Category: What’s up

I know it has been a long time since I posted and I have a bunch of great Caleb pictures to show you as well as a little surprise for those of you who haven’t been paying attention to us on Facebook or MySpace…Mandy is pregnant again. She is currently due on 10/7/2009 (1 day before her 30th birthday)…

The last few weeks have been crazy…Mandy figured it out, she has been in the car for over 60 hours in the last 2.5 weeks. First was a friend’s wedding in Virginia that we drove to from Madison, second was Penny’s cancer visit last week for Mandy, then another friend got married in Iowa so we drove there, and finally Penny’s funeral this week. We are ready to stick around the house for awhile.

The funny thing is that it is our anniversary today and when I asked Mandy what she wanted to do for our anniversary, she said “sleep!” I don’t blame her…poor woman, during her first trimester she usually has to go to bed around 8 or 9, the last 2 weeks she has been going to bed after midnight most nights. I don’t care if she sleeps for the next week…she deserves it.

Anyway, on to the pictures, the first ones are random pictures.  In May Caleb

and I are in a friend’s wedding and we got Caleb’s suit the other day so we decided to have him try it on…Hopefully you enjoy the pictures…have a great week…

I really don’t have time to be blogging right now, but I ran across one of those moments today where I asked myself, did they really need to say it?  I read something along the lines of “be careful, the cup of hot coffee you are about to enjoy is hot.” today so I have to share it with you but first a little background.

For those of you who know me, you know that since about my sophmore year of college I have been battling the bulge.  I put on a little extra weight while training for college football and it has stuck around ever since.  I gained even more weight after college when I started driving a desk every day as a computer programmer, but I digress.  I have made it a goal this year to lose some weight and I am actually serious about it this year.  To that end, I used some of the money that I received for Christmas this year to purchase some workout stuff for home for those days when I just can’t make it to the gym.

One such piece of equipment was a medicine ball for doing core work and for use with some yoga/pilates type stuff I want to start trying to help with my flexibility and lean muscle strength.

After I got done eating my delicious picante chicken from The Biggest Loser Cookbook and washing the dishes I began to unpack my new treasures.  When I opened the ball I thought to myself, this is pretty cool, this looks like a pretty well constructed medicine ball.  Then, I found the paper insert in the box and decided to humor them and read it.  Then I found this:

SET-UP

1. Remove the Fit Ball and workout DVD from box and check for shipping damage. (OK, I did this)
2. Your Fit Ball is now ready for use. (HUH?!?!?!  Did they really need to say that)

Really?  What scares me though is that they wouldn’t have had to put the 2 step wonder instructions if they didn’t think that someone needed them.

Jim: Hey Bob, that’s a fancy lookin box you got there.
Bob: Don’t I know it, that is a great looking box, it really helps me with that Pilates (pronounced Pilots) stuff that my wife got me into.
Jim: Aren’t you supposed to take the ball out of the box though
Bob: Shoot, I don’t know, it doesn’t say to on the outside of the box…they said it came with a workout video, but the box doesn’t fit in my DVD player.

Here’s the kicker…the directions were in the box underneath the ball.  So by the time you got to the directions, you had already accomplished them…

I don’t know what I would have done if I had gotten to the directions and they said:

SET-UP

1. DO NOT OPEN THE BOX FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER!!!
2. IF YOU OPEN THE BOX YOU ARE SERIOUSLY SCREWED THE DYE USED IN THE RUBBER IS TOXIC TO HUMAN BEINGS

   AND WILL KILL YOU IN 24 HOURS…THE CARDBOARD USED IN OUR PACKAGING KEEPS THE BALL FROM KILLING YOU…GUESS YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT YOUR WEIGHT ANY MORE…SUCKER!!!

If you don’t hear from me after 24 hours then you know what happened to me, call my wife…but wait, I got her a ball too…

I hope you are having a great new year…I have to get back to work…

2 Year olds can say the funniest things.

I didn not witness this exchange in person because I was flat on my back sick on New Years Day, but when Mandy recounted this conversation to me I laughed really, really hard.

Caleb (looking at the nativity scene in our kitchen): It’s a baby!

Mandy: Yes, Caleb it is a baby.

Caleb: It’s a BABY!

Mandy: Yes, Caleb, it’s a baby.

Caleb: baby sleeping.

Mandy: Yes, Caleb the baby is sleeping.

Caleb: Wake up baby.

Mandy: That’s baby Jesus.

Caleb (at the top of his lungs): WAKE UP JESUS!!!!!!!!

Mandy: No, no, we don’t yell at baby Jesus.

Caleb (very quietly): wake up Jesus.

Maybe you don’t find that as funny as I do, but I hope you do, Caleb is so stinking cute.

For those of you who keep up…my son is following in my footsteps…you know how I have the potato head gang…

Well for Christmas, my son got a pirate spud and a winter spud…take a look…

I’m

so proud…

I hope your new year is off to a great start.  I hope to be blogging more this year.  Things have been pretty hectic lately but hopefully, they will slow down sometime soon.

Jeff

For those of you who have never met Caleb he is a great little helper, he is always trying to lend a hand.

Take for instance that last sock in the

dryer…

What can I say, the kid is thorough and really tries to finish the job that he starts.  Have a great week.

It doesn’t happen often, I know, but I (Mandy) decided to blog tonight.

Life just keeps getting better.  I think this month has just been a month of me realizing this over and over again.  Caleb continues to get more fun every month.  The business is doing well, even when the economy is so rough these days (God is so faithful).  We found time to can 98 pints of homemade applesauce (with lots of help from our friends Matt and Allison and the apple machine the Stivers gave us)!  We moved Caleb to a big boy bed! I celebrated my 10 year reunion from SHS (crazy) ! Lastly Caleb was the cutest darn gorilla ever for the Fall Party at preschool on Wednesday (mommy went in her pajamas…. I wasn’t super creative this year, but very comfy 🙂 )

Here are the pictures to prove that all I say is true 🙂

Caleb in his big boy bed!

Caleb in his “Mi-eee Mowse” bed!

It’s hard work canning applesauce 🙂

It’s much more fun playing in the water table than canning!

The night of my 10 year reunion  (Did I mention my husband was the hottest guy in the room(as always!)!)

I told ya he was cute!

OK, so I first have to tell everyone who was at my surprise birthday party last night THANK YOU…you are awesome.  That is the first time anyone has been able to throw a surprise party for my birthday.  Mandy you rock, good job babe, I had no idea it was coming.

For those who weren’t there last night and have no idea what I am talking about my wife pulled of a great surprise party.  Yesterday was a great day, I met with the Chicago Bulls head strength coach and he really liked the software I wrote so he will probably end up purchasing it when we go to sell it in January.  Then, I drove home from Chicago and thought we were going to have dinner with a couple friends of ours and just have a chill night.  So when I walked into the house and a bunch of people came running around the corner with balloons and yelling “SURPRISE!!!!!” I was a little shocked because my birthday isn’t for a couple weeks so I had no idea this was coming.

So yesterday was a great day.  Tonight Mandy and I are working on stuff and she was looking for something in her email and came across some really old emails and I just have to say that there are some men in this world who do everything that they can to repell women.  C’mon guys, quit being stalkers and you might have a chance.  Talking about a woman’s beautiful eyes (which they are) and asking her to go to Africa with you on a missions trip after only talking to her once is not the right way to do things.

Anyway, I need to dig my way out of my inbox from being gone yesterday.  Have a great weekend.

Jeff

OK, this one is for my loyal readers (you have to be loyal if you are reading this because I post so infrequently).

I am in a training class down in Chicago and we pricelined my hotel and got a really good deal.  After my training class I found a Taco Bell and grabbed a quick bite to eat.  Then I drove to my hotel and realized that it was on the campus of the McDonals Corporation so here I am taking my soda from Taco Bell walking into the hotel that is connected to Hamburger University saying “Oh great Ronald McDonald please do not smite me or kick me in the butt with those big red shoes.”  Anyway, it was a good hotel, I had to pay for internet which was kind of crappy but oh well.

Completely different subject…when I grew up we always watched Monday Night Football as a family.  We would skip dinner and have MNF snacks.  Well, with the Packer’s game on

MNF last week we started that tradition with our family.

On a completely unrelated note…Caleb is now able to go to Kids Junction with Mandy…in order to do that we needed to get him school supplies including as Caleb calls it his “backack” (backpack for those of you who don’t speak 1 year old speak).  He looks really cute with his backack

I hope you are having a great week, I will talk to you later.

Jeff

P.S. – btw…things are going pretty well for us, one of these days when we aren’t so busy I will write a post updating on how things are going.

OK, so after I posted pictures earlier we took a local photography studio up on their $9.95 package deal (we ended up buying a few more pictures, but we stayed within our very conservative budget), and as part of the deal they gave us a CD with all of the pictures that they took.

DO NOT PRINT THESE PICTURES OR I WILL TAKE THEM OFF AND EVERYONE ELSE WILL HAVE TO BEAT YOU BECAUSE THEY DON’T GET THEIR CALEB FIX ANYMORE!!!

They did say that we could put them on our blog, but seriously, enjoy the pics online and don’t print them.  They are presented as thumbnails if you want to see a larger version click on a picture.

We hope you enjoyed the pictures, have a great rest of the weekend.