A Typical Arnold Family Moment

A couple of key insights into the Arnold family here....

Jeremy was outside playing in our first significant snow WITHOUT a coat. He knows it is cold, he just can't stand wearing a coat. Sorry Grandma Linda, at least he was wearing his boots!

Next check out our dog Mo as Jeremy walks past the kitchen table. I think he knows he was the original addition to the family, and he's ruled every house since Cincinnati. Here he's just checking in case there is anything good, or at least close to the edge.

As Jeremy enters the living room we are witness to some brotherly love. Jeremy greets him excitedly, as he always does, then starts a quick Peek-A-Boo game. No immediate reaction so Jeremy is out of there quick, on the next adventure. Notice that the dogs have joined the party. They wrestle and help push Jeremy into the next room. He'll play with them for a while.

Cody turns with a happy grin. He loves watching the dogs play, and that is second only to ANYTHING Jeremy is doing! Now that Cody is crawling, if we'd have kept the video rolling you'd have seen a very interesting convergence on the slippery kitchen floor!

First Business Trip Webcam Action

I've started a 2 week training journey in Ossining, NY at GE's leadership & learning center Crotonville (http://tinyurl.com/yj9cd77). That's a long time away from the family so we finally got serious about setting up and using our webcam. We originally bought it back in Atlanta to try and communicate better with the Mantua and St. Louis folks, but it never really took off. Now we are using it along with Google's Video Chat feature in Gmail. It is a great picture, and really great results. The video and audio had very little delay if any, and the whole session was very stable. A great thing to have...we talked for about 50 minutes tonight before both sides decided it was the right time for bed (actually Jeremy started throwing toys all over the basement so Mom mostly decided it was time for bed!) We are really happy with it and look forward to using it as much as we can over these 2 weeks.

Cody Speaks!

As promised...a video of Cody chatting away earlier this week.

Boys and Baseball

The Boys

So much to update y'all on (the y'all is compliments of Jon Witschy, our favorite Atlanta neighbor, because I spoke to him on the phone yesterday). Here's a quick Saturday morning picture of the boys downstairs in the basement. We are spending time down there again because our new TV finally arrived! You can be sure I will post a picture of that and provide more details later, but I have to first get out to Best Buy for some parts to fully enable the Internet connections.

Back to the boys, Cody is nearly 4 months old now. He is really trying to chat, I'll upload a video of that soon. Jeremy has had a busy month playing at the beach with his grandparents and going to some Seawolves games. Gretchen found that Beach 11 is much calmer because it is on the bay side so Jeremy can walk right in and out. He goes all the way out to where the water reaches his neck!

At the Seawolves game on Monday July 13 we had seats in the front row right on the left field line (see the pic below). Several of the Seawolves were warming up right in front of us and signing autographs for all the kids. We weren't prepared with a baseball, program or marker so as the center fielder Casper Wells was jogging back to the group after signing I yelled to him "Casper, how about a high 5?" I was standing and holding Jeremy out over the railing. Casper smiled and jogged right over sharing a solid high 5 with Jeremy! The crowd near us cheered and Jeremy was very excited. He called Grandpa Jerry right away to tell him.

Below is the line for Casper in that game. Clearly he got some good Karma from the JLA encounter. The Seawolves also completed a sweep of the Akron Aeros with a 7-5 win (sorry my fellow Tribe fans but it is always fun to be at a home game win).

Casper Wells - picture and July 13 line

Date	OPP	AVG	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	CS
Jul 13	AKR	.333	3	1	1	0	0	0	0	1	1	1	0

Here's hoping Cody loves baseball as much as Jeremy. That's going to make for some very busy summer days over the next 20 years!

Happy weekend to all.

Hilton Head

Family Vacation

I'll spare you excuses for the lack of entries lately.  I'm busy but only as much as you are and you are taking the time to read this.  So thank you, and I'll try to keep up!

We just spent a great week of vacation in Hilton Head, SC with the Moss side of the family.  Rick and Hilda made the arrangements for a house rental on Singleton Beach.  It was terrific house (details here with pics: http://rentals.hiltonheadvacation.com/rns/search/Henry%205-PF.aspx) about a 1/2 mile from the beach.  Tom, Stephanie and Isabelle drove in from St. Louis to meet up with the rest of the northeast group and we were also joined midweek for a few days by Rick's brother Jim Moss and his lovely wife Susan.

We met up Saturday May 16th and luckily a few of us made it to the beach that same evening.  I say luckily because it proceeded to rain and drop into the 50s for the majority of the week.  Local papers were describing it as record lows for the time of year.  Just our luck, it was sunny and 80s in Erie and we were in HILTON HEAD, SC for overcast and rainy 50s!

Nevertheless it was a great week.  Stephanie and Gretchen had planned a home cooked menu so we ate very well and avoided too much restaurant damage.  Our last night we did head out to a local seafood place recommended by our good friends Jay and Bunny Baker who own a home on the island:  Hudsons  http://www.hudsonsonthedocks.com/.  The oysters were excellent and most at the table sampled the catch of the day...flounder in a delicious orange glaze.  If you think of it ask Gretchen about the ketchup incident!

As I think of stories throughout the week I'll add posts.  I'll also get the pictures published in a web album and send that link out.  The two above are our Hudsons outfits, the boys loved their Hawaiian shirts.  My apologies to my rugby boys, the shirts do not have images that line up on the seam.  Maybe I can afford those when the boys (and however many others for that matter) are out of college! 

I came back to about 8 inches of grass, so maybe my 800 emails I'll see tomorrow at work won't be so bad.

Cheers,

Nate

Busy

A Little Bit of Snow

Ok, so I realize that I've failed in the weekly update already but in my defense we have officially reached 122 inches of snow.  (I'll pause for those of you calculating in your head right now).

http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090130/NEWS02/301309957

Above is my visual evidence.  Jeremy knows the routine by now.  "Daddy outside, snow blow." He loves putting his snow pants and boots on and heading out with Dad.  The sandbox shovel doubles nicely as a snow shovel.  He's got it down, even to our constant clearing of the deck railing so we can monitor the levels of newly fallen snow.

It was an eventful final weekend of January.  The Arnold grandparents drove out Saturday to celebrate my father's 52nd birthday. We cashed in a gift card to the CD Warehouse on Peach Street and the ladies did some shopping. All the while Jeremy practiced his shooting skills at home.  He has become quite the fan of his basketball hoop in the living room. We play "make it or miss" all the time now!

Sunday we woke up to what turned out to be a pretty extensive power outage. Jeremy had some sort of nightmare issue last night and kept us both up for about 1hour figuring out how to calm him down, only to wake up to no power at 9am.  What do you do...you pull the safety release on the garage door, pack the family in the car and head to Bob Evans! I'm not about to wait around for my coffee.

We have a movie theater right near the Millcreek Mall that has some great matinee specials. The early bird on Sunday 12:55pm was only $0.50/ticket so we decided to try out our first official family movie with Jeremy.  We figured with 40 degree temperatures the dogs would be fine even if the power was still out.

We went to see The Tale of Despereaux.  Jeremy seems to be a big fan of mice according to his fascination with them at the local pet stores.  It turned out to be a great event.  Jeremy lasted almost halfway through and slept the rest of the way.  Both Gretchen and I agree that the movie itself isn't close to an instant classic, but for $1 it was a fun time.  The power was restored by 4pm so we didn't miss ANY of the useless pregame on TV. 

Yes, I am posting this during the Super Bowl (I wonder if I have to pay royalties if I type that in a blog)?  Couple of reasons for that...Gretchen gave me a guilt trip for my last post being 1/11 and the Steelers are winning. I'm off to grab another beer...GO BROWNS!

JAVA!

Who Doesn't Like Starbucks?

Look, here's the deal.  It's been a long weekend since the snow started early Friday morning and is just now letting up Sunday...just over 2ft.  So when Jeremy woke Dad up demanding some Starbucks I wasn't in a position to deny him.  Don't judge us, he's happy now this morning (and doing laps around the living room table!)

First Hair Cut

	BEFORE
	AFTER

On Friday January 2, 2009 Jeremy took his first step toward manhood...shave and a haircut! Ok, so the shave part was limited to the back of the neck, but Dad is proud there's that much neck hair already.  There were a couple key observations for me that I'd like to share, especially for those friends of mine with their own kids nearing the hair cutting stage.

First - no matter what mom says, she'll be sad and nervous to do it.  Yall know how laid back Gretchen is, but she is ALL NERVOUS MOM don't let her fool you.  Driving to our local Best Cuts in Erie, PA Friday night you'd of thought we were going to leave him there overnight.  She was definitely coming to grips with this as a defining, transitional moment in our young son's life. For the record Jeremy was chilling in the back of the Tahoe watching an Elmo video.

Second - have a plan. We had a pretty solid plan in place if I can say so myself.  This wouldn't be the first time Jeremy saw a buzzing trimmer. I've let him stand on the bathroom counter watching me with my beard trimmer numerous times before. In fact, he knows where it is under the counter and has pulled it out many a time pretending to shave himself (don't worry grandparents...I always take off the actual razor head so there's no risk of self inflicted racing stripes).

Another valuable strategy was to let Jeremy see Dad get his haircut first. He loitered around, seeing our stylist (I can't call a young lady a barber for some reason) use every tool she'd use on him on me first.  Ms. Chrystal was great too...she talked to Jeremy while cutting my hair so he was both paying attention and to some degree anticipating the same "big boy" treatment like Dad.

All in all it was a great experience.  He was eager for his turn, climbing into the chair as soon as I was done.  Ms. Chrystal used scissors and he really didn't mind much save for a few flinches when she snipped around the ears.  When the razor came out for the final trim the only thing he was mad about was that he couldn't watch her use it.  He kept trying to turn around to see as she trimmed his neck!

I talk a big game but I have to admit that it is a big deal for some reason.  You are nervous at first because you want them to behave.  It is a pretty standard social event, and I know I've given eyes to parents of unruly kids before. Once you are over that (either happy with success or surviving meltdown failure), you look at this kid...almost 2 yrs old, neatly trimmed around the ears and face and you think "wow, he really is turning into a little man."  I sure hope I don't screw him up somehow!

The first calm snips recorded as evidence and for general Arnold family posterity...