grandparents, coughing, and a weekend roadtrip

March has been pretty crazy.  We just wrapped up about a month of visitors, which has been nice if a little hectic.  Unfortunately, Sam and Cal were dealing with viruses of various description for a lot of the month, and snot and coughing don't make for really fantastic photo opportunities.  Sam's parents got the short end of the stick on that one, and it was nice to have the help while Sam was feeling like crap but we didn't get to go and do a whole lot.  We did have a nice time visiting with family while they were here though (Cal's early birthday pics, below).  Sam, her dad and Cal went to Wales for a weekend while they were here but incredibly didn't take any pictures.  (I know, it's insane).

Toward the tail end of my parent's week here, Sam started feeling a little better and we took a short road trip to Wiltshire.  We saw Stonehenge on the equinox, when they open it up for a few hours around sunrise so that you can walk right up to the stones instead of just walking around.  That was pretty awesome.  We also headed down to the coast and toured the mightily impressive HMS Victory, Lord Nelson's flagship during the Battle of Trafalgar.  We also saw some Cathedrals. 

So, to sum up March so far: lots of visitors, visiting with family (all of us), lots of sneezing (Sam and Cal), a few bonks on the head (Cal and Nick), only one weekend where we really went and saw anything touristy.  We took a lot of pictures that weekend though, and they are here.  Here's a sampling.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Sorry we've been on a blogging hiatus.  We're still in the midst of our hosting duties.  We'll catch up soon!

wait a second, could it be?

One year ago today, Calvin surprised us all with a dramatic appearance.  Right away we knew for sure that we'd just added one more guy to our wolf pack.  Three of us Moeckels, running and crawling around Britain together.

Grantchester is an artsy kind of place and I commissioned a special project from a guy down the street to celebrate the occasion.  Happy birthday, Cal!

added later: Sam saw this and told me it was too weird, so here are some less stupid pictures of Cal's early birthday party last weekend.

 

Balloons!

 

Skeptical about the cake at first....

 
 

tasted good though.

 

This looks like we're all sitting around laughing at him, but he was just tired.

 

Knocking down his new blocks.

exploring with eric and brianna

Eric and Brianna are visiting.  They've been off to London a few times, so they have about a million pictures, but here are a few quick shots of what we've been up to with them.  Once their trip is done we'll catch our breath and put up an album on picasa.

 

A trip to Canterbury Cathedral.
 

  

  

  

First beer!

 
 

Testing out an early birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa, a backpack carrier.  It works!

 
 

Applying innovative interior redecoration techniques.

mobility now

He's been on the edge of crawling for what seems like years (but was in fact probably only a month or two), and now it's happened.  Locomotion.  Depending on what he's aiming for it seems either comically slow and uncoordinated or alarmingly fast and accurate.  Time to start putting things out of reach. 

little dude

Thanks to our friends in CO, Calvin is almost ready to round up cattle.  Now we just need to find some good cowboy boots and a ten gallon hat.

 

The happiest cowboy I've ever seen.

genuine human food

We're still taking it pretty easy around here, boring I know, but starting in a few weeks we over a month of family visiting.  Excitement levels should jump pretty soon.  In the meantime we've been laughing at along with Cal as he tries to figure out how to crawl and how to eat like a real person.

Sam distracting him from how tired he is to try and make him sleep longer into the morning.

Growing frustrated by not moving anywhere, but developing some mighty triceps.

Risotto*: not popular**.

 

Calvin-sized pancakes....

...much more appreciated.

Calvin-sized pizza was still a bit much, even though we microwaved it to make the crust all gross and soggy.  When I googled 'baby pizza' all I got was a book called 'Babies Don't Eat Pizza' and an article about some Australians who fed their babies pulverized pizza and pork cracklings and almost killed them.  But we boldly pressed on.

*British pronunciation of Italian words is a pet peeve of mine.

** if you had to guess what this lady did for a living

would you guess Author of Baby Cookbooks?  All the pictures in the book are her showing cleavage (like buttons popping open) feeding a (clean) baby.  It's kind of hilarious.  Anyway, the unpopular risotto was her recipe.