Chris & Naomi Hathaway Home

Today was our first 4th of July in Washington. We had a full day planned, with parades, fireworks, carnivals, BBQs and more. Not everything happened how we planned, as it usually goes, but I think we had fun nevertheless. We went to Tacoma during the day and saw parts of an air show while trying unsuccessfully to hang out with Uncle Joseph, then we visited some friends on base for a barbecue. Afterwards we came back and lit off some fireworks in our driveway. They were fairly tame (sparklers, ground flowers, smoke bombs, etc), but enough to drive both kids into the house after about 10 minutes. Apparently there aren't laws against setting off fireworks here on the 4th, so it was pretty crazy after the kids went to bed. They slept right through it, though.

Oh, and our neighbors rushed over to borrow a fire extinguisher. Their grill caught on fire, and then they tried dumping flour on it, which caught on fire as well. Fortunately we had the extinguisher handy; I had purchased it after we had our own little grease fire in a pot on our stove (Naomi reacted quickly and put it out with baking soda).

Through all the mishaps, the day was totally worth it, cause I got this shot:

So, if you hadn't heard yet, Lincoln was Buzz Lightyear for Halloween this year:

He really got the hang of it this year, and there were no problems getting him in the costume. But he didn't understand why he had to keep going to houses and getting candy when he already had candy in his bucket. He was fine just crunching dum-dums all night.

Anyway, check out the full gallery to see some video of him trick-or-treating.

This Halloween is really the first holiday Lincoln actively participated in.  After failing with a lion and dog costume, we finally found something we could get him to wear, only because it was similar to real clothes and because we bribed him with a Twix bar (not a usual tactic, but desperate times...).  We went and ate chili at Grandma's, then 6 of us went down the street behind Lincoln so he could hit up a few houses for candy.  He really didn't understand much of it, but when people started letting him grab treats out of bowls, he got the hang of it pretty well.

In other news, Naomi's sister Kate is visiting us for the entire month of November.  It's been great having her around, and Lincoln seems to enjoy having a roommate.

Smugmug now has an embeddable slideshow for pictures, so I'm trying it out below. Let me know if you have problems or what you think.

I know this is a week late, but hopefully it will bring back the Easter spirit to you. On the Saturday before Easter, we went to the Clews house to have an Easter Egg Hunt for Lincoln and Gary Clews, Jr.'s little girl, Ady (short for Adeline?). Anyway, Lincoln didn't quite understand the concept, but he loved throwing eggs around and shaking the ones that had jellybeans in them. I didn't get all of the shots that I wanted, because I forgot to recharge the battery on the camera, but there are still some good pictures, including this one:

Gallery Slide Show

I also quickly put together a video of the occasion:


Here's a full screen version.