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.