Grandpa Philip Dean Hudson 8/9/45-1/8/10

Our little family is deeply grieving the loss of Gus' Grandpa and Mary Ann's father, who died unexpectedly on Friday. We have a lot of travel and planning and visiting over the next week. We wanted to put this on the blog to let good friends and visitors who may not have had a call know, and please do not hesitate to contact Mary Ann at this time--call or email. Below his his obituary for those interested in services.

Philip Dean Hudson, 64, of Bristol, Tennessee passed away Friday, January 8, 2010 at his home.
He was born August 9, 1945 in Pratt, Kansas, the son of Dean and Dorothy Jenkins Hudson. Mr. Hudson grew up and attended schools in El Dorado, Kansas graduating from EHS in 1963. Philip served in the U.S. Air Force from 1965 to 1971. After his years in the service, Mr. Hudson attended and graduated from Pittsburg State College in 1973 and received his Master’s from Baker University in 1990. He was a member of the American Legion and of the Buffalo Ruritan Civic Fraternity in Bristol, TN and a congregant of Piney Flats First Baptist Church in Bristol, TN.

Philip was a hard working, quiet, sensitive man who dearly loved his family and friends. Upon his recent retirement, he moved to Tennessee to be near his lifelong friend, John Dickerson, and closer to his grandchild, Gus.

Mr. Hudson is survived by his son, Jason Hudson, of Wichita, Kansas; daughter, Mary Ann Hudson, son-in-law, Matthew Vadnais, and grandson, August Henry Hudson-Vadnais, of Columbus, OH; four sisters and three brothers-in-law: Larry and Pamela Duntz of Wichita, Susan Carroll of Wichita, Richard and Debra Johnson of Denton, TX, and Robert and Cindy McGraw of Towanda, Kansas, along with two nephews and four nieces. Philip was preceded in death by his parents.
Services are scheduled for 11:00 a.m. Saturday, January 16, at Kirby Morris Funeral Home in El Dorado, Kansas. Interment will follow in Sunset Lawns Cemetery in El Dorado, KS; Philip will be honored by the military for his service at internment. Kirby Morris Funeral Home is in charge of services.

Twenty Ten!

Happy New Year! At the end of this decade, Gus will be a teenager!
Gus and his dad made hats, we ate sushi, we played the board game "How Tall Am I?", and rang in Western Europe's New Year so we could go to bed at a reasonable hour.

SO MANY Winter-y posts, you need to start on the second page of this blog. Get yourself a cup of tea and get cozy!

Stay tuned for an upcoming gallery post of recent Gus art featuring muppets. Salut!

Grandma Kathy came for Christmas

Gus' Grandma Kathy came to visit this season; another person to play trains with! Also, Kathy shares Gus' love of putting together jigsaw puzzles. Gus has been handily putting together 12, then 24 piece puzzles himself, so we got Grandma and Gus a 60 piece-r thinking it would keep them busy. It did, for about 3 minutes. Though, they happily put it together several times over her visit, and now Gus does it himself. Gus has been pining after a 750 piece puzzle at a local bookstore and we've been putting him off--well, his Great Aunt Pam sent him a gift card for the store SO he got that puzzle (and a bedtime book). He has worked on this puzzle in 1-2 hour sessions at a time with Matt--first sorting the pieces, now putting together the different piles. Anyway, here is Gus and Grandma with the puzzle, Grandma making lefse, and Grandma watching a Thomas the Train Christmas special with Gus, which she cheerfully subjected herself to anytime Gus would ask.

Exciting Holiday Mail!

Gus had a lot of brown paper packages this year from all you lovely folks. I give a little explanation above each picture, and if you're the gifter and want more pictures of him opening your gift, just email me. Also, Auntie Susan, I am so sorry but Matt was the one around when Gus opened your farm animals, so it went unrecorded. See how I just called out my husband like that one the internets?

These shirts are from Mary Ann, to celebrate Gus' March 2010 upcoming concert to see They Might Be Giants, who he adores. I told Gus they came from John and John themselves.

As much as trains, Gus loves the sea, and aquariums, and the water. Because Auntie Jessamyn is a wise and loving mama herself, she guessed he would love Jacques Cousteau, a friend of both of our families. Here is the Jacques hat she knit him, and there is also a book, which we have read 100,000 times. Gus likes to pretend the couch is the Calypso.

This is Gus with his train case from Grandpa Phil. He looks surprised because he thought he would never get one because I had already denied him this very thing at the toy store about a hundred times.

This is the box filled with peanuts that his Grammy Lu sent. It also had other stuff in it, but look A GIANT BOX OF PEANUTS! (he liked the building set to Grammy Lu)

Here he is, delighted, discovering a train engine sent by Grandpa Dennis. He opened it and proceeded to tell us EVERYTHING about this kind of engine.

Children's Science Museum Train Expo

For an explanation of Gus' deep passion for trains, see the post below. The train expo at the children's science museum was one of three we went to over the holiday season (the first was the Columbus Expo, then the unphotographed Columbus Library Expo, then this one). This one was a great overview of different gauges of trains with lots of kid-friendly explanations. I love the picture of Gus against the chain around a big train set where you can see an entire line of shorties gazing, cupid-struck, at the trains.

Columbus Model Train Expo

Gus is obsessed with trains. He reads about them, draws them, builds them out of cardboard/clay/legos, talks about them, listens to music about them, and plays with his own Thomas the Train set. He is one of those kids who watches a train at a crossing and names the coal car, the hopper car, the freight car, the gondola car, etc. So naturally, when a model train expo came to town, we practically got an engraved invitation from the International Be A Good Parent Association to take Gus. It was totally worth it to see his face when we walked into an expo center full of running model trains.