Wherein I’m no longer wearing a winter hat but am waving a flag
The storms on Sunday were quite intense. We were driving down to my parents in Elgin to have a Memorial Day party and were caught in some of the most intense rain I've been in in many years. Streets were flooded, ditches were running over the tops of roads, dogs and cats were living together, mass hysteria. Or maybe it was just a lot of rain, lightning, and thunder.
Anyway, the quick jump to 90 deg yesterday was nice. A bit hot when mowing the lawn but I'll take it over having to wear winter clothes at the end of May.
We all went to the Crystal Lake Memorial Day parade yesterday. That was a lot of fun. Pretty short but, for Nate and Lily, just the right length. We parked in the train station parking lot and literally walked 10 feet forward to put our chairs in the shade right along the parade route. We brought water and snacks but still, I walked down the street to get popcorn from Pop's Corn Crib (a CL staple). I bought flags for the kids to wave [which lasted for all of 2 minutes 
]. Three marching bands, lots and lots of Cub and Boy Scouts, veterans, and police and fire. Lily was not sure what to make of it all and just stared and stared; Nate was pretty good but was a little intimidated by the loudness of the marching band so hung back a bit.
Looks like the warm weather should stick with us for this week. Hopefully that will translate into productive play (and some yard work) in the evenings.
Christmas 2010
And so we arrive on the other side of the stupendous Bernhard Christmas Season (it's really a season for us): 6 gatherings, 4 big meals, lots of laughter and many many photos snapped. (Who me?!)
Lily made it through her first Christmas season fairly well. Despite being carted around and having dozens of people interact with her, she mostly maintained her chipper spirits and will-do attitude. She wasn't so much interested in opening presents and more interested in grabbing whatever Nate was opening, who in-turn was interested in opening both his and Lily's gifts, so it worked out in a circular-sort-of-way.
Nate seemed to enjoy himself as well. This is the first Christmas that he's been super excited about Santa. He became very shy (heartbreakingly so) when meeting Santa in downtown CL last week; you could just see the awe. After all our family events though, I could tell that he was ready to be done. This made yesterday's day off nice. He and I got out in the snow for some great play yesterday evening and hopefully we can do it again next Monday.
One of the gifts Heather and I gave each other were two large prints that we'll have professionally framed. I'm really looking forward to completing this and getting them up on the wall. The prints look great and I'm inspired to do more printing in 2011.
Usually I'd be on vacation for the rest of the year, but with the time I took off when Lily was born, I'm at work for 3 days this week. It's a little strange riding a fairly empty train and having so few people in the office. I feel like I missed a memo or a major news item or something.
I hope everyone else had a good Christmas and here's to the new year: 2011 should be interesting indeed.
catch-up post #n
I was off work from December 23rd through January 4th and it was a really great. 
helloheather and Nate and I relaxed and spent a lot of quality time together.
Christmas was busy, as usual, with events every day from the 24th through the 27th. But, despite the big snowfall, and the driving around, it was really all very good. Nate was a trouper and really seemed to enjoy visiting the family. Lots of photos need to be posted.
We visited the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum after Christmas, mostly to see the Butterfly Haven they have there. I really thought Nate would enjoy it, but he was not impressed. There were other exhibits he liked though, and overall the visit was a good one. Also, with so many people being off work the week between Christmas and New Years, we had no problems driving into and out of Chicago.
Nate and I also spent a lot of time outside in the snow over break, which was really great. I'm very glad we've had all the snow and that it's been cold enough to keep it from melting. Though, I did hear on the news last night that, if it warms up on Wednesday or Thursday, it'll be the first time since Christmas that we've been at or above 32 deg F. So, it's been a little chilly!
Being back at work for a full week (last week) was tough. It's really easy to get into a habit of being lazy and family-oriented around the house and very difficult to get back into work-mode mentality. However, I've managed to chase the mid-day blues away a bit by bringing a DSLR to work and walking around in the cold and snow. Boots and thermals have been a must.
So 2010 is here and the end of March is rapidly approaching. I'm still not really ready for all of this but it's certainly not waiting for me to catch up.
last post of 2009
I didn't post as often as I had wanted to in 2009. I always felt like there was more on my mind than I could properly express. 2010 is going to be a significant year...a year of change and, I hope, a year of things getting better.
Happy New Year.
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. To celebrate, Nate drew this turkey and wrote his name (!!)
Eggs and stained fingers and peanut-free chocolate
Yesterday we went to an aunt and uncles' for Easter (my mom's side of the family). They were very accommodating to us re: Nate's peanut allergy and treats. They organized an easter egg hunt out in the back yard and only put in hard candies and gummy candies.
And Nate, in typical exuberant form, abandoned his basket about 10 seconds into the hunt when he realized there was a big swing set in the corner. He proceeded to run and swing and climb and tell us he could see easter eggs hiding in the trees (there were none there but he was very convincing in his insistence).
It was great.
Also, it is worth repeating what helloheather wrote on Friday.
Tonight's Good Friday service was a presentation of readings and choral songs. We brought Nathan into church with us, thinking that we'd keep him there as long as he wasn't disturbing anyone.
Well, the music held his attention for the whole service! Rob and I have both noticed that he really tunes in to new music. He likes to listen, and asks what the different instruments are, or who is singing.
Tonight, as we were walking out in solemn silence, Nathan whispered, "It was a good sing."
(http://helloheather.livejournal.com/628167.html)
I love that boy.
Nate’s first train ride
On Thursday we joined other family members for a train ride. The rest of the family was heading downtown Chicago for shopping and museum going, while we were only traveling as far as Des Plaines.
It was Nate's first and he really enjoyed it. He kept asking "Where's Comductor?" (which was how he pronounced it) and would say hello whenever a conductor would walk by.
Stopping at Des Plaines turned out to be a pretty good decision because the 45 minute ride was about Nate's limit for being on the train. We exited and made our way to the public library for a little bit of reading before heading to The ChooChoo for an early lunch. We had hoped to get the 11:04 back home but missed it by a few minutes. So, we headed back to the library for some puzzles and watching fish in the big fish tank until we could catch the 12:04.
Thanks to fellow Metra travelers on the return leg (who's names we never got) for snapping this photo.
Fathers Day is for Mothers
We had family over for Fathers Day and, as everyone was leaving, we discovered that the mother rabbit we'd seen hanging around the week or so before had 1) apparently given birth and 2) was busy nursing her five little ones almost right outside our front door.
The little ones were very cute, and the mother, while obviously aware and probably concerned that we were outside, did not run. Everyone just stood real still as the babies clambered over each other.
Solstice
The sun has risen as far as it can in the northern hemisphere. Enjoy as much of it as you can.
June 20, 2008
Sun Rise: 5:16 AM CDT
Sun Set: 8:33 PM CDT
Length Of Visible Light: 16h 26m
Length of Day: 15h 16m
Tomorrow will be 0m 1s shorter.
Memorial Day Weekend 2008
Following an overall decent weather-weekend, it's cold again today. It was in the mid-40's and very windy on the train platform this morning. In fact it was cold enough that I put on my winter hat. It's May 27th, mind you, and the fact that I still need to carrying my winter hat in my work bag is hard to comprehend.
For the first time in a while, we did not travel up to Wisconsin for Memorial Day weekend. Our illness in December prevented us from seeing my mom's side of the family over the Christmas holidays, so we gathered with everyone at my grandmother's in South Elgin on Sunday for the yearly Memorial Day cookout. The weather was so nice on Sunday (for a change) and Nate had a blast trying to kill himself by climbing the stairs to the deck and running through rose bushes. It was nice to see the family and getting together at my grandmothers is always a loud and fun event
On Saturday, helloheather and I cleaned like mad in the morning and early afternoon because 1) the house really needed it and 2) our friends Larry and Jen (and their two children) were coming over for dinner. We've not seen them in probably 4 years. I'm not quite sure how that happened. Nate again had fun trying to kill himself by falling off the slide and off the landscaping stones in the front. He has now graduated fully into boyhood by having both knees scraped up at the same time!
Yesterday (Monday) helloheather and I took Nate to the Milwaukee County Zoo. Nate is still too little to take in a full zoo experience (still taking a mid-day nap) so we went for the morning only. I think we tried to do a little too much in the short time even with reminding ourselves that we knew going into it that we wouldn't see all the animals. Live and learn, I guess. Overall Nate had a good time was asleep just after we left the parking lot.
In the middle of all of this, helloheather and I managed to find time to watch the first disk of the first season of Battlestar Galactica (the 3-hour mini-series). After having heard so many people rave about the show, I bumped the first season to the top of the Netflix queue. (We don't have SciFi channel because we don't have digital cable so opportunities to watch the show were few and far between anyway.) All I can say is: wow. This is really good stuff. I'm looking forward to the rest of season one and am wondering if I should upgrade our Netflix account back to 2-disks at a time...
Some of the better parts of December
Not to make every post today one of sorrow...
(In no particular order:)
- Tora Pines and Mr. Pines visiting early in the month.
- Aaron, Serena, and Charlotte visiting for New Years
- Won a iPod Nano from a raffle at work
- Left work at noon on December 20th and did not return until January 2nd.
- Was able to afford a new snow blower which cut the time to do the driveway down from an hour or more to a paltry 15 minutes.
- Received a gift of a family ticket to an indoor water park, which should make a Saturday in cold January far, far more tolerable. And plus, a water park with Nate will be an absolute blast.
- Did you see that photo of Nate? He was so very, very happy. It warms my heart every time I look at it.
How not to spend December
December, in terms of health, was not a very good month.
As many of you are aware, Nate was in the hospital from the 5th through the 7th due to dehydration from a viral infection. I was sick with the same virus at the same time and helloheather was left to deal with the both of us. Unlike Nate though, I did not feel recovered until the 12th or 13th.
A few days after Nate came home from the hospital, helloheather contracted a nasty cough, aches, and general illness. She was feeling better by weeks end but still had the cough. By the 23rd I was sick and the 24th Nate was sick. It wasn't until the 29th that all three of us finally were prescribed some antibiotics. Unfortunately for me, the possible side-effect of "headaches" has been a reality and something that tylenol and advil /together/ have been only able to reduce but not eliminate.
In the mean time, we missed out on all Christmas activities on the 25th. We had to cancel Christmas morning with my parents, the afternoon with my grandmother (who has since gone into the hospital with double pneumonia), and the evening with helloheather's dad's side of the family (all the cousins). And I was so sick on the 24th and 26th that I am not sure how I made it through.
Yet again, the week was spent with helloheather tending to two sick people in the house. Oh and, like during our last illness, we had house guests and at least one of them also became sick.
helloheather is, rightfully so, very frustrated with how December went. We have been sick since December 3rd. We had to cancel time with family, she worried herself silly with caring for the both of us, and quite frankly the continual coughing, nose-blowing, body-aches, etc has been just about too much.
My plans to finish the tile in the bathroom, go sledding with Nate, work on my photography, visit people, and everything else were all forced aside. But really, this pales in comparison to what helloheather has had to go through. I'm really not certain how she has stayed sane. But I'm sure glad she has.
I really hope January turns out to be a little better than December.
edit/update: I messed some of the dates up. Corrections made.
Memorial Day Weekend 2007
This past weekend was a lot of fun. It started off a little shaky with us needing to drive Nathan around at 4:00 AM on Saturday trying to get him to sleep (thus preventing us from leaving early Saturday morning). He had been up every 45 minutes to an hour since midnight and the lack of sleep pushed us back to a noon departure. But Saturday was very rainy, traffic was light, and Nathan slept much of the way to the lake house.
The weather only improved during the weekend but not really enough to go swimming. We went out on the boat a couple times though and Nathan seemed worried. He didn't really like the life vest and being in the sun so much, so the trips were short. But that's not to say he didn't have any fun out there. He liked the wind blowing in his face and liked looking at people as we went by. Serena and Charlotte came up for a visit on Sunday which was fun. Charlotte is getting so big, it's hard to believe.
On Monday we went to the Wisconsin Rapids Municipal Zoo. It's a small thing with only a few animals, but Nathan was very interested. We first stopped at the petting zoom where he actually became a bit scared at the noises the baby pigs were making. As a result he was a bit unsure of the lambs, the calf, and the goat and her kid. (He would actually clutch very close to me when we'd go near one of the pens.) But he was very interested in the hen and her chicks and all the ducklings. For the rest of the zoo Nathan was happy and very engaged. When we visited the pen with alpaca, donkey, turkeys, and two very large goats, he was most happy. He kept saying "Hey!" or "Eh!!" to the goats (which were laying down near the fence). When the tom turkey would make his call and stomp his feet, Nathan would stare in fascination. Surprisingly, he was also rather interested in the large tortoise sunning itself near the door in another pen.
As the sun was setting, I decided that, even though it was too cool for swimming in the lake, Nathan should at least experience the water a bit, so I rolled up my pants legs and sat down on the steps leading into the water. Nathan loved dangling his feat in the water, kicking and splashing, and wanted to jump in.
Tuesday, on the drive back, we stopped off in Milton to see Aaron and Charlotte where we had lunch at a local diner.
All in all it was a nice respite.