Test post

Just testing to make sure that my lovely Tammy can get new posts emailed now. 
Tammy, there are some ramblings down below this on the main page.

I love you,


Marcus

One Room Hoarder

So we started cleaning out the spare bedroom to get ready for little baby on the way due in November.  And, I think that, at least in that room, and the garage, I am a hoarder.
I have thrown away:

a stack of college notes and binders.  There were some 12+ year old things in there as I began finding things I had clearly written in high school.

no less than four WALKMANS (or Walkmen?), yes, walkmans (Tammy was guilty here too): three that played TAPES (that's right) and one that played CD's.  Of course most of us know that a Walkman cassette player was the most infuriating, inefficient, devourer of batteries money could buy.  So, I didn't mind letting go of the little machine that I used to take on family trips only to find that without a huge bag of batteries, ol' Tom Petty was going to start to sound pretty tired by the end of Side 2.  So goodbye, Walkmans.  We'll always have that one childhood family vacation where you made it through Billy Squire's Greatest Hits twice without dying. 

A couple of old toy trucks that I repaired as a child after they were crushed by a backhoe (apparently, piles of fill dirt were NOT a great place to build a whole town to the scale model of one's Nylint and Tonka trucks).  Back then, I thought it was pretty cool that I was able to unbend all that metal back then and basically make them look like a couple beat up old trucks.  However, from a father's perspective, they had now become a tetanus shot waiting to happen.

a box of friggin magazines; Now if that's not a hoarder thing to have, I don't know what is. 
a box of GI Joes which had already made their way out to the garage before Anna was born in which a family of mice had decided to have some kind of extended party (I hate mice, even in cartoons)

There is more cathartic junk removal to come in preparation for our second child.

I'm hoping to talk Tammy into getting rid of my rather sizable and her gigantic cassette tape libraries.  I have a ridiculous amount, but Tammy's collection easily doubles mine because she was reluctant to change over from tapes to CD's.  She may be a software designer, but she really doesn't care about the newest and best technology (as evidenced by the box of VHS tapes I recently boxed up for Goodwill).

NCAA Championship

Yuck.  That was one of the worst basketball games I've ever seen.  Naturally, since I really wanted to watch it to see how Butler's second consecutive magical run to the final four would end up, Anna decided she was too wound up and too scared of the dark to go to bed. 
Fortunately, I was able to watch some of the game on my phone while I got her settled in. 
Unfortunately, I ended up watching the rest of the game as well.  I should've turned it off at halftime.  Butler decided in the second half that they would play zone defense which they never do...and now we all know they are awful at it.  But I don't know if any kind of defense would've made up for the way they shot the ball.  I just felt bad for those kids that they had to end their season on such an embarrassing note. 

New baby on the way

 

Baby number two.  Due on November 2nd.  We're so excited.  Anna is excited about being a big sister, although I'm not sure she totally understands it yet.  We have a few months yet to keep reading her big sister book to her. 

No type of weather can stop my little girl from wanting to go outside.  It was actually 50+ degrees when we took this picture.  There was just so much snow and ice, it took about two days that warm to melt it all away.  This was one of the most fun days she's had yet in a park.  She got to swing, slide, and walk around in snow for two hours without getting cold.

Anna LOVES "birdies," so I built her a bird feeder.  That's entirely built out of scrap materials (excluding screws and wood stain).  It turned out pretty nice, and doesn't look like it in the picture, but it will hold about 10-13 pounds of birdseed.  So we don't have to fill it very often.  I also used some galvanized roof flashing on the bottom surface to help prevent wood rot.  Hopefully, it will last for a long time.  Strangely enough, since we've set it up, it attracts birds like it should, but also brings...rabbits.  Turns out Anna likes watching rabbits graze on the all the seeds that the birds drop on the ground. 

Anna and Daddy at the Nature Park.

"Doctor Anna"

She put on one of my dress shirts and went around saying "I'm a doctor."

What a fun day.

Williams Park.  She loved this thing.  I would lift her up and balance her on my knee so she could look through the opening and say "hel-lo-o" over and over.  I was actually back there with her and stretching my arm around to the other side of the wall to take the pictures.

Williams Park again...We did this for quite a while.

"Hel-lo-oooooo!"

Yes, this park is "toddler friendly."  But that little tunnel thing was not exactly Daddy friendly.

The cold weather has been back for most of the past week and a half or so, but when we had all those nice days in a row last month, Anna and I spent as much time outside as we possibly could. 
We went to the Pittsboro park one super warm day (Anna came home covered in sand.  After her nap, I had to give her a bath and change her bed sheet)
Arbuckle Park (Bburg) - where she found the most dangerous thing (some kind of strange bouncing thing with metal bars and old tires, much cooler than it sounds) on the playground for a two year old and decided that was her favorite.  She also got to play with some other kids
Pleasant Acres, aka the Jamestown Nature Park - She is usually disappointed at first about the lack of swings, but she loves to go exploring in the woods.
Williams Park (Bburg) - Anna had so much fun on their giant toddler-friendly maze of a playground, which was full of other kids for her to play with, that she was too tired to argue or throw a fit when we went home.  She fell asleep in the car and took a nice looooonnnng nap.  Btw, there are some really cool pipe chimes that the kids can play at that park.  Anna could've stayed and played those for hours. 

Now, other than yesterday, it's been pretty chilly out.  We've been going to Lowe's every now and then, and she just thinks that's the coolest place on Earth.  She loves to explore around the garden section (and gets to be kind of outside with a good wind block), likes hanging out in the lawn furniture, and could literally spend a whole afternoon looking at all the different lights and ceiling fans.