Saturday, November 24, 2007

Brenna Leftovers

In the grand Thanksgiving tradition, I give you leftovers from some recent events that I've skipped over in the past or simply missed while trying to update everyone on our happenings. A few of these that I've come across aren't too shabby.
We had a nice holiday weekend so far, starting off with turkey on Thursday at Emily's aunt's house. Friday was spent around the house, after we went to Kohl's at 4am to meet up with other maniac's looking for good deals (and there were plenty of those, definitely worth getting up that early).
Today (Saturday) we ran a few errands, and went to a movie this afternoon will Aunt Beth watched our little wild monkey girl (Beowulf was a pretty slick flick).
At any rate, below is a shot of Brenna and Emily at the church's fall festival, held a few weeks ago. This of Brenna inside the bounce house with her mama. Most of my shots from this turned out blurry (not enough light), but I found this one to share.


Here's one of me pushing Brenna around on her scooty puff lion mobile. She's gotten big enough to want to be pushed along on this thing, and I help her as far as my fat belly allows me to without passing out on the floor from exhaustion.


These are my favorite recent shots of Brenna helping me a) check my email, b) check my belly button for any nefarious lint items... and finally, just being darn cute.






Thursday, November 22, 2007

Gobble Gobble

Three quick, cute pictures of Brenna for Turkey Day!






Monday, November 19, 2007

Brenna's Fantastic Journey
(Interpreted Through Carpet Readings)

Emily and Brenna are safely back from their trip to Pennsylvania. Fun was had by all.

I've plucked some random pictures from Emily's camera to share here, and will take a stab at explaining what's going on in each shot, with the assistance of carpet and other assorted flooring (stay with me, this is going somewhere, I promise).

This first shot appears to be Brenna sitting in her stroller in one of the three airports she frequented. I'm going to guess O'Hare in Chicago, although this could be Terminal 2 at Sky Harbor, as I'm only familiar with Terminal 4 and it's airplane patterned flooring. Either way, we appear to be patiently waiting for a plane.




This one is of Brenna patiently waiting for Emily to get ready so they could go visit with the other mothers and kiddies. She looks like she's sitting in the dentist's office waiting to get called back for a cleaning. I dig the rolled up pants.



This appears to be a picture from their hotel room. What a bizarre year that there are still leaves on trees in mid November that far north. Emily tells me it wasn't near as cold as she was expecting.




Ok, I'm guessing again my the cheap pattern and texture that this is Brenna and some new found friends visiting in the conference room at the hotel. There must be something interesting in that cup, what, we'll never know.




Here is Brenna hanging out at the host mother's house, I suspect on Saturday, when they all got together for an early Thanksgiving lunch/dinner. Emily says that everyone loved the sweet potato casserole that she made from my mom's recipe. Ohio State ended up easily winning that game, in case you're wondering and/or live in a cave.




Here's Brenna, extremely excited to be hanging out with this fellow. I see she managed to commandeer some one's remote control. This is one of her favorite things to do, to change the channel to shopping networks or pay per view.


Brenna with a bunch of random people that I don't know. Comments welcome from the peanut gallery, if you wish to identify yourself.




Emily says it was snowing at the airport in Allentown/Bethlehem, sure looks like it. Goodbye to Pennsylvania!







Friday, November 16, 2007

All By Myself (Don't Wanna Be)

Emily and Brenna have officially made it to Pennsylvania for the weekend. Emily tells me that Brenna did very well on the flight to Chicago and even made a new friend in the seat next her, a nice fellow that picked up stuff that she threw overboard, and even let her sprawl out across his leg while napping. The flight to Allentown I'm told was cramped and stuffy, and Brenna crashed early tonight, no doubt from the excitement. I'm very proud of wife who braved this journey on her own to see so many of her new found friends across the country!

As for me, well, I'm staying busy around the house. Below are a few pictures of the flagstone out back, FINALLY grouted to completion after six months of "getting around to it".

The bulk of this stone in this first picture was already done, I simply finished off the last few that rounded the bend at the end.



This was the other side of the yard, once covered with bark and bird seed, it's now been spiffed up. This morning was beautiful for getting this done. It actually rained here on four different occasions yesterday, totalling about a third of an inch. We were one of the lucky areas that had a few strong isolated storms pass over us, which makes up for all the times this past summer I was out in the front yard shaking my fist at the monsoons mockingly skirting the house.



Seeing as Brenna is not here, I went back into the archives and pulled a few more shots from the past few weeks for your viewing pleasure. A few more shots of her in her Scooty Puff Jr mobile, and one her curiously checking out some other toy that I'm not recognizing from the picture.





In other random news, I'm wrapping up painting part of our bathroom, which we started about three years ago and abandoned. I also have officially replaced all of our standard 60 watt bulbs in the house with the energy saving kind (forget what they're called). I'll be curious to see how much a month we see in savings going forward. We're already on the time of day program with our power company, which has saved us some nice money already (running high power appliances during off peak hours), and despite running our A/C a lot more this summer, our monthly average bill for the year has been lower by about 10%.
I'm now working on my second Starbucks of the evening, to try and power through a number of other projects. I'll report any new Emily and Brenna updates as they become available throughout the weekend.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Satuday Supersized Post

Emily handed over her camera last night, and I found on it a slew of new Brenna pictures. Below are my favorite eight or nine of them.

Since I wasn't present when any of these were taken, allow me to provide my interpretation for each (my interpretive dance, as it were).

This first shot appears to be from daycare at Grandma and Auntie Beth's, we're sitting on the floor posing for Mommy. I'm guessing she was playing with the cool blanket that's behind her, and/or the wipes box, since we like pulling out every wipe and throwing them around on the floor... you know, for kicks.


This next one is at our house, I must have been in the boy's room or off doing something nefarious, I don't know. This is a picture apparently of our daughter Slumpy Slumperton, hanging out on the couch, being pleasant. We're not in nighttime clothes, so this must have been at some other random time, hanging around the house.

Here's another one from that same photo session, I like this one because it reminds of all of the drunk people I saw in alleyways in the French Quarter during Mardi Gras. I know, sue me for having a bit of a warped mind. If you're not following me, it's probably best that you don't, my mind will take you places you'd sometimes rather not go.

Moving right along, here's another picture at our house that I don't remember seeing Emily take (must be all the medication I'm on, or something). Brenna is doing what she does best, entertaining herself on the floor with one of her many assorted toys. Sorry, no video exists of her tractor getting flung around the room, like her firetruck. Another favorite pastime of hers that I've yet to capture on film is her dropping one of her plastic balls and chasing it across the floor, picking it up, and dropping it again. She's much more interesting than watching grass grow, and we don't have any grass, so there you go.



Ok, I was made aware of these pictures, this was Brenna's first day outside with the bigger kids at daycare. Auntie Beth bought Brenna some shoes for going outdoors, and you'll see them in their splendor later on down the line here.
I again wasn't there, but it would appear that Brenna took a liking to this scooty mobile thingy. Further on here it looks like the bigger kid behind her enjoyed pushing her around. Outta my way, crazy driver!



If I had something witty to say about each one of these pictures, I'd be rich beyond my means.






Here's a picture of what looks like our first time going down a slide. Our daredevil daughter opted to do this without pants on, what a trooper. That gravel rash is a killer.



And finally, a protective Brenna is looking off anyone wanting to take her drooled on (perhaps water, we just don't know) ball away from her.


By the way, Brenna and Emily are going on a big journey next weekend to Pennsylvania to visit some friends there. They'll be flying out for Chicago this Friday and taking a connector to Allentown (I think). If there is a three or four day lull in postings here around that time, you'll know why... not because Emily will have her camera (I have my own), but simply because my life isn't that interesting outside of being a daddy and bragging on my daughter. Stay tuned!

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Cold Snap!

Yes indeed, it's only 87 today, almost time to put away those shorts and break out the Bill Cosby sweaters!

Hey, I had some time to upload some video of Brenna before bedtime last night. In each one she shows off her singing skills, and being able to identify loved ones from a mug shot, er, picture.

Enjoy!

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Brenna's Buddies

We'll, it's officially June again, ladies and gentlemen. 91 degrees right now and a whopping 12% humidity. No clouds, no breeze, no nothing, just warm (I won't say hot, that would be a mocking slap in the face to June through September). If memory serves, we made it into the 90's as early as March this year, so summer has lasted officially eight months this year.

Ok, moving on to lighter things, below are a few pictures of Brenna over at daycare in the past week, visiting with a few friends, doing a few things, etc.












Church Nursery Pictures

It's 6am here on 11/7, and it's 70 degrees outside. That was our low, and it's supposed to be 92 today for a high. I thought it was November, but I guess it must be early June, my bad. I also read the other day where they're forecasting the next chance of rain here is to occur sometime in February (little or no chance of rain in the next 90 days). My trip to Washington state in early December is looking more appealing every day...
Below are a few pictures of Brenna at the church over the past few Sundays (in case you're questioning the wardrobe change). She's wearing socks one of these weekends because it actually got a little cool that morning (as opposed to now).







Thursday, November 01, 2007

Peddling CDs

Emily and I recently got a wild hair to rip all of our CDs to MP3 and store them all on a snazzy 1TB portable hard drive. In doing that, we have a load of CDs that I'm slowly putting up for sale on Half.com. For anyone out there that might by some small chance of fate share the same taste in music as either of us, this may be your opportunity to pick up some cheap tunes. So far we've sold about 50 discs and have at least 500 more to get rid of.

Why are we doing this, do you ask?

a) With a 1 year old, who has time for liner notes and snazzy packaging?
b) iPod, iPod, iPod
c) More space for our DVDs
d) We never use our stereo for listening to music
e) To save the environment (well, um, maybe not)

Anyway, here is a link to our Half.com store, check back often, I'm listing as many CDs as quickly as I can get around to it. Any special requests, drop us a comment.

http://shops.half.ebay.com/fittedshirt2002_W0QQ
Boo

Here are a few pictures of Brenna last night. She was quite the helper with handing out candy... and putting it back in the bowl... and pulling it back out and scattering it all over the floor...
Emily's family came over as well, which was nice, we were able to combine treats and hand out stuff for longer. Emily and I also got to walk around the neighborhood to see what was going on, something I don't think we've done since we've lived here.
Down at the very bottom are two random, totally unrelated pictures. One is of Brenna with her Grandma, Tyler, and a special friend. The last shot is of Brenna playing with something on the floor. I'm not sure what. She looks fairly entertained.