Being Uncle Mike is a Pretty Cool Title

With all of my travels and being away for so long, missing family is obviously a very hard thing to cope with. Especially when new additions to the family come and I am not there to welcome them to this beautiful earth.

Back in 2009 my sister had her first son, and my first opportunity to be Uncle Mike, but at the time I was in Bangkok, and had been there for about 9 months at that point, so I didn't even have the chance to see my sister carrying my first little nephew. Like I said, it's difficult to only see pictures and hear stories over the phone and not be a part of it all. But that is the part of the "nomadic traveler's" contract, so I lived vicariously through my family as little Logan was introduced into our family.

I had the great chance to meet him at about 4 months old for about three days when I came home for a wedding, but obviously not enough time.

Now that I am back in America, I have had the chance to see Logan grow more and more. At first I was just referred to in baby blabber as "uh oh mai". Then my sister taught him how to say his new toy she bought him; a bike. So once he could say that, I was "Uh Oh Mike". Now he can hold conversations with me, mostly just "C'mon Uncle Mike!" as he holds my hand and walks me to play soccer or play with the bouncy ball-- which is a pretty awesome feeling.

As of last week, I can officially say I have a niece, as my other sister just had her first child, Ayla! And I thought since I got my first chance to see her via Skype just the other day, I would write a little post about how cool it is to be an Uncle and to see my niece and nephews firsthand (or somewhat so) grow up.

I have been photographing Logan a lot lately and I have thousands of photos of him already, but these recent ones from Easter have really made me happy, especially because he is photogenic like his "uh oh Mike". So now he is somewhat of my little model, especially since he's got piercingly deep, ocean-blue eyes like his mom and dad.

Maybe I will be able to teach Logan how to sing this song in tribute to Thailand...

Or I can try to have Ayla properly "wai" when someone says "sawa-dee ka" to her...

But enjoy these photos of my little "Logo" from Easter and check out the rest of my pictures from Easter on my site:

Logan Michael = cool guy.

Perfect

You caught me doing something naughty, I can tell!

Oh hey!

Just driving the tractor like a big boy.

One of my favorites with that smile!