Not for me and Cheryl, but for the wonderful couple below. 36 years! As Kristen would say, Strong.

Labels: Family

So I can't believe it, but Caleb is now 10 months old! How did this happen? Looking back I feel like the past 10 months have flown by, but it is amazing to see how much Caleb has changed yet is till the same little boy. His personality keeps getting bigger and bigger. A few of his more recent achievements and quirks.


Crawling - He is now a crawling monster! This actually happened almost 2 weeks ago but we have been so busy and preoccupied with moving we haven't been able to post about it (or the remainder of our Greece trip that was almost a month ago). He loves moving around and has now learned that he can follow us around the house. I am working on posting a video, but its late so that will be coming soon.

Laughing - This is not something totally new as Caleb starting laughing a long time ago. What is new is that he really loves it when other people are laughing and then he joins in. Cheryl and I may start laughing at Caleb's attempts to feed himself with a spoon and he starts laughing and we laugh more which he laughs at...its a vicious cycle.

Barking - While on our trip to Greece, we took along Caleb's puppy book which is one of his favorites. We also had a toy that makes a few animal noises, one if these is a dog barking. Additionally, we saw several dogs while in Greece and every time Caleb saw one he could bark like a dog ("uhh uhh" is what is sounds like). Barking has now become the standard noise that all animals make, even his giraffe Jambo Jr.


Kisses & Bites - About a month ago, Cheryl mentioned that Caleb likes to bite my nose. This is equivalent to giving Cheryl sweet little kisses. For a while, kisses were hit or miss. During and since our Greece trip, Caleb has become much more affectionate on request when we ask for kisses (and get bitten instead). Its so much fun. I wouldn't change the fact that he bites my nose.

Those are just some quick updates on our becoming-not-so-little boy. Crazy to think that 2 months from now we will be back in Texas celebrating his first birthday! WOW!!

Labels: Caleb, Milestones

After months of Caleb resembling Scott's identical twin (26 years younger), Caleb is finally starting to sport some of my DNA and actually looks like my child now too! Do you agree?

Labels: Caleb

Well, my very first Father's Day has come and gone. What a day! Apparently Caleb couldn't wait for Father's Day to start (about 5:30 AM), however his Mama was kind enough take him downstairs and let me sleep in a little more. I made it downstairs to the smell of French toast, that "Caleb" was making with Cheryl's "help". It was a nice breakfast treat to start my morning!

I then was given my first Father's Day present. Caleb got all 3 of us tickets to a Rangers game in September!! I am very excited about taking Caleb to his first baseball game. It would have been great to be a Braves vs. Rangers game, but once we return we will all be getting Texas Rangers hats.

While I will always be a Braves fan and I will always remember the '91 Miracle Season and the '95 World Series, I have decided that I can't live in a place and go to baseball games and not "root, root root for the home team" (unless of course its the Yankees, but I don't plan on moving to The Bronx).

Labels: Fun, Scott

So the long awaited Greece trip summary or narrative or whatever you want to call it. Your regular trip blogger Cheryl is taking a small hiatus, but never fear she will return.

Well, our trip started out in Athens. After getting our bags and walking out to the main area, we immediately noticed the nice lady holding a piece of paper with "MCFADDIN" on it. No wasting looking at public transportation on this trip. We decided that with Caleb and all the transfers we would be having that booking all of those with an agency in advance would be well worth it and it was, except for that almost-disaster on our last day...but that is getting ahead of ourselves.

We arrived at out hotel in the afternoon and walked around the surrounding area, found some shops and a nice little place we warmly referred to as "restaurant row" for the next couple of days.

Being a small walk from the Acropolis we attempted to make it there, however there were a lot of steps and not so easy with Caleb in the stroller. Plus, Cheryl discovered that her contact had cracked and was scratching her eye. Not a good thing. As we walked around we stopped into a pharmacy to ask where we could find an eye doctor to figure out our options. Turns out he pharmacy could order Cheryl some soft contacts as temporary replacements for her hard contacts and they would be availble the next day or so. Not a bad deal for 18 euro.

We decided to eat at this little square/park near our hotel and have a light dinner. While we were eating some live jazz music began along with some strange street performers and some Greek chefs making samples for the public. This acutally went on each night in Athens.

Our first full day we set out on a half-day tour to hit the hot spots including the orignal Olympic stadium refurbished in 1896, start of the modern games. Its still used to small events and was the finish line for the marathon events in the summer games in 2004. Next was the Temple of Zeus. There was this extremely large field with the temple ruins in the middle. Apparently, the whole area we were at used to be all white marble instead of grass. Quite a amazing thought.

We then headed to the Acropolis. This is the main place for everyone to go in Athens. It was great. There is actually 2 temples on the top, but the Parthenon of Athena is the one we all know. They are in the process of refurbishing much of the Parthenon, which includes taking numerous pieces of the original temple on the ground and figuring out where it fits. A real life 3-D puzzle.

Sadly, Cheryl and I came to a realization on the Acropolis. We are kind of ruins snobs. After all the amazing places we visited in Egypt, and how well preserved some of them are, Athens seemed...average. I realize this sounds incredibly horrible, but I imagine if we had been to Athens first it would have seemed much more impressive. After the tour, we headed to pick up Cheryl's contacts so she could have non-impaired vision and wear sunglasses however they did not arrive and all pharmacies close at 2:30 on Wednesday for some reason.

Day 2 we decided to trek to Mars Hill where Paul first brought Christianity to Greece. This was a decent walk and even more difficult over less then smooth bricked roads and a less than helpful map. Eventually we managed to stumble upon Mars Hill. Its really cool to be at a place like that where someone in the Bible had been so long ago. We had been in a jail cell that held Paul and Peter in Rome a couple of years back as well. We also saw a group of young people and adults we couldn't help but wonder if they were the HUG group (doubtful, but we did sing devo songs in an old church with the HUF group in Florence 2 years ago. You never know).

Cheryl then navigated our way through the back roads back to the shops and restaurant row where we got some lunch (Cheryl - moussaka, Scott - roast pork, Caleb - a little bit of each) and were able to pick up her contacts. After our afternoon nap (yes, when Caleb naps we all at least attempt to follow suit) we walked around the National Gardens behind the Parliament building. Not very colorful, which is sad because its a very big space that could be very pretty if given a little more care. We did come across a random mini-zoo thing with chickens, peacocks, and goats. The goats came right up to the fence and Caleb was intrigued even if a little confused.

Our last day we went walking around through one of the markets, which reminded us of Camden market in London quite a bit. We looked in some of the shops, but a lot of the souvenirs just felts very cheesy and not so much "us". We typically look for items to add to our house like wall hangings or something. Prague for example we got a small clock like the Astronomical clock there. We had gyros for dinner which were cheap and extremely tasty. We recommended this place to some friends that were visiting Greece the same time we were. We got gyros for 1.60 euros each for take away, but the same meal sitting down costs about 5 or 6 euro more.

We had a great time in Athens, however were very excited for our ferry ride the next day to spend the remainder of our trip in Santorini.

Come back for that one tomorrow.
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I reserve the right for Cheryl to make any additions to this post as she sees fit. I am not used to being the trip blogger.

Labels: Trips

A few weeks ago I really wanted to put a disclaimer on the blog stating the following: "This site is best viewed using either Firefox or Safari web browsers". This is primarily because when I view the blog from work, I don't like the way it looks and the header images don't always fit using Internet Explorer. Now all the Windows users out there now have 2 alternatives to IE.

Firefox is a great browser, bu I use Apple's Safari program as my default browser and very occasionally use Firefox. I recommend Firefox to all Windows users (your welcome Stephanie). Now Windows users can also use Apple's Safari program. This is only the second Apple application that is available for use on Windows. Safari is a great browser with Google search built-in, good for RSS news feeds, a great pop-up blocker, and tabbed browsing (you never knew you would use something so much.

Its free to download here.

Labels: Apple, Recommendations

Okay, so there's lot to say about our trip, but I figure we'll start with the pictures (after all, don't "they" say that a picture is worth a thousand words?!). Besides, the uploading and processing of all these photos into a slideshow took quite a bit of time and now I'm too tired to consider adding a post of information about our trip with it. So for now, sit back and enjoy the show (it's a bit lengthy but I promise I cut A LOT of photos out) and I'll try to post about the trip tomorrow.

I apologise about the music. I didn't choose to add music with the slideshow in an attempt to make the process a bit faster so somewhere along the way one of the programs chose its own tune to add with the photos. If you don't like it, just mute your computer.

Labels: Trips