Update: Megan style

Update time!! Exciting stuff coming your way from the Huff house (not really, but thinking it's exciting is the only way to make it through winter here)! The three of us seem to be managing fine during our first New England winter. Actually it's much more mild than I imagined and since some lady on the news last night said this is the worst winter she's ever seen here, I'm guessing we'll be able to handle it. It's funny because at church/Wal-mart/anywhere we go, people are always asking us how we like New England winters and telling us we'll be tougher after wards. Well...Scott and I don't even wear our coats most of the time, so no, we haven't had a hard time. It is icier, I'll give them that. Oh, and Topher is always bundled up, so there's no child abuse going on :)

Topher is doing pretty good. He's getting so big and his eyes are still blue!! I love that he's awake for more of the day (I just wish he had an easier time taking naps) and he has so much more fun with his toys and books than he used to. He really likes the Indiana Jones Mickey that we bought him when we went to Disneyland this past summer. The stuffed animal is also really smart, keeping Topher from saying things he shouldn't :)




Scott has started Spring Semester at UCONN and isn't extremely busy yet. I say yet because we have some friends who are a year ahead of Scott in the program and they seem to be going crazy, they're so busy. He does have some good classes though and he's enjoyed doing what work he's had.

Note the boxes Craig and Diane. We just barely got them out of the living room. Thanks again for the package!!

Scott will be going to an internship fair soon and then hopefully we'll have a better idea of what our schedules will be like for the next who knows how long! Because he been working hard (or hardly working :), we went to Applebees today for lunch, where we sat and waited and waited for a waiter to come by. This one waiter kept eyeing our table but almost seemed too shy to come over, which was odd. We just stared at him and then left (don't worry, we got food somewhere else so we didn't starve :). Some people are so odd!! Although most people are really nice out here. Including this random guy who seemed to show up out of nowhere at Wendy's earlier this week and started talking to us about Topher. All we have to do is take Topher somewhere and we make lots of friends.

I haven't been up to much lately, just trying to keep up with Topher. He's been sleeping well at night, but I'm still tired all the time. I have a feeling I'll be even more tired soon because we just discovered that he's going to be cutting some teeth any day (that shark video makes more sense now :). I just got called to be the Relief Society pianist and I'm pretty excited about it, although it's interesting that one calling is with young boys and the other is with adult women. Fun times :). Wednesday, Scott had a snow day from UCONN (pretty cool huh?) and it was great to just hang out and talk to another adult!

Sometimes we don't act like adults :)

That's the news for now!! Now maybe I'll go work on a random quirk list too...or chase Topher :).

Quirky Jerky

I'm not usually one to do these sort of things, but where it came from my most devoted commenter, I figured I should oblige. So, here are five of my unspectacular quirks:

1.I can't sleep if my feet aren't covered. It doesn't matter how warm it is, I need my feet covered. I'm pretty sure that it stems from a belief that covering your feet keeps you safe from alien abductions.

2. I have to move a chair, however slightly, before I sit in it. It doesn't matter if I organized the chairs initially, I feel compelled to move it a little before I can sit in it.

3. My method of cleaning the house drives Megan crazy. I tend to make piles and move things around multiple times before they get put in their ultimate resting spot. It works for me, I just need to send Megan out of the room before I start working.

4. When sitting down or sleeping, I have a really hard time if I'm not facing the door. I think this might be related to protection from alien abductions as well.

5. I know everyone thinks it's totally bizarre, but I think the Planet of the Apes poster on top of the blog totally rocks. It's now the wallpaper on my iPod Touch, too.

I'm like Kari and don't like to tag others, but I'm pretty sure Becca would like to do this sort thing, so I'll tag her.

And just in case you don't think that number 5 really counts as a quirk, here is an artist's rendering of what Topher would look like with a big white beard.

Meet me at Big Rock Candy Mountain

Tonight on Fox...

Topher has been exciting us lately by reaching for and grabbing things now.


He has been happy with his new found ability to put whatever he can get his hands on into his mouth. There have been a lot of miss-fires however. He often tends to just get his hand back into his mouth, with whatever he has facing the other way. Also, we've had to start into the "stop pulling that face or it's going to stick like that" a little earlier than we anticipated:


His progress has been something of an inspiration. Given the popularity of our Shark Week promo (4 comments, baby!), we're happy to announce our next special on TNN (the Topher News Network): When Train Wrecks Go Bad. Here's a clip



Don't miss it, Fridays this summer.

Shark Week

Given how morbid our audience is (72% of you would rather be killed by a blunt trauma to the head?!) we thought we'd take the Discovery Channel route to drum up some additional viewers and do our own Shark Week. Here is some raw footage to whet your appetite:



Hope that doesn't give you nightmares.

Question for you:

I don't know if Megan mentioned it or not, but when we arrived home from our trip to Utah, we noticed that we had had a visitor while we were gone. I don't know if this has ever happened to you or not, but I can assure you that the worst way to find out that someone has been in your house is to find their corpse.

Anyway, it was just another mouse that had perished in our mouse cube. When I went to Wal-Mart to buy a new trap (The old one was gross so I just threw it out) I decided that we should probably kill the mice now, as trying to be their friends wasn't working (it's kind of like parenting).

So, I was faced with the question: How would I want to go? My options were a blunt force to the head (which doesn't necessarily kill you immediately. It may leave you crippled and stuck to a slab of wood) or by starvation in a big sticky mess (like the worst episode of Double Dare ever). When I took into account that someone (me) would have to dispose of the body, I ultimately decided to go with the latter, and now I write this as I listen to something stuck and moving around underneath my sink.

Anyway, I added a poll to the side of the blog to get people's thoughts on the matter. And for inspiration, here is a sweet picture of a mouse that I was walking out to the dumpster during the first wave.


And here is a picture of Topher, for the squimish.

Gooooooooooo Huskies!

Sunrise...Sunset

Thursday night, all three of us were surprised when Topher decided he was ready to roll over. Fortunately, he gave an encore after the initial shock subsided:



Since then, however, he has refused to do it again. I suppose its like art where the first attempt always goes better than subsequent attempts (Except for the second time, which sometimes goes pretty good too, in this case). Speaking of art (rocked that segue!), I carved this over the break.


Before this, I had only ever carved faces. Now I carved figures with no faces at all. Kind of makes you think....

As Promised...the End of the Story

Before I finish writing about our trip to Utah, I just have to put up this picture of my sister Becca. Sorry that your pleading fell on deaf ears, Bec, but I think it's a funny picture :).

Look at Amy's face. Hahahahaha.

Ok. On to more serious stuff. While we were in Utah we blessed Topher. It was really special and it meant so much to me that we had family around to share the experience with us.

Two of my sisters: Jenny and Becca. Enjoying their drinks obviously.

Jared and Brenda. They have Scott and I beat for cutest couple in the family :).

Amy, Libby, Marissa, and the twins (sorry Brenda, I'm not sure who is who).

Abby eating from four plates. Just kidding :).

Uncle Mike wouldn't turn his head toward me and then ended up blocking Kari's face as well. We love you both anyway :)

Grandma and Grandpa Averett

Grandpa Huff and Craig (also Grandpa Huff to Topher :).

Grandma and Grandpa Huff

Hannah and Brianna: Same age, different "views" of the world :)

Topher with Dad and Grandma Huff

We loved spending time with family and it was fun to see how Topher's cousins reacted to him. Our nephew, Bryan, when asked if he wanted to see the baby would respond with a resounding "No!" and then move far away from him (this did get better by the time they headed back to Texas). Matt on the other hand, loved playing with Topher and would come over and rub his tummy and get really excited when he smiled. This is Matt telling Topher goodbye:

Topher also had fun with another cousin; they enjoyed hitting each other in the face anyway :)

While in Utah we also got family pictures taken. I'd list everyone, but Topher is starting to fuss so I need to finish this post fast. It was cold and a few people are crying/making weird faces, Topher and Libby, but I think the picture turned out great.

Again, we had a great time in Utah, seeing family and just being able to hang out. All too soon we had to say goodbye though. Topher liked saying goodbye until it came time to give Grandma Curtis a hug. I think it's because he knew he was going to miss her :).





We left Utah County early because there was so much snow and we actually had a great trip until our flight from Vegas to Hartford.



After these pictures were taken, Topher started screaming and wouldn't stop for almost an hour. Nothing we did seemed to help so we (and the people in the seats around us) just sucked it up. It made for a miserable flight. As did the fact that our flight got in an hour late and I ended up being the third to last person to leave the airport. Finally, around 3 in the morning we arrived home. We are now all over our jet lag and crazy sleeping schedules and doing great. Plus, we were able to get all our stuff home from Utah. Thanks for a great holiday everyone! We love you guys!!!

A Grand Return to Blogging...

Hello everyone!!! Boy has it been a while since I last blogged! This is partly because I'm lazy, but mostly because we've been having a rocking time with family and friends in Utah :). This post is just a quick run through of some of the fun we had up through Christmas. After Christmas fun will have to be another post, since we have too many photos for just one. Here we go:

First of all, we spent a lot of time just hanging out with family and friends.

Lazy times at the Curtis home

We also went to the mall. Who doesn't love to go to the mall at Christmastime?

I just thought this picture of Jenny was funny. It almost looks
like she's holding a "will work for earrings" sign.

After some heavy-duty shopping.

All of Topher's Curtis aunts took turns holding him, but he seemed to like Amy best the day this picture was taken. I think it's because she offered him sugar...

We, of course, had some moments of randomness too.

The birds were half off at Wal-mart thanks to the poor economy.

Padre's lucky hat. Unfortunately, nothing can help you win when Amy cheats.

Curtis clan (minus Madre and Becca) playing games a few nights before Christmas.
I love everyone's faces! They probably didn't think they were going on the blog...

Topher was lucky enough to meet his great (freaking awesome) aunts!

Alison and Topher. Look like twins don't they?

Linnea tried to get Topher to look her way, but at the first mention of Ute
football, he wasn't interested.

We spent time at Scott's house too, where we were entertained by Santa Dog :)

Christmas Eve we went to see Christmas lights, ate an insane amount of tacos, visited with family, wore new pajamas, and watched my sisters do the nativity.






Christmas morning we were up bright and early. Scott couldn't sleep well Christmas Eve (he claimed he wasn't feeling well, but I know he was really excited for Santa :) and so we ended up opening presents with Topher at 5:oo in the morning.

Topher didn't even pretend to care that Santa had come.

Then it was on to the Curtis home for a plethera of presents, the opening of which Topher slept through entirely. Sleeping through that amount of screaming has to be a talent!

Matt and Bry helped Zach play Santa. They also helped me open some presents.
Thanks boys!!

After Christmas the boys enjoyed playing Rock Band for hours. Some good male bonding went on during songs such as "Carry On My Wayward Son."

Scott with my brothers, Zach and Jared. Scott loved playing the drums so if this whole
therapist/teacher thing doesn't work out I think we have a back-up plan.

Well this was just the start. We also had a ton of fun with Scott's family (pictures to come!) and other exciting events that will have to be part of the next post. All in all, we had a great time in Utah and we love and miss everyone there!!!