Here’s a couple of team pictures taken by one of the parents recently. Nick’s in the back row, 2nd from the right.

Also, here’s the remaining games on their schedule:

Happy 13th Birthday Taylor!!

I’m pretty excited about the MLB season getting underway too. The M’s also play their first game of the season on Monday, against Texas.

A final note, I know he debuted last year but I just find it amusing that the Reds have a pitcher named “Homer Bailey”. While I hear he has definite potential, I just think that name is a bad omen for a pitcher.

Yesterday, with a little help from mom, Ella took her very first steps. As you can see in the video, she was very excited at this feat and would giggle and fall into mom’s arms after every attempt. You can view a larger version of the video in the mediaalbums.

I’ve also been working on another group of Christian sites, one of which will sell various apparel. For this site I’ve been learning a lot more about the capabilities of Flash in terms of coding and animation methods to design the intro. You can see it here While this has been pretty cool, my client has some pretty specific ideas of what they want and it tends to conflict with my personal tastes. I prefer a cleaner look and feel and more subdued colors. Oh well, that’s what this site is for…which reminds me, I’m planning to overhaul the look of this blog when I get some spare time. Yet another site I’ve been working on is Jenn’s custom scrapbooking site, gautierdesigns.com I setup a pretty nice gallery to display her custom designs and pre-made products she will be selling. Now we just need to get more images posted. She also setup an eBay seller account for her company so I have a gallery specifically for auction items, so she can display as many images as she wants without having to pay eBay.

On to the real reason for this post…I’ve finally posted Ella’s professional portraits. I was very impressed with how these pictures turned out. The scans don’t quite do them justice but you can really see how red her hair is against the black background.

Until next time…

I’ve finally posted some video of Ella. It’s of her getting a bath at 2 weeks old (so long ago already). It’s a bit of a long one at 5 minutes, check it out in the mediaalbums.

Another task that’s been keeping me busy is building a website for my friend James. He has his own educational ministry and has started his own institute of theology. You can take a look at what I’ve been doing here. There’s still much content to add. Additionally, I did a quick little website for the Queens of Washington Drillteam, which you can take a look at here. Looks like the craziness will continue as James’ sister looked at his site and want’s me to do one for her as well.

Also, Ella’s hospital pics have now been posted here:

http://www.growingfamily.com/webnursery/babypage_view.asp?URLID=9R0R8Z4R6K

In response to requests for more photos of baby Ella (or Ella Bella Bean as I’ve been calling her), I have posted more pics taken during her first week. As always you can view these in the mediaalbums. I hope to get a video clip or 2 up soon…if I can just remember to charge the camera battery!

Ella’s birth was much different than the boys’ and it went much faster too. With Nick and Sam, Jenn went into labor in the early morning and there was no doubt as to what was happening. With Ella, she had been having contractions for several days so when they began around noon on the 27th she didn’t think much of it. They gradually got a bit worse and at about 2:40 pm she called me and I came home from work. This time the trip to the hospital was much more hectic. School buses were dropping kids off and there was a fair amount traffic. Finally we made it to the hospital at around 4:30. It was dumping rain and Jenn could barely walk. Thank the Lord for the nurse who was walking past for going back and getting a wheelchair for her. When we got into the birthing suite there were doctors and nurses (most of which whose names I don’t remember) scrambling to get everything prepared. They had determined that Jenn’s labor was very far along and though they tried to keep us optomistic, we knew that Jenn was too late for the epidural. Though somewhat discouraged, Jenn stayed focused and determined throughout the labor and our precious baby Ella was born at 5:17 pm. Though I’ve already admitted it to Jenn, I’m officially admitting it to the world that she is tougher than me! It’s somewhat scary to realize that a mere 47 minutes after arriving at the hospital, we had a brand new baby. Thankfully the delivery went perfect and both baby and mom were fine. Ella did suffer a broken clavicle (collarbone) which, apparently, is a common occurence and nothing to be concerned with. We have to keep her left sleeve pinned to her shirt as a makeshift sling to keep her from moving it. I have updated the mediaalbums with some photos of Ella’s first day. Until next time…

My excuse to get her out of the house was a lunch date. The shower was slated for 1pm at our church, so my initial plan was to leave the house at about 11am and drive over to Southcenter to eat a leisurely lunch at Bahama Breeze. My brilliant plan was to say that I had to swing by church to do something for the website! Needless to say 11am came and went and we were nowhere near ready. Jenn began to get a little suspicious because it was a Saturday and I wanted to stick to a schedule. This is an oddity in our household and for me in particular. Anyway, we ended up leaving the house at about 12:40, and with traffic and construction we were about 30 minutes late. Thankfully everyone waited for us. When we got there I opened the door and everyone yelled “SURPRISE!!”. Jenn was totally surprised. Apparently, my acting was so flawless she originally thought that I wasn’t in on it and had been surprised too.
The party was well planned and we had a spaghetti lunch and enjoyed visiting with all of the church women. After lunch I tried my hand at a surprisingly difficult baby pin/rice game. I had to wear a blindfold and had 60 second to try to pick out safety pins from a bowl of rice. You really can’t feel the difference between baby pins and grains of rice so I was only able to get 1 pin. Finally, we got to open up all of Baby Pip’s gifts. She got a lot of nice stuff from bottles and bibs to towels and teething rings. We were thoroughly buried in pink! I was pleased to see that Jennifer had such a great time. She was so appreciative and somewhat teary-eyed at this loving expression from the wonderful women of our church. Check out all the photos in the media albums.

Since this is Sam’s first Christmas, where he actually knows somewhat of what’s going on, we decided I would go down first and get Sam’s first reaction of the tree and presents on video tape. As you can see in the video, his facial expression didn’t change too much at first sight (probably due to just having been pryed from slumber), but as soon as Jenn let him down, he bolted for the tree and grabbed the first present he could. What followed can only be described as vicious, giftwrap-ripping carnage brought on by the 3 kids. They made quick and effective work of unwrapping the gifts, and elated shouts of “wow, look what I got!” and “Cool!” and “Can I open another one?”, filled the room Even Sam was no slouch when it came to unwrapping gifts, easily ripping through the wrapping to expose the treasure within. In the aftermath, the atmosphere was much more calm and the kids (and adults) settled into taking a closer look at their gifts. Sam was particularly interested in his motorized “yip-yip” puppy, as you’ll see in the video. Nick was immediately drawn to his ginormous, new race-car tuner shop Lego set. In fact, his uncle Josh and I spent a better part of the day helping him assemble the individual cars and garage included in the mammoth 650+ piece set. Taylor, the artist, began working with her new set and book for drawing animated characters. Additionally, she also got her own little video camera so now she’ll be able to make her own movies that she always wants to. Baby Pip was not to be forgotten and also received gifts. During my Christmas Eve scramble I found the tiniest pink sweater and knew it was perfect for the baby. It was hilarious wrapping it up for Jen to open as it fit easily into a small 6″x1″ deep box. Even more funny was the discovery that Jenn’s mom had also bought this very same sweater for us. Other gifts of note are the new photo printer I got for Jenn and a digital picture frame I got from Jenn’s parents. Jenn was thrilled with the new printer as it is much better than the sloth-like dinosaur it replaces and will help with her emerging custom scrapbook business. The digital picture frame is a very cool and easy to use gadget. W have so many photos on CDs and on my laptop that I’ve forgotten about and now I can put them on it and have it play an endless slideshow. It also plays music and video but I haven’t played with that yet.

Christmas this year was very nice as we didn’t have to go anywhere and we could just relax and enjoy each other’s company and gifts. You can check out a small portion of our Christmas fun by viewing the video and photos I uploaded in the media albums.

Oh yeah, and Happy New Year!!