November

It's getting cold and I get to wear my warm clothes. That's mostly a hoodie and maybe long sleeve shirts.

It's Friday night and I'm still at work!!!

So I have some free time on my hands so why not use it to post my complaints to the interwebs. It's Friday, Good Friday mind you. I'm stuck at work late again this week, but unlike the rest of the week, I'm not actually working. I'm stuck sitting here in my office waiting for someone else to finish doing their job so I can go home. Here is some background, we have a broken computer here at work and while yes it is technically my job to fix broken computers, but this one is just a royal pain. So, I called computer support from the manufacturer which will remain nameless because I actually like them and I'm not trying to dis them, just the guy they sent out to do the repair.

Long story short, there is a dead power supply that turned out to be waaayyy to much of a pain to remove so I called to have it replaced instead. Oh, and I had to call them back anyways because the power supply they sent as the replacement was missing a connector on the end of the wires!! Just bare wires is all I got in the box! So I needed another one anyway so I had them send a tech as well so they could deal with the mess. Well, now I'm paying for that anyway. He has been here for nearly 3 hours and just told me he is about half way done!! OMFG!! I know I was passing the buck here on the work, but sheesh it's Friday!! I want to go home!!!!
This is what the computer looked like at about the half way point...


In the time I've had to sit here, I have been productive though. I've figured out how to connect my cell phone to my computer and transferred all the pictures and videos I had off of it. And figured out how to remote control the audio player so I can play my music through my computer from my phone. I didn't even know I could do that :P

Caitlin is 3!!!

How has it been 3 years!! It was really wonderful having everyone here for the parties. Caitlin really enjoyed having two parties, what kid wouldn't! It's really a lot of fun now that she is bit older and really gets into the whole party thing. She loves presents and knows how to dive in and shred the paper to get at the good stuff inside :) She got a lot of really good toys and nice cards, but best of all was that she got to spend time with her grandparents and even her "great...grand...ma" as she says. And her cousin too. We will definitely have to all get back together again in the summer if we can. We can stay inside so we don't melt - haha. I have uploaded a ton of new pictures from the parties and a lot of other various pictures as well. I'll update the links when I get them, but for now just hit the link on the right to the family site and you'll get them. Enjoy the picts!!

The picture below isn't from the birthday party as I don't have any right now but I thought this one was awesome so I posted it here (It's a little grainy cause it's from my cell phone, but still cute).

It's a GIRL!! .... Again!!!

Hey everyone! Say hi to Cora Childress, our new baby girl! She was born January 27th at 4:57pm. She weighed in at exactly 6 pounds. I have posted a lot of new pictures to our site here: gchil.gotdns.com; or just click the link on the right. To help you out here are some direct links to the updated pages: New baby's page, updated Holidays page (it now has the most recent event at the top) and more miscellaneous pictures that you wont want to pass up. I also have pictures of my new street bike. That's all for now. I'll post back again soon with more pictures.

Reading Books and Cooking

Caitlin is really growing up fast. She is learning more about the world she is in every day. In addition to learning new things, she is also learning to express herself. For instance, when she wants something she points at it and says "Nah nah!", sometimes she says it really fast like she is demanding it! We take that opportunity to teach her the real word for what she wants. She is learning flower, which comes out "wowwr" but she really picked up Bubba, which is Journey's nickname. Every time she sees the cat she has to go over and give her a pet and say "Bubba!" She is really gentle with Journey and has learned not to whack the cat.

Caitlin used to come running over to us with a book and hold it at us so that we would take it and hold it open for her. Lately though, she has decided that when we read books to her she wants to sit in our laps so she can hold the book and turn the pages. She decided this all by herself and is very adamant about it. She is soo cute, sometimes she grabs a book and rushes over to the couch and points up to the cushion like "Well, help me up I'm not tall enough to get up there by myself!" She really likes to sit on the couch and read. She just decided this within the last week! When she is done with the book she gives it a toss off the couch and then starts rolling around like goof ball. We are careful not to let her get close to the edge though, we are good parents after all. She is especially funny when she is getting sleepy and wants to go take a nap. She rolls around on the couch and face plants into the cushions! She is hilarious when she gets sleepy! She decides that when she is ready for a nap she is "going" to take nap. She usually runs over to the couch and grabs a cushion and puts it on the floor and then lays down on it and hugs it. That's when we know it's time for bed. We are really happy that she doesn't try to fight naps.

So I tried my hand at cooking new things last week. Jen and I were flipping through a cook book and I found these really interesting crab cakes. The were a southwestern style, which we though would be a little different from the normal kind we usually get. They looked easy enough to make and the recipe said it only took 20 minutes from start to finish. So we got all the ingredients and I went to work on getting it put together. Two things I learned from this was to always pay attention to what the recipe is telling you (it is smarter than me) and don't get distracted while mixing the stuff together otherwise the following will happen. So, I laid out all the ingredients on the counter, there were a lot of them. Crab cakes are filled with way more than just crab as I found out. All was moving along great until I decided that talking to Jennifer would in no way hinder my ability to preheat the oven, start heating up the oil in a pan to fry the cakes in, then move them to the waiting oven. All while at the same time mixing the ingredients together! Well as you can assume, the conversation needed more brain power than I had to spare, so something had to give. Of course it was the "following directions" part of my brain that shut down, no big deal I'm just mixing about 100 different things together then throwing them into scalding hot oil, really what could go wrong? Well, first you could take ALL the ingredients and put them in the bowl together, which of course made perfect sense to me at the time. There was a huge list of ingredients and just before my brain shut off I was reading about putting them in a bowl to mix together, honestly where is the fault in that logic? Obviously they were meant to all be together at some point, and there was my problem, timing - as usual. So I mixed the very last two ingredients in the list in the bowl with the rest of the stuff - now unbeknownst to me, but by which I found out later as Jennifer so eloquently put; they always list the ingredients in the order in which you are supposed to put them in. Huh, I honestly never knew that. The last two ingredients for those of you waiting on the edge of your seats, was the cornmeal and the salsa. The cornmeal as I found out after I dumped it into the mix is used to cover the cakes just before you put them into the that scalding hot oil to fry. It gives it crust of sorts. Well, ours did have a crust, but it was a little gritty on the inside, but not really bad. The salsa was for dipping the crab cakes in. However, mixing it into the batch actually tasted great, even Jennifer agreed. So after my little snafu of mixing all the ingredients in the same bowl we decided that the next time we make them we will just put the salsa in there cause it came out really good, of course the extra cornmeal will be left out next time. The whole ordeal only took 40 minutes, start to finish. I think I'll stick with steak and chicken for a little while though before I venture back into the cook book. I will definitely not try to hold a conversation while playing with hot oil, the stove, the oven and mixing the whatever together.

30 years old!!

This weekend we celebrated my birthday. It was a combination birthday bash and father's day celebration. There were presents and cake with home-made frosting, mmmm. Jennifer makes the best home-made chocolate frosting. We also celebrated my brother-in-law's birthday as well since it is right after father's day.

We went swimming too. Caitlin loves the water. She even has her own life vest! It's a little big for her and would actually tip her over when she tried to stand up. When she first got in her pool she just lounged in it. The water was perfect, I think it was 86 degrees or so in the big pool. She only stayed in her pool for about 15 minutes. She saw everyone else in the big pool and wanted to be there too. She is so cute, she paddles with her hands and kicks with her feet and actually tries to swim. She was laughing and giggling the whole time.

For my birthday Jennifer got me a GPS! I've wanted one for a while. I can use it when I go out riding my dirt bike. Now I just need to get out and go riding, just in time for the 110 degree weather!! Here are some more pictures from the party.

Summer time is upon us

So, Caitlin is now a year old!! We have a lot of new pictures posted on the site from her birthday party and also some from the last couple of months. It's starting to get hot here in Arizona so that means it's time to get in the pool! Caitlin even went swimming and really enjoyed it. She graduated from the "baby pool" to the real pool in like 20 minutes. She saw everyone else in the big pool and wanted to go too! We had a lot of fun playing in the water.



I'd like to say that we have been really busy here and thus have not had time to post to the blog; but that would be contrary to the fact that I'm just mostly lazy and can't seem to get my butt off the couch and start blogging. So Jen and I are going to make an effort to try to schedule in some time at least once a week and update the blog. There have been so many things that have happened over the last few months that were truly blog worthy, but now I can't remember what happened off hand. So, as the latent memories return I will be posting them.

It's almost birthday time!

Hey everyone, so now it is 2007 and Cailtin is almost 1 year old!! Wow, has it really been a whole year already?!? It's amazing how fast she is growing and how quickly the time flies. We posted new pictures, they were from about a month ago. We are catching up. After the birthday party we will post all of those pictures as well. We actually had to delete some pictures from our digital camera because we filled it up. It had nearly 700 pictures on it! But now we got it down to just the important 200ish and it is filling up again.

I've been able to take my bike out a few times since my last post, and holly cow is that thing a beast! It's beyond fast, that thing really moves. It's a lot of fun and my friend Ben and I have been trying to go as much as we can because he has to have knee surgery; so he will be out for a little while for it to heal up. Good timing though, it is starting to get really hot here, last weekend we hit 99 degrees and it is only the middle of March! It is cooling off a bit but they say it will heat back up again, stupid desert.

Thats all for now, keep checking back I swear Jen and I will get better at posting more often. I have a friend at work that has a blog too and we are kind of competing to see who posts more often. She is winning right now, but Jen and I will catch up.

Later!