, goofing around instead of getting ready for bed!

Out and About in '08

We started off 2008 getting out in nature, as you saw. We kept it up in Mt.Vernon, OH by heading off into the snowy woods with Grandma Betsy. This video has become famous as the first one where we get to hear Samuel talking. The audio comes courtesy of the fantastic Fuji camera we picked up as a hand-me down from Tom (Thanks Tom!). This will hopefully improve the quality of blog material this year.



[The classic "line" from Samuel comes at about 1:10.] Thanks to our old friend Clara Schumann for supplying the music. You're the best, C.

And we'll follow up with some still shots.










Okay, actually that was an awful lot of shots. Samuel loves being out and is generally a good traveler but he REALLY hates car seats.

Tante Möne und Spinat

Samuel ist jetzt 8 Monate alt und findet Spinat mit Muttermilch ganz köstlich.



Er sitzt gerne im Musikzimmer und spielt.



















Mit Tante Möne ist Spielen noch besser, und Essen auch.



















Und hier noch ein wunderbares Video:



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Hooray for Aunt Marion, who is video-ed here during our welcome tea party in honor of her visit this week. In Boston this might have involved creatively costumed government protests, but when you have a Cambridge Tea Party things are more relaxed.

S is enjoying sitting, drinking spinach-milk and using a spoon, which at this point means holding a spoon so that any food in/on it will end up all over his hands long before it gets anywhere near his mouth. K is enjoying jogging with her sister and son and the new jogging stroller. And P is "enjoying" meeting composition deadlines and frequently celebrates this happiness by not leaving his room.

Farewell '07, (part 2)

So as promised, we do have the last bit of 2007 still to share, from our trip with Samuel's Uncle Chris to Olympic National Park / Olympic National Forest (in the far northwestern oblivion of Washington St.). As you can see it was terribly beautiful. We were situated in a cabin right on the Pacific ocean. The only way to live closer to the ocean would be on a boat. You can see our porch view below. The noise was amazing


To our backs was deciduous rainforest. Not exactly like the amazon, in that there was snow on the ground, but still rainforest. And wonderfully verdent.



The huge trees eventually wash up on shore and actually pose a threat at high tide. You can see just how big they get.


For a more dramatic virtual experience check out this video

(Warning this movie is over 8 minutes and may cause slow downloading and sleepiness or boredom on the part of the viewer.)

Closing out 2007 (part 1)

In honor of K & S safely returning from Germany it seemed like a good time to run out another post. The post-christmas rush has left us blogpostless for a while so let's pick up where we left off.

From our Christmas in Eberstadt we went on to Seattle in the western US (a distance of 5100 miles/8200 km) to meet up with Uncle Chris and Grandma Betsy.


Here we see the culture offerings of Seattle in the sculpture garden downtown. This is Richard Serra's Wake from 2004. Very impressive. But the trip to the west coast really centered around our time out in the Olympic National Park, which we'll get to next time.

One other note, though. Samuel really started his work on sitting on his own. We see him here in one of his very first moments "sitting" without help, by which we mean leaning forward on his arms in a position that his father is far too inflexible to imitate (notice where Samuel's feet are!)

Of course, he didn't hold it all that long.



And just for laughs, a few old quicktime movies from earlier in December 07.

Wrapping up in Deutschland

A few more pictures from our visit in Germany:


We had good visits with all of Samuel's aunts and cousins. Last post we saw Aunt Marion and (in the video) Aunt Sabine. Today we see Aunt Regina and Aunt Margrid.

We wish Aunt Regina a Happy Birthday today on the 26th. Ironically, the picture of her was taken when she came over for P's birthday party on the 23rd, which was done up in full-family banquet style with particularly abundant deserts.


A few days before Christmas we also had a side trip to Nürnberg and Stuttgart. We saw a sign at the Staatstheater with a familiar title at the head pronouncing this season's premieres. We also stayed in a beautiful suburb (Fürth) courtesy of our friend Anja Schaller.



And finally, for all of you junkies out there, another video in honor of tomorrow's marathon 17 1/2 hour flight from Frankfurt to Seattle with "Ride" themed music.