Ohio & Wabash - number 2

Yum.

Ohio & Wabash - post 1

For starters... I'm supposed to be on a diet. Oops....

Business Intelligence in Chicago...

So, I'm in Chicago at a BI conference being put on by Gartner.  I'm excited to be here... but the trip getting here was exciting!   The flight was very bumpy and the landing was a bit of a doosy with the plane swaying this way and that!  I'm staying in a great Hotel just down the street from Pizzeria Uno's and those of you that know Leann and I know that we can't pass up an Uno's if we have an opportunity go to one.  So that's where I'm headed for dinner. 

The hotel room has a great view of the river and is right down town so I've got some great views!  I've posted some of the pictures of the hotel room and the view here. 

Grass Hopper...

CIMG0857.JPG
Originally uploaded by Supercork

Today Ethan played in the grass for the first time! He has been having a rough week, but today he was feeling MUCH better. I took him outside around 6:45 and it was so nice out. It was pretty breezy and he looked interested in what all the green stuff was on the ground so I first had him walk a bit in it (with Dad's help obviously) and then I sat him down so he could play a bit on his own. As you can see from the photo, he has pretty much gotten the hang of sitting up on his own with out falling over. He still does fall over every now and then but for the most part, he does a good job at it.

Testing out some new gadgets...

So I'm using "Windows Live Writer" to write this blog post.  It's a desktop app that I got from Microsoft when I downloaded and installed Windows Live Gallery so I could upload a lot of my photos to Flickr.  This seems pretty cool as it is spellchecking on the fly.  I also have buttons to the right for inserting pictures, tables, maps, tags, videos, and hyperlinks.  It also looks like it supports other Plug-ins as well.  Pretty interesting.

Here's a picture that I've posted:

I now see that I have lots of options for this picture... in an advanced tab where I can set certain effects on the picture like black and white etc...  Pretty cool stuff!

Speaking of Flickr (okay, I mentioned it only briefly above), I've spent a bunch of time with my pictures today because of that darn website!  I like it a lot... but I'm now forced to rething my photos.  I've been spending the last hour or so tagging all my photos.  I successfully have tagged all my dog photos and stored them into individual shots (tagged with their name) as well as a generic category titled "dogs".  Hopefully I keep this up.  .... although, now thinking about it.  I'll have to tag them in Flickr from now on as most of them will be uploaded automatically because I'm using EyeFi.. hmmm interesting... my Flickr images will be tagged but the local copies will not if I do decide to do that.... hmm.  I guess that's something to noodle on while I sleep tonight.  Anywho, it just occured to me that I've not posted before using this tool and if I don't stop typing soon I could have a whole lot of content that I can't post on my hands ;)

So until next time!

Laters Gators

A trying week….

Wow, this has been one of those weeks! Ethan had been fussy all weekend but mom took care of things because Dad was down and out with the flu. Then on Monday when Dad started feeling better Ethan's teething kicked into high gear. He really started fussing a lot and Leann called the doctor's office. They told him that if he doesn't respond well to baby Tylenol on the gums and/or we see him rubbing an ear a lot to bring him in as it may be an ear infection. By the time Wednesday rolled around the Tylenol on the gums thing was pretty ineffective and he started to get a persistent fever. Off to the doctor's office we went! After some serous crying as the doctor was getting mass amounts of wax out of his ears she deemed the issue an ear ache indeed. On Thursday night we began giving him his prescribed dosage of Amoxicillin… which is bright pink and seems to be an exceedingly large amount for his tiny mouth. Needless to say Ethan is not a fan of Amoxicillin… and now I understand why my mom use to always claim I was allergic to it when the doctors suggested it :). Anywho, the crazytrain at work wasn't stopping for either of us as we both had tons of stuff to do at work as well as a little emergency / crisis on Pop's website for his business that I was helping to resolve Monday through Wednesday. Thankfully for me Leann volunteered to stay at home with Ethan for two days and work from home while he pushed through his fever. I was very thankful because it seemed like I had a barrage of non stop face to face meetings that I was required to be in. By the time Friday rolled around we were both exhausted… I was working late at night on block watch and HOA stuff as well as work stuff for my face to face meetings. Ethan was only sleeping 2 or maybe 3 hours at a time and Leann was taking on the brunt of it (meaning sleep deprivation).

To top things off the pink die from Ethan's Amoxicillin (remember I mentioned that it was bright pink above) seemed to move through his body and directly to his hiney and turned it bright red! That's right… by Friday Ethan had a raging diaper rash and now wanted to cry in both a sitting and standing position! Changing time is no longer fun for him… he's in a ton of pain when we wipe his bottom and he lets us know it! Luckily Leann is a superhero in the field of dealing with unhappy baby's and their sleepy fathers. She has been doing so awesome taking care of him as well as me without getting sick (thank goodness). I don't know how she does it… but I'm so thankful for her strength and ability in this area!

We are looking forward to a visit from Granny Sweetpea in a little over a week. Ethan has been talking to us a lot lately and I image that he's telling us how excited he is as asking us how much longer till we granny gets here. To which we reply "4 more miles" :)

Anywho, that's the skinny for now.
Until next time, take care!

Big boy!

Ethan just started holding the bottle on his own! He is surprising us
every day. Just a couple of nights ago he started rolling over from
his back to his tummy and rolling over and over to get places.

Today he is home sick. He got his first ear ache and a persistent
fever too. (this might be what josh had last week) We called the on
call nurse because his fever was at 102.6 after tylenol and we weren't
sure how high was too high. Now we know that 105 is when we should
call the doc or go to the emergency room.

Teething Boy!

It almost looks like Ethan is making a funny face at you, but he is
actually teething. He was a little fussy all weekend because of it.

Sick Josh...

So, Thursday morning I woke up at 3am with a headache! Yuck.... I took some Advil and headed back to bed. I got up at 5:30am and I could tell that I was coming down with something but I had a face to face with my management team at work and I needed to be there. So I took my Claratin D and I headed off to our plant in Ocotillo (about a 45 minute drive) for the face to face meeting. I got to the plant and bout a rockstar energy drink and some hot food for breakfast hoping that it would help me feel better. I held out until about 1pm when things started to get worse as the Advil and Claratin started wearing off. By 4pm I could feel a fever coming on and I had to leave so I tried to bow out gracefully. I jumped into the Murano and headed home... the Murano was probably 100 degrees inside but it felt great because by this time I was having bad cold chills! That lasted through the night and into the next day (Friday) with alternating hot and cold feverish yuckyness! I slept from 5pm Thursday night till 7:30 and then took some NyQuil and slept from 9pm till about 1pm on Friday. I was then up for a few hours and then back to sleep again until 5 or 6pm! I couldn't believe how tired and sore I was! I passed out again on Friday night about midnight with the aid of some more NyQuil and woke up this morning around 11am. A few naps here and there today and I'm finally feeling a bit better. We made the Trek to Costco and got some dinner out tonight so I'm feeling a bit better. Tomorrow is Easter and we have big plans all day apparently so hopefully I'm feeling better.

Luckily Leann and Ethan have not fallen victim to this flu that I've had (Although, if you were looking for a poop status update.... Ethan had tonight what I can only describe as bright green cottage cheese poop.... so he may actually be sick as well :)). Leann has been taking great care of me and Ethan by herself for the last two days and I don't know what I would do with out her! Little Ethan has been doing great these last few weeks... He's been sleeping a bit less because he's really started to Teethe (if that's how you spell it)... and that's been taking its toll on mom. He's sitting up pretty well on his own now as you can see from these photos. He's also gotten pretty good at grabbing things with his hands. He's all smiles lately as well. The Ladies at day care as well as a few family members and friends have been encouraging us to take him to a talent agency and get him in some commercials or print work because of his smiley attitude and cute face! We'll see how that pans out.

It has been so long since our last good post because we've been pretty busy! I've been super involved with the block watch, the HOA, and now I'm a core member of the village association of HOA's as well! On top of all that we've been trying to get in some quality time with Ethan, also Leann's brother Zach has been living with us for the last month trying to get grounded and transition from being a highschool student into the work force and getting into a community college. Leann and her sister Cori have been working with him to help get him his drivers license, and his GED. We've also been trying to spend some quality time hanging out with him as well! Additionally this month was, apparently, our annual spend money on the dogs month. Last weekend saw us spend about $500 bucks on Rajah because of a limp, and some prework to make sure she is okay to have a gum and teeth cleaning under anestheia. Not only that but it was time for Zeus's annual heart monitor session and that cost big bucks... much more than we normally pay because it's a new docotor and new technology... that cost about $800 bucks! Pretty crazy! They are totally worth it.... but it takes the wind out of you a bit. We will be keeping busy moving forward as well... I've got trips to Chicago, Portland, and San Diego planned. Additionally we are headed off to Michigan for Marcy's wedding in July! That will be are big vacation and we are pretty excited because it's been a long time since we've taken a nice long vacation to relax and visit with family. Additionally it will be the first time that lots of our family gets to see Ethan!

Anywho, that's the skinny for now.

Whooser in Whoville

We went to the movies to see Horton Hears a Who. It was ethan's
first time at the theater. He was sleeping when we sat down, but then
he woke up when he heard the loud sounds. He was good during the
first part and then he was fussy toward the end. He wasn't watching
the movie the whole time. I think it was longer than his attention
span. He also wanted to chat up a storm during the movie, so we gave
him the binkie to suck on. He is definitly a chatter box. We
thought the movie was cute. I have read the book to ethan once and I
wouldn't know what the story was about if I hadn't.

For my brother Bryan...

These things are awesome! I put a handful in my mouth... Failing to
see that they said WASABI across the front. Needless today I now have
clean sinuses!

Happy hour at the Bees!

It's that time of year again....

Actually we are a couple of months late...

From Taken on Marc...

Each year Zeus gets a halter monitor to see how far his "Boxer CardioMyopathy" has progressed (you can click on the link to see an explantion of what it is). This year he has a new Doctor and a new halter. As you can see in the picture this one is just bandaged on. The previous monitory was a vest of sorts that held a computer that was protected by being placed inside a modified altoid can. You can see a picture of the old vest here.

The new Doctor assures us that this monitor is much better and provides him with much better data. It had better be... the price tripped and we ended up walking out paying almost a grand! Leann talked them into giving us a discount because they didn't tell us that the price had gone up so much until after we were there and they had already started things. They were really good about it because they had a bunch of scheduling issues with the provide of the monitor. They actually outsource the data retrieval and report generation as opposed to creating it themselves like they used to. For Zeus we just have to keep a little diary so they can compare his activities with that they see on the output from the electrodes... for example if someone were to knock on the door while he was sleeping and he jumped up and barked and ran to the door they would see a huge spike on the monitor when they look at the data. Anywho that's the skinny for now. He's resting on his dog bet looking very humiliated being in this wrap that holds the electrodes. At least he got to go for a car ride today! Tomorrow I have to bring him back (24 hours later .... so they have 24 hours of data) and they will remove the wrap and electrodes.

Sleeping with his Doggy

Ethan snoozing this morning before work... he snuggled up to me which I substituted for this sled dog!

Snoozer

We had a scary experience with ethan last night. I went in to check
on him at midnight and he had spit up all over himself and diarriah.
As I was cleaning him up, he started throwing up again. It is really
scary to see your son throw up for the first time...his whole face
turned red and he wasn't breathing for a few seconds. Luckily that
was the end of it.

SuperDuper Business Idea

I'm testing a new business idea... I think it's SuperDuper!

Ink Fun

We bought this kit a while back to take ethan's hand and foot print.
You can tell we aren't professionals, but it isn't bad for a sqirmy
baby. We had a good time trying to get him to hold still and not put
his inky fingers in his mouth.

Hands

This was our first attempt...