Samuel is 6 months old!

Our little baby is 6 months old already. 

Some of his developmental milestones at 6 months:

He babbles mamamamama, dadadadadada, among other things. He sits alone. He is trying to crawl--he puts his face on the floor and gets his legs up under his body and pushes. Sometimes he's up on his hands and knees but hasn't gone anywhere yet. He is not eating any solid foods yet--I have tried a few times and he doesn't like it yet. Oh well, he's clearly not starving!

Here is a new picture.

Thanksgiving

Samuel sitting. He can actually sit independently...the boppy pillow is there for backup
Samuel and Mommy after bedtime bath
Learning how to get places. It won't be long before he's crawling.
Samuel doing one of his favorite activities...watching Daddy play guitar to him. This is one of the sweetest things I have ever seen.

Well, we had our first Thanksgiving on Guam. We actually had two Thanksgiving meals, thankfully separated by more than 6 hours, so plenty of time to digest!! We managed to forget our cameras for both 'Thanksgivings,' so we have no pictures to share of this monumental event :)

I will post pictures of Samuel, though (looking at his pics would be the only reason to visit this page anyway, right?).

We did have a great day. We were never lonely for company, but it didn't really feel like Thanksgiving. Maybe that was because it never did get cold here (I kept thinking that it would somehow be cold on Thanksgiving day, even though the weather's been in the 80's every day, just like usual), or because we had no out-of-town guests and were not with family. Either way, it was different but still good.

We had Thanksgiving with our church first. We had the meal at church, and everyone brought food to it. To that we brought a turkey (yes, a turkey...we did it!! We are now officially grown-ups!), gravy and cranberry sauce. Along w/ all of the traditional Thanksgiving fixings, we also enjoyed a lot of local fare that some brought. After the meal, we all sang Christmas carols. How fun!

Then in the evening, we had Thanksgiving with our neighborhood. This one was held outdoors between two of our neighbors' homes. There was a bounce house for the kids, so again, not your traditional Thanksgiving! To this we brought mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. 

Samuel did well today. He did seem a little bit scared of the large groups of people we were in at first. I had to comfort him for a little bit before I entirely released him to be held by the girls at church that love to carry him around.

Well, we have so much for which to be thankful! Happy Thanksgiving!!

Spam

Please read below for my comments about Spam and other stuff. I couldn't cut and paste them to the top of this post for some reason and the pictures look like they don't make sense!

Rudi jumping off of Rock at Sigua Falls
Rudi during hike to Sigua falls. You can see it in the background.
I thought this was a nice picture that Rudi took.
Grumpy baby didn't sleep well the night before this picture was taken :(
Happy baby!

I just have to make a few comments about the Spam problem on Guam. No, not email SPAM. I'm talking the canned meat kind! There is Spam everywhere here. The Japanese love it apparently.  There grocery stores here are deeply stocked with variety of Spam: garlic spam, low salt spam, lite spam to name a few. You can even buy 'single serving' packets of Spam. I have never seen so much in my life! I went to a brunch buffet on Sunday, and amongst the sushi, shrimp, fish, and miso soup there was a dish that you put over rice that I assumed was also seafood. Not so. I took a few bites and realized the meat in it was Spam and Vienna sausage! Yuck! I mean, it tasted ok overall, but I couldn't bear the thought of knowingly eating Spam (or Vienna sausages for that matter).

Rudi is done with his written boards. He doesn't find out results for a while, either. He and one of his co-workers celebrated by taking a hike to Sigua Falls, which is just an hour or so hike from our back door.  I'll post a few pictures of that trip (it almost ruined our camera as Rudi returned with a soaking wet camera and cell phone...camera dried off and works, cell phone does not work still).

Well, you all know the real reason for posting on our blog is to show pictures of our sweet little boy. So we will also post a couple recent photos of Samuel.