Later in the month, we checked out the Spring-Mar Touch-A-Truck event, which gives kids a chance to climb around real fire trucks, garbage trucks, and other big equipment. We arrived a bit late, but still had a fun time. And Lily was playing shy, so only “looked” while Steph and I climbed around and honked horns.

April also marked Lily’s first trip to the circus! We all had a really great time; definitely worth the price of admission (despite the Groupon). The show (at the George Mason Patriot Center) was packed with people and excitement and though she had some ants-in-the-pants towards the middle, a box of popcorn, roaring tigers, and parading elephants held Lily’s attention. It’s almost a month later now and she still talks about it!

I’ve started Lily’s 2012 photo album – keep track of that, because I update it more frequently than the actual blog.

Grown-up activities last month included a terrific concert with Colin Hay (former front man of Men At Work) at the Birchmere - thanks to Becca for the tickets! I also finally broke open a Christmas present and am trying my hand at home brewing. The 1 gallon kits are pretty neat – self-contained, with everything you need to brew up a batch of tasty goodness. I bottle next week, then wait another two weeks until it’s completely ready. Fingers crossed that it turns out!

We were also happy to hear recently that Lily will be enrolled in the First Baptist Christian Day School starting in the Fall. It will be sad to leave her current daycare provider, who has been a wonderful part of Lily’s life for almost two years. But it’s time for our big girl to move on up!

Following up from our last post, our refinance process did finally go through, and Steph and I spent a romantic Valentine’s Day afternoon together signing papers in a generic Title company conference room. Well worth it, though.

I have a load of photos to get through from the past month, but expect those to be posted soon. Yikes – I’ll need to start a 2012 album now. And it’s already March. Tick tock, tick tock.

In other family news, we’re in the middle of refinancing our mortgage. Rates were too low to pass up, and though we’ve only been in our current place for a year and a half, the potential monthly savings will be significant. And surprisingly, the stack of paperwork is only a fraction of the loads we’ve seen in the past. Rate’s been locked in, and the appraisal was done this week – so now we wait.

November was quiet, but fun – birthday celebrations for dad and Christine, as well as a family wedding (congrats to Jessica and Marc!) at the Woodend Mansion of the Audubon Naturalist Society in Maryland. For Thanksgiving, we stuffed ourselves silly with the A’Hearns, then hopped down to Richmond to visit Steph’s folks over that weekend.

But now incredibly, Christmas is right around the corner. We were just beginning to regain mobility after Thanksgiving, but are deep into holiday shopping, mostly thanks to Amazon. Tree is up, house is decorated, and threats to Lily about Santa watching are in full effect. We also thought we’d give the whole Elf on the Shelf thing a try. I’m not sure she’s fully made the connection about being on good behavior, but she definitely knows that presents are coming. She gets that from her mother.

As always, we add photos regularly (with or without an accompanying blog post).

Our weekends have been pretty full recently, but with lots of annual events and fun: Rosslyn Jazz Festival, Maryland Renaissance Festival, and International Gold Cup, to name a few. And of course, we always look forward to W&M Homecoming, coming up this weekend.

New photos in Lily’s 2011 album!

Once that was out of the way and we returned from vacation, we moved our attentions to potty training. We wanted to work on that before Steph went back to school, knowing we would have/need the more relaxed pace of summer to really concentrate on it. Like dutiful, intense yuppie parents, we read up, asked around, and mapped out a plan; and armed with the 3-day training method, we embarked on a weekend adventure. I’ll spare the details, but we did a lot of laundry and a lot of mopping. But she did, indeed, “get” it by the third or fourth day, and is now an absolute champ about three weeks in. We do still deal with a random accident here or there, and overnight is still tough, but we couldn’t be happier with her progress. Hey, she’s only two and a half.

If you haven’t already, check out her 2011 photo album for shots of the beach and other antics.

On the heels of our annual week-long family beach week, Stephanie and I recently flew out to Las Vegas for a three-day whirlwind party! A close friend of ours had reached a milestone birthday, and asked a group of us to join in the fun. So with the extremely generous help of Steph’s parents, we kissed Lily goodbye and left for our first trip to Sin City.

Neither of us had been before, so we didn’t quite know what to expect aside from what we knew from movies, TV, and second-hand stories. But most of that turned out to be true – lights, people, booze, and noise. And of course the windowless casinos that devour your time and money. (Unless you’re Stephanie, who apparently has the magic touch with craps.) There was no breaking even, but it’s still good to cash in a stack of chips at the end of the night!

In between buffets and drinks and gambling, we also took in a few tourist activities: a spa treatment, the Titanic Exhibition, the Bodies Exhibition, and a very memorable helicopter tour of the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon.

So happy birthday to Shauna – hope you had a blast! And another huge thanks to the grandparents for taking care of Lily.

I put up a few photos documenting our weekend, but those don’t include the shots of the chicken, jail cell, or stolen police car.

We’ll also have our share of quiet time – given the frantic state of daycare in this area, we’re not able to pull Lily for the summer and have a guaranteed spot for her when Steph returns to school in the fall. Fortunately, she’ll only go for a fraction of her normal weekly schedule – giving us some toddler-free time to get things done around the house, but still not feel like we’re missing out on being with her. We’re elated with the quality of our care provider, so continuing to write out a check each week (rather than risk Lily’s enrollment) was an easy decision.

Toddler life moves on at a blistering pace. Ecstatic one minute, sobbing the next. Ridiculous demands, sly negotiations, imaginative stories, thoughtful debates, and blatant lies. Not to mention tons of hugs, and alarming amounts of empathy. It’s all a hilarious adventure for us, and amazing to watch her develop right before our eyes! I’ve created a 2011 photo album for this year, which I’ll add to periodically with all the best moments. Be on the lookout soon for updates on switching to a big-girl bed, and wacky potty training time.

Of course, time conspired against me and I never really settled on a vision for scottahearn that was unique or worthwhile, so recently decided to dig up that old email and see if there was still interest. So adios, scottahearn.com. The past 11 years have given me the opportunity to tinker and learn about PHP, Perl, XML, AJAX, CSS, and a host of other related technologies serving me in my career to this day.

I’ll be transferring the domain within the coming days, and if I get really bored, might launch “scott.teamahearn.com” or something someday. But probably not.

And hey, now maybe the domain will log more than 20 hits a day.