le blog de bloogue

I suppose I should write more. But why when we have Twitter and Facebook? After all, does anyone really want to more about what I’m doing than one or two sentences at a time? Get real!

Well, life has been a blast. As always.

Katie turned FIVE, yes, FIVE this February. It still seems strange that I’m a father let alone a father of a FIVE year old. FIVE! She has been successfully enrolled into Kindergarten this fall into an Eden Prairie elementary school near her daycare. Given her entry into the Eden Prairie school system, Kieran will be enrolled without any worries of being rejected as we were with Katie …. given that we live outside that school district. Here we see her with her favorite (only) Uncle, Corey visiting us this Easter from Sioux Falls.

Kieran is still a sassy little punk, just like his daddy. He turned 3½ a day before his sister turned… FIVE. Kieran got a Lightning McQueen bike this Spring and has been begging us about every night to get out and ride it. It’s just now been warm enough for him to ride around with it so he’s no longer stressing about it like he had been when it was cooler out.

Brandy is still at United Subcontractors and working harder than ever. She enjoys working for the smaller than ADC Telecommunications company that she was laid off from last fall. She feels as if her efforts really do contribute to the success of the company more than being just another employee at ADC.

Brad is still employed with NWA/Delta. It’s been tough to see a lot of co-workers go and getting dealing with a lot of “survivor” guilt.

Yesterday was Take your Kid to Work Day. Brad took Katie and Brandy got Kieran. Katie joined a preschool gang of girls dressed in pink. They harassed the various departments until they wrote on all the post-it notes and drained them of all their candy. Kieran joined a gang of similarly aged boys at Brandy’s office and caused equal havoc. Consequently, Kieran went back to daycare after lunch. All involved parties had a lot of fun but were all happy that the day was over and collapsed into a coma shortly after the day ended.

Corey & Katie Easter 2009, originally uploaded by trypnotic.

My iPhone photo will have to suffice until I scan the ‘purchased’ photo.

Kieran declined the opportunity to sit on Santa’s lap. This wasn’t surprising to us after last year’s incident.

Kaitlyn told Mr. Claus that she would like an American Girl with her various accessories. We’re not entirely sure she’s got a grasp on the Santa concept yet as we’ve told her repeatedly that WE’RE getting her an American Girl. Sigh.

Santa & Katie @ Eden Prairie Center, originally uploaded by trypnotic.

Out laptop shopping today with my cousin Rachel at Microcenter. Here
we see her with one of the finalists. Sony Viao with a 2.4 ghz
processor, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD, and a 16" screen. Oh la la!

Rachel with a Laptop Candidate, originally uploaded by trypnotic.

We recently enjoyed Northwest Airlines Tech Ops Family Day over in Building C on October 4th. Now the kids think that there’s always face painting and popcorn at “daddy’s work”. I wish.

Northwest Airlines Family Day 2008, originally uploaded by trypnotic.

This was suppose to be a weekend in the Black Hills but the winter storm warnings forced us to change our plans! SO Kieran and myself went to Pierre Friday night, arriving around 11:30pm and returning Sunday morning back at MSP around 9am.

Given that the weather was kinda cruddy, we didn’t do a whole lot expect… eat. Cattlemen’s Club, Guadalajara, and Zesto — the Pierre staples. But, nevertheless, it was good to see the parents and Oscar, their elder tomcat.

[flickr album=72157608023807218 num=20 size=Square]

Started off this lovely Sunday by dropping Katie and Brandy off at the airport around 8am. They listed themselves for a flight to Duluth to spend a day with Kris and Cliff, get some shopping in and some Red Lobster. Meanwhile, Kieran and I took advantage of the empty Mall of America and walked three laps in there for a nice 1.5mi walk. Kieran pointed out each store that was closed. Even by the third lap, he was still amazed how many stores were closed. After we finished our walk, we took the light rail up to Minnehaha Park and wandered around there for a bit. We haven’t been there before so we figured with the extra time on our hands, never a better time than the present! We continued on, back on the light rail, to downtown Minneapolis. There was clearly a Twins game today as a majority of the people on the train had jerseys on and such. I guess baseball will never be one of those things I’ll ever understand or get excited about. We arrived downtown, and I convinced Kieran he was hungry as it was now around 10am and neither of us had anything to eat yet. After getting off the light rail in the Warehouse District, we took a shot in the dark and headed to Pizza Luce. With some luck, they had JUST opened up for brunch! Kieran nabbed some OJ and a cheese quesadilla while I had some sort of scrambled marinated tofu, peppers, hashbrowns, and tomatoes (I think). My GOD it was GREAT! Due to our train tickets expiring in the next half hour, we decided that we better get back on the train and back to the mall. From there, we headed back to Chaska and nabbed some petunias, a tomato plant, and a few planters from Home Depot. Ok, so it’s probably a little too early for it all but we’ll give it a shot anyway and keep an eye out for low temperatures.

I’d have some photos to share but the Wing got left at work on Friday. I had left early to go with Katie and Brandy to the school district’s early childhood screening. She did a great job and took it very seriously! With that, she scored a 30 — with the requirement for Kindergarten being a score of over 21. She’s still another 1-1.5 years away from that but at least we know where she’s at.

I started going to Lifetime’s Team Weight Loss class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in order to suppliment my Weight Watchers progress. Every Monday, we meet with a nutritionist for a half hour and get chastised if we’re not filling out our food/exercise journal. I’ll likely get regularly yelled at for lack of filling mine out — it’s just so much easier to keep track of my food via Weight Watchers eTools than it is figuring out how many starches, proteins, etc. I’ve ate during the day. The other half of the class, exercise, usually lasts 25-50 minutes per nights. We’re usually on a treadmill with weights and bands and keep our heart rate up in the zone 2-3 range. This will go on for a total of twelve weeks and we just completed our first week so I don’t really have any progress to report. However, I am starting my fourth month of Weight Watchers and have lost a total of 43lbs since mid-January. Earlier last year, I was seriously considering pursuing the idea of getting the lapband — the gastric bypass alternative, to assist me with my weight loss. Then later that year, I started thinking… you know, if I can raise two kids, I should be able to lose this weight on my own. So far, that method of thinking has been working well.

Nothing else to report for now. So far I’m surviving the possible NW/Delta merger, pending congressional approval. Keeping myself as optimistic as possible with Brandy’s assistance. Bye bye.

Yet another Christmas holiday has come and gone and off we go, back to work. I’m in Hibbing this week, supporting the Reservation Center while the usual Field Engineer is out for a two week vacation.

A funny thing on the way here, I wound up behind our Christmas company, Grandma Kris and Grandpa Cliff, on their way back to Ely on US 53 near Gilbert. Since it was snowing all across Minnesota, I opted to fly into Duluth, get a rental car, and then drive into Hibbing. Considering Kris and Cliff left about the same time I did from the Twin Cities, I probably wound up with the least stressful commute by eliminating that snowy drive between the Twin Cities and Duluth.

Given the time away from the family, allows for time to do things that I haven’t done for awhile – such as updating Gallery. I added three albums tonight:

+ Christmas 2007 in Chaska
+ The Girls at Walt Disney World, December 12-14, 2007
+ Brandy and Brad’s Trip to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, early November 2007

Weather permitting, we should have company again next weekend, this time it’ll be Grandma Maxine, Grandpa Dennis, Great-Grandpa Ralph, and Uncle Corey. The weather shyed that group away Christmas weekend plus Grandpa Dennis wound up with a cold. Hopefully we’ll have better luck this weekend.

Celebrating Kieran’s birthday today at Chaska Community Center’s Rainbow Room. Aside from the three mylar balloons that flew away, forgetting the Dairy Queen ice cream cake at home half-way there, and forgetting the soda all together and having to go back home from the Center to go and get it, it went pretty well! We had Papa Johns pizza (note for next time, three large pizzas isn’t quite enough for eight adults and eight children) and again, Dairy Queen ice cream cake in addition to three 2-liter sodas. After we all ate, we tossed the kids into the ballpit and castle playroom. Kieran wasn’t very interested in the ballpit and in fact wasn’t too pleased when he accidently fell in a couple times! He seemed happy enough tossing the balls into the pit and stacking the big plush squares. When the kids seemed to start getting bored with the room, we moved back into the party room and opened some presents. Kieran had a lot of help opening them! He got a lot of cars, a Little People Pirate ship, a Tonka truck, couple shirts, a blanket, Thomas toys, some books, and about $100 – a pretty good haul for a two year old!

… and Kieran. Sorry, I never got around to posting these sooner. This was on Friday of last week. You can imagine me fumbling around with my mobile, real camera, and trying to placate an almost two year old that wanted to be carried most of the morning – I was lucky to get the shots that I did! He shouted “toot-toot!” over and over again so I think he had a good time.They had an entire tent filled with Thomas merchandise. I gave in to peer pressure and bought him a shirt, mini soccer ball, and a plush Thomas which he’s been carrying around everywhere. We arrived around 9am and nabbed a spot only about a block away. Once we got in, there was a carnival-like food stand serving hamburgers, corn dogs, cheese curds, etc and people were eating them… at 9am.