More Christmas pictures and stuff...

I've added some more videos and pictures from Christmas to picasa. We've been very busy playing with all of our new toys over the past week!

On another note, my training begins today for April 27. I'm using this to get there. I haven't signed up for it yet... I'll know it's real when I do. For now, just getting through the first few weeks will be painful enough.

We'll see. Today's just 4 miles. I'm about to get on the treadmill now :)

--edit-- Tomorrow is the last day to sign up for a less expensive registration fee, so I went ahead and did it. I've got to go through with it now... this will be fun :)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everybody! Yesterday Emily celebrated baby Jesus' birthday at Sunday School, so I have a few videos from that. We opened presents at Mema Marge's tonight, and it was a ton of fun!

Before going to Mema's, we went to the 5:00 service at McFarlin, and got to see a live Nativity, as well as sing lots of songs. Emily and I went out before service started to see the manger, and as you can see in some of the pictures, they explain the strange odor we smelled once we were seated and service had began. Leslie was the first to notice the wonderful addition we had to her shoes, so I got them and washed them off in the bathroom. Never a dull moment when daddy's involved! :)

Emily got a crown, wand, and new jammies from mommy and daddy, and a barbie jeep from Mema! I'm sure I'll have more pictures of that soon. She got a very nice jewelry box from Chippa, as well as some more toys from Mema.

We left out a couple of cookies, yellow crackers, puppy chow, and dr. pepper for Santa tonight. We also through some puppy chow into the yard and on the roof for the reindeer (thanks Zack for the chex mix and puppy chow!). Emily wanted to make sure that Santa wasn't coming in her room tonight, just the living room with the presents. We told her that she may hear the reindeer, and maybe Santa saying "Ho Ho Ho!!"

I'll get more stuff up tomorrow when the family gets here (at 6 AM!), until then, Merry Christmas!

It's a boy!

For those of you unaware (the two of you who actually read this already know..), we're finally "officially public" with Leslie being pregnant. We found out yesterday that it's a boy! On the scans above, the first one is of his foot, second of his profile (head on the right looking up) and third on of his... well.. you know.

Everything has been going well so far. We had a little scare a few days ago when Leslie went to her regular doctor's appointment, because the heart appeared to be skipping. We saw the specialist the next morning in the city, and everything seemed fine, so it brought my basket case head back down to normal OCD levels.. The best part about this whole thing (and everything in our marriage) is that when I'm supposed to be the rock of stability, I crumble like burned toast. Good thing Leslie can keep her head through all of this.

So, as of now I think we're going to start calling him Benjamin Aaron. We'll see if that changes, but we're both getting used to it, so it'll probably stick :)

Emily likes talking about the baby in mommy's tummy. She says that he has "jammies on" and sometimes a bottle. She tells us that when he gets bigger he'll come out, and be really cute! Only if he doesn't look like me, is what I always say (in my head.. :)

Our cable is working again!

Here we were, sitting in our neighborhood as one of about three homes that actually had power, and we were complaining about not having cable?!?!? Well, I guess we have our priorities, I mean, we have to watch our programs! (And internet.. let's not forget that when we've moved in the past, the order of setting things up were: cable (internet), THEN power, then heat etc...)

Anyway, I've added just a few pics of the gym (you can also see the article here from the transcript) and a few movies of Emily calling for daddy. Not very important other than I wanted to document what we hear about sixteen times a night, either for daddy or mommy :)

I remembered more stuff!

How could I forget??? Not only did Emily have a big preschool presentation, but we also went to the Library to see singers and make ornaments for the tree. Then on Saturday morning we went to the Christmas parade! I knew I had forgotten something(s)!

Anyway, here are some pics from the week. I've also included some pictures of our ice storm. Enjoy!

What the mid 60's thought 1999 would look like

Emily's Preschool Concert!

This week Emily performed for all of the parents with the other kids from her class at school! She sang songs, danced, and then we got to watch a slideshow of the semester of her class!

Her last day this week at school was also a big day because she didn't wear her diaper, and went pee pee in the potty all by herself! She's getting to be very big now.. Driving is next I guess...

I know something else big happened this week, but I can't remember it right now. We're off to go shopping, I'm sure I'll think of it later and put it up here. Pics of stuff later as well.

Merry Christmas

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1147736126

Philharmonic Concert

Yesterday Emily and I went to the Christmas Philharmonic Concert, and it was wonderful! Emily got a mint from the nice man when we got there, we looked at all of the decorations outside (waiting until the very last minute until we had to go in... keeping her moving...) and then went in to find our seats.

Jim was very nice and gave us two tickets for this concert, but we didn't know where we would be sitting. I was really hoping for an aisle seat, just in case Emily needed to get up, but we ended up a few seats in. Thankfully though, nobody showed up next to us! We sat and watched all of the princesses and princes dance and sing, looked at the "sky" a lot (blue backdrop) and every time Emily started appearing tired or bored, they changed songs and she perked up quickly.

At intermission, I figured I'd just act like it was the end and come home (an hour of sitting quietly!) but as we left, Emily said, "I want to see more songs!" So we turned around and headed back in! She made it through half of the second part of the performance, and then decided it was time to go get an icee.

I loved spending time with Emily yesterday, we had a ton of fun!

Wish List

Just for fun we've added Emily's Christmas wish list to items under her name. You can find it here, or click over on the left. I think it works that if we end up buying something off of the list, it goes away. I'm also guessing that if you decide to get something from there (or from a local store) you can either send us a note so we can remove it, or you can try to remove it yourself.

If you can't view this list, can you let me know? Thanks!

Black Friday

Well we got out, but not at 4:00AM like I had hoped :)

We started at Wal-Mart, and I was very disappointed to find a parking space. I looked for the two items I wanted, but of course, sold out. We found Emily's 16" Princess Bike waaaay up on the rack, and I almost destroyed half the bikes there trying to get it down, but I managed to sneak it out in the Christmas checkout lane (empty... on black friday! Sheesh, no fun at all... I wanted to sit in line for at least an hour) and get it to the car. Emily hated the bike when she tried it because it "wobbled." I told her that if Santa made the bike and brought it for Christmas it wouldn't wobble. She seemed content with that information, but it came up again later (keep reading :) )

Next was Kohl's. This was a little better, but not much. We had to park pretty far away, so I was getting a little happier about the day, but we didn't have to park on the grass or anything, so I was still rather disappointed. Now, once we got in, it was pretty chaotic, so I liked that. It had been since 4AM, they told me there. I took Emily around and noticed that the line to the checkout wrapped half way around the store! Weeee black friday! I got in line right then, knowing it would take forever to get to the front.

As I neared the register, I called mom to get her and Leslie over there, but Leslie was still trying on clothes.. It got tense there for a second, the people behind me didn't really like holding while I frantically called Leslie and mom to get up there. They did, and we were at the register. Then the best part of the day came! Mom said that if Leslie could guess the amount of the clothes she had to buy within 10$, she'd pay for it! Leslie instantly went into game show mode, and started throwing clothes at me as she "Brain Aged" in her head... I tried to help her but she was in the counting "zone," and wouldn't have it. She called out the price at the last second, and won the grand prize and a trip to Cancun! No, just kidding.. but she did get the prices right! Even with the 60% discount on everything!

Next was the mall... Now this was what I was waiting for. Parking: Red Lobster basically.. aaaaah. We fought our way through the crowds and ended up at Santa, and there was no line! Emily and I stood at the entrance for a while watching Santa. We had decided a few days ago that I would be the one to talk to Santa, she would just stand there with me, she didn't want to sit on his lap. He looked over at her, and she waved at him. She showed him her shirt (I "heart" Santa), and we slowly walked in near him. He began to speak to her, and she went into a nose scratching frenzy. He mentioned to her if she kept it up, she might "rub your nose plum off." He asked her what she wanted, and she spoke to him (not waiting for me, like the plan.. Gosh, my only job.. and she wouldn't let me have it) saying, "we came here the other day and you weren't here!" He laughed and told her that he was still giving Rudolph a bath at the North Pole. She then told him she wanted a Princess Bike, but she didn't want it to wobble. He said, "you don't worry about that one bit, my elves make sure all of our bikes ride smooth and straight." She gave him a huge smile, and looked at me as if to say, "see! Santa can do it! Why can't you find a dumb bike that doesn't wobble!" We asked her a couple times if she wanted a picture with Santa, she replied, "maybe later."

We left the mall and wouldn't you know it, there was a sign on the best restaurant ever created (Teds) that they were open! We got in there right at 11AM, waited only for about 15 minutes or so (a new record for Teds), and had lunch there. Mom and I could still see the gleam in Leslie's eye, so I took Emily back home and mom and her rushed back to Kohl's for more fun.

A pretty boring black friday if you ask me, but still good. We ended up buying a couple more things from amazon later, which should be here (and wrapped!) by Christmas. We've still got LOTS of shopping to do, so we'll see how Cyber Monday goes.

Thanksgiving 2007

I've added some more pictures, but make SURE you check out the picasa web albums page (just click on the pictures above, I think)... Emily using the iphone... classic :)

Leslie's been cooking all day, and we're getting ready for everybody to get here for Thanksgiving! Here are some pictures, stop by often, I'll be updating throughout the evening! There's wii in our future :)

Emily went pee pee at school today! She told us all about it when she got home, and because she went pee pee at school like a big girl, she got to go to Super Target tonight and pick out a dress! This was the first dress she saw, and even after seeing all the other dresses, she liked this one the best. We hope you like it! Great job Emily!

Emily's First Dentist Appointment!

When I arrived at the dentist's office today, Leslie and Emily were already back and being checked out. I found them already in the chair, and Emily was listening to everything being said, and doing everything without any problems! She got a little scared when the doctor came to look in her mouth, but she was very brave and did everything he asked, even through the tears.

After that, the assistant helped Emily brush her teeth, then took her picture, then let her get a sticker and a prize! As soon as we were done, she looked up and asked Leslie, "are we done?" Leslie said "yup, that's it!" Emily seemed very excited that it went so well.

Great job Emily, we're very proud of you!

A poll without a way to poll

So I've asked a few people, but thought I'd throw it out the two watching this blog to see what you think... Here's my idea(s):

1. Have one blog to combine them, one blog to rule them all.. basically any family/person I'm close to give access to author blogs on a central blog so we can share our own moments in time. I see it like this - I write our blog which three or so look at, which is fine. But those three people probably have blogs that three people look at and so on.. so if we all combined on one single blog, it would be a neat place to centralize all the stuff we're doing and can share in an easy way. So, I add my people, those people add those people and so on. But, then.. does it just become facebook?

2. Just link to other blogs from mine. A little less exciting, but probably more practical.

Just my thoughts.. you know, there is a comment section after each of these posts, so feel free to chime in.. :)

Misc

Well we had a pretty tough time the end of last week. Emily's stomach was really bugging her, so she didn't make it to school for a couple of days. She went to the doctor, and got a shot (flu), so she had a bandaid on it for a while, which "will come off when it's better."

She seems to be well now though! She went to school yesterday with no problems, so things seem to be back to normal.

Speaking of normal, I put up Christmas lights Saturday night (finished at about 9:30PM). You can imagine how much Leslie loved me up on top of the house in the dark of night. I keep begging to put the Christmas tree up, but she won't let me until after the shower she is throwing at our house on Friday. I guess I can wait ONE more week... Sheesh, you'd think I was asking something crazy :)

For you nerds out there, I'm still listening to all of my podcasts, and love them all. However, my favorite podcast TWiT (This Week in Tech: Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton [sometimes], John C. Dvorak (dvorak.org/blog) and others) is starting to anger me a little, mostly because of Dvorak. Let me explain why: podcasts by nature are for a niche audience. They are not mainstream, nor should they be. I understand the movement to iptv and stuff, but podcasts are still made for small audiences (200k people or so). I listen to these podcasts because they are different than the mainstream stuff you see on G4, CNN, etc., because they don't cater to the mainstream, they include a lot more inside baseball stuff, which is the reason I listen. However, it seems lately that every time Dvorak is on this show he tries to speed up the conversation, rants about how the panel has lost the entire audience of boredom and says that nobody wants to hear the details about the tech industry.

Don't get me wrong, I love Dvorak to death (PC Mag, Market Watch, etc) but jeeeeeeeeeez, I can't be the only nerd out there sick of him telling everybody to move on just when it's getting interesting.. Okay, not very exciting news there... Just thought I'd share.

I was asked a very interesting question by Chebon and Kate this week: If you had to pick only three artists to listen to for the rest of your life, but you could listen to everything that artist created, but listen to nothing else, what would you pick?

I'm stuck right now on Beethoven, I think. It's a hard question, there's a lot of good music out there.... This may take me longer than a week.

We just got back from Trick-or-Treating, and it was great fun! Emily went to Mema Marge's, Mrs. Kershen's, Chippa's, Abby's, Kyle's, and Ann's house! We got lots of candy, and Emily had a wonderful time! Click the pictures below to see more, lots of movies!

Today we went to church, shopping with Mema Marge, hung out with Chebon, went to the yellow park, then went to the church carnival with Papa Vinny and Chippa. After the carnival, we headed out to dinner. We had a great day! Some of the pics of the day below:

Chebon came over and watched some football today, played wii with Emily, then went to the yellow park with her! They swang, went down the slide (backwards....) and had lots of fun! Thanks for coming over Chebon! We hope you like your birthday present! More pics of the day here:

Parent Day at Ballet

Leslie got to see Emily at ballet today! Apparently things started well, but Emily didn't really like everybody looking at her, so after getting a little upset, decided to sit with mommy the rest of the time.

Other than that, not too much to report, just going along day by day!

Hectic Sunday!

What a day! We began at 7:30AM driving to Blanchard to pick up Papa David and Grandma Glenda, then driving to Ada for the 100th year for Asbury United Methodist Church. We went to service, ate lunch, then drove back to Norman. Emily napped on the way, and it was a good thing she did, because as soon as we got home we headed out to the NRH Carnival! She had a great time! We're finally home resting now!

Dinner tonight with Papa Vinny and Chippa

After that close OU win we're heading out to dinner with Papa Vinny and Chippa this evening. I'm getting the hang of posting photos/videos/etc., so you should be seeing more updates the more I get a hang of things on this end.

Rumors have been flying about the new iphone, iphone 3rd party apps being available in February, and an xbox 360 with a built in hd dvd player. I'm hoping Santa will bring many presents for me this Christmas :)

Of course, if none of those work out, I could always take the homestar figurine sets 1 and 2 :)... or maybe some ties, or shirts, or.. nothing is always good :)

Couple of things

Now I'm seeing if movies work on blogger.. if so, enjoy the OOOOOO-U! - Well, the movie didn't work, so you can see it here.

Date night!

Papa Vinny was nice enough to come over tonight and watch Emily, so Ryan, Holly, Leslie and myself are going to Bricktown! We're planning on dinner at Zios, then heading to a movie, although we don't know what yet.

As you can see below, we went to the pumpkin patch today. Emily picked out her pumpkin, and we also got one to carve tomorrow. We'll take some pics and post them here when we do it!

See you later!

Testing some more

Trying a new layout to post pics from Picasa. I'm also going to try to post the slideshow here below, let's see if this works:

Pumpkin Patch 2007!

I'm doing this to test the photo blog portion of Picasa. Just testing to see how this works :)

Test with pic

Another test

Test Post

testing again... Let's see if this one works..

Wow, guess this works..

Okay, so it looks like things are up and running. Emily and I just got done reading the Hallo-Weiner and Brown Bear Brown Bear. She now reads Brown bear to me, which is really fun, and she especially likes the scary parts in Hallo-Weiner.

The other day we were walking home from the big yellow park the back way (which we found just a couple days ago, much faster than walking all the way around, but it is through some pretty tall grass and weeds and trees and stickers and bugs and stuff...) and it was getting dark. Emily quickly grabbed me and asked, "is there a ghastly monster in there?" as she pointed toward the trees. I told her that the ghastly monster was only in the Hallo-Weiner, and even then it was just a couple of ornery cats, not really a ghastly monster. She seemed okay with that, but it was pretty funny hearing her ask about the ghastly monster!

What else? Not much... We're all working hard (especially Emily! I heard that she cleaned up all the tables today at school! Taking after her OCD dad I see!!!), and ready for some rest!

See you later!

Test from phone

Testing

Test

Testing...

ugh

Well this really easy site is giving me fits. I've tried updating it three times from my phone, with no luck. Stay tuned, maybe I'll figure it out eventually.

Still listening?

So I go through all that trouble finding a new way to post, and find the easiest thing I could imagine, and what happens next? I stop updating. It seems that being as easy as it is, I keep telling myself "ahhh, I can just do it later, it will only take me three minutes to update." So the days go by, with me saying the same thing to myself over and over again.

It warms my heart to hear of the two people in the universe who actually check this thing on a regular basis tell me they miss it! So, with that in mind, how can I not update at least today???

So, what's going on you ask? Well, not all that much. We just found a back way path to the park this evening, which was pretty cool, and cuts down our time to the park significantly. Other than that, we had a GREAT time watching the OU game yesterday!

We should be taking Emily to the pumpkin patch some time this week, so with any luck I'll take pictures with my new EXTREMELY-easy-to-take-pictures camera (probably why I haven't been taking pictures lately.. too easy) and post them for the third year in a row!

Ah, this reminds me of a new show I wanted to go check on over on revision3. It's called TekZilla, with Patrick Norton, who moved over from DL.TV. Just my nerd moment, sorry :)

Oh, and thanks to Chebon for the great advice on lightbulbs! Ooh, which reminds me again, we have a clean garage! It's wonderful! Anyway, halogen, the only way to go!

I forgot to mention

Oops, I forgot to mention our trip to the State Fair this weekend! Mema Marge, Randy, Leslie, Emily and I all went to the fair Sunday morning. The line was REALLLLY long getting into the fair (the ticket booth ran out of tickets.. sheesh), but after we got in Emily had a lot of fun. She got to eat all sorts of ice cream, chocolate, bread, candy, etc., and we walked around almost all of the buildings.

Emily didn't want to ride the "big elevator" at first (space needle), but then seemed interested, so we got on and rode it up, spun around, and back down. She loved it! After that we had nice big indian tacos, then went home as it was getting really hot at that point.

So that was our trip to the fair!

Wednesday was one full day for Emily...

Today Emily seemed pretty tired when I saw her. She had already gone to school, then to dance class, and Leslie brought her to me at School because she was going to see a friend at the hospital. By the time Emily and I had gotten home, she was fast asleep in her car seat.

We got home (around 5:45) and there was no waking her... I put her in our bed and she slept for a while longer. A bit later Terry, Abby, and Ryan came over and they all played, ran, played, ran, screamed, ran, played, and ran some more until about 8. I just put her to bed after she read a few stories to us tonight! She told us about the bunny who ate the carrots because he was hungry, about the dog that was thirsty for water and crunchy ice, and about the fishies swimming in the water!

No big plans for tomorrow, but I'll try to get something up when I get a chance. Talk to you later!

Too busy playing with my new phone!

Sorry haven't been on in a while, I've been too busy playing with my iphone! Emily has had a great week, but took a spill at school and hurt her lip pretty bad. She got over it quick though, she wanted to go to ballet even with her puffy lip!

I've linked all my email accounts through gmail now (because the iphone handles gmail well, from what I can tell) and now I'm debating whether or not I should take my account info off of my local email program and just use gmail for everything. One more step for google in world domination... Is it bad that I don't mind that so much?

Emily's first Ballet class!

Here are some pictures from Emily's first class at Ballet Academy!

Recap

Well, to recap all the posts I have now lost:

- Emily went to the county fair and had a great time (up to the end where the roller coaster scared her a bit). You can see the pictures below.

- We had a great time watching the OU game yesterday, Church this morning, shopping at Penn Square Mall this afternoon.

- I managed to con [edit] convince [edit] allow my mom to buy my old [edit] "experienced" ipod for the same price as a new one... With the money, I went and got an iphone. I'm too scared to touch it until my invisibleshield comes in though.

Fun fun

So, I hit a wrong button and kablooie, the whole blog went down. Here I am starting over. I'll update everybody's links either now or later.. :)