Favorite Dinner

The above pic is from our dutch oven dinner we had tonight, one of my all time favorites! We cooked it in the fire pit we made in our back yard. Since Marisa has been on bed rest and having lots of contractions we decided not to make any new years plans and spend it home. To make the evening festive we cooked dinner out on the fire and roasted some marshmellows afterwards. 44 degrees F wasn't too bad for our cook out, but it was nice to eat it inside.

Funny

Here is a picture Bex had taken of him in his Sunday school class. When he first gave it to us we were trying to figure out who it was for a couple of seconds. It totally doesn't look like him. It is funny to see what a different angle and facial expression can do to someone.


The next picture is one I found near my work one day. Since Marisa's maiden name is Pond, I thought this would be good one for her.

Update

Tomorrow will be six weeks of continuous sickness for me. No rest for the weary I guess. We all have RSV now and it is unfortunately getting spread to some of those that are coming to help Marisa around the house. Her contractions have gone down dramatically yesterday. It looks like the bed rest has helped. If we can make it another week then everything will be good. At least we know the baby is a descent size and it didn't come out during week 35. Tomorrow she has an ultrasound and exam to see how much she is dilated and how big the baby is.

Dilation

No we are not talking about a visit to the eye Doctor. Marisa isn't due until January 26th, but we found out a few days ago that she is already dilated to a 4! She was put on immediate bed rest. I am at the busiest time of year at work since everybody is trying to use up any extra insurance before the new year. Thank goodness we have some great neighbors/friends and family helping out. She had an ultrasound yesterday that shows the baby weighs 5 pounds 9 ounces give or take 10 oz. That was a relief to see the baby is that big already. He really wants to come out so we hope he will be patient and wait at least 10 days so that he will have a bit more mass and be after Christmas. We'll keep you updated.

Christmas letter

If you are wondering if we cut you off our Christmas list this year............. don't worry ;)

We had our letter written and ready to print but we lost power for a few days with that bad wind storm that blew through here last week. With the billions of trees here in Seattle the powerlines couldn't handle it. I drove over four of them before I got half way to work last Friday.

Anyway, I shut our computer off before the storm to avoid any problems, but when we turned it back on it had a corrupt registry file. That, unfortunately, means that I have to reinstall windows and lose all data not backed up. The good news is that I usually back up everything to our old computer's hard drive over the network every Saturday so I didn't lose too much, but I did lose the Christmas letter. So, today we will write the second version, probably not as good as the original, and try to get it in the mail soon so that it will arrive before Christmas.

We have a quick fun story about the storm that is similar to the crazy Black Friday shopping rage incidents that we saw. I went to home depot Friday morning to get a generator after finding that work didn't have any power either. There was a big line of people and two generators left. I asked what was going on and the last guy in line said they were waiting for the manager to bring some bigger ones out from the back. He and I decided to get the last two anyway. As I finished putting it on my push cart the manager came out and said those were the last two in the store! I turned and headed for the cash register before anyone started any trouble.

Company Party

This is what it takes for Marisa to find me attractive...



Who is going to deliver first?

Big Boy

The following is copied from part of an email Marisa sent me today at work. I think it does a good job describing how Bex is around the house.

Beckham still amazes me sometimes with how much he
eats.  This morning he had a cup strawberry milk and a
bowl of lucky charms with Trey, and then he ate half
of my banana, and after my shower I came downstairs to
find he had pulled a chair up to the counter and cut
another banana in half, eaten one half and the whole
other banana too.  It's only 11:30 and he just ate TEN
chicken nuggets and a couple of apple slices, and he
went to the fridge for more chicken nuggets so now
he's working on 3 more.

Crazy weather

November was the wettest month on record in the Seattle area since they started keeping track in the late 1800's. It ended w/ unusually cold weather in the month of December so some of that precipitation came in the form of snow. We got a ton where I work, but out home only got a little both times it snowed. The boys had a fun time playing in what little there was.


In between storms I was able to put up the Christmas lights. I'll have to post a picture later of the night shot w/ the lights on.

Tre had his filling break. He came in to have it replaced and Beckham thought he was the one that was supposed to do the work. Once he got his gloves on we had a hard time keeping him from shoving things in Tre's mouth.