Please Touch Museum

We joined the Roth's on a trip to the Please Touch museum on December 30th. Apparently a lot of other people had the same idea but we had fun despite the crowds. Andrew will probably have more fun next time when he can walk and not get trampled by the herds of hyper children though! Most of the pictures he looks stunned and overwhelmed be I swear he had a good time! He even had his first Carousel ride at the museum! Fun times!

Longwood Gardens Christmas Lights

We joined the Roth's on a trip down to Longwood Gardens to see the Christmas lights and displays. Turned out to be more for adults than kids and the night we chose had to be one of the coldest nights of 2009 but we had fun anyway, especially at the dinner at Friendly's afterwards! :)

Merry Christmas 2009!

We had a wonderful Christmas this year! Andrew was able to open his presents and really enjoy them. He must have been a very good boy, Santa was very good to him!

Christmas eve we opened presents at Mom-mom and Poppy's house. Then we were joined by Gramma Peck and had dinner at Harpoon Louie's. Andrew was such a good boy despite the long wait and long day.

Christmas morning started around 8 AM. Andrew opened his stocking then his presents and had a blast doing it! Duane opened his presents next and seemed a little stunned to find out his surprise gift was a MacBook! I opened my Keurig (LOVE that thing!), some other nice things and then found out why Duane was stunned...he had gotten me a MacBook as a surprise too! Great minds think alike! Sadly, we ended up returning one of them :) Later in the afternoon, G-mom and G-pop came over bearing more fun presents for Andrew, then Mom-mom, Poppy, and Nan joined us for a nice dinner. It really was a wonderful day!

Peck Family Christmas card 2009

Card designed by Mary of Paper+Ink Studio, photos by Amy Ro Photography, both super talented friends of mine from an online community:

Andrew's first haircut!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we took Andrew to Snip-it's in Exton for his first haircut. That day he was not keen on taking a nap but we headed out anyway to what would turn out to be a scream-fest. We put him in the chair, he got his smock on, started to look a little nervous and when the lady came at him with scissors, he completely freaked. He reacted similarly to when we go to the doctor and he has to have his ears looked at; it was not pretty. Fearing that the stylist would take an unwanted huge chunk out or worse, cut an ear or other extremity, we thought that if I held him he'd do better. We were wrong. I ended up bear hugging him while he struggled, flailed, grunted and screamed the whole time. Everyone in the place stared. I made Duane take photos but really video would have been the better media for documenting the moment. :) Despite such conditions, she didn't do too bad of a job and as soon as we were done and out of the torture chair area, the little drama king Andrew was all smiles again.

Happy Thanksgiving 2009!

Thanksgiving 2009 was spent at our house. Sickness hit the Peck family after the birthday party and Mommy and Daddy both had Strep throat, Andrew had an ear infection and Mom-mom had some other infection. We thought this was a perfect situation to order Wegman's catered Thanksgiving meal and were pleased to report that it was pretty tasty! WAY more food than we needed or wanted but also a lot less work and probably even cost less compared to if we cooked it all from scratch. Andrew ended up napping during dinner, just like last year when he was just one week old! :)

The Cozy Coupe wearing the Pilgrim hat since Andrew wouldn't:

And for fun, here he was one year before:

Happy First Birthday Andrew!

When November 19th, 2009 rolled around, I seriously couldn't believe that it had been a year since meeting our favorite guy. Such an amazing year it's been, we love Andrew even more every day that goes by, sometimes I think my heart is going to explode!

For his special day, Duane and I took the day off of work and we spent it together. Andrew opened his presents in the morning, enjoyed a birthday cupcake then we took a trip down to the Adventure Aquarium. It was a fun day! Here are some pics of the day:

Then on the Saturday after his actual birthday, we had his big party! We were joined by many of our family and friends for a fun party at Mom-mom and Poppy's house!

Hoping to catch up soon!!!

Ugh, I know I have fallen behind on updating the blog. I have a lot to share including Andrew's first birthday, his party, Thanksgiving, first hair cut and other random photos I've taken of him. The past 6 weeks I've been spending my nights in a Photoshop course that has taught me tons so when I finally do get some photos ready for posting, hopefully you'll see some improvement in them all!

By the way, is anyone out there reading this (besides you mom and dad)???

My baby and I project - Week 44 and 45

Flipping the boy around always provides squeals and giggles:

We've been doing a lot of finger holding walking around our house lately! He gets such a kick out of himself...

Poorly in Britain

Most of this half of the year I have been working on a Regulatory Intelligence project with my director. It's pretty important and part of a huge strategic initiative backed by the VP of QA. I was both excited and nervous when I learned I'd have to make a trip to our Basingstoke office to do a consolidated project called a Kaizan.

I getting over a slight cold that I had the 4 or 5 days prior to leaving on November 1. I got to the airport, hung out in the British Air lounge and watched the Phillies with my colleague. We boarded the flight and I got comfortable in business class. It was nice, the seat went to a full bed, and it was a "sleeper service" flight leaving at 10 PM. I was able to fall asleep pretty fast (we had a busy Halloween party the night before!) and woke up with the chills. This wasn't very unusual for me, I'm always cold on the plane. That is of course why I wore my long johns. I pulled my quilt up higher and went back to sleep. I woke up with about an hour to go in the flight. This time I was hot (not surprising, I was sleeping in my jacket, with long johns and a quilt), felt achy and had a headache (not surprising, I just slept 4 or so hours in a "bed" that turns into a airplane seat) and nauseous (again not surprising, I was probably hungry). I got up and went to use my freshen up pack and brush my teeth. I felt a little woozy but figured I just didn't have enough sleep. I took some Motrin and had a Fruit bar and juice. My ear gave me a lot of trouble with the entire descent, it was very painful but I figured it was because I was just getting over that cold. We landed, used our Business class passes to breeze through immigration and customs and met our driver to take us to the Four Seasons Hampshire. The drive wasn't spectacular, just the "motorways" as they say in a van with the steering wheel on the right.

The Four Seasons Hampshire is however very spectacular, in a tiny village in Dogmersfield about an hour outside of London city limits, close (about a 20 minute drive I hear) to the Shire Basingstoke office. Set in huge green open fields, looking down upon a pond filled with ducks, geese and swans, surrounded by horse farms, cattle, sheep and goats. My room was also great, very large with a beautiful marble bathroom and spacious bedroom area. I got a little bit unpacked although I was distracted by the outlet situation. Never once did I consider that the electrical outlets would be different but they sure were. I had to have housekeeping bring me this box that converted the output to the plug size for my stuff as well as the correct voltage. Once I got that figured out I was feeling pretty lousy so I figured I'd take a short nap and still have time to go back into London as planned to take a bus tour. Our flight was super fast and did arrive almost an hour early so I had time, right?

I woke up feeling awful. All of a sudden my previous feelings of discomfort hit me and I feared the worst - I had the flu. I didn't know what to do so I pulled my chilled body out of bed and called the concierge after looking up flu symptoms on the internet. He was able to offer me a hotel visit for at least 150GBP, a taxi to take me to a medical center or a phone call from a doctor. I chose to have a doctor call me already pretty much knowing what they would say. A nice woman doctor called me about 10 minutes later and after describing my symptoms said "sounds like you have the flu, doesn't it?" Oh and we were pretty sure I had conjunctivitis (pin eye) too but that was the least of my worries. Without a thermometer we weren't able to confirm I had a fever but I had all the other symptoms and was 99% positive I had a fever as well. She was able to have the office call and get my details then call in a prescription for Tamiflu. The hotel sent a taxi to pick it up and deliver it to me.

I broke the news to the team I was working with and they were more than understanding. They all felt horrible that I was poorly (the British way of saying feeling sick) and wanted me to just rest. By this point the entire hotel staff knew of my condition and were sending me get well cards and calling to check on me. The Four Seasons staff is well trained to give superb service and they were all able to pretend that they didn't fear for their health when delivering me things, although I did have one guy let up on the service act and act as though I had the plague (although I guess I did!). I literally slept from Monday through Thursday at 3 PM, only getting up to have room service once or twice a day and play on the internet a bit.

By Thursday at 3 I knew I had to get out of there and see SOMETHING of Britain so I went for a short walk around the grounds to take photos. I obviously was still very poorly as most of the shots are out of focus but I did manage to salvage a few that you can see below.

Although all my colleagues at the Basingstoke office were concerned I wouldn't get out of the country (our admin was calling to find out about the heat seeking cameras and trying to get a doctor clearance for me, etc) we had no issues. I'm pretty sure I had the illusive Swine flu but we'll never know. It took about 2 full weeks for me to finally feel somewhat back to normal again.

I'm thankful I was able to get Tamiflu and lots of rest while I was away. Although having so little distractions made me miss home more I was glad to keep my germs on the other side of the ocean and not pass them to Duane or Andrew. I hope I get another chance to go back to Britain to see more than Heathrow airport, the motorways and the grounds of the Four Seasons!

In this one below, if you look close you can see the bonfire that was lit for their annual Guy Fawkes night where they all party around a bonfire to celebrate the downfall of the Gunpowder plot on November 5, 1605.