The family that reads together...

Evey and Adro, Sunday at Mirth (8th and New Hampshire).

Happy anniversary!

Adrianne and I celebrate one year of marriage today!

We've been celebrating all weekend. First, we had a "date night" Friday night, went out to dinner and then saw "Michael Clayton." Good movie.

Then yesterday, we got each other a gift... a NEW CAR!!!

That's Adrianne's new Hyundai TUCSON. Brand new. And it's all ours. Happy anniversary, Adrianne!

We traded in her little Focus for this bad boy. We wanted a smaller SUV to make it easier on us to get Evelyn around. This fit that niche nicely.

This was my fourth new car buying experience (I've had three Camaros since 1996). It was Adro's first. But WOW! You should have seen her. If you want to buy a new car, I'd advise taking Adrianne with you. She questioned the number crunchers TWO TIMES, and both times she had these guys jumping -- and she was right. In fact, the second time, when we were sitting down with the finance guy, resulted in the dude making a phone call the to the Hyundai dealership manager and chewing his ass. It was borderline uncomfortable. ...but we got it our way!

Anyway, feel free to ask me about the new TUCSON any time... I'd love to tell you all about it.

Congrats, Dad!

A special word of congratulations to my father, Boyd, who has been offered a job as a FOREMAN for the City of Wichita's public transportation department. Now, my Dad has not accepted said offer yet, but I'm still proud of him for being such a great professional, and teaching me a lot of the ins and outs of being a dependable employee and earning trust and respect in the workplace. My Dad comes from a military background, and he also did sales for a while. That makes him the perfect combination of a disciplined, determined, personable talker who can charm you and get you to do what he wants all at the same moment. And that's a special talent, folks.

I'll let you know what happens, but regardless of if he leaves the day-to-day grind of driving a bus for being the driving force behind the buses, I'm always -- ALWAYS -- proud of my pops.

(And since I just used the word "buses," did you know that "busses" -- buses with an extra 's' -- means "kisses"? Just a little random word trivia for you.)

Magnetic farm

"You made a match! Look what you did!"

There's a good chance I have this tune stuck in my head at any certain time of the day. Used to be it was a Pearl Jam song, maybe an L.L. Cool J chorus. But no, not anymore. Now it's songs from children's toys I have stuck in my head. Man, I'm old.

(Have you seen me lately? I'm like, 75% gray-headed now. How long ago did I get this gray?)

Anyway, Grandma Judy got Evey this "Magnetic Farm" toy and Evey LOVES it. She likes pulling the barnyard animals out of the slots, slamming them against the barn doors, making the thing sing and chirp. Good times.

**********

Happy Friday. I'm out-of-the-office today, taking a comp day for last weekend when I had to work. Going to my sister's house to paint superheroes on my nephew's walls. Photos of that project when it's done.

Wish me luck at hoops tonight... I'm out.

"You made a match... look what you did!"

Her FIRST bunny costume

I was looking at some older photos and came across this one. Evey as a bunny, taken Jan. 7, 2007. She was exactly one month old in this photo. That's a towel she's wrapped in, by the way.

Bunny!

Here's the Bunny costume.

Which do you like better?

Let your voice be heard... vote in the new poll!

(Old poll results: 14 people correctly guessed I'd party like a rock star at the Neuteboom wedding, while two people voted for me taking it easy... glad to see my mom and dad are stopping by the blog...)

Halloween nears...

And we've got TWO costumes to choose from.

We've already chosen, actually, but I'll let you see them both first. Here's the first outfit... the other outfit... tomorrow.

What do you think this animal is?

He lives next door.

At first, I thought he was a stubby raccoon. But then we heard rumors of a beaver living next door.

But we don't live that close to the river... do we? Don't beavers want to be near the river?

But I look at him, and I think... yeah... that's a beaver! Isn't it?

Whatever he is, he lives next door at the condemned house, next to Charlie's. He's a pretty good neighbor for the most part, but he borrowed my hedge clippers a month ago and still hasn't returned them.

His name is Wally.

TGIF!!!

My Mom with Evey and Marina here.

TGIF.

Thanks to everyone who voted in my latest poll! Even the two of you that were visiting this blog totally by accident!

We had 15 voters, and they overwhelmingly said they check especiallyevey.blogspot.com daily to every-other-day! Wow! 66% said that (10 votes), while 13% (2 votes) stop in weekly. One person visits monthly (we caught that person on a good week, apparently, as the poll was only up for 6 days) and two people stumbled upon the site. And found sheer cuteness.

Check out the new poll and let me know your guess...

Welcome Liam and Henry!

My good friend Greg Nunn and his wife, Adrienne, welcomed their beautiful twin boys to the world yesterday.

They are (in order of appearance) Liam Gregory and Henry Alexander.

Years later, Henry is going to want to know why he got stuck with the yellow blankie...

Congrats, Greg and Adrienne! You'll be great parents! And remember, what I told you, Greg: It's not as hard as everyone tries to tell you.

(What, just because they have TWO makes it even harder???)

Grandma Jojo with her two great-granddaughters

My Grandma came up with my parents a few weeks ago, surprising me. We all went to my sister's house and hung out, had a spaghetti dinner and enjoyed each other's company. My Grandma really loves her great-granddaughters.

Marina, my sister's daughter, is on the left. Evey is on the right. So cool to see these two together. They'll know each other their entire lives.

An email I just sent to a fellow Radiohead fan

Reason # 7,326 why I prefer to buy a CD.

OK, so I purchased last night when I emailed you. I had been drinking, of course, but was all geeked to buy the album and then download it today.

Well, I wanted to spend $12.00 on the CD. But since it’s in “pounds” or whatever, I’ve got to convert. So I went to a converter and it made sense to convert it to Euros. $8.58 Euros, I paid for the CD. Today I checked my credit card. My card was charged $18.58. Dammit. OK, whatever.

But then, this morning, I went to download. When it gave me the choice of “save,” “open,” or “cancel,” I chose “open,” because I wanted to choose WHERE I saved it. Well, nothing happens for about two minutes. I panic, and close the window and start over.

Then I re-enter the link they gave me. “We’re sorry, the link you’ve entered has already downloaded,” it told me.

So now I spent $6.50 more than I wanted to, and I have nothing but frustration to show for it.

There was an email address for problems, I emailed them my story at 7:30 a.m. and still no response.

We own the night

The new Radiohead album drops tonight at midnight. Pay what you want.

I'll be paying $12. Radiohead is worth it.

WORTH IT.

Evey is the KING.

10 months old!!!

Evey turned 10-months on Sunday.

Her two front teeth are steadily coming in... she can grind her uppers with her lowers, and it's something she likes to do from time to time. She stands up in her crib all the time, and it's just hilarious to walk in there and see her standing there, waiting for someone to walk in and play with her.

She's a tall girl -- seemingly half the height of Grandma Judy already (seriously). At her 9-month appointment, she registered at the 75th percentile in height, and the 50th percentile in weight.

She's suddenly eating anything that's easily swallowed... she ate some of my pancakes on Sunday, and some cantaloupe. Today she had some chicken. Her favorite food? Refried beans.

Yup, she's Mexican.

Luckiest guy in the world (part I)

Check out these two girls. Yup, luckiest guy in the world = me.

I just got back from five days on the road. First, a few days in Las Vegas for Eric Neuteboom's bachelor party. Then, I flew to Naples, Fla., to do a 1-on-1 interview with golf legend and entrepreneur Greg Norman.

Now, I'm back. Whoo-hoo!

I'm at work right now, and I rarely make posts from work (they pay me to blog on GCM's blog, not here). But I'm getting ready to grab lunch with Adro, and I felt like I could afford a quick 10 minutes to throw something back up here.

Evey said "ma-ma!" yesterday.

It was only a month after she said "da-da!" (heh!) but yeah, I was holding Evey, just back from my trip, when Evey saw her mom, reached out with both arms, and shouted "ma-ma!" What a sight.

Evey will be 10-months old on Sunday. She started saying "da-da," or, more specifically, "da-da-da-da-da," over a month ago. "Is she saying 'da-da?'" I'd ask. And we decided it was close, but it was also a little bit gibberish still. So we didn't throw a party, call the grandparents or mark the day on the calendar.

(But if she was saying 'ma-ma-ma-ma,' I wonder what our reaction would have been? Adro?)

So then we go to the doctor's office for Evey's 9-month checkup. The doctor is asking what Evey is doing these days, what new tricks she's learned. We told her about her crawling, and paddy cake, etc. "Is she saying any words yet?" the doctor asked. "Not... really," Adrianne said. "Well, she's sort of saying 'da-da,' but we're not quite sure..."

And then, mere moments later, Evelyn looked up at me as I was holding her, and shouted, "da-da!"

The doctor gave us a look and then said, "I don't know, guys... but that pretty much sounded like "da-da" to me...

And at that point I started jumping around, started doing the Robot, because yeah, that's right -- if the DOCTOR says she said 'da-da,' that's as official as you GET! Evey's first word, ladies and gentlemen! "DA-DA!"

But then, after five days on the road, Evelyn has mastered saying "ma-ma." And it sounds so cute. But she still says "da-da," too.

That photo at the top of this post, I took it with my PDA, right before I left for Vegas. And then I saved it as the background. So when I was on the road this last trip, every time I checked the time, or to see if I missed a call, I had their faces smiling at me. So cute!

More soon... it's so good to be back home.