As usual, it’s been a long time between updates but hope­fully the three hours I just spent orga­niz­ing and upload­ing pho­tos will make up for it. First, there is the trip to beau­ti­ful Bok Tower Gardens with Kelly’s parents.

Second, there’s Sophie’s eleventh month pho­tos.

And finally, the main event: Sophie’s first birth­day party pho­tos!

Kelly, Sophie and I would like to say a big thanks to every­one who called with well-wishes or attended Sophie’s first birth­day party. It was a blast and Sophie had a won­der­ful time. (She slept like a rock that night.) Thank you for mak­ing the day special.

The only hard part was not hav­ing enough time to spend with every­one. It’s amaz­ing how easy it is to take qual­ity time with friends and fam­ily for granted. When you are young, you can’t seem to get away from your fam­ily and vaca­tions to rel­a­tives are fre­quent and manda­tory. Eventually, you go to col­lege, get a job, have chil­dren, and you real­ize that you can’t find enough time to spend with the peo­ple who mat­ter most. It’s an odd soci­ety we’ve cre­ated for ourselves.

I think that is one of the rea­sons things like social net­work­ing sites like Facebook have attracted so many peo­ple beyond the young and trendy. With Facebook, I com­mu­ni­cate with friends and fam­ily around the world in small spurts through­out the day. Just like I did through­out child­hood and school; before a job demanded my social times to be seg­mented into breaks, week­ends, and vaca­tions. We’re social crea­tures by design and we do more than enjoy reg­u­lar human inter­ac­tion, we require it.
I recently saw a new sci­en­tific study that dis­cov­ered get­ting together with friends to chat about your prob­lems actu­ally causes your body to release a chem­i­cal that strength­ens and repairs your DNA struc­ture. Think about that the next time you “waste time” chat­ting around the water cooler or take a long lunch.