We spent the Thanksgiving weekend with friends and family which is just how it should be. I got to see a lot of family members that I have not seen for months and it was a good opportunity to catch up. In particular there are a few family members that are hard to reach out to and to see them in person feels great.
For the first time since 1994 we did not do any shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. The economy doesn’t feel right, the kids are getting older, and it seemed appropriate to let this tradition go away for at least this year. We’ll still get gifts and on balance spend about the same on the nieces and nephews as we always do but it can wait a few weeks until we know what to get them.
After Thanksgiving we came home and met friends who are back in state for a long weekend. They have a little boy who is just a bit younger than Frank and it was great to see them as well. It was very exciting to see how Frank observed and interacted with this other little boy. I think both of them learned a few things from each other. I think it was surprising to them how much of a difference just a few weeks can make to the development of a child at this age. Frank is teething right now and that has definitely changed his demeanor.
I’m getting over a cold right now and need to get to bed. Lack of updates are not for lack of activity, just have not found as much free time as I’ve hoped to have recently. That’s fatherhood, I suppose.
On Friday, I headed home from work and ran a ton of errands. Best Buy, Home Depot, Copps. All items completed with lists successfully utilized and all items required in stock. Success. We then proceeded to rearrange the house. My wife has a burning desire to rearrange on a regular basis. Anyhow we moved the large screen television into the basement as well as a large chair from the living room. We brought up the smaller television and a recliner. The reasons were multiple. We wanted to de-emphasize the television in our growing boy’s life. We were preparing for company to come over. I wanted to be able to play the 360 more.
On Saturday we got up and both of our parents came into town for family pictures. We headed to the mall to one of those kind of crummy “kid photo” stores where they churn you through a bunch of poses in short order. I did not have high expectations but they did manage to capture a few great images that we’re now going to get ordered.
After lunch and photos we headed home to prepare for friends to come in for the Lesnar/Coture UFC fight. At 3 PM the first of our friend arrived and he hit a deer on the way here. People slowly started trickling in throughout the afternoon. We watched some college football, played some Rock Band 2, and then watched a great fight. A few friends stayed over night as the fights ended around 12:30 AM.
Sunday we had even more family and friends over to watch the Packer game. What a great game it was, too. The Packers looked like it was 2007 instead of the inconsistent team they’ve shown to be in 2008.
Of course, the primary reason for all of this was so everyone could see Frank and we could see our friends. It has gotten very hard to get out and do things since he was born so we make it a point to make sure everyone gets to see him.
Latest photo:
I am going to go on record as saying that my son is the coolest litle boy evar. I know every father feels this way about their child. As he begins to come into his own and becomes aware of both the world around him and the people in it, the time we spend together is more and more fun.
It is hard to believe he is already eight months old. While some of the days have been long, the time has passed very quickly.
Here are some updated pictures from the past weekend:
This weekend I spent the entire time on the living room floor with my son. We played games, played with the dogs, and most important of all crawled for the first time. Crawling is perhaps a more elegant term for the high exertion dragging my son is doing as he tries to motor around the room but it is an absolutely huge milestone in his development.
For those curious, the item that finally inspired him to crawl? The DirecTV remote control. He can’t get enough of it. Luckily I have a spare or two in case he chews it into an early demise.
The dogs lives is never going to be the same now that a little boy is coming after them 24/7.
Congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama!
This is a significant day in the history America and by consequence world history. I voted yesterday and I have to say that it felt great. There was definitely excitement in line at the polling station. Everyone was nervously anxious about how the election was going to run.
Regardless of who you voted for, and almost half the country is disappointed today, it is a historic election. I think the Republican and Democratic candidates love this country profoundly (as do the “third party” candidates). This election was not a mandate for the President-elect to ramrod their goals and ideologies through. We’ve had that for eight years and look where that got us. No, this was simply a desire to “give the other guy a chance”.
And now Barack Obama can focus on being a man of his word.
On Friday my wife and I celebrated our tenth anniversary. It is hard to believe that we’ve been married for ten years already. To celebrate we headed back to the alma mater for a three day weekend. The campus has kept the parts that made it a good place to go to school while it has invested substantially to make it a much better campus than when we were there. Ironically enough, the person helping to steer the University through these times is a fellow class mate. We ran into him on campus and stopped by his office. Who knew?
On the way home we did some shopping and the wife picked up some new clothing. Not counting maternity clothing this is the first time she has purchased clothes in any form in over two years. It was rather hectic having the boy with us but it was not overwhelming. The toughest part was trying to check out and get to the car so he could catch a nap.
Back to marriage. Our marriage has changed us, as has struggling to have children, finally having a son, relocating all over the country, changing jobs, and all the other things that life has thrown at us. We’ve over come them and thankfully have been able to grow together and with each other. Some days I feel the same as I did in college, other days college feels like a life time away. This weekend it was fun walking around campus with my son allowing me to simultaneously enjoy the moment, look back, and think ahead.
Weekends like this make you realize just how fleeting this whole experience really is.
For whatever reason I can not get into Bioshock. I have played the game for a few hours and while it is gorgeous I find the game boring. I’ll be giving that a try next as I completed Quake 4 last night.
I found Quake 4 to be a very well done vanilla first person shooter. The level design was probably among the best I’ve seen. The level of interaction with the environment was pretty high. I loved the attention to detail throughout. The use of the computer screens and lighting was something to behold. Kudos to the art team.
The boss battles were not that hard although for a veteran gamer if I find them hard then most people would quit the game. I never got stuck in the game as everything flowed very logically. I guess the word I’d use here is “polished”.
I might try Bioshock again. I’ve also got Civ 4 and some older games (like Baldur’s Gate 2 that I never finished) that are calling me.
It is definitely fall in Wisconsin. The leaves are coming down, the temperature is dropping, the rain feels colder, and the days are shorter. The good news however is that Halloween is coming. It is a fun holiday and while we’ve not gotten dressed up in a few years, it’s still a fun holiday.
Our neighbors had an early party this past weekend and it was great to see everyone there. On Sunday I sat on the floor all day and watched football with the boy pretty much all day. I was glad to see the Packers win in pretty convincing fashion. I lost again in Fantasy Football but I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that I am not going to win this year — although nobody seems to particularly want to dominate, either.
My father in law and I worked on baby-proofing the kitchen. I took a nap on Saturday and again on Sunday. We tried a new restaurant in the town we live in (the food was merely OK). While not a particularly eventful weekend, it was extremely normal. I enjoyed it a great deal even if it wasn’t long enough.
I can summarize how awesome my weekend was in one picture:
I’m really unsure of what to do on World of Warcraft what with the impending expansion coming out. I think I’m going to hold off but at the same time I am a little curious about what to expect out of the game.
I did see that there was a huge patch yesterday. The fact that I don’t have it and don’t even know what’s in it is indicative of my lack of interest in the game. I have to say that Smitty has a great quote on the topic of the game, namely, “the more excited people get the dumber they seem to get“. This is a nugget of brilliance and truth.
So as of right now I don’t have the game on preorder but I do have the game installed. My UI is not up to date but I am curious what the game will be like in the expansion. There is a big part of me though that feels like it is more of the same.
I think I am trying to talk myself into getting the game for nostalgia purposes but I’m not actually excited about any of the content. I miss gaming with a big group of friends but I don’t see everyone getting the game, for sure we won’t all be on the same server, and I will never have the time to raid again like I did before the boy was born.
I am seeing this as a bad investment, but my mind is not made up.
The weekend went nothing like I planned — for my wife it actually started on Thursday. Our au pair got sick last week and we had to scramble around on Thursday morning to make sure we had Frank taken care of. It turned out for the best.
I worked from home and my wife took the day off. It turned out that my sister in law had the day off and my mother in law was in town. So the four of them went to lunch and then to a park as the weather was so nice.
Yesterday we worked on the house and I was going to go to a LAN party with some family members. The wife was stressing out so I backed out at the last minute (literally as I was packing to leave). We got groceries and calm was restored.
Today we got up and went to a park to enjoy what is likely the last warm weekend for the year. We then stopped at a family owned farm and got some apples and pumpkins.
The weekend went very quickly and I ended up spending it all with the family. No complaints really, just not quite what I expected.
Here’s a picture from the park:
