What does your Valentine's Day heart look like?

Here are mine and Reed's.


May you all see plenty of the faces that you love!
Happy Valentine's Day!

Future Firefighters

Last week our preschool group took a trip to the fire station. The fire fighters were great and gave the kids a tour of the fire house and then let them climb inside their huge ladder truck. The kids all had a good time---even my little boy who thinks he's a big boy sometimes.




Reed and his favorite playmate Sophia. (Reed sporting his latest "smile")
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What would a trip to the fire house be without a quick taste of the truck?

Look who's walking...and kicking

WARNING: The following video is longer than I would personally watch if I saw it on someone else's blog. Feel free to turn it off after a few seconds of watching. We promise we won't be offended. Better yet--we won't even know! We'll post shorter videos as soon as we figure out how to edit them.

Max trying to make Mao (and Ashley and Sunny) proud:

Happy Birthday Max!

Our little baby is now a one-year-old! This year as flown and we absolutely could not imagine our family without him. Max was sick on his birthday so we saved our little celebration for today.

Wonderful Christmas---take our word for it.

We had a wonderfully low-key Christmas this year. We just stayed home and enjoyed the excitement of the morning and played with our little boys all day. We might have been a little too low-key  since we didn't take a single picture on Christmas Day. In fact, these pictures from Christmas Sunday are the best we have. We did videotape Christmas morning so it wasn't a total miss. Next year year we'll be sure to snap a few photos as well.

The day after Christmas Max took his first 3 steps. He's not a "walker" yet, but he's on his way.

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Christmas in NYC

This month has been so crazy that blogging hasn't come anywhere near the top of my to-do list in the past few weeks. We've been home from our trip to NY for 2 weeks, but it was such a great trip that I just can't skip it. I've always wanted to visit NYC during Christmas time and now that my sister Whitney and her husband Matt are living there the timing was perfect. We enjoyed visiting with them for week and got to do all of the Christmas things I've always wanted to.


It was freezing, but checking out the tree at Rockefeller Plaza was worth it.


I knew it was cold when Max stopped trying to take his gloves off.


The subway actually worked out great for getting us everywhere we wanted to go. Reed loved it and attempted to make friends of strangers on every ride. A combination of invading personal space and using sign language worked pretty well for him and kept him happy and busy while we traveled.

Matt and Whitney took us to Max Brenner's, a restaurant where chocolate is used in pretty much every dish and dessert. The kid's menu actually featured a syringe of chocolate as one of the options. Reed was in heaven.


Ice Skating at Bryant Park with Reed was one of the highlights. As this blurry picture shows, Sam and Reed flew around the rink together.


Being out in the city was wonderful, but so was staying inside. One evening we made a gingerbread house. Reed was so proud of our messy work.



This is not a wonderful picture of us, but the view from their apartment was too beautiful to not include.

Reed Dickson, Attorney at Law

We're currently trying to figure out what Christmas in New York is all about, so pictures will be forthcoming, but before we get to that I thought I'd share a quick story about Reed.

The story starts with an evil police officer giving Lindsay a speeding ticket even though she had done nothing wrong (the details of the speeding ticket are unimportant, but if you must know she was driving at about the speed limit for the rest of the road but a police officer was lying in wait about a half a mile up the road clocking people coming out of a curve where the speed limit is 10 mph lower).

We have learned that it is always best to go to court when you get a ticket since they will usually reduce the penalty if you do, even if you don't have any representation.  Lindsay brought Reed to represent her (Max was there too, but she only brought him in order to be able to discreetly work out her arm muscles).

Reed was fascinated by the whole experience.  When they were inside the courtroom he kept asking Lindsay which one was the judge, and she pointed out to him a youngish black woman seated at the highest seat with a black robe on.  She described her to me as a nice lady with a no nonsense attitude--she didn't hesitate to tell people exactly what she thought of them or the situation they had created for themselves.

When it was finally their turn to appear before the judge, Reed grabbed the citation and ran up to the bench waving it.  The judge took the ticket and asked, "What's this?"  Lindsay said, "It's the ticket.  I'm sorry."  After she looked at the ticket, it was returned to Reed and he turned to run back to Lindsay, but tripped.  People throughout the courtroom chuckled and Reed dashed behind the podium where Lindsay was standing.

The judge then asked Lindsay, "How do you plead?" and Lindsay told her, "Guilty." Then the judge smiled at Reed and asked, "Are you Mom's helper today?" Reed nodded and said, "Yes." She was very nice to Reed, and I hope he broke up the tedium of the day for her.  After a brief pause she told Lindsay, "Oh just go." Lindsay thanked her profusely then took the kids and left the courtroom before the judge could change her mind. The case was dismissed thanks to the help of our little lawyer.

If anyone needs legal help, Reed has plenty of availability, except for mornings on Mondays and Wednesdays--that's when he has preschool.