Video Upload ~

Here's a quick glimpse of Hadley over the past couple weeks.  She's crawling faster than ever and she loves pushing her scooter or laundry basket all over the room - taking out dogs as she goes.  Over the last two days, she has been standing on her own (while focused on playing with my cell phone) for 10 or 20 seconds at a time and then making an attempt to step towards us.  Yesterday, it looked like she got 1 and 1/2 steps in before falling into my arms!  Walking may be in her near future???

p.s.  I'm blogging because today is a snow day and I actually have some free time!

Hadley clips... from Nate Smith on Vimeo.

music update.

Not sure if I posted any Hutchinson on here yet and I am too lazy to look through my old posts.  Either way, this guy rocks.  Also, check out Nizlopi - they are my newest obsession.  Beef, tell me what you think...

And here's some Nizlopi, "Drop Your Guard" -- beautiful song and make sure to listen to the whole thing.  I love when the drum beat kicks in around 4:00 minutes.  This is just one, check out some more of their stuff...

And the CD quality cut...

pre-game anticipation.

Week 2/52
Originally uploaded by natesmith45

no explanation necessary. go stillers.

Lots of snow!

To start off the ski season, we just received around 15 inches of snow this past Sunday!  This goes on top of our 6 inches we got several days before.  Winter is officially here!  The dogs are finding their way around in it, but it does help when we blaze a trail for them.  The forecast says snow and mix to possibly rain for Christmas Eve, so we made sure to shovel off the roof before it hardens down and adds to chance of getting ice dams on the edges.  

Hadley is doing well and is wanting to move all the time.  She doesn't just sit and play anymore.  She would rather crawl somewhere, pull up, and play while standing.  She is starting to try and imitate words such as "hot" and "please" and has even figured out the sign language for "more"!  Just like her dad, she uses that when she eats.  

Ahhhhh, music.

Love this song...

and this one...

Hadley's Baptism

We had a very special day this past Sunday as Hadley was baptized at the First United Presbyterian Church in DuBois, PA.  We were lucky to have Pastor Al Wilson travel over from State College to perform the baptism.  (Al also helped perform our wedding cermony.)  Jess's parents, Jim and Ellen, made the trek down from Maine also to be at the baptism.  Hadley did a great job through the whole service!

During our stay here, Hadley is using my mom's highchair from when she was a baby!  They sure don't make 'em like they used to...

Sam "Papa" Reeves

A picture says a thousand words but a table says a thousand more. Whether it's a dinner table from my childhood or a meat cutting table inherited from my great grandpa(above), life's stories are written into its surfaces.

Looking backward...

It's always fun to flip through old pictures and here are a few that stuck out to me today.  This first one is a classic.  What I love about it so much is the fact that my car has the number "5" on it.  That number has always been my number in soccer and now I know why.  Second, the looks on both our faces gives you a taste of brotherly competition.  Pete's just plain ol' excited to drive a go cart while I'm ready to do anything to make sure I beat him to the finish line.  Finally, that was my favorite shirt back then...it says "Slam Duck" and has a duck in a basketball hoop.

Next up is a pic from August of 2002, if the date on the picture is correct.  This is just before we all went to a PSU game with a lot of the Bordner side of the family.  Can you believe that was over 6 years ago?  We look so young...

The last one I'm posting is from RMBL in Gothic, Colorado.   It's even harder to believe that this picture was taken during the summer of 1999...9 years ago.  That summer, Jeff Woz and I spent 2 months out there studying at the bio lab earning 8 credits towards our Allegheny undergraduate degrees.  We did tons of MTBing and met some really cool people - one of which may be moving to Portland...Doug.  What a wonderful summer it was...

Newton

If you haven't checked him out yet, give Newton Faulkner a listen.  He's got a rhythmic guitar style that I love and I can see him putting out even more great albums in the future.  I got his album about a month ago and it is the most listened to schtuff on my iPod.  Check him out... http://www.newtonfaulkner.com/gb/home/

A monkey, a chicken and yoda walk into a bar . . .

Okay, so not even kind of close but the picture is just too funny. Hadley celebrated her first Halloween as monkey in a costume that Grandma Smith made for her. We headed into Portland to the McMahon's house (parents of Finn the chicken) and we watched the West End Shoestring Theater Parade. It was a perfect, suprisingly mild Maine night for watching the parade and Hadley was mesmerized by all of the excitement. We saw goblins on stilts, super-dogs and huge skeleton puppets . All in all, it was a spook-tacular first Halloween for Hadley!