Goofball

It seems that the older Aiden gets, the goofier he becomes.  Here are some pictures to illustrate this point:

A Birthday Weekend

So, Friday was Rob's birthday and I (Jen) thought I would share with you faithful blog readers how we celebrated.

Friday evening, we decided to not spend the money to go out to eat, and instead, I kicked Rob out of the house for a few hours while I made dinner.  Rob and I are always saying how much we enjoy being at home and feel so blessed with such an amazing house.  So, I took advantage of our great home and made it more romantic than any restaurant could have ever been.  We even dressed up!  We enjoyed the evening just being together and having great conversation, reminiscing over memories and looking forward to making more.  We are also very blessed to have a baby that goes to bed at 7pm and sleeps for 12 hours straight!!

trying to capture the ambiance without the flash...

On Saturday afternoon, Rob and I went to the Brandywine River Museum in Chaddsford.  One of Rob's favorite artists, and one whom I have also grown to love, is Andrew Wyeth.  The amazing thing is that Andrew Wyeth grew up in Chester County. This great museum has exhibits of the 3 generations- Andrew Wyeth, his father, N.C. Wyeth, and Andrew's son, Jamie Wyeth.  We started off taking a few minutes to walk along the river path and enjoy the beauty of the river in autumn.   Then, we took a tour of the Kuerner farm, which is where Andrew Wyeth found inspiration for nearly 1,000 of his paintings.  It was so neat to see this place that meant so much to the artist and to recognize certain scenes from his paintings.   When we got back to the museum, Andrew's grandaugther was giving tours of both Andrew and Jamie's galleries.  This was also extremely interesting and just so neat to hear about some of the artist's thought process, and how they are just normal people, with families, who have experienced great love and great loss.  

on the farm...

Saturday evening we were able to go to Bethany and Aaron's (Rob's sister and brother in law) to celebrate Rob's, Mom's, and Aaron's birthdays, which are all within a couple weeks of each other.  We had a great time eating yummy dinner, cupcakes, and opening presents.  I don't know why, but we didn't do a great job of documenting with pictures.  I promise we were all there, and Aiden was there as well.  

And lastly, since I know most of you check this blog because of our son, here is a small video of him taken at some point this weekend, being cute, as he usually is.  Enjoy.  But, let me just say, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROB!  I love you and you are an amazing husband and father.  

Autumn Attacks!

This is the vew out of our kitchen door into the back-yard...

Yep, it's Fall for sure.  

Peanut

Ok, so we caved in and totally dressed up Aiden for halloween.  As mentioned in a previous post, given his perfectly round dome, and still-bald baby head we really couldn't dress him as anything other then Charlie Brown.  Jen whipped up a spiffy costume in no time flat, and we pulled an old Snoopy costume out of the closet for Bailey.

I know that, for Aiden, Halloween will be more exciting once he is old enough to "get it" (and by "it" I mean candy.)  But in all the years to come we may never take more pictures then we did this year.  We took a lot of pictures.  Here is a small sampling:

Our first and only political post...

During this election season we have kept our blog decidedly (and deliberately) non-political, and that is not going to change now.  However, after watching history literally unfold before our eyes last night, it seems absurd to not acknowledge the thing that is already on the collective hearts and minds of our nation.

Last night our country elected a new leader.  A leader that will, for the foreseeable future, be entrusted with guiding us through some difficult times.  Regardless of your political leanings or affiliations our president will need our support, and he will absolutely need our prayer.  We hope that you'll join us as we pray for our new president, not out of a sense of obligation, but instead from a heart filled with joy and optimism.

The Parade

After the Phillies clinched the World Series on wednesday we immediately started making plans for getting down to the parade on friday.  We ended up deciding to take the train into the city with Jen's dad, and her friends Kelly and Meg.  

This whole experience was crazy, with lots of fun moments and a couple of nerve wracking ones.  It was also truly enormous, and from our tiny perspective and with our tiny camera it may be hard to give an accurate representation.  We're not going to be able to show anyone mind-blowing shots of the parade itself.  In fact, it was difficult to get many parade pictures at all.  Maybe, however, by seeing the whole thing through our eyes you'll get a sense of what it was like just to be there- surrounded by 2 million other jublilant fans.  

Just to be clear: it was pretty cool.

But I'm getting ahead of myself!  Before we could go anywhere we had some preparations to take care of.  Here is our creative sign-making session on the night before the parade.

On friday we got to the train station nice and early.  By the time the train came, the platform was packed with so many people that our one stop took up the entire train!  It's a good thing we got there when we did.

Jen and her friend Meg showing their team spirit.

On the train.

As we rode into the city the rocking of the train car put Aiden to sleep on my shoulder, and he slept like this for most of the ride down.  In a day filled with lots of crazy excitement, this may be one of my favorite and most cherished memories.

The train ride was pretty uneventful, a little bit relaxing even. Although we did occasionally feel bad as we sped by all the people waiting at other stations who couldn't fit into our trian.  After about an hour's time we arrived deep into the heart of the city of brotherly love.

Walking towards the parade route with City Hall in the distance.

People were packed shoulder to shoulder in one direction...

...and back the other direction.

My favorite sign of the day.

William Penn.

Friends.

Mom, Dad, and son.

Father and son.

Father and daughter.

People everywhere...

Although it took a lot of time and effort getting to this point, the actual parade was pretty quick.  We got glimpses of the floats as they came by, but it was ridiculously hard to get any actual pictures of anything interesting.  I tried to get as many as I could, but most of the pictures ended up being of the back of someone's head, or the side of a building.

Here is a fuzzy shot of the Philles fuzzy mascot.

And this is the only picture that I have that actually has players in it.  Don't you feel like you could just reach out and touch them??  Ok, so it's not much of a close up, but I'm pretty sure Cole Hamels is in there somewhere.  Mabye if you look really hard...

After the parade was over we quickly realized that the biggest challenge of the day was going to be just getting home.  If possible, the train station was even more crazy then when we arrived in the morning.  There were lines of hundreds (and hundreds) of people for each train, and we figured we'd be waiting a couple of hours at least.  By no small miracle, however, we found Kelly and Meg who had gotten back to the station early, allowing us to get on the first train home. Whew!

I did my best to capture as much of this whole adventure on video as possible.  It turns out that 2 million jostling people do not necessarily make for ideal filming conditions.  The video may seem a little chaotic and unsteady, but then again- that is pretty acurate depiction of what the experience was actually like.  

Hope you enjoy...

Well, after a long season and an incredible post-season I'm thinking this rightly ought to be my last Phillies post for a while.  As our blog reflects, this house has really been swept up in the excitement that this baseball team has generated.  Not only has this been a welcome escape from discouraging world news and political name-calling, it has also provided us with memories that we'll talk about 20 years from now.  It's hard to ask for much more from a game, even a game as great baseball. 

So thanks from the Jones' to the Phillies.  It's been fun!

Oh, by the way: just 5 months 'till spring training...