I brought Arthas from the latest Loot Crate to work. I don't have a lot of decorations on my desk and considering Chris has no real link or interest in Warcraft, I considered this figure to be one I cared more about.

So now I have an angry lich king staring at my while I type.

We decorated the tree today (and by we I mean Chris. I kept Quinn entertained and away from things while it was going on). The stockings also were put up on our mantle place. Chris created a placeholder stocking for Quinn until my parents come out later this month to deliver the real stocking my mother made for him.

Hooray for home made stockings!

We put up the Christmas Tree today. Quinn enjoyed looking at the new decoration, and was especially interested once the lights were turned on. We'll finish decorating it tomorrow, but for now he can enjoy it all lit up from a distance.
I also used the last of my pharmacy rewards on an older account at Meijer to pick up a 3DS game. The game picked up ended up being a launch edition (even though the game came out in October) so it came with some extras like a music CD and an art book. Not bad for $25.

We had so many leftovers from my parent's house yesterday that we decided not to do Second Thanksgiving today and put the turkey breast back in the freezer.

Next weekend!

It's turkey day! We headed out to the east side of the state to visit family and enjoy the day.

The first stop was at grandma Karath's house. Quinn had an insanely good time trying to touch all of the different decorations she had out for Christmas.

It gets exhausting chasing a baby around and constantly steering them into a different direction. So persistent!
 At my parents house we had fun with a turkey hat we'd picked up at Target.
Quinn enjoyed spending time with everyone.
 Uncle Jeff went with him up the stairs several times since that kid loves to go up stairs. Loves it!
 He enjoyed all of the attention he received.
And even had some "screen time" with his own kiddie phone.

Chris has been playing with the telephoto lens we picked up for the camera. The new camera arrived today and it autofocuses, so now we can take photos easier. Hooray

We determined today after further troubleshooting and talking with Nikon, that the camera is indeed defective. It was possible that the issue was the lens, so when a secondary lens arrived yesterday we were able to eliminate that as an issue.

The camera takes awesome photos, it's just difficult to take in-focus photos of a 9 month old constantly on the move. Still, it works a lot better than my a100 in the low light. It's an amazing difference.

So now to get a replacement that's actually working properly.

Chris has been playing around with a new camera we picked up. There appears to be something wrong with it - it won't autofocus. But you can still get photos if you manually focus. It's a Nikon and much newer than my Sony A100, so it takes a lot better photos in a lot lower light.

This month's Loot Crate arrived yesterday. We picked through it a little yesterday, but since we were so busy we really didn't get a chance to look at everything until today. The theme was combat, and I really thought it was going to be a lot more disappointing since I don't play a lot of fighting games. But the crate was pretty cute, so I'm happy with this month's haul!

Ok, it isn't exactly his first snow, but it is the first one where he can go out and enjoy it. I bundled him up in his snowpants and winter coat and out we went on the deck to play for a bit. He had a pretty good time, considering it was a little difficult to move around in all the layers.
Later in the afternoon Comfort, Adam and Corrine came over. We celebrated Comfort's birthday a little early, since we probably won't see them next weekend. Yay cake!

Chris and Quinn had a nice day hanging out today with Grandpa Karath. It was really nice to come home on visit during my lunch break too. Hooray for grandparents!

Quinn and Chris had a chill day while I was at work. Lots of hanging out and being cute.

 
Quinn is 9 months and constantly on the move! He won't stop walking and crawling all over everything.

Reading is fundamental.

Sometimes there's a fight over a box and sometimes there's just fun "petting" of the cat in the box.

We played outside for a little bit while Chris raked some leaves. Quinn had a good time grabbing everything and walking around the yard.

Quinn has finally figured out the cat door on the pet gate we've been using upstairs. So now we're going to have to start locking it. Too bad for the cat.

Quinn has started to take the floor mats apart...

There was a storm last night with a lot of wind blowing around. Amazingly the leaves Chris had raked into piles the day before mostly stayed put. Plus there was a weird stick standing straight up from the ground. Must have fallen from the tree and got stuck.

Quinn helped Chris assemble a new carpet cleaner that arrived today.

Sometimes I feel like there are too many notifications on my phone. And That's not even close to what Chris has going on most of the time.

I really wish you could get rid of that stupid S Finder and Quick connect that Samsung puts on their phones.

There's an interesting app in the Pebble Store called Battery+. It basically looks at your usage and tries to predict when you need to charge next, as well as how long it's been since the last charge.

I'd really like it if it could point to which app or watch face had what sort of drain on the life of the Pebble. But it's still neat, even if it doesn't give you that much detail.

Ok, not really. But I did manage to break the snail mail notifier. More specifically, I messed up the 703N router in the box. We upgraded the wifi last night, including finally updating the security since we've gotten rid of some legacy devices.

So I got into the one in Quinn's room (that had been a backup wifi router) and made the changes no problem. Confident that I knew what to do, I went into the one for the snail mail notifier. And somehow in my rush to get it done in between Quinn crying for attention, I locked myself out of the box.

So now the mail notifier is broken. Along with the pinoccio I was going to set up (that worked right before Quinn was born!).

All before 9am. Today is an annoying day.

Grandma Karath and Uncle Scot came to visit! Quinn really enjoyed all of the jewelry that grandma wore.
And had a lot of fun using Uncle Scot as a jungle gym.

What I said was "sock thief". That is most definitely not what the Pebble Time heard...

Kudos to them for having a robust dictionary available. I'm still fighting with my Samsung S5 to learn some words I've been using frequently for the last two years.

We've been using these empty boxes as barriers to prevent Quinn from getting up the stairs. But he's finally figured out he can just push them out of the way.

It's only a matter of time before he gets them completely clear and makes a break up the stairs.

Chris set Quinn up in the playpen out side right before I left at lunch to go back to work. It's a beautiful, warm fall day so he's taking advantage of the weather and clearing away all of the leaves that have fallen in the last few days.

It's election day today! So at lunch we headed over to vote! Quinn had fun and the women running the voting precinct enjoyed him.

the built in music app for the Pebble Time (and Pebble) are one of the weakest features of the watch, in my opinion. So I broke down and picked up Music Boss. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good and it lets me assign a specific app to launch as opposed to trying to launch the default Google Music App. Since my preferred app is Audible, Music Boss is working like a charm.

The interesting feature with Music Boss is you can set it to show the cover art of what you're playing. Since I'm listening to an audiobook, it just shows me half of a book cover.

Amusing.

We went out this afternoon to Best Buy to look at the Pebble Time that was on sale. I wasn't going to get it, even though I've really wanted one, but Chris convinced me to pick it up.

I am not disappointed. It's an amazing upgrade from the Pebble (which I love).

The color is nice, the display is always on (unlike Chris's Samsung Galaxy Gear watch), readable in the sun, and no longer has the app limit that the original Pebble does.

Plus it has a microphone and you can do short dictations. And the notifications are more robust.

I'm really happy it's less bulky than the original Pebble as well. I love that watch but it's a behemoth on my wrist.