Last weekend was perfect... We got to hang out with a lot of friends and family. Pretty recently we have been having people over for brunch almost every weekend. It is an easy way to have people over and hang out without having the fight the long brunch waits in the neighborhood. While we love that we can walk to so many places, no one wants to walk 5 minutes to have to wait an hour to eat! Plus, we are excellent chefs... Whatever you can order we can make. Next week we hope to have some new additions to the family. We are going to get some chickens for fresh eggs (and for pets!) We will keep you filled in. We just built the hen house, with some pictures coming soon!
OK. We thought about going theme-less as we do not know what the gender of our child will be. Just some neutral walls, stuffed animals and a crib. Yeah, right. We're all about the nursery themes. As most people are aware of Todd's fascination with robots (hence the current blog theme), many speculated that the "hugable robots" he devised several months ago would soon invade the nursery.
Upon much research, we determined that while robots can be helpful (just ask our nephew Greg about his "bebot" the Roomba), they rarely end up being hugable. During the research phase of the project we arrived at a theme that we feel will fulfill both the hugable aspect as well as grow with the child through the first few years (at least a little longer than a bunny or farm theme) and possibly beyond.
And the winner is... Friendly Monsters. And yes they are hugable as well! What constitutes friendly monsters you might ask? This pic, by the awesome illustrator Diana Koehne ( found on this site http://dianakoehne.de/ ) pretty much sums up the concept. There really is a whole world of friendly monsters out there.
"Monsters, Inc." "Where the Wild Things are" and even the monsters from "Sesame Street" all are included. We might even go back to the Muppet Show for a few characters.
Now that the theme has been chosen, we need to get ready to start work. We will post some video of the before a little later this week as well as some pics. We would love some feedback and ideas from anyone who knows of some great and friendly monsters just waiting to spend time with our future kid!
Book: Show us a book you've read more than once.
Quite honestly one of the best books ever.
The end of October and beginning of November bring two of our favorite "holidays." Halloween is the first. The weekend before we went to the Little 5 points Halloween parade, and we took some video which we will upload in a few days. We don't dress up, or go out, but there is an annual pumpkin carving contest that occurs every year with our friend Lesley. This year Lesley decided to up the competition level and carve two to double her chances of winning. The shamrock eyes do get points for creativity however we may have seen a similar pumpkin in Leperchaun 5. Here they are lined up on our back porch before heading to their respective places in the front of the house. We all were winners that night ending the evening with Todd cooking up "black tea and butter" and "sugar and cayanne pepper" pumpkin seeds.
On Saturday was the Chomp & Stomp, a Chili Cook-off in Cabbage town the neighborhood right next to us. We walked over at around 2:00, right after all of the chili was gone. We ran into a bunch of our friends and hung out and listened to music for most of the afternoon. The weather was perfect. I dropped some pics on the site, be sure to check them out.
This was the first weekend with the new video camera. We have never had a video camera before, they always seemed pricey, cumbersome and you ended up inflicting your video on anyone who would come over to your house and sit in front of the VCR. The nice thing about the Web is now people get to choose if they really want to watch what you end up recording.
We ended up getting a Flip, which is about the size of a deck of cards, is very cheap, and holds an hour of pretty clear video. We got it to share with family on the Internet so quality does not matter that much, the real problem now is finding something worth recording.
As you can see from our first attempt at capturing our weekend it's really not too exciting. We have really mastered the art of taking good photos and then editing them down to be meaningful and interesting, video adds a larger challenge. Take this video from the weekend for instance. The Candler Park festival was great, weather was perfect, and we saw a lot of our friends. Is any of this interesting to anyone other than us. Probably not.
Really the purpose of the video is so our nephews that are out of state can see us on screen. It should be a good way to keep family up to date and get a better sense of what we have been doing. When we are finally parents it will also be useful to capture first momnets and create a video scrapbook. So until then I figure with a little practice, some good editing and the possibility of replacing each of us with professional actors we may get some good video yet!
This weekend was my birthday party (it is really today the 8th, also Columbus Day this year!). I think it was one of the best birthdays I have had in a long while. We had a ton of friends, neighbors and family over to celebrate. I also have to say, the weather could not have been any better.
A bunch of my friends got together and bought me one of the best gifts ever, Guitar Hero II for my xbox 360. I'm not a big game player in general (I am a sucker for any game with comic book characters though, especially X-Men...) but guitar hero is a bit different, it is a lot more interactive, and I like a game I can play standing up. I also have a lot of friends who play as well so I have a feeling there may be a "battle of the bands" coming up soon.
The rest of the birthday celebration day was fantastic as well. After our brunch was over we went to our friend Ria's 7th anniversary party for her restaurant, the Bluebird. There were a lot of people we had not seen in a while and got to catch up with.
Now that the big birthday weekend celebration is over, it's time to crack down and get back on my training schedule for the Half-Marathon in November. It's coming up soon and I plan on being ready.
The weekend was very full. On Saturday Mike and I went down to a community where I build to walk the houses under construction and install a kitchen island. When we were there we got to try out a new restaurant that just opened up and grabbed a quick lunch before heading back to the city.
We got back in time to grab a nap and then head out to our friends Megan and Dave's house for a party to break in their new deep fryer.
Things we fried:
- Asparagus
- Cheese sticks
- Thai garden rolls
- French Fries
- Pickles
- Little Debbie snack cakes
- Snickers
If it sounds like it would taste good fried, it was. If it sounds like it would be gross then you were right. Sunday morning was the long dog walk and grocery shopping. We finished up the weekend with a full afternoon of gardening. Planting some new vines on the fence and moving some plants around. Here is a pic of the house after we finished. Still a lot to do but we are getting closer to having the garden in the front yard complete.
As most of our friends know we are in the process of adopting. We decided upon open adoption because we think it is the most responsible way to adopt. Anyone who has been through the process knows how much paperwork, time and dedication it takes. We have now passed through all the paperwork and are now focusing on finding the right people or person (or more accurately, having them find us!) to offer us the gift of raising their child. We have a site that covers our "Dear Birthmother" letter content www.toddandmike.com, but we thought it might be nice to allow people to see a little more about us by posting updates and showing a little more of who we really are and what we do day to day. Between the pets, our friends in the neighborhood and our hobbies we are usually pretty busy. We are hoping that eventually we will not be as public with this site and it will just be for friends and family (adopted and biological), and provide a great record of our adoption process and our child's life. Until then we really just want to let everyone know a little more about us.
My Groups
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Vegetarians and Vegans Updated: Yesterday
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Gardening lovers unite! Updated: Yesterday
Links
Our Open Adoption Agency
One of our favorite resources for dinner ideas!
