Thursday, November 26, 2009

Thanksgiving the First: Early Turkey Day with the Chicago Sobczaks

...Well i suppose they technically aren't the Chicago Sobczaks anymore - they belong to the outlying small towns of the Chicago area.

But still! Grace and I had a thought a month or two ago to take Adam on his very first plane ride to visit our Sobczak relatives up north in Illinois where he could meet, among others, his great-grandfather and great-grandmother.

As our schedule happened to work out, the week before Thanksgiving was our best option - happily, due to my Uncle Jim and cousin Mary C. having to work during the actual Thanksgiving weekend, they were planning to have their Thanksgiving meal during the weekend of our visit. Double helpings of cranberry sauce this year!

Our little piece of the Sobczak clan had a great time; Adam was terrific on the plane both in departure and return - spent most of his time either snacking, napping, or playing and garnering a few compliments about his temperament in the process from (relieved, i'm sure) nearby passengers.

It brought smiles to our faces to see everyone: Uncle Jim, Aunt Mary, cousin Mary C. (not too far from having her own little Sobczak soon!), her husband Jack, cousin Joe and his wife Ania, cousin Jim and his children Andrew and Rebecca (wife Renee regrettably absent due to a seasonal cold) and, of course, Grandpa Al and Grandma Lu.

I've posted pictures and video below of our quick weekend trip: enjoy!















































Monday, November 16, 2009

My grievances. Which are grammar-related.

is there someone out there in my vast blog readership who has a background in the world of journalism or is well-versed enough on the rules of print who can explain what i seem to find time and time again when i read my weekly subscription of Time magazine:

a small excerpt from an article discussing the future of the US dollar -

"There's widespread agreement that this setup has to change but little agreement about how to change it. Which is a risky situation."

this always looks wrong to me when i read it, most likely due to the educators of my youth advising us all against the horrors of fragment sentences. have the rules been relaxed since i left school or is this some special exception granted to the news world?

"I wanted to find the answers to my grammatical questions and I searched everywhere. But I found nothing"

just seems like you could bust out some compound sentencing up there and make it flow easier on the eyes.

Monday, November 09, 2009

men be acting like zombies at the mall

we had a little family trip to the Galleria mall this weekend for some bits of casualwear/workwear shopping, our first with Adam (not counting when he was in utero), and our trip convinced us of one thing:

You don't really notice the great masses of stroller people at the mall until you become one of the stroller people.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Belated Happy Halloween - Oct 31

never fear, Super Grover is here! gotta love a company that lets their employees dress up on a workday and drink booze on company premises starting at noon.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Adam's October : Halloween and 5 1/2 months

October found Adam extremely busy - continuing to perfect his rolling-over technique as well as adding the newly acquired sitting and 'inchworm' crawling moves. he took up eating rice cereal and in a sometimes related and messy note also figured out how to make the universally loved "pbbbbtttttt" sound.

our good friends Steven and Lauren made the trip all the way from Austin to spend some time with the little guy and he was eager to please with smiles, laughs and generally being a happy baby who slept well for his guests in the bedroom next door. we all took a trip down to Galveston to walk the Strand and a bit of the seawall as well and finished up the weekend with a trip to Chinatown for some delicious dim sum lunch.

November should be an increasingly mobile month for Adam Ant and Grace and I look forward to getting our exercise trying to keep up with him

UPDATE: forgot to add that Adam had a photo session in his first ever Halloween costume which his 'uncle' Rich, for those of you video gamers out there, aptly titled the Super Monkey Ball outfit.