We continued tracking Ted’s life (although we missed a few months) and started tracking Sarah’s life.

Ted is 34 35 36 | 41 42 43 44 45 months old

Sarah is 1 2 3 4 weeks and 1 month old

Twenty eleven started off well, with Ted doing well with potty training and sleeping in his big boy bed all through the night. He also got to fly up north with Kate and meet his new cousin Ben.

In March we had two visitors, first Gram flew up to spend some quality time and then Auntie Christine arrived the following weekend. Christine hung around for Ted’s awesome 3rd birthday party and for his first baseball game at NC State.

April was fairly average at first, but turned awful at the end of the month when Kate’s mom Cass became ill and passed away on Easter.  None of us were prepared for it, and it’s had a huge impact on our family. Everyone here misses her.

Blogging in May and June took a back seat to a lot of travel, dealing with emotions, and me changing jobs for what I hope is the last time for a while. One high-note of June was getting to meet our new niece Abigail who joined Uncle Josh and Auntie Kristen’s family.  Abigail is funny and super-cute.

In July there was more travel up north, and then my folks motorcycled their way up here to spend some time with us.  In August cousin Cory came by for a visit and got to bond with her NC family a little.  Ted and I also go to have a guys weekend in August while Kate flew up north.

In September our boy started preschool! He looks like he’s ten in his backpack. We also had a visit from our friend Scott, making his first trip to the After Victory homestead.  We also made a trip out to western NC to visit aunts Deirdre and Jackie, which was lots of fun.

October was rough – my grandfather got pretty sick and passed away.  Not only was it super-sad, but I had to leave my very pregnant wife at home to fly up to the funeral, which made me nervous the whole time on top of sad.   (Of course my concerns were pretty unwarranted, as Sarah was born 8 days past her due date!).

In November we did a lot of waiting!  Lucky for us we had a lot of family in town to keep us entertained.  Ted was very busy - taking a sibling how-to class, as well as performing Thanksgiving songs at his preschool.  The most exciting part of November was Sarah’s actual arrival which came on the 30th.

December was filled with some very helpful family visiting, and a lot of us adjusting to having a new member of our family in the house. Auntie Christine set some sort of visiting record by being at our place twice in a 3-week span.  Christmas day was spent with friends, instead of traveling far-far away like we’ve done the past few years. It was great, Ted got a bunch of very cool stuff and it’s hard to not be happy about Christmas with the enthusiasm of a three-year-old boy around.

There’s lots I’m forgetting – we had more family visits than I wrote down, I think.

After a year like this, we are grateful to have friends and family who care about us, support us, and humor us by reading our goofy blog posts.  I hope 2012 is good to us, and good to you.

Previous Years Reports:
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003

We continued posting a once-a-month status about what Ted was up to:

Ted is 33, 32, 31, 30, 29, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22 months old

And looking back, I’m glad that we’ve kept it going. It’s cool to look back at his development and see when he starts to pick up on things.

In January Ted was just starting to speak in sentences (and by December he could write his name).  We had our first local visit from Aunt Deirdre.  Ted also had his first haircut! We had another visitor in February when Auntie Christine came down.

In March we had to say goodbye to the Celica, which was a bummer, but the car we replaced it with was much easier to get Ted (and everyone else) in and out of.  My mom stopped in for a visit, and to take part in Ted’s toddler birthday party! Hard to believe he turned two so quickly! We were so excited about his birthday, we went up to Rhode Island to celebrate it there, too.  In April Ted did a lot of classes, both music and sport related.

In May Kate crafted a cardboard house for Ted which was a staple in our living room for months.  We had visitors when Grammie and Gramps came to visit for Kate’s birthday, too.  June was comparatively laid back before a very busy July where we drove up north for the 4th of July. We hit the zoo, went camping, went to a parade, saw ducks in Boston and lots more during our trip.

In August we went to the NC coast, visiting the beach and an aquarium.  We had another visit from Auntie Christine, and she took us to see Ted’s first live musical performance (Curious George Live), as well as getting a tour of NC’s finest fire trucks.  In September we went out to western North Carolina to visit the crew at Forks of Ivy, and to ascend Mt. Mitchell.  We also had a visit from Grandpa and Grandma and Ted could to stay in their camper overnight.

In October Ted and Kate went up north to celebrate cousin Jack turning three.  Then laster in the month, Ted dressed up as a very handsome fire fighter for Halloween.  In November Auntie Christine came down for a visit, and then we had a visit from Grammie, too!  And then we hopped on a plane and went to Florida to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with my folks, Auntie Kristen and Uncle Josh, with special guest appearance by Aunt Deirdre and Aunt Jackie.  Busy is how we roll.

December was busy, but not as busy as November.  I just started a new job.  Ted finished up a round of soccer classes at the local community center.  We did Christmas at our house, then packed it up for Christmas up north in Rhode Island.

So that was 2010.  We very much appreciate everyone reading and commenting.

Some highlights from the past years:

2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003

Ted is 21, 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10 months old

The Ted of the beginning of 2009 is much different than he is now.  In January he was learning to clap, getting up at least once a night still, and army crawling around. So strange to think that he’s developed so much in just a year. In January we also had a quick visit from Auntie Christine.

Ted logged more hours in the air in February when we flew up north to celebrate my 30th, seeing all sorts of friends and family, and it was lots of fun.   Ted also started real-crawling in February, which was a mode of transportation he would embrace for just about a month.

In March, we took Ted to his first car show.  He also figured out how to stand up on his own, which would have been the biggest accomplishment of the month, except that  he then figured out how to walk.  And walking would have been the biggest accomplishment of the month, for real, except that Ted turned 1!  We had more family over then to celebrate.

In April Ted celebrated Easter with us here at the ranch.  We then flew up north (again!) for Grammie Cass‘ birthday and for a friend’s wedding.   Both good times.   Ted also said “car” and “ba” for the first time.   In May, lots of Kate’s family came down to visit us for her birthday, which was also a lot of fun.  I don’t think that many people had ever slept in this house at one time (unless the previous owners had gigantic pajama parties). May also started a certain dance craze.

In June we headed out west (well, western North Carolina) and visited the folks at Forks of Ivy to see their amazing new house, take a hike in the woods, and introduce Ted to the world of pancakes.  In July we drove up north for the Forth of July week.  Then some folks came down to see us, first Auntie Christine flew down to surprise us, and then our friends Jay and Erin swung by on their road trip.  We do love visitors!

In August we didn’t fly anywhere, but my dad stopped by for a visit on his way down to Florida. We also returned to Western NC for another visit with Ted’s Great-Aunts there. Ted continued his interest in music all month long. He also focused a lot of time learning new words.  In September we flew down to Florida to see my folks in their new house.  Ted had lots of fun hanging with my folks, swimming and going to Disney.

In October, Kate and Ted flew up north for cousin Jack’s second birthday. October also marked Ted’s second Halloween and his first trick-r-treating.  He did a great job in getting a full bag of candy for himself, and passing out candy to the neighborhood kids.  We also went to the local airport and Ted got to shout “helicopter” at actual helicopters.

In November, Auntie Christine came down for a quick visit.  Ted became obsessed with stickers and trucks, and helped his mom make Turkey thanksgiving cards.  December was busy as well.  There was the parade in town, a holiday train ride, and another trip up north to celebrate Christmas with family.  We got to see Auntie Kristen and Uncle Josh’s new house while there too.

Website traffic

Here’s a chart of AfterVictory.com website traffic, comparing 2008 to 2009 visits. Click it to see a larger version.

Visits declined this year compared to last year by about 15%.  I think this can be attributed to a couple of things.  First, last year was crazy exciting, as we had a newborn baby who was cranking out the cuteness seven days a week (not that he’s any less cute now :) ).  Second, we’re not posting quite as often, and people check the site less as a result.   A small decrease in traffic might also be tied to people using RSS readers (like Google Reader).

Since we make no money from the site, and do this as much for ourselves (to keep track and remember things) as we do to keep our friends and family informed, less traffic is neither good nor bad.  We do really appreciate everyone who comes to read and for all the comments.  It certainly motivates us more to keep things going.

Previous year’s annual reports:

2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003

In January our posting was light as we were busy prepping for Ted’s arrival. We managed to find a few minutes to fly up north for a baby shower.  A great weekend with lots of friends and family.   Kate had another shower thrown for her by (now former) co-workers in February.  February also marked the great blog shift, when we abandoned the Rockland-ave.com name (and shady hosting serivice tragically tied to it) to our new home here at AfterVictory.com.

March was busy in a way, but compared to life now, it was fairly calm right up until the big day.  The cats were blissfully unaware of what was to come, although Zoe suspected something was up.  Things got pretty crazy on the 30th when Ted arrived, though.  April was spent mostly adjusting to our new lives as a family of three.  Kate’s mom came down and spent a few weeks with us, which totally saved the day.  Other Ted admirers visited us, and we took Ted out on tour to show our coworkers.  And of course, we took many gigabytes of photos of this kid.

Ted got to meet his first President in May, when he held a short summit with Jimmy Carter.  We had some more Yankee visitors that month, too, but decided we could show Ted off more effectively if we just went up north. It was a crazy trip, and we got to introduce Ted to his new family and some new friends.  Ted also turned two months old and Kate got to celebrate Mother’s day for the first time.  In June I got to celebrate father’s day and we both watched Ted grow out of that tiny newborn look into a the baby look we know now (although much smaller and chubbier then).

In July I drove Kate and Ted up north and left them there for two weeks so Ted could further aquaint himself with his Yankee heritage.  It was a little odd for me, going from the hectic madness that is baby-daddying to being a single guy in a house with two cats.  I was pretty productive while they were gone, but very happy to get them back.  In August my folks came down to visit us one weekend, and then Kristen and Josh came down the next.  It was good to have some company down here, as Ted enjoys entertaining house guests.  Ted really got into laughing that month, which is music to our ears.  And he figured out how to roll over!

September was very eventful, and found Ted figuring out how to really sit on his own, which was great for us since we could give him a toy and step away for a few seconds to blog.  It also marked two years since we left the smallest state in the union to live here in NC.  We got a new set of wheels for Kate and Ted to cruise around in, and briefly enjoyed a driveway full of cars.  Ted’s first tooth emerged, too! In October we took that new car and drove it up to New England for some birthday parties.  When we got back, Ted started eating solids.  I think he was hoping to be ready for Halloween candy, but not quite. His Auntie Christine came down for a visit to help him with pumpkin carving, though.  Ted also got all dressed up for his first Halloween.

Things kept right on moving through November.  We took Ted on a carosel ride, got him to laugh at himself, and celebrated his first Thanksgiving.  We also lost the Sentra when some dude drove into me on the way to work.   In December I taught him how to drive, which was good because we had a long drive up the coast ahead of us.  Ted had his first Christmas before Christmas here in the south and learned that opening presents is fun.  We also drove up north to celebrate with his grandparents and greatgrandparents and aunts and uncles and friends.  That was a crazy week, but very memorable, to.  Ted turned 9 months and began what (we hope) is a lifelong love of Cheerios.

And… that was the short version of 2008.  Completely intense and moderately action packed.  Who knew such a little person could be responsbile for such big things!

Thank you all for reading and commenting, it means a great deal to us.

Annual Report 2007

Annual Report 2006

Annual Report 2005

Annual Report 2004

Annual Report 2003

Oh wait…

In January, Kate made a trip back up to New England to get a haircut. And also to visit with friends and family. Back down in NC, we got to go to our first Carolina Hurricanes game which was fun, and appropriate to the cold season as it snowed down here shortly thereafter. Kate also spent lots of time crafting.

In February we redesigned the site together, shedding a look we had sported for close to three years. Later in the month Kate’s mom stopped by for a visit.

March was all about money. Kate started a new job while I learned a valuable lesson about credit cards. We also took care of a large deposit of copper we had hanging around.

Later in the spring we go to hang out with my folks for a while when they flew down to visit. They got to see our new place and then treated us to lots of trees. I also learned to roll with just one eye, if only temporarily.

In May I left my cushy bathrobe-wearing work-from-home job, and had to hike it up to New England to finish up in the office. Later in May, our house was filled up with family members. We also got to finish digging up our yard.

The parade of visitors continued in June when Kate’s father and step-mom rolled into town. We visited the farmers market and got to eat at a restaurant really close us that was hit by a plane just three months later. I also decided to change jobs again because you’ve gotta answer when opportunity knocks.

July 7th marked the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of our centruy, so we thought we’d take a trip up north and see if anyone was going to get married that day. Lucky us, there was just such a hitching, Kate’s sister Kim and new wife Anne.

Not nearly as exciting as that, but still exciting for robot lovers, July also marked the release of a movie I was waiting some time to see.

Our site was essentially offline all of August. We were down, but not out, and in September we switched our blog system to WordPress and it’s been good blogging ever since. It was good to have the site up and running because we were fast approaching our 500th post where we thought we’d make a little announcement to the world.

Speaking of new family members, we got two new ones in October with birth of cousin Jack and new brother in law Josh. All conveniently in the same weekend.

In November, guest blogger Chris stopped by for a visit. If she had stayed just a few more weeks, she could have come to the local Christmas parade we got to see. Speaking of Christmas, we ended the year by scaring festivus right out of our families. Good times.

I can’t believe 2007 is over already!

ps – Those curious about our stats can review this handy PDF file that Google put together for me.

We subtly hinted at bigger things in January. Who knew then where we’d end up at the end of the year? We didn’t. We’re glad to be here now though.

We didn’t post much in February. In March we attended a wedding for some friends. I also started working on three large freelance projects at the same time. I won’t do that again.

We didn’t hike as much in 2006 as we did in 2005, but we did get out a little. Kate also witnessed the minor nuking of a Rhode Island landmark. Towards the end of April, I expressed my secret fear right here on this website.

In May we drove to the cape, froze a hard drive, threw a surprise party, and climbed a mountain. May was busy.

June was busy, too. Kate was crafty. We traveled to New York, too, which was an act of bravery for sure. Kate’s craftiness continued in July. I was also crafty, in a slightly different way.

In August we announced to the world that we were picking up the Rockland Ave operations and moving them south. We also purged many of our worldly goods, yard-sale style.

Not the cats though, we kept them.

In September we posted a lot. Not nearly as much as we posted in October. The Rockland-ave.com servers were glowing red with all the posts. I’d write about it here, but if you haven’t read these posts, you should.

Still with me? November and December continued with the frequent posts, talking about how we moved into a house and started our new lives in North Carolina.

And that was 2006.

Completely Useless Numbers

Previous Annual Reports
2003
2004
2005

PS: For the bored, the tracking stats for our site are wildly innacurate, and are mostly meaningless random numbers. I installed Google Analytics in hopes of figuring out some real numbers.

Anyhow, it’s been another successful year at Rockland-ave.com. We did lots of stuff, and lots of outdoor stuff, highlighted by Kate bringing together Hike Club. She was way ambitious in getting people to go, and we went on a lot of great hikes and climbs.

Early in the year, Kate went to Michigan to visit her sister and her partner for a couple days. She must have made a good impression, as they moved to the town next to ours later on in 2005.

I took a class on Maya, and learned how to make a 3D model of our kitchen. Speaking of school, we went to NH to see my sister graduate from school.

Later on in year, I had a terrible experience at Dunkin Donuts. In June, Kate set the all-time Rockland-ave.com record for most-comments-in-a-post for her Hike Club posting. 21 comments, which is a lot for us.

In August we watched a speeding Ice cream truck rip down our road, and we got to go camping in New Hampshire.

Kate did some gardening this year, growing some strawberries, and some giant beans. I got to test drive two brand new cars, a Charger and a hybrid Accord. Both were fun to drive, but I still roll in the Celica.

For the curious, here are some probably useless statistics about our web traffic:

I wish I knew who all these people where who visit the site!

2004 Report
2003 Report

So what happened this year anyway? Well, in the outside world, some baseball team won some kind of award or something. Then there was an election of some kind, but that didn’t go very well, unless you were red stated. (Rockland-ave voted).

We traveled this year, quite a bit. Kate went to Washington DC in June, and then we both went in October. I got to go to Las Vegas this summer. We went to Vermont twice this year, once to go camping and then again to see Burlington,

In June, we got to go to the Cayman Islands for a little relaxation.

We went there, because we had just gotten married and it seemed like the honeymoonish thing to do. The getting-hitched thing was the highlight of the year for me :) What an excellent time! Lots of nice people came to see us, gave us some cool prizes, and then we got to hop on a plane and slack somewhere tropical for a week. Good times! Kate also received a very cool wedding shower.

Rockland Ave was invited to some other folks’ weddings this year. We got to see Jessi and Rick’s wedding and Matt and Michelle’s wedding. Kind of like the class of 2004 for weddings, but less diplomas.

In May we went to see The Strokes in concert in Providence. It was an excellent concert, so good! I meant to write all about it, but shortly thereafter my Grandfather passed away and I was feeling pretty down about it for a while.

Kate left her job of four years in June, just before the wedding. She took the summer off, and then started at this cool new job in October, working for a book bindery. The people there are really nice, and took us (and the rest of their company) out to eat at an Indian restaurant.

We spent some time in Lowell this year. Our friends Erin and Jay (who up until very recently) lived there, and through some excellent parties. We posted about it in July and in October. Photos here, here, and here.

It was a quality year, and I’m happy to be alive, healthy and very happy to be married. We’ve come along way since 2003! Thanks to our loyal Rockland-Ave.com readers for stopping by.

As you can see, we’ve grown a bunch since the start of the year. In December, over 250 different people have visited our site. We’re glad to have grown, but it leads us to ask: who are you? I don’t know if I know if we know anywhere near that many people.

Well, whoever you are, thanks for visiting. Feel free to leave a message in the guestbook or in the shout box thing to the right of this message.

Coming in 2004:

- Redesign

- Cell Phone / PDA mini site

- buddy icons

- hopefully more posts from Tom.

Happy new year folks.