Happy Birthday!

One year ago today our beautiful baby boy was born. Can you believe it? He has gone from our helpless, "noodle" of a baby to the oh, so mobile and curious toddler in 365 days. Amazing. We had his first party at his Aunt Bunny and Uncle Tom's house in Austin. I made him a birthday banner which we hung on their porch.


And Esten and I slaved over these monkey cupcakes which were homemade carrot cake with maple cream cheese frosting. The face is a ginger snap, the eyes are M&M's, the ears are mini oreos and the nose is chocolate ganache. They were soooo good.

Rowan was impressed with our singing as you can tell.

And he even tried a little bit of the icing. He's still not big on the eating thing and so my mental picture of him covered in icing and having cake all over himself didn't happen. This is what I got.

There was not a shortage of gifts for this little man. He got musical instruments, puzzles, trucks, blocks, a barn with animals, blocks, books, crayons and did I mention blocks? He for some reason loves this little Papa Smurf that John and Jess gave him.

It was a fun day and we had a great time. This past Saturday we had another party for Rowan at the San Antonio Zoo. We invited kids to this one and they all had a blast.
We started off feeding fish and goats. Then the kids got to pet a hedgehog like creature. Here is cousin Mara petting Sophie.
This is Rowan being helped by Daddy, petting Sophie.
Rowan having a second round of happy birthday and a bit of cake afterward.



The rest of the day was spent exploring the zoo. This is a group shot at the end of the day.

Dr. Mason

After many long days and late nights of writing his 200 page dissertation, Esten is officially Dr. Mason. He defended his dissertation last Thursday. His parents came to town and we celebrated with a happy hour and dinner. Now it's crunch time with our packing and preparing for Mexico.

This is Dr. Hays and Esten.



Title Slide from Esten's seminar.

Walking

I think we now have to say that Rowan is walking. It's his primary mode of transportation. I can't believe it. Today was one of his first days to try walking in the grass with his shoes. Here is a video clip of his walking:

Bluesy Ro

I mentioned the Harmonica skills a few posts ago, well...

Happy Belated Halloween

We opted to dress Rowan and stay home this Halloween. Ro handed out candy to a few trick-or-treaters and showed off some unforeseen walking skills to his Grandma and Grandpa. It was like he had been walking for months. But no worries he's back to his falling self again.




We stayed home because we took Rowan to his first Aggie football game. He was tired after all of that excitement. Here is Esten and Ro at the game.



Our packing is getting underway over here. My parents took a trailer and truck full of stuff this weekend and I'm wheeling and dealing on craigslist. Our dresser and bar stools are gone today. Hmmm, what to do with all of the clothes in the dresser...