Fall

The Hood[1] and Hood[2] cousins spent time together at Virginia-Hylton park with thier dads. The mothers were able to get some much needed time to decompress (i.e. clean the house). The leaves were the rich, beautiful colors of fall: bright red, brilliant yellow, and bold orange.

Thank You NICU

State-of-the-art, just-like-the-real-thing, you-must-really-love-your-kid bottle. $7.48 each

Hopital issue, disposable, you-might-as-well-take-em-home-cause-we're-gonna-throw-em-away-anyway bottle. $0 for a bag full

Finally finding a bottle Claire will take?

priceless.

Thanksgiving

Some of the Hood side extended family gathered at the Hood home for Thanksgiving Dinner. Present: Hood[0], Hood[1], Hood[2], Hood[3]*, Jessica with Fiance Jamie, Grandma Scott, Tiffany with this month's boyfriend, and Janis' kids Hanna and Haley. A few more were in and out during the day. We had an excellent meal, and of course, we brought out the traditional "Sombrero of Thankfulness," donned by Mikala this year.


*Family Array Notation: surname[index], will be used throughout this blog to provide a shorthand method for addressing Hood Family branches. Hood[0] refers to the Root Node (Thomas E., Nancy and family members still at home). Hood[1] refers to the branch of the first born (Thomas N., Heather and their offspring). When a Hood child leaves home--i.e. flies the coup or cuts the proverbial apron strings--their branch will then be assigned an index equal to their birth order. This convention can be extended to future generations simply by adding a dimension to the array, i.e. Hood[2][1] for Amy's branch (or Hood[2,1] if you prefer rectangular array indexing). This convention was officially adopted by the Hoods in 2002, and clarifies statements such as: "We'll meet you at the Hood's House at 6:00, and the Hood's will be Babysitting, and the those other Hood's will met us at the restaurant at 7:00."

Sleeping Child

The most powerful combination of emotions in the world is not called out by any grand cosmic event, nor is it found in novels or history books, but merely by a parent gazing down upon a sleeping child.

-Thomas S. Monson

They are angels of God in disguise; The sunlight still sleeps in their tresses, His glory still gleams in their eyes, These truants from home and from Heaven, They have made me more manly and mild; And I know now how Jesus could liken The Kingdom of God to a child.

-Charles M. Dickenson

...and through the woods

Amy and Mikala spent the day yesterday in Newberry with Grandma and Grandpa Baker. Their favorite part about going to Newberry is the trampoline. "I wanna bounce" is the first thing Amy says when she gets there. The rest of our family joined them after work for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner. The kid's cousins were there too: Ethan, Evan and Ari. Mikala was pretty grouchy (Grandma let her stay up too long the night before--invoking her grandmotherly right to lax discipline). Amy's cousin Tyler has made Amy scared of monsters lately. Every time she would hear a sound, like an acorn falling or crickets chirping, she said that it must be a monster. Some good news is that we were able to drive the van up to Newberry. It needed a repair that may or may not be permanent. Unfortunately, that leaves us crossing our fingers every time we drive it.

Today by the Numbers

162,795 - Mileage of our Kia Sedona

2200 - Price to replace automatic transmission for Kia Sedona

0 - Amount we budgeted for automatic transmissions this month

83 - Percentage of our family that fits in our Ford Escort

248,131 - Mileage of our Ford Escort

Sara Christine Hood

This being our Inaugural Blog Post for our newly created blog Life is Hood, we thought it would be appropriate to post a photo of the most recent addition to the Hood family: Sara Christine. Sara was born September 11th. We adopted Sara on October 8th. She was born two months premature and has been home with us from the NICU since November 2nd. Sara is one of the many reasons why Life is Good at the Hood Home. Three other big reasons are her sisters: Amy, Mikala and Claire. Even though the big sisters are a little jealous of Sara right now, they love her very much and like making her laugh. Between Sara and Claire, we get very little sleep these days. We average about 5 hours per night (weekends are better). We find that good time management is the key to our success. We keep a detailed weekly schedule, planned to 15 minute intervals. Heather has been staying with us for the past week while Thomas is in Savanah working at his new job and buying a house. Tyler and Ainslee are here too, and it can get to be quite a mad house sometimes with 6 kids confined to 1200 sq ft, but Amy and Mikala do have a lot of fun with their cousins.