TOES

Remember I told you the other day that Evey discovered her toes? Proof positive... in case you didn't believe me.

Utah doesn't stand a chance in this series. And Bruce Bowen is SO dirty. Ugh... Why'd I lay my $2o on New Jersey? Oh yeah, 'cause I hate San Antone.

Memorial Day weekend

Of course, a tip of the hat, a salute, a high-five, a chest bump, a glass of scotch to all the veterans out there who have kept this country free...

It only took me a four day weekend to CATCH UP on things. But I was an animal, and got a lot of $*&@ done. I'm happiest to report that the DVD "Evey's First Movie" is done. (Watch your jokes, fellas!) I probably put a good 12 hours into this project, it was addictive and fun and ultimately rewarding. Now, rather than just a home video of shaky clips and nervous chatter, we have a cute movie with transitions, still photos, cropped scenes and even some music -- Pearl Jam and Coldplay, just to name a few. I burned 7 copies and mailed out a few to close family. I know nothing is more boring than someone else's home video, but if you'd like to see a copy, let me know. Besides one cute baby, it's a good demonstration of what a system like Adobe Premier can enable a computer illiterate like me to do with his home movie clips. And yes, I'm VERY happy with the system's performance. A+.

The photo with this post is of my Mom, June, and Adro's Mom, Judy, with Evey on Mother's Day. We all (my family, the Johnsons, my mom and dad and Judy) all met up in Emporia to enjoy a dinner together. While the Applebee's let us down in the food department, it was nice to make everyone's drive a little shorter so we could all be together.

And yet another sign that I'm 30: I sprung for the check, the first time I've done a dinner bill of the extended family. I was on scholarship for many years, always being the youngest, the rookie, I was taken care of. I felt it necessary to finally step up and buy whatever my Mom misordered. Now, don't get me wrong, I've bought at Rick's or at Hardee's before. But this was different. And you know what? It felt good.

Just like the piece of jewelry I bought Adrianne for graduation. Feast your eyes upon that sparkly necklace next time you see it. Just don't look too long, that's my job.

See you all back at the plant on Monday. I hope your weekend was as productive as mine.

Catch up!

I need to go spend some time at home. I've barely been home this week. And with golf lessons tonight, I'll be out and about this evening too. Ready to go home and relax...

And that's what I'm going to do, too. I'm taking a 4-day weekend. I've already written my list of creative projects that I'm going to attack. And lots of Evey time, too.

Adrianne graduated!!!

We attended Baker University's graduation ceremony yesterday afternoon... and my sweet wife took a proud stroll across the stage and accepted her degree! Whooo-hooo! Me and Evey are so proud of her!

I took several photos and lots of video... I'll post photos soon, I promise!

Congrats Adro! A new mom and wife, and now a new college graduate! I don't know how you did it all, but I'm so proud of you -- SO, SO PROUD!!!

Was that a crawl?

A few thoughts while I watch the ugly end to this Nets/Cavs game...

• Evey made an impressive attempt at crawling tonight. We'll need an official ruling, but she did 1) make forward progress and 2) she was on her stomach. A lot of pushing with the feet and grabbing with the hands. She's lacking a little power with her legs because she keeps them crossed when she's pushing. Soon, soon, we'll be crawling all over the place.


• Adro and a few other people are saying that Evey is starting to look more and more like me. And you know what? She's STILL beautiful. A dichotomy, I know.


• Evey discovered a new noise tonight. Let me see if I can master the onomatopoeia... "eeeYYYYeeeeaaaaaccccccchthththththththththt!" And then a smile and a giggle. Almost like she's in pain, but then a happy expression.

Deadspin

We had a breakthrough at the GCM blog over the weekend.

Deadspin linked up to us. For the 411 go here: http://gcm.typepad.com/gcm/

And if you're Mrs. Esterhouse... thank you.

Mother's Day is here!

Hope you're all set.

I'm mostly ready. Adrianne already know her main gift... she totally stunned me when she guessed it. She asked me if she could guess, I nodded in the affirmative since I was eating at the time, and she blurted out, "Morrissey (tickets)?" And she was right. And she shocked me so much, I just looked at her, pizza sauce all over my mouth. Crazy. There was no way I could play that off.

But I have a surprise for her too, I hope.

I was telling Adrianne, we now have year-old memories of the baby. It was a little over a year ago that we found out about Baby Evey's presence. I still remember the conversation. I was standing in the media parking lot at the Wachovia Championship in Charlotte, N.C. when I got the call affirming what I couldn't believe... that I would be a dad.

Mother's Day is coming. Will we, as men, ever be "all set?" I don't think so.

That's what Moms are for.

Happy Mother's Day.

What's going on?

Lots!

Adro has class tonight -- postponed from Monday as Topeka had flash flooding concerns then. So me and Evey are relaxing now at the house, after we went for a jog at the LHS track.

It dawned on me recently that not only am I not blogging a lot lately, but also, I'm not telling you little details about Evey. Time to remedy that.

Evey's got lots of new tricks she's been showing us. Her favorite things?

1. Her toes. She loves to grab her toes. She even tries to suck on them. And sometimes she does suck on them. It's cute seeing her in a ball, with her feet to her face. And she only really discovered that those were indeed her toes maybe two, three weeks ago.

2. Laughing, cooing, overall noise making. And it's very cute. She made a "DAAA!" sound the other day that made me come back to her pretty fast. And there's times where I think maybe she's mad about something, but then I realize that she's just taking those brand new vocal chords for a ride, seeing what different sounds she's capable of making. It's fun to watch and listen.

3. Texting. Yeah, she's like millions of other kids caught up in this "texting" thing. She texts her friends Greyson, Isabella, Leo, Baby K, Marina and Norbert all the time. Driving me crazy! "What RU doing?" "Drooling." "OMG! ME 2!" I don't get it. Kids.

Photos!

Some of the things you're seeing here... Top to bottom... the new computer with Evey on the wallpaper... Evey in her tutu that my sister got her... Evey and Mary Heiman, Jeff's mom... Greyson after enjoying his cake... Adro and Evey, chillin'... Greyson and Evey hanging out... me abd Evey relaxing... Adro and Evey as we're first setting up the new computer... Evey, one morning before we left for work, looking so cute I had to take a quick photo of her (jacket by Bunny)... Evey wearing her Masters hat that her dad brought her.

Action-packed week winding down

We got a new computer delivered on Thursday. We set it up Friday night, and I've been playing with it steadily since.

It's really made organizing my photos easy. Every photo I've taken has been date-stamped, so when I uploaded them all, it automatically put them all in order by date for me. My previous method was a bunch of loosely dated folders. So much for that.

1,700 photos in 6 months, by the way. I have a sickness. But I'm happy to have so many photos, so many happy memories already.

Let's recap why I didn't post much this past week:

Monday -- volleyball

Tuesday -- 18 holes at Alvamar Private, followed by the Electric 6 concert at the Bottleneck

Wednesday -- family time

Thursday -- Spider-Man 3 with Sean

Friday -- Set up the computer

Saturday -- Greyson Heiman's 1-year birthday party, Cinco de Mayo, Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight

WHEW!

Great week, though. It's raining out now and I'm hoping to just stick around the house today, even though I was tring to convince Danny P and Rockhold to come with me to the comic book convention today. The excitement for driving to Overland Park has ebbed. Now I just wanna chill out and play with Evey and work on the new computadora when I can.

New computer

We got a new computer.

I'm so, so tired. Wow, I have a lot of photos...

Spidey 3... today!!!

I'm not the only one that is excited!

Happy 60th, Virginia and Ramon

I may have celebrated 30 years on this planet recently, but three weekends ago, Adrianne's maternal grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.

Sixty years! Wow! And both Ramon and Virginia are doing great. They treat me like family and I really appreciate that. I can't pretend to tell you I know everything about the rich history of their lives together... I'll just tell you that Ramon served our country bravely in WW II in the Pacific Theater, and Virginia has worked to support her family her whole life and is also an excellent cook. And Evey is their first great-grandchild, and they both love her something fierce.

Pictured here, front to back, left to right: Judy Romero (my mother-in-law), Ramon Romero, Virginia Romero, Lupe Romero-Kosa, Tony Romero, Mike Romero, Ramon "Rick" Romero.

Weekend at thirties

What a great birthday weekend!

It started early, on Thursday, my actual birthday, when all my co-workers brought me 30 of something. 30 Capri Suns, 30 fruit roll-ups, 30 donuts, 30 colored pencils, 30 army men, 30 comic books.

After work, Adro, Evey, Judy and me went out to my regular birthday dinner spot -- Don's Steakhouse. I had my usual chicken fried steak and it was excellent. I'm happy to report Don's is back on its game.

Following dinner, I went out to Rick's Place. Some last-minute plans were made, and I think at the evening's peak, we had 12 people helping me ring in 30. Brandon and Anne Bauer, Danny P., Ryno, Chesty and Stacey Rinnert, Holihan and Brent, Neuty and Trish, Stewart, Dave... it was a great group! And of course, I couldn't have left Rick's unscathed. Rick made sure plenty of Crown was waiting for my group, so we hit that pretty hard. Then Ryno, Brent and Holiahn all went in on stogies for my birthday, so we had to relocate to West so we could all spark up a stoge to celebrate.

Friday I was appropriately hungover, but the good news was I didn't have to be to work until 1 p.m. I managed to get there by 2.

Following work we drove to Mulvane to see my family. My Dad started off the weekend right by handing me a $100 bill and saying, "Let's go to the casino." My Mom stayed home with Evey, me, Adro and Dad went to the Oklahoma border to gamble in Newkirk, Okla. I came out of there having lost $40 of the $100, not too bad. I was able to watch the Dallas/Golden State game while playing video poker, too, an extra bonus. My Dad hit 600 quarters on 4 aces, so he walked out a winner.

Saturday we slept in. Then we went to the mall, where Evey got to get pushed around in the stroller and people watched, while the rest of us shopped. My folks got me a new gray suit, which I picked out, for my birthday. Then we went out to dinner with the Johnson family for my b-day dinner, a cool private club in Wichita called the Candle Light Club.

We returned home late Saturday night. As we drove back, Adro and I reflected at how nice my birthday weekend was. Check out this haul: Adro got me a Best Buy gift card, and she's going to pay for most of my trip to Chicago in August; my folks got me a new suit and some fun money for the casino; my mother-in-law got me some new KU shorts and dinner at Don's; my boy Lervy got me a nice humidor; the guys got me a bunch of cigars and plenty drunk; I got my favorite Jell-O cake from Teresa; comics from Angela; and from my sister and her family... wait for it... a 4-gig iPod!

Plus, I got to see just about everyone I wanted to. I watched plenty of NBA playoffs. The weather was gorgeous...

I just can't imagine a better 30th birthday. Thanks to everyone -- everyone that called, emailed, hung out with me in person -- that made the big three-oh so much fun.

I want to do it all again for forty, OK? Put it in your planner today.

Three-oh

I turn 30 tomorrow, April 26th. Sorry for the lack of a forewarning.

Actually, I can't confirm I'm 30 as of tomorrow. I very well could be 39 or 40, based on appearance. My earliest memories that can date me are of opening G.I. Joe toys on Christmas. Does that sound about 30 to you? I don't remember seeing a man walk on the moon or the day Kennedy was shot. I don't think.

Oh, and they were the small G.I. Joes, the 4-inch toys, not the 12-inch Joe "with Kung-Fu grip." Just to clarify.

I have two stories on turning 30:

1) My best friend Solo sent me a photo on my cell phone this Tuesday. The image was his hands holding out a "3" and a "0." I looked at this photo and thought, "what the?" Then, suddenly it dawned on me -- Tracy McGrady must be going off in the Rockets game. I better check out the score... But the score was 41-38 in the second quarter, or something. No way T-Mac already had 30. I sat there, dumbfounded. And then, finally, the meaning of "3-0" struck me...

2) My friend/boss Bryce walked into my office the same day. "Welcome to the decade," he told me. I looked at him, mystified. What was I doing that made me seem to be in the stone age? Isn't that what that meant? "Welcome to the decade." I must be doing something that would cause him to mock me just now coming into the 2000s, right? And then, "decade"... again, it dawned on me.

I guess I've never thought about how old I am. It's never really been in my mind. Even when people ask me how old I am, I have to think about it. And then I blurt out a number, and I silently ask myself, "Is that right?"

For the record: On my last day of my 20s, I'm sitting here next to my 4-month-old daughter, who is asleep, while my wife of 7 months is at study group with her college classmates. I'm watching the NBA playoffs. I'm typing on a blog. I'm on my second Boulevard Wheat. I feel healthy, for the most part (I've been in much better shape). I'm mostly gray-headed. My lower back hurts. And I'm still alive.

A good 30 revolutions. Thanks for helping make it memorable.