Photo photo on the blog...

Who is the sexiest of them all?

airbrush Britney


a Britney wannabe


or a real pregnant women?


This weekend we made a plaster of Paris mold of Christine's belly. For the "birth day" we plan to decorate it in decoupage with a bunch of my Mom's old quilting scraps and some glass jewels our friend Terry gave us. As you can see I've already had some fun with it. Now if we could just get the cats not to sleep in it...

Christmas was rather uneventful 'round these parts. The weather was absolutely crappy and we just stayed in the house napping. We didn't spend any money on ourselves this year because we figured we better save all the money we can, while we can, for the baby. We both agreed it was a pretty boring Christmas without new toys to play with. I reckon we'll be getting something new to play with any day now though!

Shady says Ho Ho Ho.

Ain't she cute?

Merry Christmas Hon.

Monday night while Natalie, Michael, and Ian were visiting we headed up to the land of the Hons (that would be Baltimore to you and me), specifically 34th street. We just had to check this place out. We've seen it on the local news every year we've lived here. It's one city block of solid lights. Everybody on both sides of the block put up lights, literally covering every square inch of their yards and houses. They even run streamers of lights across the street. I'm thinking that the astronauts on the ISS can see it from space and if you listened closely you could hear the strained hum of the electric meters...

Here's a couple of shots:

Another Couple of Hikes

I took off Friday to spend the day with Christine, probably one of our last "free" days together. We ended up messing around the house for a bit and later in the day went for a short hike at Gunpowder Falls State Park, just north of Baltimore. The Gunpowder River is one of those famous trout streams you read about in Field and Stream and what not. The trails there are really beautiful and follow along the river. Down in the valley you wouldn't think that your are only 10 miles north of Baltimore. The river valley is filled with laurels and rhododendrons so you think really your up in the mountains somewhere. The only draw back is that there can be a lot of people there and it seems nobody thinks they need to keep their dog on a leash. Our dog hates dogs, and if you've ever had to pass an unleashed dog with a dog who wants to kill other dogs while hiking through a laurel tunnel then you'd know why I wish everybody would keep their dog on leash. It isn't pleasant. Fortunately, it was Friday afternoon and everybody else was at work and we had a nice relaxing hike. That is until the end when Christine tripped over a root and banged up her knee. She was pretty upset, more that she has this 30 lb thing inside her that's messing with her equilibrium than the fact that it hurt.

Saturday was another chill day. We needed to clean the house because Natalie and Michael were coming on Sunday, but we decided to put it off until the sun went down. So we threw the dog in the truck and headed to Patapsco Valley State Park. We went to the northwest end of the park and set out on a nice long hike. Here is the Map:



As you can see from the satellite map, Patapsco is unmistakably an urban park. If the houses bordering the park don't give it way, the fact that it is less than 5 miles from BWI and directly under the flight path will! Still it's a pretty nice chunk of green space. Most of the trails are built and maintained by M.O.R.E., the Maryland mountain bike advocacy group. There are roughly 30-40 miles of trails in the park.

In one area, some trail pixies have created little shrines in the woods made from broken glass and bricks. I'm not sure why but they are kind of pretty.



Last but not least, here's Christine hiking up the Buzzard's Roost trail. It's actually quite steep. Check out the trail blazes on the trees behind Christine. That's straight down... I'm not sure how much longer she's going to be able (or should) to do this. I offered an alternate route to the top, but she said that's the way she wanted to go!

Christmas is coming!

Here's a brief report on the status of Christmas in our household...

Well, we decided against a big tree this year. Mainly because we didn't think that taking it down in January, with a newborn in the house sounded like all that much fun. Christine and I went to Home Depot for some hardware and while I was hunting for the hardware, Christine snuck off the Christmas section. When I found her she had latched on to a 2' high, purple, aluminum tinsel, pre-lit Christmas tree. Quite possibly the most loveliest thing I have ever done laid my eyes on.

Here it is all decorated up:



On the baking front, Christine has been making chocolate chip cookies as fast as I can eat them. We also tried making fudge. The chemistry of fudge seems to be hit or miss and we missed this year. We ended up with a batch of fudge soup. Delicious but messy.

Now for a little story...

Ever since Christine's nephew was born, her brother-in-law Michael has been documenting the child's every waking moment via digital camera and then emails the entire family all the photographs. Well that's understandable, he's a proud Papa and he wants to share. But sometimes it's pretty funny. One time he sent out an email that went something like "here's a picture of Ian playing with the dog" (attaches picture of kid and dog) Okay, I'm following you so far. "That morning Natalie made scones for breakfast" (attaches picture of a baking tray of perfectly formed and nicely brown scones) Why? Who knows... It just seemed pretty random.

Back to the topic at hand...

So yeah, Christine made some fudge and it didn't quite work out. I'm much much more irreverent than Michael, and having just gotten back from emptying the litterbox, I was feeling inspired. May I present to you Christine's world famous Cat poop fudge, complete with skid marks!

1 in a million shot

A few things to report. I've been busy applying for jobs. I think I've applied for 8 in the last week. Still no offers for interviews but I have been contacted for follow-up information from Clemson and Binghamton University. That's promising. That means at least I made the first cut.
Christine's Uncle Terry and Aunt Susie dropped by for a short visit on Saturday. They were in DC for a meeting and decided to drive over to Annapolis and meet us for dinner and to see the annual Christmas boat parade. It was great to see them and it gave Christine and I the motivation to really clean the house from top to bottom.

Here's a picture from last year's parade. I was too lazy to bring the camera this year.

Now for a funny story. Sunday I was outside playing fetch with the dog. I threw the ball over the high bank in the back yard like I always do and the dog took off like she always does, except she didn't come back. I could hear her running around so I figured she must have lost the ball so I went to help her find it. After I scrambled down the bank (about 20 near vertical feet straight down) I was standing with the dog. I noticed as she was running around she kept stopping and sniffing at a small 6" round hole in the ground so I went to investigate. I got a 2' long stick and stuck it in the hole and didn't hit bottom. I got a 6' long stick and it didn't hit bottom either. "Hmmmmm???," I thought. I figured it was highly unlikely that I threw the ball from 100' away and it went in a hole 6" around. I never was all that good at basketball, but the dog sure did seem interested in that hole. I climbed back up the bank and retrieved a shovel and started widening the hole. The dog was getting really excited about all this digging and started to help. I had to shoo her away, because I didn't know what might be living in this hole. About this time Christine decided she should come see what we were doing so she scrambled / waddled down the embankment to see what all the fuss was about. About this time I figured out that what I had found was the back door to an old retired beaver den. It was full of moldy, old, chewed up sticks. I pulled some of the sticks out of the way and made the hole a little wider and told the dog to "Go get it girl" and after a little coaxing she disappeared into the hole. All you could see was the very tip of her tail. When she came back out, she was covered in dirt and mud, but she had her toy in her mouth and was just ever so pleased with herself.

Funny Funny

Tonight...

Tonight is our 4th of 5 birthing classes. Christine's is going to try to use hypnosis to try to achieve a relatively pain-free and natural child birth experience. When she first mentioned "hypnosis" I had images of "mesmerism" and this guy:





and thought, "there ain't no way that can work." Then I thought about it a bit.

I occasionally do endurance sports and activities such as long mountain bike rides or backpacking trips with long 10 to 20 mile days. Usually there is some element of pain involved. On a long day of hiking, my legs, shoulders, and feet are usually killing me, yet I persevere. How do I do that? Usually I pick up one foot after the other and plod along. Sometimes I will focus on a distant point, an interesting rock, or a knotted old tree along the trail and aim for it, making my only goal to make it to that point. Sometimes I'll even hum a tune. "Nobody's going to break my stride" is always a favorite. And I realized that I am lulling myself into a traced state simply by providing mental imagery that distracts me from my bodily pain or present location. I'm using hiking as an example. We've all done it. Think about the last time you took a long drive on the interstate. You start day dreaming and next thing you know you're thinking "what exit did I just pass and where the hell am I?"

So anyway, that's basically the gist of the Hypnobabies thing. We are basically learning techniques to deeply relax the mind (which of course - relaxes the body as well) Theory being that the majority of pain from labor occurs from being tense and clenching up your muscles and not letting things flow naturally. Pretty cool and not too far fetched. Even for an engineer such as myself!

SEASONS GREETINGS!

Here's a special Christmas greeting from Christine for my special friends...

I hope Santa thinks you're as good this year as he thought I was last year!

Love, Christine

Hello!

Well, this is my first blog post. I probably should have started this years ago, but hey better late than never. I reckon this blog will be used mostly for posting family pictures and photos of the families going's on. The baby is due January 10th. Things should get pretty exciting after then. I'm also going to try to put up brief reports from trips and hikes Christine and I take and include pictures as much as possible.


Here's one to start:

So yesterday afternoon, we went for a short hike at Patapsco Valley State Park. We ended up doing about 4 miles in a little over an hour and a half. As we crossed the fields (top center of the map) we saw 2 or 3 herds of deer, probably 50 deer all told. It was pretty impressive. Shady Grove (the dog) was going nuts. We ended up hiking about a 1/2 hour in the near-dark. There was an impressive full moon occasionally poking out from behind the haze. Christine had a few minor "pressure waves," i.e. contractions, on the hike. Things seem to be progressing well. I guess she's gearing up for the big day! It was a pretty good hike over all.