·:[ David and Claire’s Blog ]:·
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When you are a kid it seems like Christmas is never, ever going to get here. Now that I’m a parent, it’s like Christmas is an unstoppable freight train hurtling towards me. I just need a couple more weeks! I have so much to do in the next four days that I was thinking about taking a day off just to do some shopping, painting, cleaning, gift wrapping etc., but work is far too busy. Who on earth decided that jamming the week before Christmas with training and regulatory deadlines would be a good idea? In fact just sitting here at 10.30pm made me feel guilty that I had checked email in 5 hours so I logged on to work and spent 30 mins dealing with all the Tokyo emails. That’s the problem with working for an international company – there’s always someone, somewhere in the world who is at work and thinking of problems to email me about.

The kids have been very sick lately. Evan especially, and it really hit me this evening because he was just a little bundle of joy and he hasn’t been that way in weeks. Clearly he has felt pretty miserable and he hasn’t been himself. So that’s good and bad, because at least he’s back to his old self, but I feel bad that I was getting so frustrated with him when he was crying and cranky all the time but it wasn’t as if he was doing it to be annoying. Poor little guy. And I actually put him to bed in his bassinet and he cried for a while and then fell asleep and that was over 2 hours ago. It’s a Christmas miracle!

Here are some videos that we made recently. The first is Brynn and Evan screeching their heads off. Evan makes this high pitched squealing noise that ends in a growl and it’s cute but then Brynn learned to mimic it, and she is absolutely spot on. When they are in the car together they just do it over and over and I have no idea which is which. It’s very cute but it sounds like a zoo sometimes. They are loud. So this video is Brynn making the noise and Evan cracking up. Oh, and this morning Dave tried to join in on the way to daycare and Brynn told him “No Daddy. That’s Brynn and Evan’s noise”. And that was that.

The second video is Brynn and David dancing. I’ve included this one just to embarrass David.

Tonight I cooked two things for the first time ever- Lamb chops and capers. Sure, I’ve cooked lamb before. Especially leg of lamb, both bone in and out. But I’ve never cooked lamb chops and I now know that is a shame, because they are very tasty. Like the Gourmet cookbook says, they’re like mini T-Bones. Capers are fun to cook too. They bloom right there in the frying pan.
I had the lamb with Rice a Roni- herb and butter, salad, and a Rosemount Show Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon Coonawarra 2005- one of my favorite wines.

I am a huge Battlestar Galactica fan. Something about it just sets off the total nerd in me. I watched pretty much all of the original series and agree with the magazines that the latest rendition is some of the best television out there. Razor(sp) was no exception.

I’ve been managing a web services group for a while now, and I still note this perception that web services are this mysterious SOA technology that is very complex and hard to use. The funny thing is that this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Sure the underlying framework my group uses is using several different cutting-edge software tools and APIs, but the consumer of the services themselves need know absolutely nothing about this. Web services embrace the whole black box mentality wholeheartedly, and it works well. As the client what do you care what happens in that box as long as you get what you’re looking for?

There is a reason that web services are supported in all kinds of tools like Crystal Reports, databases like Oracle, or providers like Google and Ebay- they’re incredibly easy to use. Just grab the WSDL file and away you go.

Also, ultimately the underlying communication mechanism is identical to surfing the web like you are doing right now. So right now you’re talking HTTP with a web server sending back and forth a variant of XML called HTML. Web services do exactly the same thing, talk HTTP sending back and forth XML. It’s simplicity, and use of tried and true underlying technology, is one of its greatest assets.

So the next time you hear someone call Web Services complex, consider this- it’s a as simple as surfing the web.

My website has been down a few days, and I thought it was a problem on the side of my hosting provider, GoDaddy. And I had an hour long discussion with a tech support guy whose name I don’t know, and I insisted that the problem was on their side. Turns out it was me, and a bad link to one of my other web sites. And they even suggested I look at that too! So my most sincere apologies to the fine tech support people at GoDaddy.

Claire is an amazing wife and mother, and I would like to dedicate this post to her! Now Claire is a very busy woman, definitely one of the modern types. She juggles a full-time job, 2 crazy kids, and a demanding (but cool) husband all with style and grace. Claire excels at caring for, educating, and loving Brynn and Evan. She even makes a mean Cosmo. Claire is wicked smart, with a good sense of humor. She is also an endless source of information about all current events- epecially those that are disaster or celebrity related. Claire is my own personal readers digest, and she even votes for me! Claire is capable of carrying an amazing number of bags and children all at the same time, kinda like the Cat in the Hat. I look forward to the future with Claire and all the good times coming with the great family we’ll raise. So thank you Claire for being such a great person. Keep up the good work!

 All my Love,
~David

We have a very vertical house, and our wireless networks don’t seem to reach the whole gamut. If you’re on the ground floor or the basement the routers on the 3rd floor don’t have the best signal strength. Not a big deal unless I’m trying to stream video through my slingbox. So my solution is to use my power lines as yet another network. It took a while before the technology was fast enough to be useful, but now it’s finally there with speeds up to 36 Mbps with the Linksys PowerLine AV Ethernet Adapter Kit. Much more than most people would ever need. Streaming HD video for instance only requires 6 mpbs. So now I have a router on the first floor that connects via the power lines to my FIOS connection on the 3rd floor. Everything is humming along nicely now, and I can watch tv on my Treo flawlessy…

For those of you unfamiliar with the term a luddite is a person who is opposed to technological progress, improvement, or change. I am something along the opposite of this. I strive to embrace technology in all aspects of my life down to the most mundane. For example, why use an ordinary toothbrush when you can have a battery powered vibrating one? Why have a boring plain faced fridge when you can have an internet enabled one that orders milk for you? Why not have a USB drive on your key chain? What’s wrong with RFID tags in all of our clothes? The biggest challenge is just trying to keep up with it all…

This weekend my mom was in town, and she had a meeting in the Rockefeller Center, that just happens to have just about the only place you’re guranteed to be able to get a Wii, the Nintendo World Store.
I’m pretty impressed with the device in general. It’s everything they say about the new controller interface- very intuitive, easy to use, and fun. It’s deceivingly simple too with how the controller works. For example I learned while playing the tennis game that it’s easy enough to hit the ball with the right timing. But turns out that with a subtle flick of your wrist you can put english on the ball or do other spin tricks. There are so many more degrees of movement possible when you are moving your whole arm, and adjusting angles of your hand and wrist.
I also agree with my mom’s comment that this gaming console may be setup to rope in a whole new demographic of potential video game players who never liked the “joystick” interface.

That’s my goal. But I don’t guarantee good content!
Here’s the latest toy I just bought:
IOGEAR 4GB Flash Wallet Drive (Blue) 
 Small enough to fit in my wallet.

I forgot to mention the pumpkins we carved this year. I went a little bit nuts this year and bought a 57 pound pumpkin. After nearly throwing my back out I got that sucker home, and carved in the following design blown up onto four pieces of paper:
Dragon Pumpkin Carving Pattern
Here’s a picture of me carving. For the first time I used a drill to do the carving. I had a brand new cordless drill I bought at Costco, and managed to break 4 drill bits in the process!
But I like to think that my handy work paid off.

Today Claire and I took the day off to fully enjoy the family Halloween experience. Brynn participated in her daycare’s Halloween Day Parade as none other than a spider princess! We walked around the block while all the kids held onto a rope, and all the parents were madly taking photos of their children. I went a little crazy today with the camera, and 240 pictures lately have a few good ones.
Then later in the day we went trick or treating. I always enjoyed trick or treating as a child, and this is the first time I’ve ever taken one of my own children out. We joined a bunch of neighborhood families with similiar aged children and went from house to house scoring loot for Brynn. She wasn’t so good at saying trick-or-treat, but she sure learned fast how to grab candy out of a bowl. She also used her cuteness to maximum effect going back in the bowl over and over again grabbing as much as she could before being stopped.
I love handing out candy when children come by our house. The last couple years I have been offering chocolate coins amongst other various traditional candies like snickers, mars bars, hersheys, etc. The chocolate coins are in the shape of 50 cent coins with gold foil. Size wise they are smaller than other candy you could get. Also they are just milk chocolate, so nothing special really. They are shiny however, and for the last two years have been the most popular choice by far when children of any age come by. Even over ring pops! This year I tried offering only candy of a similiar gold color and other things just as shiny. It didn’t matter, the coins always went first. So now my theory is that the coins are the rarest of the candy offered. So next year I’ll get some other real rare and weird stuff and see how that fares against the coins…
As for Brynn’s candy preferences, that was a real treat to watch this year. That’s because she’s never actually had any of these candies before, so it’s clear she’s choosing for reasons other than what the candy tastes like. Unfortunately for her, she appears to have an affinity towards the look of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (the size of the package maybe? or just the orange color?). Given her mother’s peanut allergies those candies were promptly removed from her sight when we got home. She also had a big thing for lollipops. That is one thing she has had before, so maybe that choice was just that she knows she like lollipops. Given the choice of lollipop over anything else, she always chose the lollipop. I look forward to seeing how her taste evolves over the years.

The last post was right before I went back to work so you can probably figure out that it’s been an exhausting six weeks. Evan is coming to work with me and going to the Children’s Center but that is only for one more week and then he goes to Brynn’s daycare. That will be very sad for me as I love going to see the little guy every three hours. It’s so nice to have a baby visit to look forward to when the day is going badly. Or even when the day is just… going. He’s been very mellow about the new arrangements. He’s not peturbed to be left with strangers, and he’s never overly thrilled to see me. He’s generally very happy and only cries when he’s over-tired and other babies are keeping him awake.

We just started him on solid food recently and he’s already gained over a pound. His appetite is enormous and he’s getting noticeably chubbier. It’s funny to compare him to Brynn because she was always so physically active. Brynn started rolling in both directions right around 4 months but Ev can still only do front to back. By 6 months Brynn was using the rolling to get herself around the place but Evan has no method for moving around. He’s barely able to keep himself upright while leaning against something and sitting down. Brynn was sitting unassisted around 6 months. Not that Evan is slow compared to other babies, by any means, but he is just fairly passive in general which is a big part of it. I’m convinced Brynn learned to roll and crawl out of anger more than anything. She was just never satisfied with wherever she was and was always kicking and arching and wriggling around unhappily.

There are a couple of other 5 month old babies at the center and they are so much bigger than Evan. Ev is long and skinny but he also has a really small head compared to these other babies. There heads are enormous and they have legs like tree trunks. I actually cupped my hand over Evan’s head and then used that measurement to compare to one of the mega-head kids. The hand shape I was making was about half the diameter of his skull. The infant room teacher and I are always laughing over the size differences.

The one thing that is good about having the kids close together is that they are absolutely enarmoured with one another. Brynn will just go up to Evan and lie there kissing and hugging him and saying “I love you! I love you!” They also do this thing where Brynn mimics Evan’s baby noises and it sets him off and they both sing the same tone together. Ridiculously cute. I have to get it on video. When they are in the car they sit there grinning at one another the whole time. When we drop Brynn off at daycare she always climbs out of her seat and over to Evan and then gives him a kiss goodbye.

Brynn is actually being really good lately. The whole tantrum phase has passed for the most part. She’s not done with them, but the frequency is much, much lower. It’s probably primarily a language thing. All of a sudden it’s all come together with her and she’s now speaking in 7 or 8 word sentences that are grammatically correct for the most part. She has a big vocabulary and says some surprisingly mature things sometimes. Her new one is “I need a binky to calm down!” when she’s upset. Probably time to ditch the pacifier if she can express her need for it like that! She’s a mini-teenager a lot of the time too. Running to her room and slamming the door. Saying “get away from me”, “leave me alone” and “you hurt my feelings!” She’s also really into princesses and pink things while happened so suddenly that it almost seems like it was built into her genetic code and that gene activated when she got to 2 years and 3 months. I had no particular thoughts on princesses before this and I don’t think I ever really talked about them (why would I??) but all of a sudden I’m buying princess everything because life is so much easier when your toddler has an obsession and you can buy those things to bribe them with. She has a princess pillowcase, shoes, dolls, books, tent, sleeping bag, tiara, costumes (x3), slippers, underpants, pullups and probably more. Almost all of those were purchased to shut her up or get her to do something she didn’t want to do.

She has also managed to figure out that David and I have names that are not just Mommy and Daddy and she takes great delight is using our real names randomly just to shock us. The other day in a store we had lost David, so I said “let’s find Daddy” and she takes off, shrieking “DAVID! WHERE ARE YOU? DAVID!” This morning she was sitting in her room and trying to get my attention as I wandered past. She was saying “Mommy, mommy!” but when that didn’t work she switched to “CLAIRE! CLAIRE!” and of course, that made me stop!

I put two new albums up in the gallery, including one with our recent visit to Kip’s Castle for a Harvest Festival. Brynn had great fun decorating a pumpkin and watching a puppet show. Lots of new Evan pictures, although he still looks exactly the same as he has done for months and he still has the exact same expression in all photos.

A couple weeks ago Brynn and I attended Elizabeth and Azeem’s wedding in Oxford. Claire and Evan were unable to make it as we think Evan is still too young to fly on airplanes, and once we got him there he would certainly be a handful.
So Brynn and I ventured out alone, but with the help of many willing grandparents including: Grandma Carol, Grandma Joan, Granpa Don, Grandpa Andy, and 4 uncles and aunts: Uncle Ben, Uncle Mike, Auntie Liz, and the new Uncle Azeem. There was a Mehndi party where Brynn boogied the night away, and Elizabeth got her hands tatooed. The mosque trip Brynn and I skipped as it was a solemn affair that little 2 years olds are not welcome at. Then the ceremony itself was really beautiful. It was short and sweet, and Brynn only made one scene during it. There were readings that were not nearly as cheesy as I thought they were going to be, and some really good vows that Elizabeth and Azeem made to each other. The reception was in a barn and very nice with good food including a lamb Biriyani. There were also a couple late night parties that were only the younger family and friends that were a lot of fun.

The next day after the wedding, with the help of some babysitting grandparents, I ventured out to London for the first time. Being around the world a bit myself I was a little disappointed at how little culture shock I experienced in London. Despite the vastly different architecture it reminded me a whole lot of New York City.

David & Brynn went to the UK recently. I think David is planning to post about it so I’ll leave the details of that to him. We have a couple of new albums up in the gallery so make sure to take a look. We have new pictures of the UK trip, the kids over the summer, and the Farm ‘n Fun Party in Ohio.

Also, here is the “big pig” that fascinated Brynn.

I have been trying to find some comparable pictures of Brynn and Evan at the same age to see if they look the same. The pictures below are of pretty similar poses, so you can be the judge of the resemblance. It’s hard to see beyond the hair, and Evan’s chubbiness but I think the main facial features are very close.

I’ve been trying to take a lot more pictures of Evan, similar to how I did the fashion show for Brynn, but he’s a very boring subject. It’s the same picture over and over. Brynn was much more expressive and wriggly so I was able to get more interesting pictures out of her. I’ve added a new album of Evan photos, but be warned that it is basically the same shot 30 times.

We headed out to Ohio this weekend for the Villa Mir farm’s annual “Farm & Fun Party”. This is a big event that features lots of bluegrass musicians, a huge bonfire and even a fireworks show. We went last year and there were torrential rains all day so the whole farm was one big mud-patch and it was quite interesting trying to navigate that in the dark with a one-year old. This year the forecast looked much better so we decided to give it another shot. Although, of course, with two kids this time, it would be quite interesting in it’s own way.

The drive out is fairly arduous depending on traffic. Actual driving time is around eight hours but the one road there (Interstate 80) has two lanes and lots of construction zones where it’s down to a single lane. If you get stuck in a slow merge it can easily add on an hour or two to the travel time. We left around 3pm on Friday night and had to stop twice. There was a lot of traffic and the kids were pretty cranky so it was pretty sucky in general. We finally got in around midnight.

Brynn was so excited to see Grandma, Grandpa & Uncle Mike. She also saw Carol’s niece Helen and nephew Jack who are a few years older and refer to her as “Baby Brynn”. She got to go blueberry picking but it was mainly a case of blueberry eating on Brynn’s part.

Hundreds of people come to the party and they have a huge area that people camp for the night in tents. Everyone brings a dish and there is big potluck with tons of food. There are several groups of musicians set up at any given time having a little jam session with a rotating cast. There’s also a stage for a more formal concert in the late evening hours. Brynn sat with Grandma Carol watching the music until 11pm. She was so exhausted but still managed to keep herself awake. When I finally put her to bed she was so tired she crawled into bed in her jacket and boots and passed out. I managed to change her into PJs and then the fireworks started. She actually had a view out the window from her bed so she lay there and managed to keep her eyes half open to see the show.

With both kids asleep, my time at the party was over but David managed to stay up to see the big bonfire. It’s a truly amazing pile of firewood that they light around midnight. I heard that the heat was so intense you had to stand half a field away.

The next day Brynn got to spend some time in the pool they have there. We also visited Farm Park which is a farm with lots of animals. We saw a pig that had just given birth to a litter of piglets that morning. There was also an enormous, disgusting pig that was asleep and snoring really loudly. He smelt so bad too. Brynn was horrified and intrigued. She’s still talking about it now. It was apparently the highlight of the trip. We also saw sheep, llamas, alpacas, ponies, chickens & cows. There was a pony for the kids to ride but Brynn freaked out when we put her on his back. She was completely exhausted after missing her nap so it was to be expected.

On Monday we headed home and I drove the whole way, which was a big deal for me because I think the furthest I’ve ever driven before is up to Connecticut. This was 450 miles! I’ve also never driven that fast before. We made good time until the rain started coming down and the accidents began (we passed at least two). Then, of course, we hit heavy traffic in the last 20 miles that took almost an hour to get through. Despite that, we made it home in less than eight hours and the kids were really good the whole time. Evan is pretty reliable about sleeping as long as the speed of the car stays above 55mph. It’s amazing how quickly he wakes up whenever we slowed below that. (It’s like he’s the bomb on the bus in that movie Speed. Don’t slow down or the baby will scream!!)

So all in all, a fun weekend and Evan has now left the state of New Jersey for the first time. We can add Ohio and Pennsylvania to his resume.

This video is a little old but it pretty much sums up my day.

Not much in the way of updates lately. Evan is still growing and Brynn is still crazy. Actually, she’s been a lot better lately – far fewer tantrums. Our neighbor’s two year old grand-daughter is visiting, so Brynn has been spending a lot of time playing outside with her. Amazingly, the other girl is just as tantrum-prone as Brynn so it’s nice to see someone else on the toddler roller-coaster. The girls have a lot of issues with sharing toys. The pink chalk has caused problems as they are both very fond of that particular color. Also, the Dora ball is a favorite, plus a ride on bike that makes fancy noises. They both understand the concept of taking turns, but they don’t understand that a turn should last longer than two seconds. Brynn will reluctantly get off the bike to give her friend a turn but she’s instantly shrieking “my turn! my turn!”

It’s been very hot the last couple of days, and it will be tomorrow as well (upper 90s). Thankfully no power outages yet. We spent a lazy weekend at home, hanging out in the yard and doing some grilling. Unfortunately I’m now covered in bug bites.

(*Warning* This paragraph is for my Mum’s benefit. Everyone else can skip it.)

Evan is getting on a bit of a schedule. He wakes to eat around 5.30am (although sometimes earlier) and then goes back to sleep for another two hours or so. After that we get up for the day but he barely lasts an hour before he needs a cat nap. He takes another short nap mid-morning, then he goes down for a big nap in the early afternoon that is usually around 4 hours. This coincides with Brynn’s 2-3 hour nap so we get a nice break in the middle of the day. He wakes around 4 or 5pm and sometimes fits in yet another nap in the early evening, then it’s bath and final feeding time and he falls asleep around 9pm.

He’s quite content to hang out on a playmat or in a bouncy chair which is nice, especially as he spits up all over me every time I pick him up. If he is left to sit quietly then he keeps much more of his food down and my clothes stay slightly cleaner. I have no success with using a blanket to protect myself from his attacks. If I’m adjusting the blanket momentarily then he uses that opportunity to get me. If the blanket leaves one area of my clothes exposed, he manages to find it. If he does a small spit-up and I stand up to get a tissue, then he immediately unleashes a torrent of milk all over my, now unprotected, clothing. It’s a constant battle that involves many changes of clothes for us both. The other thing I never knew is how hard it is to get spit-up stains out of clothes. I spend a lot of time doing laundry.

I guess I never blogged about the time his spit up landed him in the ER. I’ll refrain from sharing the gory details, but I completely underestimated the power of a baby and some regurgitated milk. I think maybe he does it to get lots of baths. They really are his favorite thing and if we don’t give him one a day then he tends to get a bit smelly. Brynn and Evan took a bath tonight which was really cute. He was in his baby tub which was in the bath tub and Brynn was pointing at various places on Evan and saying “I love Evan’s knees”, “I love Evan’s eyes” etc. She’s such a cutie and very affectionate with him now. Lots of kisses and telling us that she loves him. I can’t wait until he’s a bit older and they play together.

Bron left last week after a two week visit. The time went by much too quickly… She’s now jetting around Europe and no doubt thrilled to be child-free!

This means that we have come to the end of our string of visiting baby assistants so we’re now going it alone. Luckily Evan is an awesome baby so he’s doing his best to make this easy on us. Brynn, on the other hand, is doing her best to make us put her up for adoption. Yes, of course she’s still cute, sweet, smart, funny, charming etc., but she’s also the most tantrum-prone toddler I have ever seen. Just once I would like to leave the park without holding her sideways while she screams, flails, kicks, pulls my hair and all the other parents stare at us. We have not made a graceful exit from any kind of playground in months now. Hopefully she’ll get to a point soon where she understands cause and effect a little more and I can explain to her that when we know she’s going to act like a psycho whenever we leave the park then the result is we never want to take her anywhere fun because we can only tolerate so much embarrassment. How long until they learn to understand these kind of things?? I’m getting desperate here.

So, back to the good child. At 5 weeks, Evan was still sleeping in 2-3 hour stretches and I was losing my mind. By 6 weeks he’d gone up to 4 hours which was better. Then he started adding an extra hour every night until we got to the 8 hour mark. Yes, our delightful seven week old now sleeps 8 hours uninterrupted overnight. Praise the freaking gods, it doesn’t get much better than this. On Sunday the entire family slept in until 8.30am. How many parents with an infant and a toddler can say that!!

He also smiled at me the other day for the first time which was delightful. He has a very good disposition and barely fusses. He loves taking baths and is very keen to drink the bathwater. He has this tricky little move where he slides down so his mouth is at water level and then turns his head very slightly to the side and opens his mouth. He does this all very sneakily and then the next thing i know his tongue is out and he’s lapping up the water. He freaks out when I scoot him back up and away from his precious bathwater.

The poor kid has pretty bad baby acne at the moment so we’re getting a lot of those comments like “oh, let me see the baby!” *pause* “oh, he’s so…. small” or “look at….. his fingers – they’re so long!” Not helping the situation is his hair which, in the sunlight, appears to be undergoing all variations of male-pattern baldness simultaneously. The front hairline appears to be receding at his temples. It also seems to be thinning at the crown and now he looks like he’s getting hair loss on the back and sides that leave that lower ring of hair behind. Most of this is caused by the difference in hair color in various sections. Some areas are very fair so they aren’t really visible when contrasted with the darker hair. I think he’s also losing some where he lies on it. I want it all to fall out so he can just start over.

He’s putting on a ton of weight and is closing in on 12lbs which means he’s up almost 50% of his birth weight. Not bad I think. We call him the Hungry Man due to his voracious appetite. Now that he sleeps so long at night he needs to make up for it during the day so I have to feed him every 1.5 to 2 hours. A small price to pay for a good night’s sleep though!

Brynn definitely likes Evan although I don’t think she likes what his addition to the family means for her. Thankfully she doesn’t take it out on him. She likes to kiss him and tell us that she loves him so that’s sweet. However, she is much more clingy and whiny with me and gets upset with me holding or feeding the baby. We’re hoping she gets over this soon as we’re at the point now where we are enduring her, rather than enjoying her, which is a pity because she really is adorable when she is well behaved. Hopefully this will all calm down in a couple of weeks – she was a little better today.

We had a blackout last night for 10 hours which sucked because it was the hottest day of the year so far – well over 90 degrees and it hadn’t cooled much by the evening when the power went out around 7pm. The kids were a bit of a mess. Brynn was too hot in her room and kept crying so she ended up in our bed where she writhed and thrashed around and had weird dreams “OPEN THE DOOR! OPEN THE DOOR!!”. She was also very sweaty but still wanted to snuggle up to me. It was too hot to swaddle Evan so he was a free-range baby and he did not like it and couldn’t settle down. We ended up with David sleeping on the couch in the living room with Evan in his swing, while Brynn and I shared a bed. Finally the power came back on around 5am. The upside of all this is that everyone was exhausted and both Brynn and Evan took naps that lasted over 3 hours each and overlapped enough that I was also able to sneak in a nap. Very nice!

My mother-in-law Denise just returned to Australia this week after visiting us for a couple of weeks. I will put pictures of the visit up on our gallery. While she was here we cooked lots of good meals, and Denise had some rather unique craft projects she was up to.
Denise’s first project was to finish up Brynn’s most singular stuffed animal- a red bearded, long-tailed, purple Dragon. It has lots of character, and now that I think of it deserves a name. Any suggestions?
Next Denise revamped the rocking chair in Brynn’s room. It badly needed an update as we’re pretty sure the cushions were circa 1930s, and the fabric needed to be replaced along with the foam inside. She chose a lavender fabric that complements the color of the walls in Brynn’s room. So it now matches the room perfectly and is a lot more comfortable!
We had a couple barbeques while Denise was here, one of which was out in Annandale, NJ. Denise’s step sister’s relatives live out there in the hicks of NJ. The host was a terrific bbq chef and we had lots of different meats like brisquet, slow cooked pork, and bbq chicken.
I also cooked prime rib for the first time. I had a mustard crust rub that really added a rich flavor. We made sandwiches the next day that were also mighty tasty.
Now Denise has gone back home, and Bron is out here with us…

I have purchased a new house this week. I admit it is a kit house, but still it’s a quaint Cambridge Cottage (SKU#CB633B48). Brynn loves it, and has been playing in it in the backyard the last couple of days.
My mom is in town this week, and by popular demand I have added some more photos of Evan, Brynn, and the rest of us. I hardly make it into any photos myself, being behind the camera most of the time, but who wants to see me anyway? I have been cooking up a storm lately, and it has been quite relaxing and therapeutic. When you’re cooking, and especially with 3 or so courses, there really is no time to think about anything else. So for a couple hours that’s all you’re doing and everything else doesn’t matter or exist. And I really like the challenge of making it all end up ready at exactly the same time. Tonight I made a Bolognese sauce, as I wanted to use up a ton of vegetables that we bought at the farmer’s market. This week I have made Cod Creole, ginger pork tenderloin, and leg of lamb. I found some new ways to cook butternut squash on the grill as well.
There’s some real cute photos of Brynn holding Evan, so make sure to check them out!

I just added some more pictures of Evan to the Gallery. And I threw a few in of Brynn for free!
Now if Brynn could just understand that I was up late doing this, and it would be nice if she could sleep in tomorrow…