The many faces of our sweet Abel

SAD - this one breaks dad's heart everytime

HAPPY :-)

SUPPRISED!

Our sweet boy SLEEPING - this is how most of his time is spent :-)

Pictures! One Month Old

Abel is now offically one month old - where has the time gone? We had a big week last week. Abel got to go to his first horse show, see some friends, and go to church.

Abel went to church yeterday for the second time - he was great, he pretty much slept through the entire service, sorry Dr. Davis, guess the sermon wasn't quite exciting enough :-) Abel did wake up afterwards to let his grand-grandmother hold him (we will work on his priorities)

After church all three of us got to have a wonderful lunch outside at El Rodeo (abel loves mexican :-)

family photo

Sneak Peak at Abel's Nursery

i am pretty sure that Abel has the best room in the house. we are so thankful for everyone who helped make our nursery wonderful, we hope that many more children will be able to enjoy it. i, of course, will be enjoying our new comfy chair for many years :-)

abel's first words

Abel had jaundice when he was born which made him very sleepy and also necessitated him having some phototherapy - here is what he thought about the whole ordeal.

TWO WEEKS OLD!

We can't believe it, our sweet little Abel is 2 weeks old as of yesterday. the Lord continues to show us grace upon grace with him. he is healthy and is gaining weight like a champ (he eats every 3 hours) Abel sleeps most of the time, but has started to have some awake (fussy :-) time in the evenings, evidently this is normal. james and i are doing well. i feel better and better everyday, we are even going to try to go to church tonight (our biggest outing so far ;-) We will do our best to keep you updated on Abel. We love him so much and are thankful that the Lord saw it fit to give us such a sweet and beautiful little boy.

Our lives have changed!

Abel Has Come!!!
On Tuesday night Sonya and I had our baby boy. He came to us around 3 weeks early via c-section at 6:55pm after the wise guidance of our doctors. He weighed 7lbs 5oz. We went in for appointment on Tuesday at 10:20 and by about noon they said "head over to the hospital now," so we did. Praise God everything went great and Sonya and the baby are both healthy and adjusting to new life.For all my guy friends, I just want to point out, I hope after the first night with little sleep you look this great and have a little bit of this to show off:

My Pride and Joy

Sonya said which one (ha ha). So this is my pride and joy....and my wife and kid...just kidding :-) We decided since we were going to have a baby we should get a family car, so I bought a 65 Chevy Truck. Dad and I did a quick paint job. It still needs some work before I bring it home. The bed isn't put in it yet, the brakes need some work, it has the wrong fenders on it. But, we're trying to keep it cheap (it's just for taking trash to the dump). It's been fun spending time with Dad while we work on it. It's the same year truck that Grandpa Dee had.

Baby Shower!

Last Saturday Martha and some friends were gracious to give me a wonderful baby shower - it was definitly the best shower i have ever been to. Here I am with my sweet friend Dana, it was great to see friends i don't get to see often. (i am 30 weeks in this pic)

Here are my 3 beautiful old college roomies :-)

This is the sweet gift Martha gave us. I guess this is the official blog announcement of our baby's name!

Office Tank

This Pic is at the top of my rock. On the left you can see a few groups of Zoanthids. The big one on the left is a "Pally." You can see the orange Montipora on the right. It's doing really well. It has polyps that come out, which is a good sign.


This is a picture of my Ricordia. I haven't figured out what to do with it yet, so it's just hanging out on the bottom.


This is a Xenia that Josh let me put it my tank. It pulses and waves (it's beautiful to watch). Behind it you can see some green chaetomorpha (a saltwater plant).


I've been excited about my tank lately. Two of my zoa collonies are making new heads. I got some new zoas I haven't taken a picture of yet. I'm going to be able to add another light soon. I also bought an Acropora frag that is doing pretty good. I need to get a fancy camera to take some better pictures.

Anniversary Trip

Sonya and I celebrated our 3 year Anniversary this weekend and into the week. We went to Emerald Isle on the outer banks of NC. As you can tell from these pictures...we had a great time :-) Sonya is 22 weeks now and still looked great in a bathing suit. We went to the aquarium, walked around Beaufort, and spend some time on the beach hanging out. It was a great time to rest and relax with not too much on the agenda. We're back home now and are sure looking forward to going to work tomorrow...at least one of us is.

Office Tank

There have been several changes in the office tank. A little while ago during a frag swap I purchased a ricordia. Later I purchased some Zoanthid's with my coworker Pete. These had been in his tank along with some of my rocks until my tank was stable. Well the rock I got had been at least partially cured and my water chemistry levels were right on. My amonia, nitrite and nitrate levels were all zero (or close to it). So I added some critters. A Zoanthid frag

Another Zoanthid frag.

My Ricordia.

This is a frag of Josh's Xenia. It will look better once it's attached to the rock and we don't have to hold it on with netting and rubber bands.

The tank.

I used Josh's camera to take these pics. So they are much higher quality. Unfortunatly this picks up some stuff that I don't really want it to, like water drop smudges.

I also got three blue leg hermit crabs to help start cleaning things up. I'm pretty excited. Things are moving along nicely.

Office Tank

So I decided to just update the office tank posts once a month, or when significant changes occur. I bought a piece of live rock for my tank this week. I had been planning for a while to get this aquacultured live rock from Florida, but I had a bunch of store credit at a local fish store, so I used it to get this 7.5 lb piece of rock instead. It has pretty coraline algae growing on it and I really like the shape. Now I have to wait. The tank has to "cycle" which involves the build up of beneficial bacteria to eat waste.
I'll post another update when something fun happens.

More Pictures!

On Friday we got to see our baby man again. On our last ultrasound they saw some "bright spots" on his heart, so they wanted to check him out a little more. Our doctor was great and said our baby looked wonderful. He has a "beautiful heart" and long limbs. :-) he currently weighs (at 19 weeks) around 11oz. We praise God for knitting our baby so well.

In the first picture you can see that our baby is definitly a Tarheel :-) he has all 5 toes :-) it is also good to see what will be kicking me alot in the future :-)

The second picture shows his arm and 5 fingers, thumb is pointing up.

enjoy!

pie

I was just reading some documentation for VMware resource management and it had an interesting example in it that got me thinking. The example was dealing with dividing resources and it compared it to pieces of pie. So I'll pose the question as this.

If you were given one piece of pie and your sister was given two pieces of pie, who would have more pie?

This is where my wife would say, "I don't understand you smart people; sometimes you can be so clueless."

Now most of you would probably say the sister is getting more pie, but for people like me and the people that wrote the VMware documentation we have to say I don't know. It depends on if the sizes of pie are all the same. It's this kind of thinking that sets people like me apart and makes me do poorly on standardized tests. And it's thinking like this that sometimes makes my wife think I'm pretty stupid sometimes. :-) Sometimes she's right ;-)

a BABY-MAN

We got to see our little man again yesterday (yes, he’s a boy! :-). I am currently 17 weeks and feeling better than earlier in my pregnancy, we still have the occasional throw-ups but that just means God is knitting a strong boy together for us. It was amazing to see how quickly our baby is growing. We got to see his brain, head, ribs, hands, arms, legs, ribs, and spine. He weighs only 9oz but the Lord has already formed him well. Enjoy the pictures above, the first 2 show his profile and in the third one he is looking toward you.

Office Tank Week 2

So, not much has changed with the old office tank. I did a little water change and let the dirty water go into the mini office aquarium next to the 5.5 gallon. It's pretty sick looking.
I did get some new light bulbs for over the tank. One of them is a pure white 10,000Kelvin T5 flourescent. The other is a blue Actinic T5. The blue is "too blue" and makes my cubicle look kind of funny. Oh well. Maybe it will be worth it one day. The good news is that I can use these bulbs on a tank at home if I ever make it a saltwater tank. I need a few more things for this tank before it's ready to have stuff in it. Hopefully next week...

Office Tank Week One

This week I set up my first Saltwater tank. I set this up in my office at work on my desk. The tank is only 5.5 gallons which not only qualifies it as a "nano-tank" but also qualifies it as a "pico-tank" from what I've been told. I hope to track the progress of the tank here.

So this picture is on day 2. You might notice that you don't really see much in the tank. There is some gravel in the tank. Gravel?! you might say...in a saltwater tank?! Well, the beaches where I grew up in CA have this instead of sand. It's very beautiful with lots of colors and is mostly made up of small peices of Jade. So it seemed like a good idea. I haven't added any rock, corals, or fish because that takes time. You might also notices that you don't really see filters etc. That's because the tank has 2 holes drilled in it that are plumbed to a canister filter under my desk. This provides the water flow. The canister will be filled with live rock which will work as a biological filter for the tank.

Well seeing as how I've now written much more about having set up a tank than my previous post about Sonya and I expecting our first child, I should probably end this post. I will try to post weekly pics of the tank so that you can track it's progress. I'll also try to get a better camera to take the pictures with (I took this one with my phone.)

Our lives are about to change!

For those of you who can't tell what this small blurry picture is of, I'll tell you. It's a 15 week old baby in my wife's belly. That's right, we're having our first child. We're so excited! Sonya is already over the first trimester hump. The morning sickness is wearing off (it was more like evening sickness for us). We had a great trip to DC in February. Friends of ours just had their first baby and other friends of ours are having babies. Sonya and at least 3 of her friends are all pregnant and are pretty close together. This fall is going to be full of babies. We'll try to be better about posting more, we've just been so busy.

There's a new sheriff in town...

Bad Boeeeyyy

...and if I ever get in a shootout with him, I'm in trouble because I can't even hit a clay target with a 20 guage.

Josh hosted some skeet shooting on his Dad's land. Vic Carpenter from Church, and his Dad and brother got to come too. We even had Josh's Dad and some dogs for an audience.

the family

The day after thanksgiving we went to Charlotte to see james' sister (Becca) and her wonderful family. The highlight was going to a tree farm and picking out their Christmas tree. We had a great time with all the kids - as you can see...

COLORADO!

So, I am a slow to get any pics of my CO trip up on the blog - no suprise :-) i thought this one of the three of us would be a fun addition. martha and i had a great time with katie, pete and sweet william. they were so gracious to show us around their beautiful state. i was constantly reminded what a wonderful artist God is.

He is mobile!

Our friends Josh and Kami have a sweet video of their baby Silas crawling. The audio for the video is very choice. You can go to their website by clicking
here, or just watch the video below.

We finally agreed...

After much searching, Sonya and I finally both found a dog that we liked. We got him from a rescue group called H.E.A.R.T. His name is Grady. The rescue group said that he was part Weimeraner and part Hound. To me that means he's cute with 2 parts naughty. I've definately noticed the hound when he keeps his nose to the ground when we go on our walks. And he sleeps a lot.

Bocce in the Park

Sometimes on Sundays our Sunday School class goes to Duke Park for a pic-nic. Josh sent me a picture of us playing bocce ball. I thought it was a funny pic.

Oh Honey

It's been a while since we've posted because it's been a busy summer. We got some honey from our bees, about 4 gallons total. It was more than I expected for our first year.



This is me cutting the caps off a frame of honey. I did the first one, but Sonya did the rest while I spun the frames in the extractor. (Sonya was better at cutting that I am)





This is me at the extractor. It spins the frames and gets the honey out.





This is some of the finished product.

The big move!

A few weekends ago we helped the McDonald's (James' sister & family) move from Greenville to Charlotte. The Lord has blessed them with a wonderful new home to live in while Dr. Curtis complete his residency there James and I had a lot of fun hanging out with them all and even getting in a little play time :-)

We were so glad Curtis went for the big truck so that we didn't have to be to careful about the packing technique ;-)

Uncle James is a pro with the iron. Afton finally warmed up to him over the weekend, even asking him to play with her - Sweet Afton

Fun on the Water

James got to have alot of fun with Josh Johnson this Tuesday evening. Josh's dad has a boat and they went to Sharron-Harris Lake to do a little knee boarding and wake boarding. James had a great time - but was crazy sore the next day and the day after that :-) He is turning into an old married man, nuts !

Up to our ears

My grandpa is a farmer. He has been all his life. And last weekend it was time for CORN!! Sadly we were unable to help "pull" any, but we did get to help "shuck" it. We decided we liked cut corn better than whole cobb corn (James loves stewed corn). So on Wednesday we boiled, cut, and froze about 13 dozen ears of corn. That's more than 50 ears of corn for those of you can't do math...more than 100 actually...so I'm not so good at math either. :-)


And while I was doing all the corn work, this is what James was doing.

BABIES

Praise the Lord for new lives! This is Grace's baby (a friend at my work) Hannah. She is one of the cutest babies I have seen! She is only about 4 days old in this picture and already has more hair than most babies have at 1 year - i love it.

BOSTON!

two weeks ago james and i got to go on a wonderful trip to boston. we were there for about a week and had a great time. he is there for a work conference but i got to tag along. we were able to walk around the city, do a little shopping, go to the aquarium and have some great seafood. our only hitch was on the return trip home i got stuck in boston (alone!) due to thunderstorms. but God worked it all out and it turned out to be a great evening.

My Silly Nephew

Man this baby-man is cute! Andrew is about 6 months and getting his first tast of carrots-it didn't go over so well :-) anyway we are excited to have him residing in the wonderful state of NC very soon.

the sweet hairline and ears are compliments of his dad - the eyes are from mom :-)

Anniversary Trip

For our two year anniversary (back on May 22), Sonya and I took a trip to the mountains of VA on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was a relaxing time. We visited a winery, and a grain mill. We saw some backwoods-hillbilly-folk-singers. We took some pictures of cows, and I caught some delicious bass. We are very thankful for our gracious hosts that let us stay in their beautiful farm house.

I am a dork

I am a computer dork. I recently got a free upgrade from my Abit-Vh6 motherboard to an Abit-VP6 motherboard (a dual processor motherboard for which I have 2 PIII 733 Mhz processors). I was so excited about it that I told the guy ringing me up at Intrex all about it. He said, "wow, that's cool just to have that around."

So when I cam across someone on the internet who was way more of a computer dork that I am, I had to blog it. Whoever you are, in whatever country you're from, I give props to the guy that made this...Coffee Computer. He is what I wish I was, and what my wife is glad that I am not.