September News and Updates

Gosh, September has just come and gone. We had Owen's birthday party at the end of August, September flew in and went by in a flash! During the month of September, Owen experienced his first high temperature, ear infection and pink eye (in both eyes) all at the same time! Needless to say, Dave and I also got wind of his illness and took weeks to recuperate....I still have a lingering cough and scratchy voice. Here is a picture of Owen before we realized he had pink eye. Owen has also given up bouncing in his jumper. He'd much rather walk around and get himself into all kinds of trouble!

Owen has also mastered walking! He still trips over his feet on occasion, and stumbles a lot when he's tired, but he's pretty much given up crawling!



Self explanatory-Owen getting goofy with his spoon! Another evening after a hard day of day care....first time he had ever fallen asleep in the highchair.






Owen is just about as excited to move as we are! We didn't even have to ask him for his help when we started packing up our books. He just started tossing in books! What a great helper! We can hire him out for a fee! :)



Here's Owen and Addie (and Addie's mom, Joanna). The two tykes seemed to get along fabulously. Owen has always been drawn to cute, older girls, and Addie definitely fits the bill! Joanna is a friend of Dave's from High School. Joanna, her husband, Dennis, and Addie, along with another high school friend, Kjell and his wife Lisa were over for lunch today. Owen couldn't believe it when everybody left him. He had so much fun playing with everyone....he cried for quite a while.

We are certainly getting anxious to get out of our apartment. The more mobile Owen gets, the more we wish we could plunk him down in our huge back yard under the enormous oak tree and watch him run around! Certainly can't do that on the corner of our 2 super-busy streets!

Power walker!

http://media.putfile.com/Owen-walking

Above is the link to our video of Owen walking. Shortly before his 1st birthday, Owen decided to take a few steps all on his own. In a short 2 or 3 weeks he has officially graduated into being a regular walker. He still prefers to walk barefoot over wearing his sneakers. (even outside) I guess it won't be an issue until it gets cold!

Owen had just gotten over his cold after his birthday party when he decided to catch another one. This time it seems to be lingering quite a bit longer, and the cough is even cruddier. He also very graciously "gave" it to me! Luckily, Dave hasn't come down with a cough or sniffles. Last night I made my first "late night run" (3 AM) to pick up some cough syrup. Owen woke up, started hacking and just couldn't get back to sleep without his cough waking him back up. Needless to say, Dave and I are both a little short on sleep....so I should sign off and go to bed!

Birthday Boy!

Well, my pictures didn't get posted in the order I thought they would.....we celebrated Owen's 1st Birthday at our apartment, and for a while (before it started to rain) we were at Elmwood Park.
Owen's Grandpa Hudson, looking mighty spiffy in his birthday hat!

Owen seems to be enjoying stuffing his face with the Dr. Seuss Birthday cake!
Opening a few presents....
Grandmas Spiehs, Hudson, Owen and Mommy walking over to the playground area.
Owen received two big gifts from his mom and dad: 1. a pair of shoes (which he doesn't really like to wear and 2. a house of his own to live it! (we hope he likes the house better than his shoes!)

Owen is just getting over his cold, which is why you don't really see him smiling very much...

Homeowners!

As you can see I've posted pictures of a house and its yard. From the title of today's blog, I assume you've figured out that we're homeowners. Well, pretty close to being homewoners. We have the house, termite and radon inspection on Monday; our official closing date won't be until middle or late September...and then the fun of moving will begin. We'll finally have a house to call home. It will be ours, all ours...we will be able to do whatever we want and not worry about not getting our damage deposit back from a landlord!






We think it's a pretty nice house, lots of landscaping (and garden) potential. It sits on about one-third of an acre, so there's plenty of room for a garage/shop for Dave. Lots of room for the kids to run around in, and if they don't think there's enough room, they can run across the street to the park.

New pics and video

The picture on the top is of Owen's bathtime.
Video of Owen's bathtime:
http://media.putfile.com/Owens-July-Bath

Picture on the bottom is Owen's first trip to the pool. He didn't like it very much since the water was a bit ont he cold side. Went back a week or two later after 100 degree weather and he enjoyed it much more!

Long time, no posting...we're still around!

I'm enjoying a nice quiet Sunday morning while the boys are napping. Instead of picking up the living room, washing the huge stack of dishes in the sink or even fold clothes I decided to take a few minutes and put up a new post and pictures.

Here are some pictures from Early July. We celebrated our neice's 1st birthday! Hannah and Owen played pretty well together. You can see that Owen is enjoying stuffing his face with a birthday cupcake! We didn't quite get Hannah's cupcake in the picture above, but it's there. It''s so hard to believe that a year has gone by and how much has changed. Owen will turn one August 26th, our lives are soo different.

We had a rather surprising surprise in May. Turns out that Owen will be getting a little brother or sister for Christmas! I'm about 18 weeks into the pregnancy, so I had to go get the box of maternity clothes out of storage about 2 weeks ago. (Seems like not too long ago that I put them away!) The 20-week appointment when they do the ultra-sound is coming up, and we've decided that we are going to go ahead and find out what kind of bun is in the oven this time. Since we're planning on buying a house soon, we'll be able to plan ahead and get a nursery put together that doesn't have to be shared with the computer and office stuff. Hopefully each child can have their own room and not share with the computer!

I've been working at Sylvan Learning Center for about a month now. I work whenever they're open for tutoring. So when Dave comes home from his work, I hand Owen off to him, give him the details of how our day went and off I go until 8 or 9. With me working part-time, that doesn't leave a lot of free time to look for houses, but somehow we've managed to look at quite a few. We even made an offer on one down in Springfield, and went back and forth a few times with the bid, but the owners seemed unwilling to negotiate very much...so we're still looking.

Dave's 1960 Cadillac Sedan DeVille is up for bid on Ebay. We're trying to downsize our "stuff" and hopefully make a profit as well. It will be up for bid until Tuesday...Aug 1st.

I can't think of anything else that's new and exciting to report on. There's more pictures and a video that I'll try to get posted.

Owen, the Traveler

New video of Owen--he is crawling:
http://www.putfile.com/3hudsons

Owen has been quite the traveler, lately! Last week he spent 2 1/2 days in Phillips with me and the Spiehs grandparents. On Sunday, Dave picked him up and continued west to Gothenburg so they could spend a few days with the Hudson grandparents.

Since returning home, Owen has mastered the art of crawling! He also, just today, figured out how to get to a sitting position from laying on his tummy!

The pictures were all taken in Gothenburg, with the exception of Owen in the Cadillac. Currently, the 1960 Sedan de Ville Cadillac is being stored in Grand Island. We are looking for interested buyers....

Sons of Tupelo Reunion

We had one crazy, hectic week! Dave and I had been looking forward to seeing old college friends May 30-31. To start the week, our family pictures were taken last Sunday, the 28th of May. Owen was a total ham, the more people that came into the office to see what was going on, the more sillier he got! Monday was the start of a very busy week.

To prepare for our venturing guests (Brother Memphis and the Colonel), on Monday we cleaned the house. Dave (Brother Cadillac) also made some homemade ice cream (banana-walnut); as well as putting together his ribs to cook Wed. We were supposed to get our first guest in the middle of the night on Monday, but when we woke on Tues morning to see if Santa had arrived, we were so sad to see that his bed (futon) had not been slept in. Chad had to do some extra stuff at work, so he would be arriving later that afternoon.

About noon on Tuesday, Bill and Amy Rinehart concluded their long journey from Ohio by meeting us at Valentino's. I have to say that Owen was much more interested in flirting with the waitresses and waving at complete strangers than conversing with our guests. We all (the Rineharts, Plambeck and the Hudsons) finally met up at our place for a fun afternoon of playing catch with Owen. Later on we hit an Omaha Royals game. After the game, the boys and Amy played video games, watched movies and in general stayed up way too late for their own good. I, of course, had to stay at home so someone could be there when Owen wakes up in the morning.

Wednesday, everybody's dragging their behinds, looking pretty ragged; especially Bill! Dave stays home to take a nap with Owen, while the rest of us hit the Old Market in search of nothing.

Wednesday afternoon was also Owen's 9-month check up! Here's his stats: weight: 24 pounds (93rd %), height: 31 1/2 inches (off the chart %), head circumference 47.9 cm (also off the chart %). So he's healthy as a horse and growing like a weed!

Family Pictures

We finally had a chance to get our family pictures taken.

Mustang Video

http://www.putfile.com/3hudsons

Above is the link to our video webpage. Dave took a short video of the latest work on the rear-quarter panel of his 1966 Mustang.

New Teeth!

Owen finally cut through one of his top teeth, the second top tooth will shortly be through. He got his first bottom teeth along time ago....around Valentine's Day, so we were wondering when the rest were ever going to pop through! Here they come!

Family Visit

Owen and his cousin, Hannah, had a good visit Friday and Saturday. Owen watched Hannah crawl circles around him and climb up stairs! It was so funny to watch him watch Hannah as she crawled and got closer, he'd reach out as if to say, "slow down and stop to play with me." But, the excellent crawler that she is, she wizzed on past to go investigate a toy on the other side of the room. In the pictures you can see they made some good sounding music at the piano, and Hannah "tagged along" for the ride behind Owen in his scooter.

New Video

Here's the link to our putfile.com account where you can view our home videos. The two new ones are "Bouncer" and "Barn Tipper."

http://www.putfile.com/3hudsons

A Trip to the Park

Today we walked down to Elmwood Park (about a mile each way). Owen had his first "swing" in a swing and trip down a few slides.

It's April, already?

Got diapers? Owen's new playpen....he likes to purposefully tip it over and squirm his way out!
This cute gal is Julia Dahlke. She's the daughter of Josh and Laura Dahlke...

I can't believe that it's April! We've had snow, thunderstorms and hail! The spring-like weather has definately altered our sleep. With longer periods of sunshine, I feel more like staying up and soaking in all the rays! However, since I'm never sure when my natural "little alarm clock" is going to sound, going to bed at a reasonable hour just doesn't seem like much fun.

Speaking of my "natural little alarm clock...." I think Owen is part rooster. Last week he decided he needed to start his day anywhere between 3 - 5 AM. His entire sleep schedule got off kilter when he was sick last month. (A cold turned into sinus infection, plus about 4 days of diarrhea). His sniffles are gone, but the icky wet sounding cough still hangs on. We're slowly getting back on the sleep schedule.

Another day, another diaper....

So I haven't blogged in a while....sorry! Here's a quick update: Owen's had a cold, then a few days of diarrhea, and then back to recuperating from his cold. I've been on a quest for size 12-month PJ's and there's none to be found. Haven't checked around on E-bay yet, but that's my next stop. Even though tomorrow is officially Spring, it decided to snow here in Omaha, and the nights are still cold; therefore warm pj's that fit are a must.

Hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to take him outside for a little walk in the snow...maybe a picture or two!

Another day, another diaper....

So I haven't blogged in a while....sorry! Here's a quick update: Owen's had a cold, then a few days of diarrhea, and then back to recuperating from his cold. I've been on a quest for size 12-month PJ's and there's none to be found. Haven't checked around on E-bay yet, but that's my next stop. Even though tomorrow is officially Spring, it decided to snow here in Omaha, and the nights are still cold; therefore warm pj's that fit are a must.

Hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to take him outside for a little walk in the snow...maybe a picture or two!

6 months!

Here are Owen's 6-month stats: weight: 20 pounds, 8 ounces (95%) height: 28 3/4 inches (97%) head circumference: 46 cm (97%) As you can see, he's the image of health. Dave and I reflect upon Owen's changes almost daily. We are truly amazed at the changes in him over the past 6 months. We marvel at each new thing he discovers or attempts to do himself.

Grandparents visit!

This weekend Owen had a wonderful time visiting with his grandparents from Gothenburg. Dan and Karen were in Omaha late Sunday afternoon and most of Monday. Owen had fun showingoff his tongue and babbling skills! Dan and Dave adjusted the rear differential spacer with a hammer and put in a new rear differential pinnion seal. Tough job without a hoist, but they got it done. Karen helped out by taking care of Owen so I could make calls and check out different Day Care places. One would think it wouldn't be too difficult to find a respectful place with loving people to take care of your child (which also doesn't cost an arm and a leg), but it turned out to be much more difficult than we thought. I think I found a more suitable place for Owen to spend his Fridays and then continue on next year when I go back to work fulltime.

Yeah for Grandparents!

Two monkies

Two little monkies picking their teeth and scratching their heads.

Owen the Tiger Tamer!

Today, our living room was under attack by Moo Goo Gai Pan, our pet tiger, who was at one point tame. As you can see, Owen was very brave in his efforts to wrestle him! The tiger is now back under control!