Happy Corrected Birthday!

No need for lots of words, one year ago today was my due date. Here's our perfect little man...

Happy Corrected 1st Birthday Chase!!

Daddy's Favorite

Many of you know that my husband has a "small" obsession with Stone Brewery out in Cali.

A few years ago Jason was out in San Diego for a business trip, he stumbled upon Stone, and has never looked back. He likes to fancy himself as a craft beer connoisseur and over the years has amassed quite a collection of bomber bottles. He will never let me live down the fact that while he was on a business trip I drank his last bottle of '08 Russian Imperial Stout, and I will never let him forget that a keg of Arrogant Bastard=bad news for drinking games. I've been fortunate enough to visit Jas out in San Diego a few times, and I too am now a Stone fan. Not only are the brews awesome, the gardens are beautiful, and the food at the bistro is ridiculous. Since I was preggers last time we were there, and I couldn't partake in the tastings after our brewery tour(they were generous enough to allow Jas my samples-after all he had a designated driver!), I made sure I had my fill of the duck tacos and some of their other offerings.

Jas follows Stone on Twitter, and I'm pretty sure the day they announced that they were building a hotel across from the brewery he called me at work. Jason's passion for Stone rivals my passion for food. Around times for several of their seasonal releases he asks me to stop and check to see if local stores have received shipments. Each time I bought a six pack of Oaked Arrogant Bastard(one of his faves), the guy behind the counter would say, "Do you know how much this costs?" and my response was always "Yes, and do you know my husband is always the one buying it!" I'm not going to lie, I don't love hoppy beers, I'm more of a porter or stout girl myself, frankly Jas is just happy that its not Miller Lite.

Okay, I know I should not be promoting drinking on our family blog, but it is what it is. Here are some pictures to prove it....

Chase's onesie says "My Daddy is an Arrogant Bastard", Jas has a Stone t-shirt on, and yes that is an actual bottle of beer. Just an FYI-Chase is not allowed to be seen by anyone other than our friends and family in this onesie.

It's not that I'm not proud that our family are Stone fans, I just don't feel like explaining it to everyone.....

More Birthday Celebrations!

Since as usual I'm backlogged on posts, I'm going to combine all of August's birthday celebrations. Just the other night we watched the Seinfeld episode where Elaine's office had cake and celebrations for everything and she was getting a little full of it all. I couldn't help empathize with her. After this month we are feeling a little caked-out and quite stuffed to say the least. I just took pictures of the camera, and since the beginning of August I've taken 247 shots. I even forgot my camera the day we had a playdate with my roommates from college and their adorable little girls!

Birthday weekend in Ocean City

Yummy-this sand tastes wonderful

Mr. Serious

MomMom and PopPop

Happy Birthday PopPop!

It was so nice that even Mommy went in the water!

Hanging with daddy and my uncles after an afternoon of surfing

PopPop I still don't like the water! Good thing you had your shirt on, cuz otherwise I'd been yanking your chest hair out!

A little mad at PopPop right now

Unfortunately I didn't get a family shot until after Chase's bedtime. Jenna, Pat, Mommy, Bill, Daddy, Chris, Julie, Keith, Lee, MomMom, PopPop, and of course nosy Socks!

Happy Birthday Uncle Pat and PopPop, and of course Happy Birthday to Uncle Timmy in Wales!

On to our next party. We had cake at our house for GiGi's 85th Birthday!

Doesn't she look awesome? Chase stayed up a little past his bedtime to have some cake. No- we aren't those parents that prohibit sugar! Only special occasions for cake though:)

Yay it's Gigi's birthday! And people are holding my nighttime bottle right behind the camera! I am clapping to sign "more".

Here's looking forward to many more birthday celebrations with everyone. Gotta get ready for more cake- we have another five birthdays in September!

Finally A Family Recap

Finally I have a few moments to post about our Swanson family visit! It's been years since Jas' dad, stepmom, and half sister have been to the East Coast so we wanted to cram in as many things as possible during their 11 day visit. The first stop after leaving the airport was of course for some good "real" Philly cheesesteaks, and from then on the eating and travels continued! I brought Berger cookies up from Baltimore, and we made sure we had lots of Tastykakes in the house since they can't get them in New Mexico. We needed plenty of sugar to keep us going for all of our planned day trips:) I didn't load the pictures in order so I'm just going do a running commentary....

One of the last nights we headed to see a Phillies game. It rained for a while, and they lost, but we still had a blast.

The fireworks over the stadium were awesome. I'm not great at taking pictures at night, but I think some of these shots turned out surprisingly well.

Jordan and Jas sharing some sibling bonding:)

Not the best seats, but it was a good time.

We tried to get the ice cream with "jimmies" served in a phillies cap in the shot.

Next, on to the family dinner. This was the first time all of the Swanson's were together in years.

Sorry I couldn't resist. You can't really tell, but Chase is screaming his head off. He isn't a fan of the big pool.

Bob, Greg, Debbie, Kenny, and Bruce

Swanson family shot

Chase was unfortunately mesmerized by a fan on the neighbor's roof, so we couldn't get very many good shots!

Clearly I stick out a little in this picture. Years ago when I thought it was a good idea to get blond highlights, I would have fit in a little better. I now look back at pictures and wonder what I was thinking. It looked terrible.

Family and a few friends thrown in!

Oh, and Chase decided he liked the baby pool that day!

On to the aquarium! I personally think this one is so much better than the one in Baltimore. Chase was still too young to enjoy the touch tanks but he loved looking at all of the fish and of course, banging on the glass.

Clearly he would rather be crawling around, and I wasn't allowing it.

Learning with daddy

Jellies, my best shot of the day!

Hamming it up

Hanging with grandpa

Off to the beach! This time Chase actually enjoyed the sand. Thank goodness, because mommy and daddy grew up going to the beach with their families and we want to share this with him.

Hanging with his second cousin Gavin. Chase is a few months older, but still looks like a peanut.

Still not a fan of the hat

He looks thrilled right? They renovated the playground up the street from my grandparents house, but left some of the old equipment. I used to play on these horses all the time when I was little. As I took this picture I couldn't help but think that that probably was lead paint-Yikes!

Visits from family are always too short. This one especially because it was the first time Chase met Grandpa Bob, Grandma Lisa, and Aunt Jordan. In fact, it was the first time I'd ever met Lisa and Jordan as well, and I only had the opportunity to spend a short time with Bob during our wedding years ago. Busy schedules and thousands of miles kept pushing this trip back. We'd like to make a point to not have that much time pass between our next time together. Family should take precedence over everything! We miss you guys already!

Checkup and Milestones

Chase had one last appointment with his pediatrician in Baltimore. We were super sad to say goodbye, after all we've spent a lot of time with doctors over the past year. I am proud to report that he is finally on the bottom of the 12-month old chart for his weight! He is now 20lbs and over 29 in. long. Besides receiving the another round of vaccinations and reviewing Chase's developmental milestones the appt. was relatively routine. Well not so uneventful for Chase, double shots for the little man is painful for Mama as well!

Since his well baby checkup I am happy to share that Chase has made even more progress.

Here's a rundown...

Chase is growing fast and continues to love to eat-some of his favorites are guacamole, chicken, pork tenderloin, string cheese, asparagus, broccoli, ground buffalo, wheat bread, any kind fruit or cereal and of course black and white milkshakes. Oh, and with MomMom and PopPop H he regularly eats french toast from Cracker Barrel. No wonder why he's catching up on the weight chart:) Yay for our little foodie! To ask for "more" to eat we worked on teaching Chase sign language. At first he just laughed at us and then yelled to get what he wanted, but now I am happy to report he will clap if he wants more of something. Its been great-except that is, when you aren't getting the food to him fast enough. Again he'll starting yelling, not screaming or crying, just vocalizing loudly. Needless to say, eating out just got a bit more difficult.

Our "Nut-Nut" also continues to be a madman doing laps around the house. He gets into everything and some days could care less about his toys. He has always been fascinated with technology and is even trying to figure out how things work. On a daily basis he turns on the PS3, "types" on the laptop, and sometimes sets the DVR. After getting bored downstairs he now also ventures up the steps with lightning speed. Although he still isn't walking unassisted he navigates quite proficiently between furniture and loves walking while pushing his car, tricycle, or stroller. He does fine until he hits a wall and can't figure out how to turn around, so then he just yells until you help him.

The little man is also quite chatty these days! We still can't get him to say Mama or Dada directed toward us(probably because we are constantly trying to do this), he does however make a woo(f) sound when he sees Summer. Although he still says ba-ba for lots of things he has started saying it when he gets his bottle at night before bed. "Vroom" is still car, and he loves babbling throughout the day. He now tries to imitate more sounds and actions, and it is hilarious to watch him try to figure out what you are doing. Chase could spend most of the day putting things in containers and taking them out, and now that he knows how to turn on quite a few of his toys it gets a little overstimulating in his room some days. He has a new toy that is like "Whack a Mole" and that in combination with the air popper has Summer going crazy with all of the balls. I will say that she has behaved and not destroyed any since his birthday:)

Each day Chase comes up with something new, and its truly awesome. Its also neat to see what he learns while he's staying at MomMom and PopPops' houses. One day my mom told him to "blow" to turn the ceiling fan on. Now anytime he is in a room with a fan or lamp he thinks if he blows at it that it will turn on. Its pretty cute, and he gets an absolute kick out of it. All his new skills are incredible, we are not looking forward to that walking piece-I know its any day now!

4th of July

The sirens were blaring so Chase wasn't thrilled to pose for this family photo

I know this was a month ago, but I wanted to share Chase's second 4th of July. Last year we dressed him up in the NICU, but he couldn't really celebrate. So this year a parade was in order! We went to see our friend's dad a retired police chief ride in the parade with his motorcycle club. Despite the heat we had a great time:)