Spinnin' Wheel

Watch Brenna spin her big alphabet ball!

http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i8/xbel76/?action=view&current=07033015.flv

ALERT: New Hoes Post!

Mid Week Brenna Fix

Brenna got a little chilly at daycare today (it didn't get out of the 60s and was windy), so she came home in a little boy's outfit, complete with Where's Waldo socks. Fetching.

Please keep our little one in your thoughts and prayers, we found out yesterday that she has a double ear infection, which would explain some of her crabbiness during our recent road trip. She weighed in at 16 lbs, 9 ozs, and feels every bit of that.

100th Post!

Below this post you'll find a recap of Brenna's trip to Las Vegas this past weekend. I wanted to mention that I'll be posting some springtime pictures from the yard on the Hoes blog in the next day. We had another half inch of rain (at least, no telling how much evaporated out of the gauge from Saturday morning until Sunday night), so things are starting to grow pretty wild out there.

Since I've pulled my Metal School blog (like the Dreams blog, how much can one person keep up with), I wanted to briefly relay a funny conversation I overheard while at a used CD store this afternoon. These two guys in their 40s, maybe 50s were looking for CDs of their favorite heavy metal bands, one wearing an Iron Maiden hat and the other a KISS shirt.

In short, they looked like the white version of Cheech and Chong, burnt out stoners. At any rate, the conversation went as follows (feel free to insert expletives where necessary, I'll leave those to your imagination):

"Hey man, they don't have any Motorhead CDs."
"But look, they've got Poison, your favorite." (both of them laugh at this, metal-heads don't listen to Poison and other cream-puff hair bands)
"Hey, they also have some Skid Row CDs."
(silence from the other guy)
"What, you LIKE Skid Row?"
"Yeah man, I saw them open for Bon Jovi in 1989 during the Slippery When Wet Tour."
(more silence)
"You saw Bon Jovi in concert???"
"Yeah man, what's wrong with that?"
(yet more silence)
"Well, I don't know man, I just thought you were cool, that's all"

Anyway, this conversation went on for a while, I thought it was pretty funny, perhaps you will too.

Brenna's Roadtrip

We made it back safely from our two-day travelling road show to Las Vegas. Brenna did very well, riding for an hour and a half to two hours at a time before needing out of her seat, fed, changed, etc.

Below is a calmer moment, aptly labelled "This Is How Brenna Rolls" on Emily's Photobucket account.

Here we are arriving at the Kingman hotel at 1am Saturday morning. The four and a half hour drive from our house took about two extra hours with the Brenna stops. We got her to calm down and fall asleep around 2:30 that morning, and got up at six.

I'm not sure what Emily's artistic vision was on this shot, but quite honestly it looks like I'm getting ready to relieve myself on the floor.

The next picture is of Brenna and all of her stuff that we had to bring for our two day trip.

Here's Brenna entertaining herself briefly on the floor of the hotel room. She pulled the overhead bar to the ground so she could get a closer look at her animals.

Below is the wedding we went to, it was in a little wedding chapel off the strip in Vegas. I was busy bouncing an irate Brenna in the parking lot, this is honestly the first time I've seen this picture. I'm told the service lasted approximately three minutes and the person conducting the ceremony was possibly an ex-showgirl, although that's purely speculation.

After the ceremony Saturday afternoon, we arrived at Aunt Sue and Uncle Tom's and had to drive Brenna around the town briefly to get her to calm down for the night. Once we accomplished that, she slept for almost four hours at a time and didn't get up until well after seven, perhaps the latest I've seen her wake.

Below are a few pictures of us visiting on the back porch, Brenna was somewhat cranky the majority of our brief visit, but here's what we got on film (well, digital, you know what I mean).

Aaargh!! Last Post Before Vegas

We're going to a family wedding in Las Vegas this weekend, so this will be your last Brenna fix until after the weekend.

Below Brenna is sporting an outfit we bought for her while at Disneyland last summer when she was still cooking in the belly. It's amazing seeing her wearing this already. She's doing very well sitting up on her own, with minimal assistance!

BTW - We're finally getting some rain, if you're curious to see what that looks like in the desert, I'll be posting a short video from out the front door from earlier this afternoon. It's been raining hard most of the night, and like last year, we've gone from no rain for a long period to lots of rain all at once. Check out the Hoes blog for that video!

Sitting Up!

The link below is a video of Brenna sitting up looking at her fishy music thingy attached to the side of her crib. She loses her concentration when I say her name and flops over, priceless.

http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i8/xbel76/?action=view&current=07032001.flv

New Video - Brenna Laughing

After seeing cousin Melanie's videos of Alexander, I was reminded that I still had one of Brenna that I had yet to upload. I ran out of room on our monthly video allowance on Drop Shots, but Emily saved the day with her Photo Bucket account.

The quality of the video is still marginal, but you can still tell the baby is ours.

As ZZ Top would say, enjoy and get it on.


http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i8/xbel76/?action=view&current=07031202.flv

Yoga

A few pictures of our bendy baby from this past weekend...

Lost My Way This Bloody Day

I can't tell you first off how happy I am that this work week is over. I have been assigned nine credit unions in Hawaii to work on for their electronic service installations, and have spent the last two days on the phone for six plus hours asking the same questions over and over and... well, I'm happy to be typing and not talking.

Tonight Emily and I are having a semi-date night at the church watching a showing of some movie about Esther (One Night With The King I think it's called), while Grandma Becky watches our daughter. We were hoping to go to the Renaissance Festival tomorrow, but the forcecast high is 95, so we're probably going to swap off the baby and clean our house. My office for one is littered with weeks of accumulated granola bar crumbs under keyboards and wildly discarded staples and paper bits strewn about on the floor under my desk.

I've added a nifty little tracking map on the blog site, something I stumbled across on a site of one of cousin Christine's friends, and as you'll see, in the last two days we've had visitors from some interesting places. I know who the folks are checking in from the southeast, the Ohio area, and perhaps even the New York state area, but I have NO clue who is represented by the red blip in eastern Australia. Whoever you are, show yourself, I'm curious.

It's official, I'll be going to Hawaii the week of June 4th, so perhaps while I'm there I can put a little red blip on the map from there, greetings from Paradise and all that (right, it's only Paradise if you're NOT working while there).

Below are a few pictures of us over at the grandparents last night, celebrating Becky's mmphhh'th birthday. Below she's inspecting her sewing machine case she was given, unaware at the time that she was getting a new machine to put in it, heh heh heh. Like last week, this picture is brought to you cheerfully and respectfully by Voivod. You'll be seeing a lot of this shirt until it rots off me.

In the next picture here, Uncle John is trying to appease Brenna by tickling her toes. I haven't been around much to witness this, but apparently Brenna is not a huge fan of Uncle John, but this night things went peacefully and there was no screaming of projectile vomiting involved.

I honestly don't think Emily could have crammed more smiling faces into this picture, well done and bravo!

Ah, my daughter takes after me when her picture is taken, I couldn't be prouder. I need to start a photo album of stoner pictures, what a hoot that would be.

This is what I was trying to capture, although I couldn't get Brenna to smile here.

Again, and finally, Emily seems to be the only smiling person in this duo.

I'm happy to announce that there were only two spelling errors in this post, that's an all time best!

Quick Thursday Morning Picture

Speed Blog

Moment of opportunity... pantsless baby... discovering footies

There are my footies...

Got em...

How ya doin?

What I go through to humor my mommy...

Coughing and Sleeping

Below is yet another low budget, low grade video of our daughter, this one with her faking coughing and another of her sleeping on the back porch.

http://www.dropshots.com/day.php?userid=217718&cdate=20070312&ctime=184247

Brenna Road Trip!

Well, if 15 minutes from our house counts as a road trip, we went on one Saturday morning. Cousin Tyler was in a season ending Lacrosse tournament, and we watched him play for as long as Brenna could stand to be in the sun (about an hour, it was already in the 80s when we left).

Cousin Rachel is saying hello in this first shot, as Brenna gets settled in to watch the action on the field.

Here is Tyler on the field, pondering his next move. He appears to be on the defensive end of the field when playing, don't know the name of his position, this honestly was the first time I've ever watched the sport in person, and admittedly was intrigued.

"Hmm, guys blindsiding each other, beating on each other with sticks with wreckless abandon, I could learn to like this sport"

Brenna continues to take in the action as Rachel and Beth (Tyler's mom) cheer the team on (they finished second overall, losing only their last game/match/scrimmage/scrub of the day).

Finally, Brenna continues to ponder the importance of Lacrosse in the United States, and how the sport can thrive in the midst of other major sports such as football, baseball, and basketball.

This Week With Brenna

I've barely managed to get a blog posted before the weekend... again. Our weekends are action packed these days, I apologize for not getting something out here sooner. Between running errands and entertaining our girl, all of a sudden it's Sunday night again.

Brenna is cutting a tooth and has been having issues with sleeping recently. Don't know if they're related, but we've had to go the extra mile recently to keep her down during the day for long periods of time. On Friday night we had to drive her around, which we haven't done in over a month, and today she gave in to sleep while being pushed on the back porch in her swingy chair (pictures of video of that to come later).

Other Brenna related updates:

- She is getting chattier by the day, and enjoys hearing herself screech
- She has not mastered rolling over from her belly and dislikes being asked to do such
- After coughing for real, if Emily asks her is she's okay, she'll fake a few coughs and
chuckle or grin. We're trying to catch this on video and will post it when we can.
- Things that make her laugh: any interaction with her belly (chewing, zerberts, etc.), and
Mommy shaking her hair at her.. again, trying to catch this on video

Below Brenna is getting a handful of stinky old dog hair and tugging ferociously to see what dog tastes like. Good natured Tazi is just happy someone is paying attention to him.

I wasn't around when these were taken, but it would appear that Brenna is practicing some wrestling moves on her Stitch doll.

Brenna here is humoring Mommy while she smooches her on the cheek. Drool included.



A final shot of the finger chewer and Mommy.

Brenna At Church (Revisited)

Sorry, one lonely little picture for your midweek update, this from Brenna at church last week!

The IKEA Of All Posts


I somehow managed to not get around to blogging this weekend, and apologize. We had a very busy weekend of running errands and doing other assorted things, and here it is Monday afternoon again. Brenna is almost five months old already, which also doesn't seem possible, and in a few months I'll be 33... I think... yes, 33, doing the math is getting more difficult with every passing year.

Before I delve into the Brenna photo library, let me quickly mention that I'm going to be posting some new yard pictures on the Hoes site. We're supposed to stay in the low 80s this week, approaching 90 by the weekend, so the yard is quickly waking up from it's brief winter slumber.

I also have some pictures of the Rose Garden at the Birmingham Botanical Garden that Emily and I took when we were there a few years ago, and that seems like an appropriate thing to post with Spring approaching (well, for some people).


On another random note, it looks like I'll be going to Hawaii (Oahu) for work sometime between April and June, certainly not a bad place to go if I have to be away from home, although after seeing these pictures below, you'll certainly see why I'm torn. Probably best if you pace yourself as you wade through these.


The first three pictures are of Brenna in her Jumperoo recently. I need to use my old Canon camera and slow down the shutter speed to give the blurred effect of her jumping through the ceiling of our house, but alas time is short and I don't have any film right now. Damn these digital cameras, you almost can't take a bad picture with them.




Caught in the act here of doing something nefarious.




Brenna enjoys pulling herself around in her captain's chair to look at all the bells and whistles on this contraption, I had to sneak up on her here for this (ahem) candid shot.



Next, we'll play a game called "Hey, Brenna, what's that on your shirt", and no, I'm not referring to puke, although I apologize in advance if there are any signs of spittle in any of these pictures. As you can imagine, that's a big part of our lives these days.


I'll give you a hint, the front of the shirt has a quote from a recent Will Ferrell movie.





Here's chance #2. By the way, Brenna is showing off her new cloth diapers that Mommy thinks will make life easier for all of us, nice cost savings! We love that frugal Mommy, more money for Daddy's plants!





Here Brenna reenacts a scene from her new favorite movie Talledega Nights. If you guessed right, congrats, we'll send you some spittle in the mail as your prize... grrrr. Mom seems to be enjoying this a little toooo much.





Finally a couple of candid shots of Breena chewing on the wrong side of her binkie. These pictures are sponsored by Voivod, the greatest heavy metal band to come out of Canada since the beginning of time. One of these days when we ever get back to Seattle where Emily's tattoo artist resides, I'm going to get the logo from the back of this shirt put on my back somewhere. Intrigued? Hmm, you should be. And I can safely say I'm ready for a tattoo, being 1500 miles away from the needle.

I also have a few pictures of Brenna at Church from this past weekend, but how many pictures do we need in one post? I'm afraid this post alone might crash the blog site : )

And besides, you still have the Hoes site to check out (wink wink nod nod).