Ross, Rachel, Helen, and Arthur

Helen's friend Abhay had a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's. It was Helen's first trip, and she had a great time. She really enjoyed all of the games and the child-sized hamster-run. However, when the person in the Chuck E. Cheese suit came out at cake-time, Helen ran. Her love for cake enticed her out of her hiding place, but wasn't enough to get her close to the cake until the costumed personality had left. Even after that she was kind of looking over her shoulder just in case he reappeared while she was eating cake.

Arthur had his 4 month exam this week. He officially weighs in at 21 pounds, 5 ounces. He is also 26.5 inches long and his head is 44 cm in diameter. His pediatrician charts all of this information to compare with average values. Arthur has been literally off the charts since birth, but happily his growth rate is starting to level off.

Today, Arthur is four months old. Last night, he weighed in at 21.6 pounds. He's a big boy.

Since I changed cell phones, I downloaded all the photos off my old phone. It was such an energy barrier to get the photos off the phone while I was using it, that I rarely did it, which means that those pictures are like a time capsule, a random sampling. You can see them all in our gallery, but these are some good examples:

I do a fair amount of travel for work. Most of the time it consists of flying across the country and sitting in a conference room. Admittedly, we're usually talking about intellectually stimulating topics like planetary science and spacecraft. This meeting certainly had all of those elements, but it also took place on Hawaii's big island at Volcanoes National Park, and we got a chance to do some hiking and see the sights.