Trip to Texas

Val and I and the kids have been in Texas the last week and will be here until next Thursday. I have been here for work and am mostly interviewing and trying to put people into place on a new project in San Antonio. We have been staying with Irene and Aaron Merkin and their 2 little girls in Austin while we are here.

Tristan took his first ride in a plane and did very well. He slept the entire time pretty much so it was fairly easy. The boys are entertained by watching a movie and slept some of the time.

We are certainly ready to come home and I am definitely still in agreement with my old self that I don't like to travel on business. It is stressful.....

We will be back in Virginia for a little over a week and then we will be traveling back to Indiana and Chicago over the Holidays. We are looking forward to it..... I think! We will be driving out on Friday the 19th at night we think. We are thinking it will make it easier on the kids and mom and dad while driving for 9 hours.

Sorry it's been a while since I updated the blog. I never make time to do it. Will try to post some pics soon and write more.

Ciao!

Tristan is coming home today

Today, mom and Tristan should be coming home. Mom is doing well and Tristan is finishing up some precautionary Billirubin light therapy. He was a little Gondis yesterday because he didnt eat well the day before we think. He looks better this morning and should be just fine to go home.

Here are some pics of the little guy...

Welcome Tristan James Blow to the world

We would like to proudly introduce our new baby boy, Tristan James Blow to our family and friends. He was born this morning at 8:07 am at a whopping 8lbs 13oz. Mom and baby are at Reston Hospital Center in Reston Virginia. Both are doing great and looking forward to going home sometime hopefully Sunday.

Still waiting for #3

We are still waiting for #3 to come. Friday will be the day if Val doesn't go into labor tomorrow. So Friday at 7:30 am she is scheduled for extraction. We are excited for the new arrival and are a bit anxious. The boys have no idea what is about to happen I am sure. We seem to have most things ready for the baby.



The Shed is another thing that has had extra time to keep moving forward. Here the latest state.

Before the Shingles and window install...

After Window and Shingles install.... I still need to trim up the ends of the shingles but at least its water proof now.

We have been working on finding a replacement car but have not had any luck finding "The Car". We did get a settlement decided with our insurance that seems to be fair so far. I'll be doing harder shopping when I can. Basiclly, any 2004 Toyota Sienna XLE is in our range.

Here is to our last days with only 2 children. Cheers!!!

The Mothers Day Black Cloud

The Mothers Day Black Cloud is something that has followed me since I was 16 and had my first car. Someone I barely knew borrowed my car to take a friend home from a party I was at and he fell asleep at the wheel and hit a house totalling the car. This had happened at about 5:30 am on Mothers Day morning.

Well, today the black cloud returned. Val and I and the boys were inside the house clean up a couple rooms when we heard a loud bang. I thought, what did the cats just knock over.... Val said, that sounded like a car accident. So I rushed downstairs and looked outside, someone had plowed right into the back of our new Van.

I went outside and yelled something like, "What the heck just happened?" towards the guy gingerly getting out of his car that was conveniently parallel parked behind our car now. He started telling me how sorry he was and I quickly found that truly this was an accident and was actually starting to worry about how they were doing. I asked if everyone in the car was OK, and he kept saying, I'm sorry and I can't believe I just did that. Yes we are OK he said. A couple fire engines and police later our Van was gone and totalled. Below is the picture to show for it.

How convenient that our new family car is now gone and we are just about to have the 3rd child. Well, he was insured and everyone was OK, that was all that mattered. So a little inconvenience but we should have a rental car tomorrow and then shopping for a new van apparently.

Happy Mothers Day All!!!!

We are still waiting for #3 to come.

Waiting For the Stork

As we await for the Stork to arrive I thought I would get an update on the blog in. Sorry it's been a while, but things have been a bit busy and usually the last thing I want to do when I get home and finally put the kids down for bed is get back on the computer.

So Val is now 38 weeks pregnant and we are both anxiously awaiting the new family arrival. We still don't know the sex of it and no we really don't know. We have chosen a name that is a-sexual so that we don't have to worry if it is a boy or girl. The name will be "Pat". Sorry if your name is Pat and you are reading this. It's a joke.

We will definitely be having the little one by the 23rd of May because that is when Val is scheduled for a C-Section. Since Val has already had a C-Section the ability to induce natural labor has been minimized to a very small chance. So we are trying the natural ways starting now. Walks and anything else we can think of, we are interested. As long as Val is comfortable I guess. We went for a mile walk last night and this morning she woke up feeling like she had ran a marathon I think.

In the meantime the nesting is in full effect. We finally finished the babies room and at least that portion of the nesting is complete. I'll upload pictures soon for that.

For many reasons we decided to go ahead and build a shed so that we could move all the Shed and Tool items out of the garage and basement into a rightful home. So I decided as a real do it yourself kind of guy, to build my own. The first thing I did, was decided that size does matter in this case. I decided a normal 6x8 shed is way too small. Why build it that small when you can have a 10x12 shed instead. Sheesh!! So I went online to find plans that I liked. I found one that was a good design and had a materials list to go with it. Perfect, I thought. It should build itself! This where carpentry 101 starts. Note to self and to wives. When daddy says he is going to take off a little early (2pm) and go pick up the materials for building this shed, don't expect him to be home before 9pm. Don't plan a ladies night out that evening if you plan to not be pissed at your husband too. I love Val. Any other wife would have jumped down my throat and had me for breakfast. Instead she did her way of getting mad at me. "The boys are asleep, Here's the monitor, I'm going out."

After 3 weeks of work so far, I have the start of a nice shed. Here is a picture of where I am right now.

Other than the Shed, it's all about the boys and keeping them busy. Lately, we have been getting them practicing their batting skills. Caleb shows great eye hand coordination and can actually hit the ball sometimes when you toss it to him. Jackson prefers hitting it off the T-ball Tee which they boy are great at using. The show some signs of being golfers as they like to hit any ball on the ground with what ever stick / utensil they can find.

The boys are becoming more and more like their own little people. They both enjoy playing outside and with the neighbors and any kids they can. Caleb tends to be more in your face type of playing, where Jackson observes and finds what is fun and can get them into trouble, then goes for it. Jackson is the, "That looks like a great idea" type of kid.

I had a great moment the other day, when both of them were helping daddy do something in the babies room, and they both had the same hanger / latch with a screw type device that daddy had just taken apart. They held it up to the window that I was working on and grabbed to closest item that they thought they could turn the screw with and they were methodically trying to get it to happen. Jackson consulted as Caleb tried every combo he could. They worked on it is if they were helping me and talked as if they knew exactly what they were doing. It was pretty cool to see that they indeed were like their dad and like to try to figure things out mechanically.

I hope to try to update the blog more often so please keep checking back to see more updates.

Here are some pics from recently.

Bad Blogger

Sorry its been over a month since I last blogged. We have had some busy weekends and some sick weekends. We have certainly had our share of colds this winter.

Val is doing well with the bun in the oven except she has a weird hip issue this time around. It feels like her hip is going out of the socket a lot and she can't walk very well. So she pretty much just hobbles around and looks like she has a bum leg. Other than that, the baby is doing OK so far and she is now in her 28th week. So not much longer to go and still not bed rest, which is awesome.

Caleb and Jackson are now 2 and are acting the part. They are learning new things everyday, good and bad. As my mom says, they are all boy. If there is something to get into or to climb up and jump off of, they will try it. We definitely can't wait for it to warm up around here so they can get outside more often. They love to run around and play outside so the sooner the better.

We have found that their interest in Trains has turned into an obsession. They notice every train anywhere you go and 60% of their day outside of sleep involves some sort of train playing or having a train in the grasp. They really like the trains that you can turn on and it moves around the track. WE have gotten used to the annoying constant noise of the battery powered trains running and running and running..... Putting the trains under any type of bridge or tunnel in the house is their favorite. Couches, tables, and furniture are the usual and it is not uncommon for me to have to come home and move furniture to retrieve lost trains that are still on and making their noise under the back of the couch.

They vocabulary is getting to be a long list and we certainly have to be careful what we say around them if you know what I mean. Ever since their Birthday they sing happy birthday to you at least once a day to each other. They always think the cake is supposed to come right around that time. They are starting to realize that that is not the case. I can definitely tell that reading really does teach them about new words and such. Another really cool thing is that they are getting really close to starting to count things with mommy and daddy. They know that 2 comes after 1 and 3 comes after 2 but are still trying to link the "How many cows are on the page?" to the number mommy and daddy are saying.

This week my buddy Adam has been in town for work and staying with us. It has been good to see him and talk about old times. He now lives in Boulder, CO which I call Hippie Land. I am just waiting for the day that he tells me he is going to be a Freegan. If you are interested, Google "Freegan". Its an extreme way of living cheap. Adam is too into technology to go this route but I still give him a hard time. He is my environmentalist link to the world.