Christmas 2009

December 24- January 1, 2010

With limited vacation time and in the hopes of using what's left of it when people come to visit this year, we decided to only travel home for one week around Christmas. Luckily, we recovered from our flus just in time to fly on the morning of Christmas eve. The trip started great, packed the night before, had breakfast and was in the car on the way to the airport before our planned time (which is an extreme rarity for us).

Everything is great, until an hour into our flight, when they announce we have to land in London because of a malfunction in the plane. After an hour or so waiting at Heathrow, they load us onto a new plane. Studying our watches, figuring time changes, and how much time we lost, we figure we could still make our connection to Cleveland in New York.

Very excited, we land in New York a half hour before our boarding time to Cleveland. Everybody on the plane rushes to get through customs. Out of breath, we reach baggage claim to find that the luggage hasn't come out yet. We wait... and wait... and wait.

It turns out that the airport employees had left to go celebrate Christmas Eve with their families and nobody bothered to unload our plane! Of course, we missed our connection and the next available flight to Cleveland was Christmas Day at 3 pm! That would have meant we would be staying in a hotel in New Jersey and waiting around for our flight in the airport.

Rani turns to me and calmly says, "We will drive."

Huh? "Are you crazy? It's 1 am our time already! And you want me to drive 8 hrs to Cleveland?"

"Yes", she replies calmly, again.

"Yes, my love", I mutter as I take off at a sprint to the car rental area.

Luckily, the last car rental agency I checked with had a car to rent. We loaded up, set the gps, hit the road and after 7 hrs of singing the top 100 Christmas Carols (twice), we reached Cleveland at 3 am (9am our time).

It was definately worth it, waking up Christmas morning to a house full of family and opening presents

First stop - Cleveland, Ohio.

Opening presents!

Cousin Kennedy with her new puppy dog.

Kurt's new bike for riding along the Swiss wanderwegs.

Noah & Cousin Kennedy visited the Rain Forest at the Cleveland Zoo over the holiday.

Noah's new monkey friends.

It seems Amanda is more interested in the chimps than the kids!

Rarrrhhhhhh! That's what Noah says the Lion says. (In fact, when he just saw this picture he rarrhhhed!)

The Zoo Gang trudging up the hill to the Ape House.

On Tuesday, we had a much less eventful flight from Cleveland to Baltimore

Annapolis Christmas

More presents. Noah was begining to get the hang of opening presents. Although, he still liked to steal all the bows off of everyone else's gifts.

Aunt Nicole in her new shades. Very cool!

Noah needed a feeding break between the gift opening so Grandmom Price gives him a bottle full of energy.

Something Noah said must have set Grandmom Price off.....

Is that a fancy Snuggie?

What is that we see? The Prices European Vacation 2010?? Yikes......sounds like great future blog material.

Here we are with Noah's buddy Jacob and Jeanni.

Julia shares some food with Noah.

Pre-Christmas in Switzerland 09

December 19-21, 2009

We planned to have our pre-Christmas with Noah in Switzerland before we went home. Kurt & I decided that we would do this the Sunday before Christmas. So Saturday night we were up really late putting together Noah's present (not really). Then around 3 a.m. Kurt woke me up asking for the bucket to relieve himself of his dinner and on my way back upstairs with the bucket I realized that I also needed to get rid of my dinner too. Kurt and I continued throwing up through the night into the morning so unfortunately our plans did not work out exactly as planned for Sunday. Noah had come home sick the Thursday before this but by Saturday he was running around as usual. It wasn't until too late that we realized we had caught his flu so we delayed Christmas until Monday morning.

Noah and Kurt getting excited for Christmas coming!




Our pre-Christmas eve......instructions in German of course but at least there were pictures.

The final product with Curious George along for the ride.

Noah discovering his nicely wrapped present. Unfortunately we ran out of paper - this was 2 rolls. I have to remember this for future Christmases.

Noah needed a little help getting started.

Am I cool or what? Check out my new bike everybody!

The Big Numero Uno

December 3, 2009

Can you believe it has been a year? Our little bear turned one!

When he got home from school, he opened his first gift, Bruce the Moose! He jumped right on and started rocking away.

He got a real kick out of Aunt Nicole's gift

Opening presents with Grandma Price on Skype

His new hat for the upcoming sledding season

Blowing out the candle on his birthday carrot cake

Even after all of those presents, he went back into his playroom and brought out his favorite box to play in. The next child is getting only boxes!!

A momentous week!!

November 22-29, 2009

It was an exciting week. After practicing, Noah started walking on his own on Thursday. As we were getting ready for school, he was begining to show his new talents. A couple of times, while standing, he decided to walk away from me as we were putting on his jacket. I warned them at school of what was happening. Sure enough, when I picked him up in the evening, they were all excited to tell me how he was walking down the hallway and they couldn't get him to sit still.

(On a side note, we have started using Vimeo for our videos. Along with better quality, you can click on the symbol to the left of "vimeo" and watch the video in full screen. Press ESC to revert back to the normal screen.)

Noah walking from kurt cerny on Vimeo.

With his new found mobility, we thought we could head to the park.

We tried out the slide. Although, as you can see, he wasn't too sure about it.

He warmed up quickly, though.




Tried out the swing

Climbed aroung in a tree fort.

Climbed around on Daddy

Saw some cows

A donkey


And a pony



Some random pictures....


Fingerpaint!

Being silly

He loves to watch himself in the videos. He knows when we are video taping him and always comes over to see how he looks after. I turned the viewfinder towards him and turned it on as he admired himself.

Rani caught a video of him playing in his room

What's happenin.....

November, 2009

I know, I know, It has been a long while since posting anything. So, here are some videos from our month of November.

Playing some ball at the Castle's park on the lake

He loves this box. He is either pushing it around the house with his toys in it or he is trying to climb inside.

The awesome wooden top!

The big event of the month was Noah taking his first steps! It has been an awesome experience seeing him progress day after day.

Keep practicing.....

Up to this point, he was getting pretty good at walking a straight line

Halloween!..... and random pictures of Noah

October 2009

We were very excited when we got an invitation to a Halloween party in the mail. Of course, the big question was "What should Noah be?". After searching the stores for two weekends, we had come up with nothing. It seems the Swiss only started celebrating Halloween about 4 years ago and they hadn't gotten passed the vampire or witch stage yet. So, we started trying out a few different ideas......

We considered that he would make a good Johnny Jumper Gymnast. Wrong, he couldn't "pull off" the whole tights thing.

Or maybe R2D2 from Star Wars......

Nope, too confining.


He made a good Swiss Mountain Pole Dancer but we couldn't fit the pole in the car.

We were much relieved when a package from Grandma Cerny showed up with this monkey costume. It was very fitting since we play Crazy Monkey Family around the house on a weekly basis.

Noah at his party with Samuel the inch worm, Alicia the bumblebee, and Danny Count Dracula.

It was really fun watching Noah interact and play with the other kids.

Now, on to some Random pictures.....

Although he isn't holding his toy phone, he is mimicking Mom and Dad on their cell phones. If you say, "Hey Noah, Hullo?", he will pick up anything nearby and put it to his ear. The past month or so has been a lot of fun. Noah has changed so much. Not only is he eating a ton and growing like a weed, but he has become very inquisitive and is always getting into things. He has also become more playful and interactive with us, from playing ball to wrestling on the floor.

We don't know where he got this one from, but one day we put this box by the door to be thrown away, when Noah started pushing it around the house collecting all of his toys in it, including Mr. Monkey.




He is definitely very close to walking. Any day now. He makes his way around the house holding on to everything and has a few times taken a step or two in our direction. Stay tuned.... I feel a video moment coming on!