I hope all is well with everyone. Look for more updates in the coming weeks (I promise). Later.

So last weekend Elizabeth, Jake and I traveled to Alabama to see family and friends. We stopped in Anniston on Friday night and stayed at Dad and Susan’s house. Since it is Lent, Dad made us all fish for dinner (vs. our standard BBQ). Now you know that I am not a big seafood person (unless it is shrimp from the Kani House), but this was pretty good. I know Dad was not happy with how the frying turned out, but it tasted fine. I honestly was not too worried about the appearance.

It was just great to see everyone; we had not seen them since Christmas. Additionally, Grandma made an AMAZING apple pie. I really enjoyed eating that over the past week. Seriously, one of her top 5 pies of all time!

So after Dad’s excellent breakfast, we headed out on Saturday morning and made our way to Springville. It was party time!!! Little Jack Gatgens was celebrating his first birthday, and Jake was pumped about seeing his friend. We had a great time seeing Kevin, Tiph, Jack, Kevin’s parents, and the Walkers (Lynne, Scott, and Jillian). Jack had a baseball themed party (Go Team Gatgens!) and a cool Cubs cake. Kevin has posted pics from the party on his website.

While we were there, Jake had a chance to play on a mini inflatable bouncer. I have posted a new video on the Movie page. Check it out!

Well that is all for now. Hope everyone is doing good. Later!

Let me start by saying, it’s just highly frustrating when people don’t do what they are suppose to and get their jobs done. We have a couple of days every 6 – 8 weeks where the team has to ensure items get reviewed and signed-off before ANYONE can leave. This time it was my turn to coordinate all of this and try to get all three divisions of the team to get 100% sign-off. As an added bonus, I was also charged the task of being the one to let everyone know when they were clear to leave.

So people get 48 hours to sign-off on any setup they did during this 6 – 8 week period. Of course, all that means is wait until noon on the day it’s due to start working…right?!? Clearly, that seems to be what most people did (and do each time). We also have a lot of laziness that comes into play. There are some people who just look for their ID and sign-off on it. However, there are times when their ID will not show and it looks like no one owns it. Then they just wait for someone to go back through and say “hey, you missed this one”. Bahhh!!!!!

ANYWAY, long boring story short, we were online until 8 p.m. on Wednesday and then 9 p.m. on Thursday trying to get this all done. You get a lot of instant messages from people when you are the one telling them when it’s okay to leave. You also get a lot of suggestions how to make this process better. In the end, I don’t think you can fix lazy. That is really the cause of all this pain each time.

Overall, I am just a little tired from work this past week. Hopefully next week will be better and I won’t feel the need to vent so much. Take is easy.

As everyone is well aware, I really have not developed a taste for meat. I prefer to stick with soy products, peanut butter, and healthy diet of cheese. Well last night Mom and Dad took me to this Canyon place to eat and they got me a “kids meal”. It came with some chicken nuggets and a fruit cup. Well I was all ready to throw that chicken all over the place, but I decided I would be nice a try a bite. So after eating a few grapes, I picked up a piece of chicken nugget and ate it. Well surprisingly enough, I liked it. I continued to selectively pick up chicken, grapes, strawberries, and some random cheese that appeared (from Mom’s salad I think). I mean it was so good, I just had to eat it all. It was just too good to throw around.

To top if off, I tried using this straw thing last night with my milk. Man those things are so cool! I don’t even have to lean back to drink the milk. It just comes right up to my mouth (with a little bit of work). Where has this thing been for the past year?

Mom and Dad just kept saying they were so proud of me and how well I did at dinner. They called me a “big man” and, if you ask me, were overly emotional about the whole thing. I mean big deal. So I ate some chicken and did not make a mess. Is is that rare? Well…maybe it is. Hey, I gotta throw them a bone every once in a while (so they think they did something right).

Tonight I made sure that they realized this was not going to be a daily thing. They tried to sneak some meat into the spaghetti, and that just was not going to fly. I made sure to sling that all over the place; Moose seemed to enjoy it. I have to get my brother fed. I mean have you seen that stuff he eats? It’s a blast to throw those hard pebble things on the floor, but wow does they taste bad.

Anyway, I will try not to be such a stranger. If Mom and Dad would just take down the baby gate to the office it would be so much easier. Oh well, I will just write when I can. It’s past my bed time, so nite nite!

Every Friday there is a play group in our neighborhood, and most weeks Elizabeth will take Jake. Well yesterday, Jake decided that it was time to have a “girlfriend”. Our little man first set his sites on a younger lady (8 months old). He leaned in and gave her a full on kiss. The little girl clapped and smiled, so Jake decided he should do it yet again. From my understanding, this cycle continued for a little while. Elizabeth and the other moms found this quite hysterical.

Evidently Jake still was on the prowl. He later decided he should also branch out to the older ladies and tried his luck with a 2.5 year old. She was almost the exact same height as Jake, so this one he kissed standing up. The reaction from her was somewhat different than the first girl; she decided to run away. Jake got a little upset, but seems to have decided that she was just playing “hard to get”. He later tracked her down and kissed her again.

Now as a Dad, part of me is quite excited that my son is intrigued by the fairer sex; however, I am also quite concerned. If he is this bold now, what will he be like in a few years? I think we are going to have to keep an eye on this little guy. Maybe I should invest in a large fire hose now? He seems destine to cause some trouble and/or break some hearts in the future.

Anyway, I hope you all find this as funny as we did. Cya.

UPDATE: All fixed. I could not stand it being “smushed”, so I reinstalled the old program that came with the camcorder and remade the video. At least now it matches the others out there. Booooo to Windows Movie Maker!

1. We have really been busy.
2. Jake has been all over the place since he learned to walk, and we have spent what time we have had chasing him (keeping him out of Moose food, the DVDs, etc).
3. I have felt like poop for the better part of 4 months.
4. Elizabeth also has felt like poop.
5. I have just been lazy and not really cared to make updates (probably the ultimate winner).

Now that the excuses are out of the way, we can get down to business. So let me give you a quick set of updates on all things us.

Jake is now 16 months old [can you believe it?] and, as I mentioned, is into everything. He is running all over the place, and really takes joy is getting into places he should avoid. I think we are up to 12 – 14 teeth now, but the kid still does not care for meat too much (so strange). He is basically a quasi hippie, since he also drinks soy milk now (as the cows milk was giving him some fierce blow outs). We have tons of pics and some video from over the past 5 months (plus of course the stuff I never posted before then), so I am going to work on updating those in the next week (pics at least).

Now a quick health summary. Again, as I mentioned, I have not felt great over the past several months. About a month ago now, my doctor put me on a pretty strong cocktail of additional meds (steroids, methotrexate, and Humira). So for those who remember from several years ago, the methotrexate is what I took for a good year (Elizabeth gave me a shot each week). That stuff did a really good job, but has its share of side effects though (mainly related to having children). Most people probably have never heard of Humira, but it also is a shot. Hopefully once everything calms down, that will be my main maintenance drug. Of course the steroids are a short term thing. I should be able to stop stair-stepping off those next week (a nice long 7 – 8 week process). All in all though, they are making me feel better. It prob has been 9 months or so since I have felt this good. The hope is that 6 months or so from now, I am just taking the Humira (we’ll see).

Elizabeth has also not felt great for a couple of months. The good news is that she seems to be doing better and hopefully is getting back to normal. It definitely has been rough with both of us feeling bad; Jake has no mercy…haha.

In more recent news….

Elizabeth had tried to move to a split baylor position at work. All this means is she was going to work 2 weeks out of the month instead of all 4. We were really looking forward to this, so we could have more family time. However, it looks like that is on hold for now. The hospital has decided to not make any changes to those positions at this time. I guess we should not complain, since at least Elizabeth has a job that works for our schedule with Jake. However, it still would have been nice to have the extra free time all together. Hopefully something will change in the future.

Also, this past week the family PC kicked the dust (well the main hard drive to be more specific). Since the PC was a good 6 years old (some parts older then that), we decided it was time to upgrade. So we made the move to a new Dell (picked it up at Best Buy) with an Intel i7 quad core processor. I have to say, this thing made me realize how out of touch I am with the latest hardware changes. It was a bit of a shock to me not to have any IDE interfaces (all SATA now) and no PCI slots on the motherboard. So today I made a trek to the Fry’s electronic ultra-mega super store, and picked up an IDE to USB converter and an PCI Express wireless card. Just a side note, but holy crap Fry’s is cool! I have never been before, but seriously it was like electronics mecca. ANYWAY, this new PC seems pretty cool. I am getting use to Vista and a 64 bit OS, but I do love the 24in monitor upgrade!

Finally, we went to the Georgia Aquarium for our second time this past Friday. We saw the Titanic exhibit, which was pretty interesting. The highlight though was watching Jake in front of the giant Plexiglas wall of the aquarium. He just stood there in amazement and watched all the fish go by. I think he could have stayed there for an hour and been completely happy. We were able to get some great pics and a bit of video (again, which I hope to add soon). All in all, just a fun visit. Oh, and we did learn that they are expanding the aquarium to include a dolphin section (to open in Spring 2010). A great reason to go back next year!

Well, I guess that is all for now. I really will try and do better and update this every week or two with some kind of random info. I hope everyone is doing well! Bye.

So as everyone knows, Jake is oh so close to being the big 1.0 (yes, that is cheesy, but I get at least one quasi tech/computer reference per post – I don’t make the rules people). It’s really hard to believe that a year has already past. I mean…where does the time go? Elizabeth and I have been working on Jake’s party theme, and we landed on pirates. We are putting the final touches on the invitations now (i.e. – addressing them), so hopefully everyone will have theirs next week. It should be a fun time; we hope everyone will be able to make it.

Jake is doing great though. It seems like he learns something new everyday. The kid is just so adventurous; he does not want to stay still for anyone. He did stand up a couple of times the other day unassisted, but no steps yet. He still just likes walking along the furniture and transitioning from one item to the next (for stability).

In other news, I started a new medicine on Thursday for the always fun Crohn’s. As some of you may no, I had a bad reaction to the Remicade. That was the stuff I was getting by IV every 8 weeks. Anyway, the last time I had that (back in Sept), I had a reaction after 8 minutes (far more quickly than I had previous times and more severe). It was kinda scary, to be honest. I mean they broke out the oxygen for me. After that, I think everyone was in agreement that it was not going to work for me. The doctor prescribed a medication called Humera, and after a mere 3.5 weeks I was approved for it (gotta love the health care system). I guess I should not complain, but I have no idea what someone without insurance would do in this situation. The actually cost of these shots for 3 months is like $7300; I pay $60. I guess I should just be thankful that I have the option. In any case, it looks like I did not have a reaction with the initial dose (which is 4 shots). Hopefully that trend will continue and the medicine actually does something for me.

Let’s see….what else is new? Hmmmm. Well I paid off my car a couple of weeks ago. I know that may seem boring to everyone, but I can’t express how pumped I was. My car title actually came in the mail on Thursday. Fun times!

I guess the only other thing I can think of is my new work arrangement. I have been working from home on Monday’s and Wednesday’s during the week, and that seems to be going well. It’s nice to just have to role out of bed, get a shower, and start working. I claimed the spare bedroom (the one next to Jake’s room) as my home office. Yes, I know we have an office, but I needed one with a door (to keep out sounds and a Moose).

Well I guess that is all for now. I hope that everyone is doing well. Cya.

I also caught the new show on Fox called Fringe last night. Very cool!! It kind of feels like X Files (but with a creepier twist). This definitely has the potential to be my new favorite show (of this season at least). Elizabeth even liked it. If you did not get a chance to check it out, I believe they are showing it again this Sunday night (9/14) @ 8 p.m. EST.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Have a great rest of the week!