Happy 2010

Another year down. Let's recap:

• The birth of Reed Samuel on May 28th.
• A trip to Florida over Thanksgiving with Andrea's family
• Babbage Technology's fourth anniversary, including a trip to Benihana and some new projects
• Andrea's and my fifth wedding anniversary and ninth anniversary of being together
• Five years in our house
• Jacob's second birthday
• I took one class at SCSU

In 2010, we're looking forward to:

• Josh & Becca's wedding
• A trip to Michigan for Jacek & Charlene's wedding (and a chance to see some of my extended family)
• Reed learning to crawl and walk
• Andrea's ten year anniversary on the Clearwater Fire & Rescue Department

Andrea took this picture of Jacob today at lunch. He was eating a PB&J sandwich and decided he wanted to "eat with [his] nose."

Baby's first abacus

For Christmas, Dad made a few neat items in the basement. First off, he made a nutcracker for each family (and brought a bag of assorted nuts) - us, Doug & Sarah, Krista & Abe, and Becca & Josh. He also made a little rolling toy for Jacob and one for Toby. And for Reed, he made this block toy, to which Reed has taken to playing.

Christmas was fun; we went to Doug & Sarah's for Christmas Eve. The next morning, we had our small family gift opening at 6:30am. Since the boys were up, we all were up, and we figured we might as well start it off. (I gave Andrea a nice vacuum-insulated travel coffee mug and some Caribou Coffee grounds; she gave me a zafu.) Later on, my parents came over and we had a huge breakfast -- some egg bake, Hungarian Coffee Cake, venison and pork bacon, and so on. Yum. After noon, we all went to Doug & Sarah's house for social time, some drinks, and later dinner. It was a great day.

New Year's Eve, we're planning on hosting my family (including Nate and Lonnea), but no spectacular plans. Probably dinner and a few drinks. Last year, we didn't stay up very late (11pm, maybe?). We'll see about it this year.

Ah, I see you have the machine that goes "PING"!

My car was making a rather loud noise when traveling above two miles per hour, so Dad and I went about fixing it tonight. He guessed it was a rear wheel bearing gone bad, so I picked up the whole hub assembly for $100. The only problem was that we didn't have a clue which one it was -- neither of us could tell whether it was the driver's or passenger's side that was all hosed up. We guessed on the passenger's side, and - lucky for us - we were right.

The four of us headed out to Mom and Dad's place, but it started to get late, so Andrea took the boys home, but not before Jacob was able to lend a helping hand.

I still need to replace the timing belt; while I have no clue whether it truly needs it or not, the car has about 110k miles on it, and I think it's about time to do it.

Getting the Christmas tree

Today we went to Jan's Tree Farm to go Christmas tree hunting. It was a bit cold out for Reed to go, so he and Andrea stayed back at Mom and Dad's house while Jacob and I went with them. Since we have an artificial tree at home, Jacob won't be doing this unless we go with my parents. I have fond memories from my childhood of going out (often behind our house on long walks) to find a tree, then we would cut it down and haul it back to the house. (I'm sure Dad did 99% of the work.)

Dad, Jacob and I played for a bit on a pile of straw that was half maze, half climbing structure. He loved it. Then we went on a horse-drawn carriage ride around the tree farm. It got a bit cold out there, but it was definitely worth it. I'm looking forward to bringing Reed out in a couple years as well.

So long, Florida

Well, it was fun while it lasted. Time to head home. We wanted to get a good picture of the four of us on the beach for our Christmas picture, but it was awfully bright. It's pretty close, though -- we just hopped under this grass awning. Reed is obviously very happy here; Jake is, too, but he wasn't looking at the camera. Three out of four isn't too bad.

We also scooped some sand into a bottle with the boys. They both loved playing in the cool white sand, though it's a pain in the butt to get out of clothes, hair, ears and more.

We'll be heading back to Minnesota soon. I just hope the flight back isn't too bad.

They're out of booze in Florida

Or at least the geography immediately surrounding me and Josh. And this is what we look like when our drink glasses are empty.

Tonight our boys are staying back at the condo with Doug, Sarah, Krista, Abe and Toby. Meanwhile, Andrea and I are out on a double date with Becca and Josh. We started walking south with a plan to hit up a local sushi place. About an hour later, we find that they gave us bunk directions and we've been walking away from the rest of civilization. Rather than walking back and again as far, we took the trolley. Best $2 investment ever. We abandoned the idea of getting sushi, which is a bummer, and decided instead to hit up whatever random restaurant we could find.

I highly recommend the salmon, mahi mahi and whatever this other fish is. It's quite good. I don't, however, recommend the "drink" everyone made in my empty lowball glass -- among other ingredients, it includes steak sauce, salt, pepper and various garnishes.

Goats have rectangular pupils

No, really, they do. We went to the A Maze'n Farmyard a while back with Trista, Travis and their two girls. It was fun watching Jacob play with the various animals. He loved the puppies and chickens especially. Reed was also quite happy. Maybe I'll upload the pictures as soon as I get around to it.

Today, November 16th, is Nate's 30th birthday, so happy birthday, Nate!

Ma'am, I'm going to have to take those nail clippers

Most everyone around here knows that President Obama was in Minneapolis today stumping for healthcare reform. Andrea and I decided we'd head down there and see if we could get in. After dropping the boys off at my parents' place, we drove down to Minneapolis, parked at the public library (which looks pretty awesome, by the way), and walked outside. As luck would have it, the end of the line was right outside the library, so our walk to the Target Center was pretty easy to figure out.

When we got there, I realized I had my Gerber mini-tool in my pocket, and the airport-like security we'd be going through would probably take it away. I stashed it all secret ninja style (hoping no one would see me), and I'm glad I did: when we got into the building, the woman ahead of me had her nail clippers taken away.

We waited for probably an hour to an hour and a half before Obama actually got into the place. (There were a few speakers before him, like Kathleen Sebelius, head of H&HS.) The whole thing started out pretty tame; people were sitting around doing little, as was obvious from the blank stares into the jumbo-tron, which did get some good use later. The crowd did really get revved up after a bit, though, and even did the wave for a while. Andrea and I both thought it was an excellent speech, not only in content but also delivery.

Afterward, we wandered back to the car, headed to Maple grove, had some lunch at P.F. Chang's and did some small-time shopping around the area. We went back and got Jacob and Reed and headed home.

Oh, and I did recover my trusty Gerber.

Here are the pictures from the day.

A walk around St. Johns

Today we went for a walk around St. John's -- Doug, Sarah, Becca, Josh, and the four of us. There's a nice walk around Sagatagan Lake that we took from the beach near SJU and to a chapel a mile and a half away.

Pictures from our walk are online.

Mom, are you freaking out?

On Friday, Jacob was starting to come down with something. We thought it was maybe the flu, but he was having a hard time breathing. Saturday morning, he still felt crummy, was still having difficulty breathing and still had a fever, so we took him to urgent care. They did a blood test, an H1N1 test and took some chest x-rays. It turns out he had bacterial pneumonia, and we had to take him to the hospital right away so he could get proper treatment (including antibiotics, tylenol, popsicles and Mr. Freezees).

By yesterday evening, he was pretty much back to his normal self, though the IV in his foot imposed the restriction that he couldn't walk, so he had a lot of energy he couldn't burn of as he usually can. We put him to bed last night around 8:30 and he lay in bed for an hour or so talking to himself quietly. Andrea and I listened to him (mostly reciting passages from books we read to him) for some time. After Andrea laughed at a few things he said, he asked her, "Mom, are you freaking out?"

I happened to have a bottle of Pepsi during the day, and he commandeered it with the remaining ounce or two. He alternated mostly between telling nurses it was his coffee (and promptly taking a pretend sip of it, making the coffee-sipping sound) and telling them it was his bottle of beer (and tilting it completely upside-down, taking a huge pretend gulp of it). I'm so proud.