Let Jake eat cake!

, originally uploaded by ben.truitt.

Jake -

Although you won't officially be a year old until Thursday afternoon, we had a birthday party for you on Sunday. Click the picture with this post to see the rest of the set in Flickr.
Your aunt Cathy and her boyfriend Steve flew in from DC and we had a fantastic weekend showing them around Hartford.
You had a stupendous birthday party and especially liked the cake, I think. It seems like you were just waiting for a reason to act like a big kid, because this weekend you started to point at objects, you started to hand me legos and help me to construct lego castles and you started laughing at Pixar animated short films. What a remarkable kiddo you are.
Love,
Dad

Yankees Fan?

Yankees Fan, originally uploaded by ben.truitt.

Jacob,
On Independence Day, we took the "game train" to New York to watch the Yankees play against the Blue Jays with your uncle Jim. You seemed to like baseball, but you refused to wear your new Yankees cap for more than 10 seconds at a time. Are you trying to signal that you are a Red Sox fan, perhaps? Click the picture to see some more shots from our outing.

-Dad

Our House

, originally uploaded by ben.truitt.

Jacob -
Well your slacker parents have finally gotten around to taking some pictures of our new house. You can click on the picture above to see the rest of the set.

A couple of notes - your room is incomplete because we're waiting on your new crib to arrive, and your parent's room is excluded for the safety of the eyes of your fans (eyes which would otherwise be scalded by the sight of the mess contained therein).

-Papa

Power Outage

, originally uploaded by ben.truitt.

Jacob -
This weekend our adventure in Hartford became even more interesting. On Friday afternoon a severe thunderstorm blew through the area with 75 mph winds and nickle-sized hail. In cities throughout Connecticut, the high winds, coupled with more than a solid two weeks of rain meant that many large trees were toppled. About one block from our house, a large tree fell on some power lines that serve our neighborhood. Because of this, we were without power for about 43 hours. We are happy to have light again, and more importantly, Internet connectivity. :) It turns out that we are pretty deeply dependent on power. Sad, yes, but unimpeachably true. Love,
Dad

Picnic Playtime

Picnic Playtime, originally uploaded by ben.truitt.

Jake,
Partway along our trip to Connecticut, we stopped by Washington DC to hang out with some family. We had a fantastic dinner at a very nice restaurant with your aunts Sandy and Cathy, Steve, Lindsay and her sister Emily, and Nicole and her husband. It was a great meal, but what you liked even better was the subway ride to get there and back from Cathy's house. It was your first time on a subway and you thought it was great stuff...although you totally broke the rule about no eye contact by flirting with all of the girls on the train. The next morning, we had a late breakfast with your aunts, then drove across town to your cousin Emmy's house, where you played for several hours (unfortunately we narrowly missed seeing Sam, who was on an airplane during our visit). After playing in the front yard at the Brown's house for a while, we walked to a nearby park where you and Emmy played. We got some good pictures of the whole thing, which you can find here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/benvolio/sets/72157620154235404/. So this is my last post for the night. I have to get to bed because I start work tomorrow for the first time in about a month. Vacation has been great, but you, your mom, and I have not had much time to relax during our time here in Hartford so far. But that is a story for another night.
Dad

The Journey

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Jacob,

 So after we packed the house, the movers came and loaded it all into a truck and hauled it away. We weren't to see our massive collection of furniture, toys and (predominately) junk for two weeks.

 Left with an empty house, we attached a uhaul trailer to the pickup truck, and loaded your mom's car onto it. That sentence makes it sound as though it was easy to accomplish the trailer hookup and loading. It was not. Our family will be forever indebted to the Kohls for Matt's help in getting loaded safely.

 So car hooked up, and dogs in back, we said our tearful goodbyes to our friends in San Antonio and began the 2000+ mile journey from San Antonio, TX to Hartford, CT.
We decided to give ourselves an extra day (for a total of four days) so that we could enjoy the drive, and have plenty of time to stop and play with you and the dogs at rest stops along our route. It is a good thing we decided to do so, because we ended up arriving in West Hartford within 30 seconds of our scheduled appointment time, and that was with us pushing hard the whole way.
(I'm not kidding about that 30 second thing, either - it was kind of awesome).

 You did extremely well on the trip, but by the end of it you were finding increasingly creative ways to avoid being put back into your car seat at the start of each leg of the journey. 

 Our slow progress was partly due to the fact that we were limited to a top speed of 60 mph with the trailer. We also managed to sqeeze in a few fun stops along the way. Notably, we stopped in DC to see your aunties Sandy and Cathy, and to see your cousin Emmy.

 But that is a story for another post.

-Dad

Graduation Pics

DSC_0210.jpg, originally uploaded by ben.truitt.

Hey Jake,
I forgot to mention, you can see more photos of your Mom's graduation here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/benvolio/sets/72157618750278808/
-Dad