As promised, more pictures of Emma have been put online.  I added a few new pictures to the “Autumn 2008” album, starting with this photo.  There is also a Christmas 2008 photo album, with subalbums for each of the times we celebrated Christmas.

Just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday here are a few more videos of Emma for everyone to enjoy.  On November 13, exactly two weeks before Thanksgiving, we had started to notice how close Emma was to being able to crawl.  She had learned to get on hands and knees, and she could kind of rock forward and backward.  I predicted that she would be fully mobile by Thanksgiving.  Prediction confirmed.  You can see the progress she made in just eight days in the video below.

And second, we have a rather long video of Emma and yours truly “playing football.”  Which causes her to giggle uncontrollably.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

I’d like to start this post out by wishing all you mommies out there a belated Happy Mother’s Day!  I just celebrated my very first Mother’s Day two days ago, and I’d have to say it went really well.  It has been a real blessing having Emma in our lives, and we both love her very much.  She made me a very special Mother’s Day gift (with Kip’s and my help of course).  She made a really good hand print, and had her daddy frame it so we could keep it forever.  And then Kip gave me a new Honda CR-V to replace the Ford that I had been driving since college.  True, we bought it a couple of weeks ago, but it was for Mother’s Day.  Kip also got up early and brought back breakfast from Bojangles’ this morning.

At church on Mother’s Day they always have three really pretty flower bouquets to honor the moms that regularly attend the church.  They draw three names from a bowl, and each lady got to pick her bouquet.  Each year they leave out the names of the moms who were picked the year before.  I think that is a very fair way to make sure the same ladies don’t get flowers each year.  Well, it was exciting because my name got pulled second, and you can see the pretty floral bouquet in the picture below.  So, all in all, I’ve had a really good first Mother’s Day!

PS: You can see just how much Emma has grown in the picture.  She is getting so big, and beautiful!

Now that 2007 is then rather than now, it’s time to look at some of the things that happened then.

The year began with a review of 2006.  Much like the one you are reading now!  By the way, I apparently write like a girl.  I got a chance to eat lunch with my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss.  I may have miscounted the number of bosses but it’s something like that.  I named a new medical condition, frigidamanus supermus.  Doctors and scientists are still trying to catch up.  My niece—only 6.5 months old at the time—learned to play the ukulele, with yours truly as an instructor.  Around Easter, Stephanie took a shortcut to the bottom of a staircase.  She saved some time but broke her foot in the process.  I made some observations last summer, and now everyone thinks I’m a racist.  Oops.  We bought a house, and just five months later got around to posting some photos of said dwelling.  I theorized a bit on human eyes, and soon reported additional evidence in a follow-up post.  My right eye dominates both of yours.

Then of course there was the big news.  Stephanie has a parasite living in her abdomen, which we found out lacks sufficient organs needed to be called a he.  So when she joins us in March, hopefully her father will be up to the task of raising her.

Some other things happened last year too.  The sixth anniversary of 9/11 occurred, and I posted my account of that fateful day for all to read.  I also visited the top-left corner of the lower forty-eight, where I worked with some aeroplanists.  Shortly after that I got a year older, something which unfortunately happens every year.  Hopefully scientists get around to inventing immortality pills soon.

Aside from that, I made several posts about things that I spend time with.  These included some video game reviews, as well as some other video-game-related posts.  I also geeked out on Lost for a couple posts.  Who or what is Jacob!?  I think he’s Superman, and Lost Island is his new Fortress of Solitude.  That’s gotta be it.  Let’s see, what else...  I made several posts regarding software development, and a couple posts to make the internets better.  I also posted some comments on pop culture in what I am calling the “OMG dju hear” series.  Expect to see more in that series from time to time.

If you like to look at other people’s photos, three photo albums were posted this year.  Feel free to check those out.

Lastly, I have to mention the series of five posts where I dug up my old drawings from middle school.  I was apparently pretty demented.

Enjoy 2008.

So I said over four months ago that I would try to put up some pictures of our new house.  Well when we decorated the house and then cleaned it up before we had company over, I decided I’d take some pictures.  Without further ado, you can find those pictures on our photos page.

Among the highlights is Stephanie’s snowman nativity scene.  Because, you know, most biblical scholars agree that it is likely that Jesus was a baby snowman.  You’ll also see a picture of Stephanie barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.  Making dinner no less!

I also want to make some comments about this picture of my messy bonus room/noise room/office.  You can see the following things in the picture, from (roughly) left to right:

• The cardboard cube you see there was going to be a Mario ? block to hang over my cubicle, but I never finished it.  In part because I would need to buy some yellow paper, and in part because I thought it might be too corny even for a programmer’s office.  And I’ll openly admit that I got the idea from someone else.

• You can see the Sumo Lounge bean bag chair that I won last year.

• There is a book of Christmas music for the ukulele that I got last year.  Mele Kalikimaka!

• You can see my big amp, my acoustic guitar, and my Micro Cube mini-amp (which I wrote about on this very blog a while back).

When I went to take the pictures off my memory card, I realized there were still pictures from our Labor Day trip to Lake Lure with Stephanie’s family (we also went there last year).  If anyone is interested, I put those pictures up for your perusal.

My what a big month April was.  Kip and I had our second anniversary, as he posted about, there was Easter, I decided exactly when I would be quiting my job, and I have sprained my foot pretty seriously by falling down the stairs at church on Easter Sunday.  That is correct ladies and gentlemen, I said fell down an entire flight of stairs, and as it was on Easter Sunday, I was dressed appropriately in my new Easter outfit.  I was told that my skirt did not go over my head though, so I managed to remain modest on my quick trip down to the basement of the church.  So, I spent my Easter Sunday in the emergency room of Northeast Medical Center in Concord, NC.  I fell down the stairs because the heel of my shoe caught on the step and I lost my balance.  I am very heart broken because the very tip of the heel, or the grip of the heel, broke off when I fell down, and those were the shoes that I wore on my wedding day.  They are irreplaceable.  After spending the day in the emergency room, having a pregnancy test (it was negative for those of you keeping track or at all interested), having four x-rays taken, and waiting for quite awhile, we learned that they couldn’t see that anything was broken, so they think it is simply a sprain.  However, the doctor told us that if it still hurt after a few days I should to to the orthopedist to have them do a more thorough exam of my foot.  Well, it is now several weeks later and I still have a sore foot, and it pops almost daily.  On the shoe front, Kip took me to the mall and I bought the cutest flat ballet slippers that were eyelet material to match my Easter skirt perfectly (the same one that I fell down the stairs in).  Of course they were flats as I have pretty much decided to give up high heels for the time being until my foot heals and I will be able to walk in them again.  I shared all of that to share that within the month of buying these brand new shoes, that I absolutely adored, I ruined them too.  I wanted to wear them to Scott’s (and for those of you living under a rock, that is my brother-in-law) graduation ceremony at High Point University.  I didn’t expect it to be such a miserable day, or that we would be sitting on folding chairs on the lawn.  Needless to say, wet grass and perfectly white cloth shoes do not mix in a positive fashion.  The shoes are now grass stained, and no longer white.  I did enjoy Scott’s graduation, and the fun of listening to the arguing African-American family that sat directly in front of us for the better part of the ceremony, and listening to Bill Cosby give the graduation address without having planned a speech (we think).  All in all, it was an ok day.  I go to the doctor on Monday to see how my foot is doing, and exactly what is wrong with it.  I’ll keep you posted on the foot and shoe fronts as the week progresses.

Well the calendar companies have again tricked us all into shelling out even more money for astrological tables which focus on the earth’s location relative to the sun.  So according to an ancient tradition which dates back nearly a year, I will review some of the adventures I have been through with you, faithful reader of my boring blog.

Let’s see...  there was that time I got ripped off on eBay, although technically that happened in 2005.  But I didn’t blog about it until 2006 so it still counts.  Then I critiqued some xenophobic e-mail, shortly before I influenced the direction of American television.  I listed a few of my favorite things, for all to see and marvel at.  Later Stephanie interviewed for and was subsequently offered a job.  But in between those two events, we ate a year-old pastry.  Once we had another source of income we bought a new car.  A few months later I bought a new amp and rocked super hard.  I built the most complex sand castle I’ve ever built, but sadly it could not stand up to the incoming tide.  As the summer was winding down, I let you all in on twenty-six video games that I think are totally cool, before letting you in on a little secret: this is where I work.  Next, I became an uncle at the same time that Stephanie became an aunt, when our new niece began to independently consume some of the extra oxygen in the atmosphere.  Stephanie made a list, focusing on movies, and then I jumped on board the MySpace bandwagon thing.  Just when I was starting to feel like a cool young dude, I got a year older.  But at least I won a hot blonde girl bean bag chair to ease my aging back.  To finish up the year I finished a project that was two years in the making, before being robbed by some stupid teenagers.

Nothing changes on New Year’s Day
—Bono (greatest rock star, humanitarian, philanthropist, and savior ever to call himself all of those things)

We spent Thanksgiving in Williamsburg, Virginia with Stephanie’s family, and I just put some pictures up.  Most are either our new niece, Riley, or some kinda artsy pictures from Colonial Williamsburg like the one that can be seen to your left.

Stephanie and I decided to carve a pumpkin on Sunday, but the new Über Target up the street only had white pumpkins left.  Rather than look for an orange pumpkin, I suggested we take the white pumpkin and turn it into a ghost, because I’m lazy like that.  We then put it on a little table we had and put some white sheets over it, so it looks sort of like a ghost.  The outline of the head we stole from Strong Sad, but we gave him a more menacing face and a goofy looking mouth.

In other news, the Red Cross comes to my company about four times a year for blood drives.  They will be here today.. on Halloween.  To suck our blood!  That’s funny isn’t it?  I think that’s a little funny.  Or at least a little ironic.  What would be awesome is if the Red Cross workers were dressed up as vampires.

For Labor Day weekend, Stephanie and I went to Lake Lure, NC with her parents.  We took a bunch of pictures while we were there, mostly of Chimney Rock.  Check them out!

You may notice when viewing my photos that it looks a little different.  I tried to make the text small enough that you see very little header before the photo, hopefully reducing the amount of scrolling you have to do if you aren’t running at a high resolution.  I also moved the timestamp down below the image, since most people probably don’t care about it.  It was a bit tricky to come up with an algorithm for determining the color of the header based on the color of the background, but I think I’ve come up with one that works fairly well.

If you have any comments about the new photos view, feel free to let me know.