OK folks, here’s the deal. I got WAAAAYYYYYY behind on the whole blogging thing. I could make all kinds of excuses, like things getting busy at work (two trials in the last seven months), or getting caught up in my new blogging project over at Disdads.com (which includes hosting the bi-weekly Dis Dads Podcast – that’s an iTunes link). But I won’t. I’m sorry I let this slip. Thank you for your patience (if anyone is still reading this). I’m not going to go back and try to do any more fill-in. I just couldn’t let that Disney World trip report remain not-quite-done. And with summer beginning, I’m going to do my best to keep things more up to date around here.

That’s right. A half year.
Six months.
As of today, 187 days.
4488 hours.
269,280 minutes.
16,156,800 seconds.
By any measure – a whole heck of a lot of time for a Hy-Vee helium balloon to stay fully airborn. It has started to drift around the kitchen a bit more – we have to return it to its “home” corner to keep it out of the way. And it is looking a bit less plump. But the magic helium Jonthan’s First Birthday balloon continues to hang in there. At this rate, it’ll be flying right next to the big helium #2 for Jonathan’s next birthday.

Sorry for the lack of updates for a while. Things have been a little bit crazy. I have been adding photos, and I’m going to add a series of posts in the next day or so that should get us all caught up.

I’m not yet done with transitioning all of the photo albums over to the new space yet, but that’ll be completed soon.  In the meantime, this will be the site that I update and the place to find any new photos.  I hope you like the new format.  This new blogging tool is much more flexible than the old one – which is a blessing and a curse.  It’s a blessing because I can add cool things like the Events listing and Online indicator in the right sidebar.  It’s a curse because it’s also more complex than the tool I was using, so there’s a bit of a learning curve involved.  I think I’ve gotten through the worst of it though.

So enjoy the new site.  Spend a little time exploring.  If you click on the image in the left sidebar, it will take you to the photo album in which that photo exists.  From there, you can explore the photo galleries.  To get back to the blog, just click on the blog title at the top of the page. Have fun!

New pictures have been added, both to the 05-November Photo Album (I added Thanksgiving weekend pictures, portraits that were taken at Marcia & Larry’s anniversary brunch, and pictures from Mikaela’s preschool Thanksgiving program); and a few pictures in the new 05-December Photo Album.  Also, I’m making an early New Year’s Resolution to do more frequent blog updates this year.  Here’s an early start – a cute Mikaela anecdote:

Mikaela is quite the drama queen.  We’ve known that for some time now.  But lately, she’s started something new.  She will quote movie lines to you, in what seems to her to be perfect context.  Over Thanksgiving Break, on a day that we needed to stay inside because it was cold and snowy out and Mikaela had a cold, we spent the morning watching Mikaela’s favorite movie of the moment, Shrek2 (which she calls, "New Shrek").  Later, we got out the watercolors and Mikaela developed her own unique painting style.  She would carefully paint her hand with the brush, and then stamp her hand onto the paper.  When Mikaela had had enough of that, we scrubbed her hands to get the watercolor off.

A few minutes later, Mikaela wanted to finger paint.  Having just cleaned up paint, I told her no and that she needed to choose something else to play with.  After insisting, "But I WANT it!" several times, and still being told, "No," Mikaela stomped off to her playroom.  But as soon as she got there, she turned around and stomped back to the Great Room, crossed her arms across her chest, and with her poutiest face looked right at me and shouted "I’ve made changes for you, just think about that!" – almost a direct quote from the movie – and stomped off again.  (I had to work REALLY hard to supress the laugh, but she still didn’t get to finger paint).

Here’s the scene from the movie:
Princess Fiona: You know, you are acting like a… a…
Donkey: Go on, say it.
Princess Fiona: Like an ogre!
Shrek: Well, whether your parents like it or not, I am an ogre!
[growls at the dog to shut it up]
Shrek: And guess what, princess? That’s not about to change.
Princess Fiona: I’ve made changes for you, Shrek. Think about that.
[she leaves]
Donkey: Real smooth, Shrek. "I’m an ogre! Arrr!"

Okay, okay . . . mea culpa.  Sorry folks.  I FINALLY got new pictures posted – right at the top of the list of photo albums (05-March/April).  I’ll work on getting caught up on posting news/information over the next week or so, but I figured I’d better get pictures posted before I had a revolt on my hands.

Finally!  I got my camera back from Pentax service on Thursday night, just before we left for the trip to Chicago.  I should be better about getting new pictures posted on a regular basis again now.  In addition to the pictures from Chicago that we posted, I’ve added a November photo album.  So far, it’s got pictures from Mikaela playing in the snow in it.  I’ll be adding pictures from our trip to Rochester for Thanksgiving and through the end of the month.  Enjoy!

I added some Halloween pictures to the September-October 04 Photo Album. There are pictures of Mikaela, Samantha, Sarah and Margo in their costumes. Thanks to Grandma Ted, Aunt Judy, and Big Sarah for the pictures (I REALLY can’t wait for my camera to come back from the repair shop)!

Sorry that this is a bit out of order. I just got a chance to catch up on some of the video stuff today. Here’s Mikaela’s first music video – rocking out to the ABCs with the guitar she got for her birthday.

Mikaela Rocks the House

The August photo album has some new pictures in it. Sorry there are fewer new pictures than usual, and they’re taking longer to get posted. One of the casualties of the flood that took out my car was the digital camera that was in the car at the time. The camera was sent back for repair, and we don’t have an ETA for its return yet. Thanks to Grandma Ted for taking some pictures that I could scan and add to the photo album.