birthday

The big party

/ Shane / 5 Comments

So as I mentioned in my previous post, we had a pretty busy couple of weeks and the end cap on all of it was Evie’s birthday party.  We didn’t invite as many people as we could have (have I mentioned how large my family is?) so it wasn’t as bad as it could of been.  All in all I think we were expecting about 30 people, mostly immediate family, co-workers and Chicago friends.  Still, 30 people are 30 people and especially coming back from vacation just a day and a half before, we had our work cut out for us.  We had a lot of cleaning and setup to do and a lot of food to prepare.  Sara was pretty stressed out, but I think everything came together in the end.  Special thanks to my and Sara’s mom for helping with last minute stuff.

First let me say that something about the fresh air seems to stimulate Evie.  She just loved camping.  So much so that I was sad to have to come home and force her to be inside!  She learned many new skills over the trip.  She learned to point to many new things like the tent and the trees, she learned to kick a ball (“goaaaaaal” as taught by Bad Uncle Nathan), she learned a few new words, especially “shoe” and “hat”.  Every time she goes outside now she reminds us, “Hat!  Hat!”  And, of course, she learned how to walk.  She has improved every day since then and she will now walk > 20 steps no problem.

So everything went great, although it went very fast once it got going.  I don’t think I talked to a single person at the party.  If I wasn’t working on something I was snapping pictures of the birthday girl.  All of the presents she got were just absolutely perfect.  I thouht we might get a bunch of random toys, but every toy and every outfit was well thought out and just perfect.  There was one duplicate present, a Melissa & Doug band in a box, but it was such a perfect present for her that I can see why two people would get it.

I think the most important (but least mentioned) part of the party was my awesome grill master skills.  I had > 30 hamburgers plus at least 2 packages of brats and a package of hot dogs going all at the same time.  I actually got to bust out all my grilling tools that I never get to use, including my “Pirates get all the booty” apron.  Everything was grilled to absolute perfection and, though nobod complimented me, I could see in their eyes that they respected, nay feared, my awesome grilling prowess.

We ended up having a lot of extra food, so we will be eating good for a while.  Everybody said the food was good and I think we had a good selection.  Evie didn’t particularly rip into her cake that Sara made special for her, but she liked it enough I think.  After everybody left it didn’t take too long to get everything back to normal (and upload all of the pictures to Snapfish!)

All in all a good day, but not one I’d be looking to repeat any time soon!

Tiny Houses

/ Shane / 1 Comment

This reminds me of that fake Geico commercial where the newlyweds had to live in the tiny house.  Except it is real.  And this man is crazy.

If you don’t feel like going to the website, you can just watch this here:

P.S.  Happy Birthday to me!

Happy Birthday!

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Happy Birthday Sara!

Not too many plans for her birthday. We were going to try to go out to eat, but now as it gets closer we are too nervous about Evie crying and stuff I think. So I don’t know what we’ll do.

I haven’t had much of a chance to post in here lately…we’ve been pretty exhausted. We’re still getting used to things and not sleeping as much as we are accustomed to! Nothing new to report really…he days sort of run together!

What happened since the last update? Sara’s mom stayed with us for a week and helped a lot with the cleaning, laundry, meals and dishes. She also found time to do a lot more sewing! What’s left you say? A window seat for the baby’s room, sewing the edges of tons of flanel squares for wipes, re-sewing by hand one of the curtains, and making several throw pillows.

Two Sundays ago I went to the Cubs game for a friend’s bachelor party. Well, I should say I *tried* to go. We saw 3 innings and then stayed in the rain for 2 hours before the game was canceled. There’s $80 down the drain! One friend collected up all the ticket stubs and is going to try to sell the rain checks together, so maybe we will recoup some of that. It wasn’t all bad though, it was fun hanging out with everybody and being inside Wrigley Field for the first time.

Last weekend my mom came. I was worried she would try to steal Evie when she left! 🙂 She obviously enjoyed her time with the baby and also helped with meals and dishes and helped me clean the condo from top to bottom (including bathrooms!). She also made a cake for Sara’s birthday that was delicious. I hope she has a chance to come more often but she is always so busy.

Okay, so let me clear out some items I’ve been saving up.

First off, the British military actually had to send out a press release denying that they released man eating badgers in Iraq!
UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: “We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.”

Second, this is a little old. Read this article about a bank scare in the computer game Second Life. It is a very strange/scary article because if you ignore the picture it sounds like it could be happening in the real world. But it is a video game!! I don’t know, I just found it odd.

Finally, this is pretty funny. It is 2007 football standings predicted in the form of assigning a Star Wars character to each team. For example, Cleveland is likened to Jawas because “They are small, brown, and constantly trading for junk.”

Weekend

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Went to MI this weekend for Sara’s sister’s birthday.  Pretty low key, we didn’t really do much.  Actually I feel like I slept the whole weekend!  Must be the allergy medicine or something.  We went to  bunch of baby stores.  I’m kind of baby-stored out, I have to tell you.  They’re all pretty much the same with the same brands and items for about the same prices.  We did eat some good food though, including a trip to Olive Garden.  I don’t think I’ve been there for about 6 years!  Too bad too because I love that place.  I ate 7 bread sticks.  We played 1 game of Acquire and I came in 3rd out of 5.  So not very good, but I beat Sara so that’s all that counts! 😛

In unrelated news, I have had nothing but headaches with my new laptop ever since I bought it.  Vista is so terrible.  I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.  To be fair, I don’t think it is really Vista’s fault, I think it is the fact that there are no good drivers available for most of my hardware.  I’ve tried everything under the sun to keep the thing from locking up constantly until Thursday I actually re-flashed my BIOS.  But the good news is that so far it hasn’t locked up since then!  So keep your fingers crossed and maybe everything is okay now!

I probably have other things to say, but I just couldn’t be bothered.

Success!

/ Shane / 3 Comments

So I’ve been really busy lately, and I haven’t had a chance to post about it yet, but our offer was accepted for the house!!!  Perhaps we offered to little because they accepted all of our terms!  But really we’re very happy because we offered $7,000 less than the asking price in addition to the $5,000 closing cost credit they were offering.  Also, we got them to run a 220 volt line for our electric dryer and give us an $800 credit for using our washer and dryer rather than having them buy one.  Since ours are pretty much brand new, we are very happy with that.  Our realtor didn’t really want us to try to get both the credit and the lower price because he didn’t think they’d accept, but we sort of overrode him and look how it came out!

You can see some pictures of the place on your snapfish account.

One of the reasons we were so busy was that this weekend we went to a 1st birthday party followed immediately by a 50th birthday party! Opposite ends of the spectrum there.

On a completely unrelated note, as an addendum to my post about coyotes at our new place, here is an article about airplanes being unable to land at O’Hare due to coyotes on the runway!