Dad (Brett)
All around
rockstar geek. Brett enjoys his job as a Clinical Data Manager (helping research medical breakthroughs at Celgene); in his time off he enjoys reading books, watching movies, and learning new tricks on his camera and in Photoshop. He absolutely adores his wife and 2 daughters.
Mom (Erin)
Complete supermom. Erin loves her job as a Youth Field Researcher (aka 'mother'); in her plentiful spare time (ha!) she enjoys sleeping, re-reading Twilight or Harry Potter, and cuddling with Brett.
Aeriana ('Wacko', 'Princess')
Hybrid Angel/Devil. Aeriana loves her mommy and daddy, each of whom she loves to test at times and pretend innocence at others. A veritable sponge, Aeriana wants to do anything she sees an adult doing; she loves babies and especially adores her little sister, taking great care of her every need.
Zoe Jean ('Stinker', 'Cutie')
Growing fast, Zoe wants to be just like her big sister. Very goal oriented, she'll find a way to get that toy she's been looking at. She loves her pacifier and can't help but snuggle up to her blanket. Zoe is as relaxed as they come, she just loves chillin' out and watching TV.
The Nursery
It's been a long hard road for Erin and I... no I'm not talking about the pregnancy, that's a long hard road for Erin, I've got it easy. No, I'm talking about the nursery. A year ago we were calling it the "office", before we got married it was the second bedroom for my occasional roommates. Regardless of what it's been called, it could always only be described as a disaster. None of my roommates were very clean, and immediately after the last roommate left (about a month before Erin and I got married) we started filling it up with all of our accrued junk... and more junk, and more junk. And that junk sat there, occasionally getting moved into different semi-organized piles, but mostly just forcing us to tell any company to not even think about opening
that door.
Those days are over now, thankfully. Ever since we found out Erin was expecting, we've been chiseling away little by little at the mess that it was. The cleaner the room got, the more likely we were to call it the "nursery" rather than the "office". And finally a few months ago the room was clean enough to not only allow guests to see the room, but to actually allow those staying a night or two to sleep in there.
But today was a special milestone in the history of the nursery... Erin finished one of the big projects. We aren't doing too much, since it is a rental and since we don't really know exactly how long we'll be in this apartment, but we had to decorate at least a little. Erin is amazing and was willing to make all of the bedding and curtains for the room, rather than picking out a set at a store. She's been working for quite a while on the different pieces, but today finished the bumper. She's still planning to reupholster the glider/ottoman, but other than that she's done. She made yellow striped curtains, a green striped crib-skirt (with white trim), yellow hand-print sheets (along with a few other coordinating sheets as backups), and a green foot-print bumper (again with white trim). I think it looks fantastic, and it's exciting to hit this milestone and just know that we're that much closer to having our little Aeriana here with us.
Oh, and we are so excited for Aeriana's cousin that Erin made a blanket for him to match Aeriana's.
Labels: baby, Erin, family, pictures
Family Fun and Church Trips
Kariana's been spending quite a few weekends with us and we were lucky to have her again this weekend, though this was an especially fun one. Sunday afternoon we all headed over to our Aunt Karlene's to have dinner with Karlene, Nikki, and Nayana. What a blast (and oh my heck the food was good)!!! Unfortunately I had to leave for a couple of hours to go to a fireside, but we all had a great time. It's hard to believe that we have so much fun and that they live only about 20 minutes away, but we never get to see them. Hopefully with Kariana starting to help nanny for them, we'll be over to see them a bit more often.
As disappointed as I was to have to go to the fireside, it sure was a good one. Our stake has been planning a huge Youth Conference event that's happening in a few weeks and last night was a bit of preparation for that. We'll be heading up on a Thursday morning to Palmyra where we'll spend 3 days visiting church history sites and having activities for the youth. The fireside was mostly centered around a great talk by our regional CES coordinator who told a ton of stories about the area in an effort to get the kids more excited about the amazing history of the area... not sure if it worked for the youth but I certainly got excited. I haven't been up to that area for several years and I'm glad I was able to take a couple of days off of work to be able to act as chaperone.
Labels: family, trips
Cute Pregnant Tummy - 28 Weeks
I can't believe time is moving so fast, we're already at about 6 1/2 months!!! Erin is of course looking cuter and cuter each day. I can't keep all the cuteness to myself, so here are a couple pictures of Erin after church today. We picked up her sweater yesterday at the mall, my goodness she's adorable.
Labels: baby, Erin, pictures
Not Bored With Board Games
So I just wanted to say real quick that we've got some awesome new board games. For the past year or so we've been really into Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, Carcassone, and the Farming Game. Recently however we've picked up a couple of new really awesome games.
About two weeks ago we got Talisman in the mail, a game introduced to us by our best friends. It's a fantasy-type game (think Lord of the Rings universe) that is just a blast to play. Then yesterday, just in time for Kariana being here for the weekend, we got the latest expansion for Ticket to Ride... it's the Switzerland map, and it is awesome. It's a bit different in game style so Erin and I were prepared to show Kariana how it all worked. She picked up on it a little better than I would have hoped though... she kicked our trash both times we've played. Beginner's luck no doubt.
Here are a couple pictures of us and the new games... we're dorks, but man do we have fun. :-)
Labels: family, pictures
Religion and Politics
They say that if you want to keep the peace you should refrain from discussing religion and politics... On this blog it seems that religion is pretty safe; every blog Erin and I have links to are from LDS people and I'd guess 95% of our blog hits are from LDS people (and the other 5% are from our friends who are perfectly okay with our religious choices). So that leaves politics (though of course I'm not really a "stir-the-water" kind of guy).
Up until recently I was never really into political campaigns and elections, never really had the time or desire to really get to know candidates and their stances. On top of that, I was often fairly wishy-washy on how I felt about some big-ticket topics (there are a lot of good ideas, but frighteningly few perfect ones). For some reason though, the upcoming presidential election has really grabbed my attention. Maybe it was the fact that 2008 will probably be historical in one way or another... among the front-runners are potentials for the first female president, the first black president, and the first LDS president; maybe it's just that I'm starting to realize how much this stuff can really impact me and my family.
Either way, with all of my efforts to follow the news and do a bit of research into the major candidates, it's hard to keep track of everything. So I was happy to find a website today that makes it a little easier to see where other candidates stand compared to your own views. It was pretty interesting to see how people stacked up; I wasn't terribly surprised that Romney was top of my list of political compatibility, but it was still cool to see how some of the other candidates stand up.
If you're interested at all, check it out.
USA Today Candidate Match Game
