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Little Sean and I got back last night from New York for a surprise visit to Oma and Opa’s house (my dad and Colleen) in New York.  They are due to come visit in a week or so for their spring break, but I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to surprise them!  I surprised Colleen at her work and Dad at home when he got home from work.  They were just thrilled to meet Little Sean for the first time and spent all four days with him in their arms!  They are definitely in love!  I snapped a lot of pictures, including some of my mom tapping her maple trees at the cabin to make maple syrup.  All in all, it was a great visit and we look forward to having my Dad and Colleen visit us in a little over a week!

I know I know, I should have posted this a few days ago, but I’ve been sick!
Like I mentioned earlier, Emily and I made the trek to St. Louis to visit my parents for Thanksgiving. Sean was also in town from Seattle. Wednesday night, my sister Megan and I stayed up sharing a bottle of Chateau Ste. Michelle cabernet and talking until 3:30am (430 my time!). We rarely get to do that, so it was very cool. Thursday was Turkey Day! Man I love thanksgiving…I think we should have it at least twice a year! Although, I’m sure there are a number of turkeys out there who disagree with me. Mom cooked and awesome meal for us and Emily made the famous Marshall Rolls. Aunt Karen, Uncle Ted, and Scott made it down from west St. Louis as well and it was really nice seeing them.
Sean, Manders (friend of ours and Megan’s from high school), and myself then made our trip to the movie theatre to catch our annual bad-movie-on-turkey-day which started back in the day with my selection of “Paycheck” starring Matt Damon. Sean’s selection this year was Hitman. HOO BOY was it rotten. We got to the theatre about 15 or 20 minutes late so we missed the beginning of the movie ( **cue Office Space “I wouldn’t say I was missing it, Bob…” ***). The acting was lousy, the female character in the movie probably only got the role cause she showed her boobs. What can you expect from a movie produced by Vin Diesel? But I digress…
The rest of the week was pretty uneventful - we went out to an irish pub in Belleville, IL that was nice, hung out at a local bar in O’Fallon, had an awesome hamburger at Denny’s (eggs and hashbrowns on a burger! YUM!), and hung around the house. Saturday we did a family trip to Pierre Marquette State Park to lunch on their lodge’s famous fried chicken and take some family photos.
While we were home for thanksgiving Mom and Dad presented us with some new gifts for Little Sean. As we’ve mentioned before, my dad is *very* handy in wood working. When Sean and I were born, he made us a cradle that was also used for my sister when she was born. Well, now we have a cradle of our own:

click to view more

Paul’s mom has also recently dusted off her knitting needles and made a fun little hat for Little Sean:

Can’t wait to have him try them both out (only three more months to go!!). Here are some highlight photos from the trip:
me showing my approval of the baby bump:

My parents - dad looks great! (mom too!)

I’ll post some more from my dad’s set of photos after I process the huge DSLR snapshots from his Nikon D80

Emily and I took a trip to St. Louis for Thanksgiving this year.  My sister and brother were both in town as well.  I didn’t bring a heavy enough jacket with me and now I’m fighting a nasty cold….so now I am going to bed and I will post photos and a run-down of turkey day at a time in the very near future.

For the Labor Day weekend, Paul and I went with our church to Cathedral Domain. The Episcopal Diocese of Lexington have over 800 acres of land near Irvine, KY that has a camp and conference center on it. Each church gets ‘a weekend’ at the Domain, and Labor Day is our church’s weekend. It’s a great time to meet members of the church. It’s not a retreat type weekend, it’s more of a ‘come and hang out and meet some people that you see every week’ type thing. It was great.
We could have stayed in a camp with 12 bunk beds on either side and share a restroom, but since it was our first year going, and we didn’t know that many people, we opted for what people referred to as the “Hilton,” which was more of a dorm-type setup, with a double occupancy room with it’s own bathroom. Quite spiffy for a camp!

We got to the Domain Friday night about 915pm, unloaded, then took a walk around to see what the place was like. We met a few people then headed off to bed. We spent the weekend hanging out with new friends, getting to know people, playing games, eating (a lot), sitting by the pool, having a few drinks (well…Paul anyway) and a lot of laughs. We did some hiking, and caving as well. We are really glad we went. We finally got to put names, and life stories to about 50 people that we’ve seen in church for years but never have gotten to know.

We’re really glad for the experience. We want to feel more a part of the church, especially because we’re bringing our little one into it. Everyone was very excited to hear that we are expecting. There were actually 2 other women that were pregnant at the Domain; one due in February, and one in April, so our little one will have instant friends!

Check out pictures by clicking below:

We have all the pictures from New York online now.

We had a really great time in NY.  We got there Thursday night and stayed at Diana’s cabin, since Cate was getting her wisdom teeth out the next morning.  On Friday, Cate and her boyfriend Brian came over to the cabin.  We hung out awhile, went for some ice cream, and then had dinner with Heinz, Colleen, and Diana.  Cate was doing amazingly well for just having 4 wisdom teeth out; she even had a hamburger for dinner!

Saturday, we took the boat to the Schroon Lake marina/beach and went into town and had a bite to eat.  We also got some maple syrup to bring back to friends.  We went fishing that night off the beach and caught a ton of fish.  Emily caught a 17.5 inch Northern Pike! 

Sunday we headed over to Heinz & Colleen’s cabin on Sacadaga Lake.  We ate some lunch, and hung out on the beach with Eddie & Wendy (Colleen’s brother and sister-in-law).  The dogs, Bailey and Sherman had a blast chasing sticks in the water and eachother!

We had a great time, even though it was a short visit. 

Check out pictures by clicking here.

Getting restless with the website. Its been online in this format since at least December 2005. Those that know me well, know that I get restless after 2 or 3 years of the same old same old Maybe that explains my car “habit” (time for a change about now isn’t it?). I guess it goes back to my military childhood of moving every two to three years.
Anyway, I’m thinking its about time for a theme change on the old blog. Of course I haven’t mentioned it to Emily yet This all came about after doing some work on Heather and Ashley’s blogs. I think I am still using an older version of the blog software, so it would have to be upgraded to the 2.x version to work with many new formats and layouts. So keep your eyes peeled, there may be some new changes afoot.
On an unrelated note, my Dad is doing really well. His recent trip to the oncologist brought back some very positive feedback on his treatment. At 42% reduction in the tumor size and a significant reduction in the [stuff] they measure for cancer in the blood. As Mom says, he is a poster boy for his current treatment plan Their website is listed on the links to the right of the website.
Emily and I will be going to New York for the first weekend in August. We’ll be visiting her dad and stepmom and spending some time at Diana’s cabin. Maybe I can finally watch a movie in the home theater room that I designed and installed? (and never got to have fun with!)
My brother is taking the Motorcycle Safety Course up in Seattle this weekend. I think everyone should take this class.  Heck, even if you don’t plan on getting your two wheel note on your ID, I encourage anyone to take it. Could save the lives of many of us on two wheels. Plus you will learn the thrill of riding a motorcycle. Its truly a freeing feeling.
Guess I should go to bed now as work draws near.

-pc

We got back Saturday from our spring vacation.  This year we went on cruise with Diana, Phil and Philip.  We were on Royal Caribbean’s Grandeur of the Seas.  We left Sat. March 31 from New Orleans, stopped in Georgetown Grand Cayman, Costa Maya, and Cozumel and ended back in New Orleans.  The cruise was awesome; we had great weather, the ports were great and it was very relaxing.  Check out pictures below:

 

 

Sorry to all our avid readers *smirk* that we haven’t posted in awhile.  We’ve both been really busy with work, Dliberation work, friends and family.  I was thinking back to this time last year, when we were buying our house, living at my mom’s, I was preparing for my black belt test, Emmaus was going on, we were having all sorts of car trouble, etc.  Whew, what a stressful few months!

Now, a year later, it’s happening again…not so many big things going on, but this time of year seems to be a tough one for us to get through.  We’re both swamped at work, there’s another black belt test coming up (thankfully this time I just get to watch everyone else), we have 3 mock trials coming up in the next month with Dliberation Resources, plus we are squeezing in a visit to St. Louis, and a couple of on-call weekends for me, and of course, Brian and Ashley’s upcoming wedding.

Luckily though, we’ve got Lost, Survivor, and The Amazing Race starting back up again (which we love), a great cruise to the Caribbean (YAY!), and April, which in general is our “ahhhhh, it’s all over” month.  Hopefully we’ll get back to posting soon, just wanted to keep everyone updated.

-ec

We’re back from our wonderfully restful New York vacation! We went from June 23 - July 3rd. We got to see lots of family and spend a lot of time doing nothing but relaxing; which we really needed.

We left KY Friday the 23rd and drove 9 hours to Syracuse, NY. When we got there at 2:30am we decided to stop instead of driving the last 3 hours that night. We got up at 7am and finished the drive, got to Emily’s dad’s house in time to jump in the shower, get dressed and head out for Cate’s (Emily’s sister) high school graduation. The ceremony was very nice and Colleen got to hand Cate her diploma which was really cool. We went out to eat and mini golfing after the ceremony.

Sunday was Cate’s graduation party at our Uncle Danny’s house (Colleen’s brother). It was a little warm and muggy, but we had great food and played some great rounds of cornhole! We again went mini-golfing afterwards (one of our family’s favorite pastimes).

Monday - Thursday Paul and I pretty much stayed at my mom’s cabin while she flew back to KY to drop my brother off at a summer camp. Her cabin is now finished, and beautiful! We had a nice relaxing time there, even though it rained the whole time. We had quite the fiasco with their motorboat on the lake. There had been so much rain that the boat flooded and came withing 3 inches of sinking! The road out to the lakefront where the boat was moored was flooded, so I had to get in the little dingy and row about 200 yards out to it. I spent the next hour bilging and bailing water; what fun! My mom also lost her very expensive kayak to the flood, but Phil ended up finding it on Saturday; it had been found by a boy a few camps down the lake.

On Saturday, Paul and I went to my dad’s camp on the Great Sacandaga Lake. The Lake was flooded as well, it had risen about 4 feet in a matter of days. Everyone’s docks were torn apart or sunken, and many boats were flipped over and sunk. Even the mooring balls that boats were tied to on the lake were under water, it was so flooded.
We went to the Sacandaga dam, which usually barely has a trickle of water, but since the water was so high, it was gushing over it like Niagra Falls. There were tons of people out on the road taking pictures and video. Apparently, it’s only the 5th time since 1930 that it’s gushed over the dam like that. Pretty cool.
We had a nice time at the cabin, Meg got to swim, we watched some fireworks from my uncle’s camp down the road, and ate smore’s by the fire that night.

Megabyte went with us to New York. She had an unbelievable time; she got to sit out on screen porches the whole time and smell all the woodsy Adirondack smells, and got to go swimming for the first time in her life. We got some really cute pictures of her swimming and hanging out.

I got to read a few of my books in the Left Behind series; I’m now on book 8: The Mark. Philip (my little brother) is still reading them, and my mom has started the series as well.

That’s all for now; be sure to check out all the pictures from our trip in our gallery, there’s pictures in the following folders: Cate’s Graduation, Diana’s Cabin, Megabyte, and Vacations.

Spent the weekend of June 2-4 in New York for the official “move in” of my mom’s cabin. We finally got some pictures online (see below). The cabin is beautiful!!! Paul and I drove her two dogs up there along with my little brother. Crazy, quick weekend.
Paul and I are going up to NY again in a few weeks, so we’ll get some more pictures of her cabin and stuff. We’re even going to take Megabyte with us! She’s never been to New York before, so she’ll get to meet all of her NY family