Tommy is 1

His birthday was this past Monday. Holy cow, hard to believe. Where did that year go? Daddy was able to get off work early that day so we had a "pool party"It didn't take Tommy long to discover how much he loved his bear banana cake. That was honestly the funniest thing, to watch him digging in and his constant "mmmmmmm" the entire time.What's birthday cake without icecream...and what's cookie dough ice cream without the cookie dough...well just ask Rachie.He did this and then pointed to himself like, "Is this for me?" in total disbelief.
A little bit about my birthday boy:

• He's testing his balance these days and I have yet to capture it, but it looks like he's on a roller coaster ride
• He loves windows and grunting at dogs
• He says "hm hm aa aa" when we turn on Curious George in the morning
• His favorite place is the fireplace
• Everything is a phone
• He makes sure to wave bye-bye every time he leaves a room
• He still hates orange veggies
• His language literally sounds like the Tazmanian Devil
• He loves to head bang every time he hears any kind of music
• He loves to be upside down
• He loves his blankie and won't go to sleep without it. I've gotten in trouble a couple of times when I've put it in the wash.
  

Thank Heaven for Little Girls

For our Primary Talent show a couple weeks ago I taught Rachel and two of her friends, Ava and Rachel "Bambederode," a little dance. My friend Noelle (Ava's mom) made these ADORABLE tutus for the girls.
They all did great in the show...SUPER CUTE! I've been trying to upload the video for days now and it's just not working for me. I'll keep trying but I'm going to post this anyway so I can get to Tommy's Birthday.

Here's to 5 years

Here's our amazing beachfront condo we got at the absolute LAST minute for a killer deal. It was so fun to sleep to the sound of the waves.Hilton Head beach is really unique with their hard packed sand. You wouldn't believe how fun it is to ride along the waves! We wanted to ride the full length of the island, which is 12 miles, but with the wind resistance and our sore bottoms we probably did more like 8 or 9. We even got to ride along with dolphins that were swimming only about 15 feet out. So cool!By the way, these are my new glasses. Turns out I'm going blind...I had no idea!! I thought I had good eye sight. I went to the doctor about some headaches and after ruling everything else out we did an eye exam. My left eye is really poor. Astigmatism (sp?). I'm still not sure how I like them and I'm still trying to get used to them. I picked these pair out, with two kids destroying the place and a wall of 1000s of frames...a bit overwhelming. Jake however thinks they've made me smarter :) and he likes the new look.Funny story (well, it gave us a good laugh): We bought a kite and tried to fly it on Friday, with no success. We go back to the condo and googled, "how to fly a kite." Pathetic, I know. So we watched a you tube video telling us how easy it is and then learned all about the "towing point" and came to the conclusion we just needed to make it higher. So Saturday we took it out with all confidence, and then spent over an hour trying to get it to fly. Adding to our frustration was how "easy" it was suppose to be and about 50 feet away a 6 year old got her Hello Kitty kite up with no problem. We finally decided to ask the Hello Kitty family. Her dad turned our kites frame around and what do you know. We got it up on our first try after that.To finish off the weekend we went kayaking, which is a lot of fun. We didn't get to see any dolphins, but we did see a sting ray and a pelican. I also enjoyed really getting into the rhythm of the rowing.
The first day we were relaxing on the beach we reminisced about all that has happened in our past five years: from our summer jobs of Window washing and MyFamily.com, graduating from BYU, getting scammed our summer in New York, having Rachel, to moving here to Charlotte, buying a house, switching groups within Wachovia, Tommy and many other adventures in between. On our drive home we considered what's in store for the next five years. Another kid? Maybe two? Another car? Another job? Another house? Who knows! But we'll keep enjoying the journey whatever life brings us.

Utah

I feel guilty for posting on top of Jake's awesome post of India. So, if you haven't had a chance to see and read it, be sure to scroll down.
This is what we were up to during all that:

Slumber party with Jack- you know how slumber parties go...very little sleep but still a lot of fun! Jack is 5 months younger than Tommy and they're the same size. He's too cute!
Meeting cute baby Taft at only 2 weeks old, he belongs to Jake's brother Seth.Tommy was super clingy on our trip, partly due to his top tooth coming in. It's no fun dealing with a feverish and cranky child, but at least Rachel was entertained with grandparent and aunts and uncles.

All the Herway cousins with their Pop and Grammie. A real treat to be all together considering we all live in Belgium, North Carolina, Texas and Utah.
This picture is for Anita:Can you still say he does not look like Jake?

It snowed pretty much the entire 2 weeks I was there.
Which made for some of the best skiing days I've ever had.

Flying a kite with Uncle Dan on one of the not so cold and snowy days.
Tommy has become a real explorer. At least he tries to clean up his damage.
We enjoyed an early Easter while we were there.
Tommy probably had more candy than Rachel had in her first two years of life :)
Here's Rachel driving Lightning McQueen through the house. She sure gets away with a lot more than I did when I was growing up. She's crazy.
We sure had a lot of fun, and it was great to be able to see all my family and friends. We'll be out again for Christmas...unless somebody gets married ;)

India

My experience in India can be summed up by "sensory overload." Specifically, the overload comes when 2000BC is juxtaposed with 2000AD in the same moment (1st Picture: elephant & tour bus sharing the same road in front of the ancient Wind Palace), when chaos is order (2nd & 3rd Pictures: Old Delhi business people pushing through limited space & youth trying to get on a free ride home), with extreme contrast in color (4th Picture: Delhi souks - the city has a taint of brown filth contrasted with the women's brilliant, vibrant colors), and with incredible, literally I'm incredulous, arts (5th & 6th Pictures: the art of snake charming & the Taj Mahal).



As a prelude to the India travels I spent a few days in Dubai. In true Emirati fashion I took up camel and desert dune racing (I forgot to get my free house and 75,000 Dirhams after getting married, but I figure I'll make it up through my earnings on the track).

Of course the Arabian desert needs the balance of an indoor ski slope. In the same day one can ski three different terrains: snow, water, and sand.

With just over 2 million, Jaipur is a smaller town when compared with Delhi or Mumbai (~20 million), yet the ordered chaos is still evident in a clip I took of a random, pun intended, traffic circle. The second clip is of elephants on parade up to the Amer fort in Jaipur.

My last stop was Mumbai. I loved riding the train into town! New and fun! Thank you Tushar (my tour guide/fellow Duke student who is from Bombay as he still calls it). A confluence of thoughts met their apex in this city.

The trains were the most humane of the inhumane scenes I witnessed, and heard about, in Mumbai. These scenes struck me with such strength that it jarred loose a myriad of refelctions. I've seen scenes like this before . . . before I had children. The effect is different when you consider your child or spouse could be in the picture. Although relatively young, my sensitivity to what I experience has exponentially deepened having become a husband and father. Witnessing the disregard for human life that occurs in a city like Mumbai distressed me. In many cases, there is nothing to be done. It's a choice between fulfilling your responsibility of the day or looking after another's. You can't always be doing the latter. The one dynamic I witnessed again and again was the simple gestures of respect and recognition that changed the value of an individual, at least in that individual's eyes (which is all that matters). In the traffic circle, the honking is to let you know the vehicle is coming, it is not an angry gesture. In fact, there is little road rage until vehicles collide. And then it seemed to be anger less focused on the individual and more on the circumstance. Still, there is an understanding among people that everyone is getting where they need to go as fast as they can. That is accepted. If there is space, someone needs to fill it. There is little frustration shown when that space happens to be in front of your vehicle. Anyway, a phenomenon of human respect found in a very unlikely scene (and rarely found on Western roads).

Another illustrative experience occured in Fatehpur Sikri, the Victory City. Here local peddlers tried to convince me to enter a Hindu shrine. Knowing not to trust anyone that had approached me with favors (remember that if you ever travel abroad!!) I asked my tour guide. He simply answered my query of permission with, "Yes." Turning to a friend of mine he suggested my friend call me. My friend did so. Thankfully I responded to his beckon. Without a word we strolled away from the temple and into a taxi. I was then informed that the tour guide could not disrespect the locals by prohibiting me to enter a temple. Such disrespect could be turned on him and future tours, ultimately killing his business to that temple. Yet, the guide knew they would require large sums of money from me for having ushered me in the temple and thus asked my friend to call me back. I was impressed with this man's ability to respect the locals 'business' and his own business simultaneously.

Later, we were with an aquaintance of our tour guide who was peddling souvenirs (another thing to remember when travelling: you are the outsider and apparently everyone else is in on getting some kickback from your expenditures!). But this experience will close the thoughts for tonight . . . there is much more written, available upon request and in paperback only . . . but as I inquired further into the relationship between the guide and the peddler my guide gave very matter-of-fact responses. I found out they played cricket together in the local town. I asked why our guide gave this fellow our business rather than another. The guide looked up, knowing what his response would do, he very clearly stated, "Becuase this man is an expert cricket player." The pride on that man's face when he heard our guide's compliment cannot be overstated. He beamed! And he beamed in silent revelry the rest of the time we were there. The simple respect shown to this man had easily made his day. I would not be surprised if he tells his children (I also learned he was recently married) of the compliment given him by our guide to a Western audience that day. As an indelible addition to this man's self worth, under the right circumstances I believe that compliment will be remembered throughout the rest of his life. Six years ago, this experience in a country where human life is often devalued would have been lost on me. Two children and five years of marriage later my mind savored the love, respect, and influence for good this simple expression had on a single human life.

Pictures to come...

The kids and I had a great time in Utah and Rachel and Tommy were perfect on the trip home. Yea! Jake had an incredible experience in India and isn't suffering from much jet lag. We went through hundreds of pictures the other night between the both of us of the last couple weeks. There are some really great ones, we will post some of them soon. But for now, we are enjoying the sound of the waves in our steal of deal condo we got on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina for our 5 year anniversary. Today is also Jake's birthday and we celebrated by going out to Jim-N-Nicks southern BBQ restaurant. mmmmMMMMMM! Life is good!