happy birthday jake!!!

i can't go through today and not post - today's our son's jake's first birthday!! wow time flies! he's getting big, speed crawling, and getting better with balancing standing up (thus, walking is not too far off!!). we're driving down to knoxville tmrw after jake's 12 month dr. appt (shots - eek!) and we'll be having a big b-day shindig

often i look back at the phases of our marriage: 7 months regular, 9 months pregnancy, 12 months with a kid :-)

napoleon dynamite

ok i saw this movie on new year's eve and maybe it had been hyped up a bit too much for me, but i still thought it was pretty funny. however, in retrospect, it's getting funnier as lines from the movie continue to come up as bits of comedy in office conversation. in light of that, i feel compelled to share the following links:
napoleon dynamite phrase soundboard
napoleon dynamite store
enjoy!!

isn't it a beut?

so i ordered and finally received the slipcase for the trilogy of lotr extended editions and it looks great :-)

the week thus far

school is starting out fine thus far. no real work in ethics beyond some introductory posts and just learning the alphabet in hebrew. work is monotonous and boring as usual, but i'm really looking forward to the poker game at my place tonite. i played at a friend's house last saturday for a higher buy-in and the play was better and more aggressive than at my place. i played well in the beginning and got 6th out of 12.
spring training starts soon and the nba all-star weekend is next weekend! well, at least I enjoy it :-) daytona is a couple weeks away too - someone call me when there's like 10 laps left haha.

response to a survey for one of my new classes...

for fun, i've generally refrained from using any capitals in my posts so please excuse me as i simply copied the following from a survey for one of my new classes that started today.

#4 - What is your "typical" weekly schedule like? Please include things like work load.
--Monday-Friday
Get up at 5:30a, family (one 1-yr. old) gets ready, out the door around 6:40a.
Take Jake to daycare, wife Lindsay drops me off at the train a little after 7:00a, she fights traffic, we both get to work around 8:00a. I research and respond to computer networking patent applications all day.
Lindsay leaves work at 4:30p, I leave at 4:50p to catch the train, we rendezvous at the home train station at 5:30p, pick up Jake, get home a little after 6:00p on a good nite. :-)
Feed Jake and feed us while watching the Food channel and Wheel of Fortune.
Play with Jake until about 8:30p when he gets a bottle and rocked to sleep by Lindsay.
Kiss Lindsay goodnite around 9:00p and work on schoolwork until 12-1a.
Repeat.
--Saturday
Get up, feed Jake, try to go back to sleep :-)
Play with Jake, run any necessary errands, catch up on reading or schoolwork, and mainly hang out as a family.
--Sunday
Get up, feed Jake, get ready for Church
Driving and Church from ~9a-1p
Lunch, nap, hang out, finish school work after Jake goes to bed like a normal weeknite.

jake's b-day present from mom-ma and da-da

a 3 sport set with basketball, baseball, and golf :-D
and lindsay picked it out!!

jake's b-day present from grandparents collins

vrooom!! vrooom!!

cruisin!!

jake's b-day present from grandparent whitsons

castle!

ladder / climbing wall (yes that's one of my new nats hats)

whee! down the slide!

regarding the map below...

this question was asked: "what do you count as 'been to'... do you have the stay the night or does driving through count?" -kg

well, driving thru counted for minnesota and wisconsin, but we drove from chicago to north dakota and back and the return trip was during the middle of the nite so it was like i stayed overnite in the state ;-)
i went to manhattan for one all day trip and that definitely counts. same for a couple times out to west virginia. delaware was the 5 minute blip and bridge on the way to nyc, but that bridge toll was so expensive that i get to count it. and lindsay visited a mall there because they have no sales tax so i will at least count it by proxy haha. i almost thought maryland was just driving and going to the airport, but we had a church retreat there last fall.

where i've been

i found this old thing and figured i'd post it for fun:


create your own personalized map of the USA

the weekend

so the weekend was pretty fun. poker nite on friday was a blast and there's a recap of how the game was huge and didn't end until after 2am! on saturday morning, we got up and took lindsay to finally redeem the gift certificate for a massage i surprised her with back on our anniversary. it was in occoquan so i went down the block to the coffeeshop i'd always wanted to go to, but it turned out to just be a few small tables in a junk shop that happened to have a real espresso machine. i got to listen to an awesome dc baseball show on the sports radio station while me and jake waited on L to get done and then we headed up to springfield to go to trader joe's grocery for some good food. we came back to town and went to applebee's for a yummy lunch - they have these new combos and the cheesecake that came with it was delish. we laid around the rest of the day and napped and watched movies and then sunday was another no church snow day so we did more of the same and i cleaned what was left of the snow around and on our car that evening.