Progress...finally

Well...after a few weeks of "inspections" (read: not doing anything), the crew was back to work on our house this week. They've started on the stone and stucco on the outside. Not much progress on the inside as we still have to our pre-drywall walk through (where I get to tell them what's wrong before the walls go up). So...hopefully that'll be soon b/c as of 5/30 we'll be homeless and the sooner they finish, the sooner we'll be able to move in. Here are some pictures...

First set is of the left side and the garage


They finsihed this whole side this week. This is also the left side just behind the garages. That section that isn't finished is called a gable...it gets done last. It's stucco, so they do the stone first.



This is the other side of the house (right side). The picture on the bottomyou can see the dining room windows on the far left.


Back of the house is getting stucco. Apparantly they have to do 3 coats before they can paint it. I think this is still the first coat.



Some random pictures of the backyard take from the right side of the house.



I tried to do a pano from the back patio so you can get a feel for how the yard lays out. It's got a long way to go before anyone is rolling in the grass.

Musical Prodigy

Bryce taught Russell a few things on the guitar recently. Obviously got his musical ability from Russell. Russell is actually worried that my singing nursery rhymes to Bryce may damage his hearing :)

Since we haven't done anything exciting lately, here's a picture from today playing outside. He's still not crawling. If he runs out of toys within his reach, he usually finds dirt or a leaf to occupy him.

Passover...a little late

We typically have seder on the closest Saturday to the beginning of Passover so by our family calendar, it was time for seder this weekend. We went to the Barbans to celebrate.

Here is a typical scene. Everyone is wandering around doing their own thing.

While we were thrilled to have "Rabbi" Arnold pose in this picture, it's really highlighting the new bib that Mimi just bought for Bryce.

While we still love the bib, this picture was better posed to show off the people in it.

Capitol 10K

[Russell Posting] Today was Bryce's first race...the Statesman's Capitol 10k. This year happened to be the 30th annual one...so it was particularly crazy. About 18K people lined the streets of downtown to suffer through 6.2 miles of heat and humdity. The rain threatened, but managed to hold off. Normally that would be a good thing, but the weather was so gross the rain would probably have felt good. I pushed Bryce in the jogger and Paige ran with our friend Michelle (the blond below who isn't Paige). Other than the pictures to commemorate the event, the race itself was forgettable. Bryce was obviously unimpressed with my efforts to zip through traffic so he decided to take a nap. I wished he would have chatted or cried or something b/c when he was talking...it sort of acted like a horn and people got out of our way. Once he snoozed...it was back to bobbing and weaving. Paige and Michelle did great! They were both a little zapped at the end, but hung in there. Everyone was rewarded with sandwiches from Schlotzky's for lunch. Here are a few before shots...perhaps if the official race photos turn out, we'll get some action shots.

Happy Birthday Papa!

Papa was 81 today and we went to my parent's house to celebrate.

Holy Crap! It's a house!!!

[Russell Posting] Well...things move fast when the weather is good. Paige, Bryce, and I took a drive down to the new digs to see how things were progressing. Well, when they say the early parts go up fast...they weren't kidding. Geez...the whole frame is up, some of the roof is done, and well...it looks like a real life house. We were really happy to see how big the backyard will be. It's funny how the shape of the lot is different w/ a house on it. The rear elevation shows how high the foundation is...much higher off the ground than we though. So...the new idea is to try and add a deck or something off the covered patio. This way we get some more entertaining space...and more importantly, I don't have to trim any more hedges. Not sure if the descriptions will come through, but I wrote some descritpions if you go to the actual picture trail site, perhaps you can read them there. So...we're off and running. Since we had some rain early on, looks like we'll probably list our house the end of this month. Luckily, Paige has already started packing...and I've only had to take Bryce out of 2 boxes ;-)

http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery.fcgi?p=12&gid=15595892

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Busy Weekend

Harry came in to visit for the weekend so we ran all over the place. First stop was to check in the progress of our house. We have a foundation! Next stop was to my parents. The guys played golf and my mother and I entertained Bryce. He loves his wagon that Papa bought for him.

Have fun looking at our pictures.

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Trip to San Antonio

Since Dede was going to be in San Antonio for the day, Bryce and I went to visit. Estelle was nice enough to let us take over here house. Dede brought Bryce a great book that plays Old MacDonald. Bryce taught Dede that when you are done reading a book, it makes a great snack.

Estelle made her delicious gumbo but Bryce thought that the bread was the best.

Research Study

I got a letter a few weeks ago asking for Bryce to participate in a UT research study. The study was looking at short term memory of 6 months old. Our appointment was today. Bryce sat on my lap and looked at 2 computers screens. There was music and the screens flashed different shapes. They recorded how long he looked at the objects. The funny part of the s tudy was that I had to keep my eyes closed. Earlier studies showed that babies tend to look at what their moms are watching. It was hard to keep from laughing. There was something silly about sitting in a room with my eyes closed wondering what Bryce was looking at.

Anyway, he loved participating. Smiled and laughed at all the research assistants. They gave him this cute bib for participating.

Trip to San Angelo

My mother took Bryce and me to visit Mimi and Papa for the weekend. Bryce was an excellent traveller as always. We had a wonderful visit. Thank you for having us!!

Papa made his world famous pancakes for breakfast.

Mimi entertained Bryce while my mother and I ate the first batch of pancakes.

Barnaby thought Bryce was taking up too much room on the floor so he had to make do with resting on the chair.

Bryce has discovered his feet lately. Just thought this picture was funny.

6 months old

A lot is going on! At his 6 month checkup on Monday he weighed 15lbs., 7oz (20th%) and was 27in(70th%). Right after the appointment his first tooth popped up. I need to stop sticking my fingers in his mouth becuase that little tooth is sharp.

The other news is that Bryce started food. We did rice cereal for a week and now I'm adding in vegetables. Sweet potatoes were a big hit this morning!

Lucky for me if I run out of food, Bryce is happy to eat his bib :)

Visit from Nana

Myra came to visit last weekend. It was cold and rainy so we did't do much. Here are a couple of pics.

A New Year's wedding nightmare

(Russell posting) This past weekend was Paige's cousin Will's wedding. The wedding was in Jackson, Mississippi (are you saying in your head...i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-pi?). We were a little nervous because we hadn't taken an airplan trip with Bryce before so we were in for some firsts. Well, to cut to the chase, Bryce was the easy part. He slept on all 4 of our flights, seemed happy to entertain everyone in the waiting areas, and even reminded us not to put him through the x-ray machine. Unfortunately, it was everything else that was the problem. Our weekend started with a about 8 hours in the DFW airport. Peggy and Jack only had to spend 4, but that was because they spent the other 4 sitting on their airplane in San Antonio before being cleared to leave.

At about 6 pm, the airport PA system requested that we all move to the corridors...away from the windows. Apprantly that's what you do when there's a TORNADO. Seriously, did they build DFW on a trailer park? How does a tornado touch down at an airport? At that point, we decided that we had enough. Perhaps traveling via a twister works for Dorothy and the Wizard, but we figured the traditional twin jet engine would work better for our needs so we checked in to the airport hotel. I went to Target to buy toiletries and baby food b/c in weather related delays they don't give you your bags back...I thought that was awfully nice of them. At that point, we put ourselves to bed, but our journey was really just beginning.

Next morning we were supposed to head out on the 930 flight. Well, thanks to the remaining chaos from the prior day, there was no crew available for our flight. Peggy was more than willing to serve the drinks and I could certainly tell everyone their seat cushins could be used as floatation devices, but they made us wait...2 more hours. Then, just for grins, they kicked 10 people off the plane...lucky for us (well, I guess that depends on your point of view), Mr. Bryce is the trump card and they won't boot you off if you have an infant.

So...after a long night, a long morning, we finally landed in rainy Jackson, MS. The good news was that loading the rental car would be easy...because we had no bags. Which is typically not a good thing if you a) have been in the same clothes for 2 days and b) have to go to a wedding that night.

Well...to make a long story short, we bought clothes, made the wedding, were delayed 5 more hours coming home, and they lost our bags again...Happy New Year!

Now that we've had a few days to reflect, it still sucked. Hopefully we've paid our penance for 2006 and 2007 so we're good.

Here are a few pictures from the week that was:
http://www.PictureTrail.com/gid14551423

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A Canyon Lake Christmas

On Christmas day, the whole family took a trip out to Mimi and Papa's lake house. Mimi was making her version of Thanksgiving lunch sponsored by Christmas day. Turkey, dressing, cranberries, green beans...the works. So...who could pass up a delicious meal like that? We spent the afternoon watching basketball and building a cozy fire. Lunch was wonderful and we all left a little heavier than we came. Here are some pictures from the afternoon (along with some other misc. pictures from Hanukkah that we didn't get around to posting).

A Canyon Lake Christmas
http://www.PictureTrail.com/gid14551036

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A Hanukkah Album
http://www.PictureTrail.com/gid14550870

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Family Trip

Russell's grandmother and aunt were visting Russell's cousin in Dallas so we were invited to come visit. On the way to the Shouse's house we stopped by Jessica andTyler's. Marty was a great host letting Bryce play in his exersaucer. They weren't so cooperative during picture time though so no photos there.

On to Plano where Bryce met his cousin Morgan. She is about 18 months and very cute. She liked Bryce and kept saying "hi baby". She really liked Russell. She sat on his lap and helped him eat dinner.

Here are some pictures of the weekend!

A new toy...

for Dad :) Well...really it's for the whole family, but i got to the box first. for hanukkah, we bought webcams for bryce, nana & g-bob, and pops & gram. Since ours came first, i was the guinea pig for installation and setup. i was a bit nervous after reading somethings on the tech support forums about the software, but to my delight, it installed just fine. For the record, we all got logitech quickcam pro 5000. the first test was a quick 1 sided video session with my mom on my old AOL instant messenger. i wasn't too happy with the functionality so i upgraded to AOL IM 6.0. Haven't tested it yet, but it certainly looks nicer. But the testing wasn't done. with bryce in his pj's...we did a little photo shoot.

Also...this is my first attempt at posting video to the web, but hopefully you can see some of bryce in action:

Bryce Part I


Bryce Part II


Bryce The Finale


These are just some stills from the webcam...he was a happy camper tonight