Team Wessman

Aidan turns 3!

2010-04-19T20:10:00.009-04:00

Since facebook has made me lazy, it's now been 10 months since I posted. Oops...but I have more than I care to put in a facebook post, so here goes.

Aidan is now 3 years old! How time flies. Since I actually have a little more vacation time this year, and it was spring break last week, I took Thursday and Friday off and we took him to a couple of places we thought he'd like.

First, the Louisville Zoo. We'd been to the Cincinnati Zoo plenty of times, but thought we'd try something different, and since we hadn't really been to Louisville since we moved here (sad, it's only a little over an hour away) we headed down there.

Aidan was a fan of this globe that had water coming down over it.

On his actual birthday we went to a place called Entertrainment Junction, which bills itself as the world's largest indoor model train display. It was pretty impressive, they had 3 different eras (~1860s, 1940s, and modern) and each of them were huge. It was a G-scale train, which is pretty large models.

Here's a view inside one of the displays:
They also had a train themed play area. Look, mommy can play too!

Mari also had a good time.

And now that Aidan is 3, he'll be starting preschool. He's always talked about the school bus when it comes down our street, so he was pretty excited when he got to actually ride on it (not that you can tell from the picture, but when he got up the steps into the isle he was smiling and doing a little excited hop thing). We've been doing flashcards with him, at his insistance, and he can identify all the letters and numbers, count up to about 10, and knows colors and shapes. So, preschool should be great fun.

When he got home, he started singing "Ring around the Rosies" and falling down in the family room. Any time he can learn a new song and run in circles, it's a good day as far as he is concerned. The only challenge will probably be the lack of a time during the day for nap, as he is in afternoon preschool and has mostly been on a 1-3pm nap time, although at day care he hasn't been always actually napping. So it will be an early bed time for him now.

Crazy how fast he's growing.

Come on ride the train.

2009-06-21T09:40:00.002-04:00

Aidan’s always seemed to like trains (the gym we go to has a busy rail line running past it that he can see from the kids area, and he’d just stare at them going by). So, Jill found out about a miniature railroad around here and we decided to check it out. It turned out to be a 1/2 scale steam locamotive that runs in a track around the property (details here).

Aidan seemed at first kind of nervous, but then excited.

The train went around a pretty decent little track, with a road crossing, tunnel, a mockup of a little town, etc for maybe 15 or 20 minutes. Which is probably about the right amount for a 2 year old. He seemed to enjoy it, although he had kind of a funny look on his face most of the time.

It was actually a pretty pleasant ride, with decent views in a couple of spots.

So, that made for a fun family outing. Not too expensive either, and the money they make goes to charity.

Slackin

2009-03-30T19:26:00.002-04:00

I've been slacking on the blog lately. Mostly because I'm lazy, and been doing the Facebook thing, which is like blogging for the lazy. So, hit me up on there if you like...

And here's a random picture of little dude playing outside with a ball. It's definitely spring here now, and he likes to play in the yard and driveway. So much so, that it's not too fun to try to bring him inside now. He throws quite the little fit.

They didn't listen....

2009-02-20T21:56:00.003-05:00

Evidently, the President didn't read my housing bailout post. Too bad too, since what they're coming out with seems to me to be a half meaure that won't work. And the whole pay incentives to loan modifications that don't redefault seems like a payoff to banks and people who got in over their head, and it doesn't help anybody who has been responsible and current on their loans regardless of what other sacrifices were needed to do it.
I'm sure people are going to game the system big time too. What's to stop me from quitting my job, having my loan terms modified to get payments of 31% of Jill's income, and then going back to work? Maybe there is something in there to prevent such a simple scam, but you get the idea.
And this whole "we're not going to nationalize the banks" talk today is dumb too. Why rule anything out at this point?
On the bright side, it has been fun watching Rick Santelli on CNBC blow up....
This crap just keeps getting worse, and I'm starting to wonder if the new administration is willing to really bite the bullet and clean house like I'd hoped.

El Segundo

2009-01-14T21:23:00.003-05:00

Kid 2 is on the way! Come July, Aidan will have a little sibling of some variety. We're very excited!

Where's my freakin bailout?

2009-01-13T19:28:00.003-05:00

Now, I'm hardly of the government-can-do-no-right sort, but it seems to me like the whole bailout thing is a bit wrong headed. We threw 350 billion down on the banks so they would lend again, but they still didn't lend (Needed the cash to reduce their leverage ratios? Probably. Money will disappear into bonuses and off balance sheet crap? Yup, probably.) So, absent a careful accounting of where the first chunk of cash went, I'm not thinking it's a good idea to throw more good money after bad. At least the auto makers bailout helps people keep their jobs....

So, here's what I think we need to do. Supposedly the whole root of the problem here is mortgage deliquencies. So, I think the government needs to step up and offer 3.5%, 30 year fixed rate mortages on up to 90% (or even 95%) of present home value. Let Fannie and Freddie buy these notes up. And maybe also offer a 3.25% 15 year fixed as well. To anybody with semi-decent credit. Here's why.

Banks aren't lending to anybody, so giving them more cash won't do squat.
People in trouble because their subprime loan reset to a higher rate could avoid forclosure if they could refinance into such generous terms. This would reduce forclosures, helping to stabilize property values, and all the old subprime debt would be paid off and out of the system.
The 90% amount would help people who had more than 20% of value in their house when they got the original mortgage but are below that threshold now because of dropping home values. This would also allow some people to take cash out to pay off other higher interest rate debt or buy something (car, home improvement, college tuition, whatever), which could help keep someone else employed.
Most people would knock a few hundred bucks off their mortgage payments, freeing up that money to pay off other debt, be saved or invested (helps the stock market...), or spending (helping jobs).
Put a time limit on it, (say, only good during 2009) and anybody waiting for the bottom in housing is going to get off the fence, and the housing market should stabilize. And since the government is already offering a $7500 tax credit to first time home buyers, just allow them to use that for a downpayment. If you set the limit and 95% of value for the loan, that would mean a first time buyer could get a $150k house with hardly any cash. Talk about stimulus. But, this time that buyer should at least verify they're employed....

And the best part is, since the government is basically borrowing money at 0% right now, this would actually be profitable for the government. Which could then use the interest to retire some of the massive federal debt.

So, what's not to love? Don't think the government should interject in the markets? Then let the banks fail, otherwise shut it. The banks would definitely be losers in this plan, but I don't really care right now, since they pretty much did it to themselves. And I realize this won't help everybody, since those who are completely underwater on their mortgage would have to get some other help too. But if somebody was close to the line, say 110% of home value in the current mortgage, put 90% in this loan and the other 20% into something else, then maybe the payment could be manageable. Maybe allow somebody to defer principle on the 90% note for 5 years or something and set up payment plan to pay off the other 20% as quick as possible. If somebody is much further underwater than that, they're probably better off walking away if the bank won't write down the amount.

That's my plan. Sound good, Mr. Obama? I'm not holding my breath though. This would be entirely too helpful for ordinary people to make it through our bought and paid for congress. Sigh....

Full Panic Mode.

2008-12-16T21:26:00.005-05:00

This year's visit with Santa Claus didn't go quite as planned.....at first there was general panic.

Then more of a "how could you do this to me" despair.

Better luck next year! On the bright side, we showed up right before Santa's break, and for being the last ones in line we got the picture for free. Just imagine if this precious memory cost us something...

As of late...

2008-12-15T22:29:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since the last post, but it's a busy time of year, as I'm sure you all know. We were up in Michigan for Thanksgiving, which was good except for the ride back. The only snow we've really seen so far this year was during the drive, so it took about 7 hours vs the usual 5. Part of that was due to traffic in Dayton, where there is a bunch of construction. And since we hit that around 6, as we ground to a halt we started hearing Aidan saying "eat" in the back. It figures that he'd learn that word early. So, we had to stop for dinner on top of that instead of just getting home. At least he just used the word instead of throwing a fit...

Then, last weekend my parents came over. We're also doing Christmas in Michigan this year on account of the new baby, so we had an early Christmas with them.

My dad was also nice enough to bring over a new CPU for the computer out of one he had that had died and been replaced. It was a pretty decent quad core, so a good upgrade compared to the dual core I'd been running, so he was kind enough to donate it and I went out and bought a new motherboard to set it up. I don't buy computers, I build one and upgrade a few parts at a time to keep it current, which avoid that painful lump of cash all at one time and keep me pretty up to date, but it seems these things never go as smoothly as planned (CPU fan I had didn't fit the new board, first board I bought wasn't quite what I wanted, etc), so it's taken a good week plus before I feel like it's all ironed out now. But, it's noticably quicker (the HD camcorder video used to be very choppy in the editing software, now it's smoothed out), so it's worth the effort. So, enough of my dorkness, but that's why we've fallen off the planet temporarily.

So, now we just have to work our way through this week, and then Jill gets the nice 2 week break. I'm working until Tuesday, but then we're leaving town for Michigan that evening for about a week.

I hope all of you that are brave enough to read this blog from time to time have a happy holidays.

Aidan has a cousin!

2008-11-10T20:04:00.007-05:00

We were very excited this weekend to meet Kade. Jill's sister had her baby on Wednesday, so we headed up to Michigan for the weekend to meet him. He is one cute kid, we think.

As luck would have it, Jill's brother also came to town, so we got a picture with all of Aidan's first cousins. Aidan was being less than cooperative with the pictures though....

Only 3 first cousins at this point, but I think we're past 30 second cousins so far.

The night we got there was also the birthday of a girl that Jill's parents watch on Fridays, so we took her to Huckleberry Junction, a sort of Chuck E Cheese kind of place. They had a toddler section with little mechanical horses, cars, planes etc of the sit in front of the grocery store just put in a quarter variety, but he was having none of that. He was all about the ski ball.

He did need a little help from dad though. He doesn't quite understand the underhand roll technique now, but he does have a wicked overhand fastball which almost makes it up the ramp. This can cause problems with those on the neighboring ones, so we had to provide some guidance as to proper technique.

The next day we also went to Bronner's CHRISTmas Wonderland, which bills itself as the world's largest Christmas store, and they seem to have done their best to ensure nobody ever comes close. Jill said she took this picture for the blog, so here it is....

We were looking for a tree topper of a Santa and sleigh which rotate about the top of the tree, but no luck. Jill had one as a kid so it's a sentimental thing. They did have a whole bunch of ornaments you could pick out and then have a name put on right then and there, so we did that for the babies.

And that was the trip. I'll close with a picture of Aidan hanging out with Bosco, 70 pounds of lovin English bulldog....

He snores like a jackhammer crew and when he's excited, he throws up. But, he just really wants to be loved....

Si se puede!

2008-11-05T19:23:00.002-05:00

We tried to run this state blue for Obama (and most of the other states too), but didn't quite make it. And McConnell managed to squeak one out too, despite our efforts.

But, WOO HOOO! anyway. Definitely excited that Obama won, and looking forward to good things to come.

And I ended up voting for the guy, although with some hesitation since the local teacher's union had some not so nice things to say about that, and of course we're big supporters of education in this house. And the guy won big time (like 62-36 or something), so all my thought on the matter didn't really make a difference anyways.

Very exciting..but now I can get back to posting about fun stuff, with pictures! As soon as I get some pictures, that is. Jill's sister had a baby today, so I'm an uncle again, and this weekend we'll head up to Michigan to see the new arrival.

A Conundrum

2008-11-02T20:02:00.002-05:00

Ok, I said I wouldn't post about politics again, but I lied. No ranting this time, though.

I'm pretty well decided on most of my votes on Tuesday (no early voting in Kentucky, as some have asked...). As you already know, Obama for President. I'm also in the "Ditch Mitch" camp for senate, and will vote for the challenger for representative mostly because the incumbant no-showed at the debates claiming his opponent wasn't running a "serious campaign". Umm, I'll be the judge of that. And we have a tax levy for parks on there too that I'll vote yes on, as I appreciate the good public parks we do have here.

The one puzzler here is actually the state representative race. I'm most geared towards voting for Democrats this year, but I'm wondering that's the right call on this one. I'm really an independant, so party loyalty isn't the issue here, I'm just in general agreement with Democrats on most issues. But, our local state representative, a Republican, stopped by the house yesterday (third time he's done it, second time this year), to ask if I had any questions. So, we had a nice chat, and while we don't agree on everything, he's not a reflexive "government bad, free market good, do away with taxes" guy (funny thing, his Democrat challenger has been hitting him in ads for having raised taxes as county commisioner a few years back). He definitely gives stuff serious thought, and is willing to consider taxes if needed for a balanced budget as long as other things for raising revenue/controlling spending are also considered. And he was also for supporting the schools better and providing assistance for teachers to get their continuing education. So, we do agree on a number of things.

And at the end of our discussion, he said "Go to this website and watch my debate with my opponent, and if you think he'd be better, than vote for him, otherwise, please consider voting for me". Bold I thought. So I did, and he did seem to have a better grasp on the issues.

But, my conundrum is this: I'm none to happy with his party, and a vote for him helps them out at the state level. So, should I put party aside and vote for the person I think is better on an individual level, or am I just being an enabler for a do-nothing Republican party in the state. The incumbant won his seat in a real squeaker the first time, so the vote I cast wil probably be pretty important here.

This has me kind of vexed, to be honest. You might be able to tell that I am leaning towards judging this my the individual, but I am a bit torn. And it's a bit inconsistent of me, since I'm not applying the same logic to the senate race (if Mitch stops by, we'll talk...).

I'm curious as to what anybody who might happen to read this thinks. Come on, sway me!

Aidan's Second Halloween

2008-10-31T20:12:00.006-04:00

I can hardly believe he's old enough for the second of anything, but here it is.

He was a giraffe this year. And the dog was a police officer.

Jill pulled him around to a few houses in his red wagon.

And at the end, he enjoyed some of his loot. Nothing wrong with a little M&M mini action...

It was definitely more fun that last year, now that he can interact with people more, and eat some of the candy. We have a ton of kids in our neighborhood, so it's also a good time to be able to see everyone. And it was in the 60s, so can't complain about that. Definitely beats freezing.

Caution: Political Rant

2008-10-29T19:55:00.003-04:00

Warning: The opinions expressed in this post are the opinions of the writer (Andrew) only and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of others, and the mere existence of this post probably embarrasses the editorial staff (Jill...)

I've been pretty good so far about not dragging politics into the blog, but with such a big election coming up, I figure I'll put one post out there. I tend to be pretty opinionated about these sorts of things, as you might notice, so I've been trying not to dirty up the more happy stuff I generally put on here too much.

So, I keep having an idea in my head of what I think is the perfect theme song for this election; Mike Watt's Against the 70's. The main refrain being "The kids of today should defend themselves against the 70s". Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam is the singer on it. It just seems to me like those of us of my generation will be voting to defend ourselves against a conservative ideology brought about to solve the problems of 1979. And conservatives have basically been in power since that point, during which time they've knocked marginal tax rates and capital gains tax rates way down and deregulated just about everything. And at the time it was probably necessary, and I think led to the great economic growth in the 90s. But in the last 8 years the tax cutting and deregulating has been taken too far. The rich get richer, while everybody else stagnates, and without regulation the markets went off the deep end. My view of the American version of capitalism is that it has been a balancing act between empowering those who make money from having wealth and capital, and those who make money by their labor. Things get out of whack when you go off balance too far in either direction, and I think we're off balance too much in favor of wealth and capital. The republicans still want to push the pendulum more towards the benefit of those with capital with tax cuts for capital gains and higher income brackets. It strikes me as trying to fight the battles of the late 70s, and it's not really relevant today and would actually be pretty harmful.

And this whole "Joe the Plumber" jackass really gets me fired up. He whines that basically if he's lucky enough to be able to make 250k/yr owning a small plumbing business, no way does he want to give a little more back to the country that allows him to succeed. Maybe he was raised in a hand hewed log cabin and schooled by his mama, but as for me, I was educated in public school and attended public, land grant colleges where I got a world class education for relative peanuts. In grad school, the government even picked up the tab for it, including some living expenses, and just asked for a little bit of my time in research in return. Now I drive down an Interstate highway to work, work at a job partially supported by federal research money, come home and eat food from the safest food source and water system around, and can rest at night knowing the finest military the world has ever seen is watching over me. And if I'm so lucky as to make a living most only dream about with a salary of 250k per year, I don't think it's too much to ask that I give a little extra back so that when my brother is in Afghanistan, he'll have some decent body armor. I don't think it's unreasonable for me to give a little more back than those who don't have as much do, so that other people can get the same benefits I've enjoyed and continue to enjoy.

So, I don't need a damn tax cut. Use the money to keep the bridge I'm driving across on the way to work from falling down. Let the policemen, firefighters, teachers and soldiers I'm depending on make a decent living. The "Spreading the Wealth Around" that Joe calls "Socialism", I call giving my fair share for all our benefit: teamwork.

So, you're probably figuring by now I'll be voting for Obama, and you would be right. I actually think McCain is a decent guy, but I just think he formed his views in the late 70s and they've never changed, and that's not what we need. Here's hoping that Obama wins and can get us all moving in the right direction together again.

Ok, done ranting now. And I'll spare you from any more this election season.

Monkey Boy

2008-10-27T19:59:00.003-04:00

About a week or so ago Aidan figured out how to do somersaults, which of course he follows up with plenty of laughs. Maybe gymnastics should be his thing, since being my son the NBA probably isn't in his future...

I took a quick video of it, which you can check out here...

Monkey Boy!

Not too much else going on here, really. We did go to a fall festival thing a few weeks ago, and got to go down a slide they had, which was fun.

We've been pretty slack about taking pictures and videos lately, so we need to step it up. Jill's sister is due to have a baby pretty soon here, so we'll have a good excuse.

Utes Rock the Big House!

2008-09-02T20:15:00.004-04:00

This weekend was the battle of the family. My U of Utah versus Jill's U of Michigan in a winner take all battle medieval battle to the death....er....football game. Since the U comes out this way to play almost never, and since our schools have played each other only twice in history, we thought it would be fun to go to the game. So, Jill was able to log on to the online ticket system, then Aidan pressed the power button on the computer and it shut down as she was about to buy tickets (jealous he wasn't going?), but then she was able to log back on and get the tickets. Pretty good seats too, 4 rows up in the back of one end zone. Here's a view.

Half of the the fun was just going to Michigan Stadium, which is one of the biggest football stadiums around (108,000 people there for this game). You can see in the picture here that there were a few other Ute fans, but we were definitely outnumbered.

It actually ended up being a close game at the end, but mostly because of a couple of mistakes by Utah. Overall, Utah pretty much took Michigan to the woodshed and administered a harsh beating. I found it very entertaining; Jill, not as much.

But now, the universe will return to normal, which means I'll be rooting on both Utah and Michigan for the rest of the season. The problem with that is that, despite my enjoyment of Utah thumping Michigan, the fact that Michigan didn't look particulary good won't work out well for me for the rest of the season. Maybe the first game knocked the rust out of them and they'll get better quick. If not, I guess we'll call it a "rebuilding year".

Totally Awesome Awesomeness!

2008-08-25T20:37:00.005-04:00

So, somebody forwarded Jill a link to some website that lists the number one song on various dates in history. It turns out the #1 song on the day I was born was.......wait for it.......

DISCO STAR WARS!!!

Yup, 1977, the year of disco and Star Wars, and this melds the two together. My parents, disco fiends both I'm sure, actually had this on vinyl. Actually, the probably still do. I should get it on mp3...

Poor Jill, despite being only 3 days younger, was stuck with "You Light Up My Life". How very Father-Daughter-Wedding-Dance.

Speaking of poor Jill, she also had to get some cavities filled, and got the novacaine treatment. Can you tell?

It wore off after a few hours, thankfully.....

Tiny little video windows...

2008-08-06T20:13:00.002-04:00

The last post with the tiger video kind of bugs me. I bought this nice HD video camera to have good quality movies, and it gets shoved in a tiny little window. I'm sure blogger has it's space restrictions. So, for those who have the bandwidth, you can grab a higher quality version straight off the hard drive. It's about standard definition tv quality, so not the original HD, but that keeps the file size to about 45MB, so it won't take an eternity to download.

It's right Here

Please comment if it doesn't work right, or, for the really intrepid, you want to see it in the original HD version. Enjoy!

The Eye of the Tiger!

2008-08-03T22:27:00.003-04:00

Our vacation to San Diego was a bunch of fun. My Grandma had arranged for a nice behind the scenes tour at the zoo there. The best part was definitely the tigers. They had some fairly new cubs there (not even out on exhibit yet), and they were fun to watch. The mom tiger also gave us some nice up close and personal views at the door. Nothing like being 6 inches from a tiger

We also went to the beach, and had a nice birthday dinner for my Grandma, who turned 85. It was great to see everybody on my mom's side of the family. Aidan travelled pretty well, but on a 4 our flight he did get a bit restless. It's not as easy as it was when he was 4 months old and slept the whole way....

We got a nice hi-def camcorder a few months back, and that's turning out to be a pretty good toy. I'm trying out some video editing software, so the video above is my first crack at posting something with that. Making movies and dvds etc is actually kind of fun, so I'll have to put more of that up here.

Fixed, finally...

2008-07-24T21:09:00.004-04:00

Thanks to the warranty on the computer power supply, I'm now all fixed and back up and running.

A few days ago, it was decided that Aidan's achy breaky hair needed to be tamed, so he went for his first haircut. Jill took him to a kid's haircut place, and they fixed him up good. He did pretty well, although the sucker might have helped with that...

He also had his 15 month checkup. He is now 31 inches tall (I'd say tall now, as opposed to long) and 22 lbs, 12 ozs, which is about right on average for height and a little under for weight. He also got his last shot for a long time (until he's 4 the Dr. said), which will be nice. He's done fine with shots, but I still feel for him when he gets stuck.

And tomorrow, we're off to San Diego for a few days with relatives out there. It's my Grandma's 85th birthday party, and we'll get to take a good tour of the San Diego zoo. Should be fun. The wild card is how Aidan will be on the plane. He's flown twice before, but that was back when he slept more, so it could be total chaos. We'll see.

Technca dffcutes

2008-07-09T22:27:00.002-04:00

nthng seems t be wrg s we ths wee.

Translation: Nothing seems to be working so well this week. Including a number of keys on the laptop...

Ok, so I'm having one of those weeks where the computers are against us. When we got home from being gone this weekend visiting friends, my computer wouldn't turn on. Dead power supply, I think. In addition to that, Jill's laptop has a problem with the keyboard (about 8 dead keys around the u, i o, j, k area, as shown in the typing above). I'm only able to type normally here by plugging in the keyboard from the dead desktop.

And work isn't safe either, as the computer controlling our heat treat furnace lost its video too.

Just one painful reminder after another of how much I use computers.

Hopefully I'll get the desktop back up and running again in a few days.

Vacation!

2008-06-22T20:34:00.011-04:00

This year for vacation we decided it would just be the two of us. I was able to sandwich some time between the end of school and getting back to work, and we decided to take a beach vacation. We were on a budget (aren't we all...), but wanted to go somewhere reasonably nice, so we looked into all inclusive resorts in the Mayan Riviera. Which is just south of Cancun in Mexico. We ended up finding some reasonably good deals online through Funjet vacations, which is a giant vacation/tour operator kind of like Apple vacations, where they sell package deals including air, hotel, transfer to and from the airport, meals, and drinks of all sorts for a flat rate.

With what we had budgeted for the trip, we ended up with a couple of options. One was to book a specific hotel there that would have been about a "4 star" rating. The other was to go for the sort of wild card vacation, where they give you a "5 start" rated place for about the same price as all the 4 stars, but you don't find out exactly what hotel it is until you get there.

Now, my logic being that if you knocked the sign off of the 5 star places I wouldn't be able to tell one from the other, I figured that was the way to go. We ended up being put in the Riu Place Mexico, which a number of friends of ours stayed in for their honeymoons.

It was a very nice hotel, although definitely not the newest one in the area it's very well kept. Food was good and endless and the they had lots of good fruity tropical drinks. Corona was on tap everywhere too, which always tastes twice as good to me in the hot tropics as at home. They had a number of different restaurants. They had a buffet for breakfast, lunch and dinner which was well done, and a number of restaurants you could make reservations at for a change of pace. We tried the steakhouse (which had good steaks, but the highlight was a dessert they lit on fire), and a brazillian restaurant with lots of different varieties of meats on skewers, which was really good. The hotel is also close to the town of Playa del Carmen (5 minutes and $5 by cab), so we went there for some shopping and a pretty good dinner at a Mexican restaurant one night. The hotel staff was exceptionally friendly and service was great.

They also had a pretty nice beach. The hotel is actually set back from the beach enough that I don't think there is a good view of the ocean from any of the rooms (we were ground level in the back anyways), and the area near the beach is a palm grove where they have tons of beach chairs to lounge on.

We had great weather except for the last 2 days. On the second to last day we had a storm just offshore, which caused a lot of wind where we were. It did get very dark over the island of Cozumel, which was directly out from where we were, but then we still had some sun overhead, and I thought it made a cool picture of the dark clouds over the turquoise water.

As you can see, the water was beautiful. There were a few fish offshore, but not really much of a reef, so we didn't do any snorkeling off the hotel. We did take the little hobie cat sailboat in the picture out a couple of times, which was fun. Jill was a little skeptical of my sailing abilities after a less than stellar performance in a sunfish (little tiny 1-hull boat) in the Dominican Republic years ago. But, the catamarans are a lot easier, and I feel I have finally redeemed myself, complete with proper tacking manuevers to leave a rather narrow inlet going straight into the wind.

We took one excursion while there to see some sights. We signed up for a visit to a nature area called Akumal, which is an ocean inlet where you can go snorkeling. The Yucatan peninsula is limestone, so all of the lakes and rivers to underground (there is no surface water there), and Akumal is where one of the underground rivers emptied into the ocean. We also went to a cenote, which is where the rivers meet the surface briefly. One was underground like a cave, the other more like a pond. The pond like one had a little cliff to jump off of, which was pretty fun.
Jill was the crazy one and dove in head first. It was probably about 12 feet up or so.

Here's the surface cenote. It's fresh water and actually pretty cool water.

Then, the underground one had some cool stalagtities and stalagmites. But, that was really pretty cold, so it was a quick stop.

Then, we went to the ocean inlet area. For that you swim out and back a little over a mile each way. The fresh and salt water mix, so you get weird blurry areas because of that, but there were lots of good tropical fish. So, it was definitely a worthwhile day trip.

It was definitely a fun trip. After 6 days though, it was good to be home and see Aidan again. He stayed in Michigan with his grandparents, which was nice so he could get to know them a little better. We brought him back a little traditional Mexican outfit, a guayabera. Que guapo!

These days he no longer walks anywhere, he runs. And to take his picture, I set him down, ran across the room, and then tried to snap the photo before he got too close. The kid does nothing but eat and isn't gaining much weight because he gets so much exercise.

I go back to work tomorrow, which will actually be kind of nice to get back to the routine. And Jill will have the fun of chasing after our little nutcase for her summer vacation.

Visitors

2008-06-21T23:19:00.003-04:00

Lynn and Laurel (Andrew's aunt and uncle) were on their way from Arlington VA to a family reunion in Wisconsin and were nice enough to stop by for the night last week. Cinci is a good waypoint for a lot of people on their travels and we like it whenever people are able to stop by (we always have a bed for anyone who needs it...). We were heading out ourselves for vacation the next day (I'll have plenty to write about that tomorrow when I have more time), so the timing worked out well. Aidan seemed to like hanging out with Laurel.

With the cost of gas....

2008-06-09T20:35:00.002-04:00

Here we are, cruising the neighborhood.

"I'm too sexy for my wagon"

The Baby Backpack

2008-06-04T21:10:00.004-04:00

All that time in Boy Scouts and college hauling a backpack through the mountains is paying off!

So, my parents were in town for Memorial Day weekend. We were planning on taking them downtown for the Taste of Cincinnati, which is one of those festivals where a bunch of different restaurants put up booths along the streets downtown and they close off a few city blocks, and you can try out a bunch of sample size dishes from a bunch of places. Figuring the stroller would be a pain, and that it would come in handy later, we went out and got a baby backpack. It works pretty darn well, and has the same kind of load bearing system as a camping backpack, so it's comfortable if you're used to that sort of thing. It also has plenty of room for all of the various baby gear. It does have a couple of downsides, though, namely:

Aidan is a walking fool, so he eventually decides he really wants to run around, and will let that opinion be known loudly. And his mouth is really close to my ear
He does a good job of drinking from the sippy cup back there, until he's done with it and the cup becomes a weapon with which to bludgeon me
Jill's never been backpacking, so she's not used to carrying loads that way. This will probably be a dad only device
While I had no problem with a couple of drinks, moderation will probably be key to success here. Especially since the load back there tends to shift side to side rapidly and unexpectedly. Moderation isn't always such a simple task in a city settled by Bavarians and where beer and bratwurst are always enticing me. Oktoberfest could be trouble...

Overall though, it's been a good purchase. We'll be taking this to San Diego for a trip to the zoo in July. We also took it to the Air Force Museum (which is very cool, if you're ever in Dayton). Now we just need to find some good hiking spots....

Summer is here!

2008-06-04T20:53:00.005-04:00

After a somewhat cool May, summer seemed to kick in hard as soon as June arrived. So, we did what any good parents do, and got the little guy a kiddie pool. It's out on the back deck, and he tried it out the other day. Seems like it's a hit. He's always been a big fan of water (baths, beach, pools, all of it).

Take note of the water level that doesn't even cover the legs...

Along with the start of summer came the first severe weather of the year. Yesterday Jill had to take cover in the basement because the tornado alarms went off, while I was up on the University of Cincinnati campus taking a midterm, during which they told everybody over the emergency system to stay indoors. Then, today we got a repeat of that, complete with tornado alarms and a trip to the basement. It sounds like one touched down a couple of miles away, but we didn't see anything since it was raining too hard. Visibility was down to about a foot. Here's the baby pool now.

That would be a lawn chair in the pool, which is now mostly full. According to the radar, we got about 4 inches of rain in an hour or so. I don't think I've ever seen it rain that hard. It was turning drainage easments into some wild rivers, so I'm glad we live on fairly high ground and a good slope away from the house.

Now, the weather is moslty passed, and it's supposed to get hot and muggy. Tomorrow is Jill's last day of school before summer break, so Aidan will get a pool party at daycare for his departure. Check out the sweet surfer wear.

Should be a fun summer.

Zoo!

2008-05-21T20:01:00.004-04:00

It was time for Aidan's first trip to the zoo. Cincinnati has a pretty decent zoo, though nothing like the National Zoo or San Diego Zoo, I think they do pretty well with the relatively smaller space they have. This time of year they do a zoo babies thing, so we thought that would be worth checking out.

Being only 13 months old, Aidan wasn't too into most of the animals, but some caught his attention. We found the elephants at feeding time, so I think it was the size that really got his attention.

And here's a picture of 3 monkeys...

It was fun, and I'm sure it will be even more fun when he's older and cares more about it. They have family memberships which are a pretty good deal, so we might do that next year.

Cherry Blossoms

2008-04-05T20:15:00.004-04:00

So, as promised here's some pictures from the cherry blossoms. There are a couple of thousand cherry trees down by the Thomas Jefferson memorial (gifts from the government of Japan, so please tell them thanks for us Cheeth) , so we started walking near there.Then, we took a walk around the tidal basin. My mom took a nice scenery shot of the trees with the memorial in the background.It was a nice day and fun to wander around there.

Lately....

2008-04-04T22:09:00.005-04:00

I figure it's been a couple of months since I put a picture of Aidan up here, so I'm overdue. His first birthday is coming up soon (Apr. 16), and he's working on the walking thing now. He's got the crawling thing down, and he's pretty speedy, but not so much with the walking. He can stand up and walk about 12 or maybe even 20 steps, but it always ends with a crash, which doesn't seem to bother him unless something hard stops his fall, like a table or wall corner or something. He walks a little further each day, so in no time I'm sure he'll be a walkin fool. I'll have to get some video of that up here.

We took a trip for spring break (I'm 30 years old and still a college student with a spring break....sad.....) to see the grandparents. First, we drove up to Michigan to see Jill's parents. On the way we stopped at one of my favorite cheap eats, Steak n Shake. For those who may not be blessed with a steak and shake near them, the "steak" part refers to steakburgers which are really just hamburgers, but they are pretty good ones. And the shake, obviously, refers to tasty milkshakes of many varieties. It's a sit down place, but you can get the double cheese burger, two sides, and shake for $5.99 with the sent-out-every-week coupon, so it's a good deal. We hit that on our way north. Aidan has been a big fan of their work for a while now, especially the shakes, so he was showing his love with the hat....

So, if you're in the segment of the country with a Steak n Shake, it's a pretty good way to go for good, cheap eats. They have salads and other sandwiches as well.

We were there for Easter weekend, so Aidan got his first Easter basket. He really made out well, as I remember Easter being a candy only holiday, but he managed to get a couple of presents. He's definitely spoiled.

Next, we flew from Michigan to DC on Monday afternoon to visit Andrew's parents. We also managed to see a number of friends of ours, and Lynn and Laurel too, so it was busy but good to see everybody. Spring has definitely arrived in DC so we went to see the cherry blossoms around the tidal basin. We forgot the camera that day, but maybe I can get my parents to send a picture or two for me to post. We were also able to spend some time with friends of ours who had a baby 5 days after us. It was fun to see how the two babies interacted (Aidan pulling on her shoulder, her crying, him looking confused....good times).

After all that, we flew back to Detriot on Friday morning, then drove home that day so Jillian could go to her grad school class. But, now she's done! YEEEAAHHHH!!!!! We may now call her Master. Or, Master Teacher she says. Right.....

Aidan was excited.

So, that's the fun from Kentucky lately. I'll quit rambling now.

"The Blizzard of '08"

2008-03-09T12:13:00.006-04:00

So, not to be outdone by the Utah folks (we saw your storm post, Cora...) we decided to have our own little snow storm here. And by little, I mean the biggest one in 30 years. According to the nonstop, breathless reporting of our local news, this is the biggest one since the "Blizzard of '78".

We were supposed to get snow starting around 11am Friday, so they had decided the night before already to let school out 2 hours early, at 12:25 for Jill. Being a simple graduate student again, I just stayed home. The prediction turned out to be wrong, and the storm started at 7:30am, and so Jill's school instead let out around 11:30. What was normally a 10 minute drive home took about 40 minutes.

It snowed pretty much all day Friday, heavily overnight, and heavy Saturday until coming to a halt around 3pm. All told, it looks like about a foot or so (I saw 10" in one spot near us and almost 16" at another spot near us, so I figure the truth is in between). We also had up to 35mph winds, so a lot of drifting (you can see the uneven snow line on our deck).

Of course the dog just loved all the snow. She went kind of bounding through the drifts and was running all over our area of the neighborhood while I was digging out. You can just see the look of joy on her face.

It took about 3 hours for me to dig out the driveway after the snow stopped. But we're supposed to warm up into the 50s this week so it should melt off eventually. I made some pretty decent snow piles by the garage...

We're losers, we know....

2008-02-22T15:05:00.002-05:00

So, I've been a big slacker about this blog lately, and really have no excuse. So, since we're iced in today (it's like a skating rink out there....), I figure I can at least post something.

Aidan is crawling all over the place now, so that's entertaining. We took him out yesterday to let him crawl through the snow, before it turned into freezing rain and froze into one solid mass. He didn't seem overly impressed. He'll probably enjoy it more next winter.

I told Jill I wanted to get some cardboard and put his old cranial remolding helmet on him and see how fast we can get going down our hill here in the ice. For some reason, she didn't like my idea......

Happy Halloween!

2007-10-28T20:47:00.000-04:00

Aidan is going to be a dinosaur for his first Halloween. We decided to dress him up early and take a pumpkin picture. We dressed Mackenzie up in her bumblebee costume and as you can see she is less than thrilled about the photo shoot. She had the same costume last year and was not nearly as grumpy about getting her picture taken. Andrew is going to take Aidan to a few houses for his first trick or treating experience. Hope everyone has a great Halloween.

Aidan's First Vacation

2007-09-08T15:17:00.000-04:00

We've been pretty good about taking at least one decent trip a year since we've been together (St John last year, Cancun in '05, Spain in '04, a Carribean cruise and California in '03, Punta Cana in '02), so we were really trying not to break that just because we have a baby now. Of course, overseas would be a bit tough, so we decided to do a beach trip to Florida. We found a pretty decent deal on a condo in Destin, FL, which I knew almost nothing about, except that it's on the gulf coast not too far from the Alabama border. So, we booked the hotel, cashed in the 2-for-1 delta voucher we have, and headed out for Aidan's first plane ride. He did really well, with no ear problems or anything. We had a comically large amount of luggage for a 5 day trip, but somehow managed to lug it all to the place.

He was a pretty good traveler. As usual, he only got mad when he was hungry, which was an easy problem to solve. To their credit, all the Delta personnel were very helpful with regards to him. We flew into Fort Walton Beach airport, which was actually on Eglin Air Force base (you use their runway, then taxi off to a small commercial terminal). It was a tiny little airport, only 3 years old or so, and was very easy to deal with especially with Aidan in tow.

We weren't really thinking, but we didn't take any good pictures of the condo, but it was really nice. It was at a place called the Palms of Destin, which is condos but they're currently renting them out like a hotel would on account of the place being new and most aren't sold yet. I'm not sure how long that will go on for. It was great for having a baby, as they had a full kitchen (very nice, granite countertops even), two full baths, and a nice bedroom and another bedroom which had a set of twin trundle beds. It had a pull out couch too, so you could have gotten 6 people in there easily. Being new it also had nice flat panel tvs (one in each bedroom and one in the main room) and a dvd player, not that we used it. We had a 10th floor room so we could see the ocean from a nice little balcony. The nightly rate was only $109, so definitely a good deal (found on travelzoo.com).

The only drawback was it wasn't actually on the beach, more like across the street. But, the place had probably the nicest pool around.

The pool on the left end of the picture has a gentle slope to it, sort of like imitation beach. Aidan enjoyed standing in the shallow water there.

We spent a couple of days at that pool, being as nice as it was and very convenient with Aidan. But, we did get a good beach day in. The beach across the street is actually a state park, and it had the nice white and and turquoise waters. A very nice beach.

To keep Aidan and Andrew from burning to a cinder in the Florida heat (about 90, not bad actually, but being on bright white sand made it feel pretty warm), we bought a rockin blue Walmart sun shelter, which you can see in the next picture. One nice thing about the gulf coast is the water is pretty warm, and the water has very little wave action. Good for a baby, but terrible if you like to boogie board or anything.

So, it was definitely a good trip and nice to get away for a few days. I'd recommend going there as an easy and reasonably cheap beach trip with kids. The Palms had a number of bigger condos and villas to rent for larger groups. And it's nice for us to know Aidan is such a good traveller.

Mexican Train

2007-08-10T22:14:00.000-04:00

Here's Aidan playing his first Mexican Train game (with some assistance from his Grandma). The game has been a hit with the Garcia side of the family too, since introducing it to them when they came out to Utah a few years ago. Good times....

Pool Party

2007-08-10T22:00:00.000-04:00

Ok, so we're slackers and haven't posted in way too long. Sorry about that....
We were up in Michigan, and Jill's cousins have also had babies recently. That's Ian on the left, our boy Aidan in the middle, and Sebatian on the right. And that same day another cousin, Perrin, was born too. So, on Jill's side of the family there are 4 boys within 3 1/2 months. That will make fore some entertaining holidays. In this picture, the boys are about to hit the pool.

2007-07-04T20:42:00.000-04:00

Happy 4th of July!!

Every year our subdivision has a 4th of July parade. A fire truck comes to lead us through the neighborhood to the pool. At the pool the kids eat popsicles and they can get a closer look at the fire truck. There were extra popsicles so we got one, too. It's a lot of fun.

2 Month Picture

2007-07-04T14:06:00.000-04:00

We recently had Aidan's picture taken for being two months old, and I thought this one was pretty cute. So enjoy!

Stuff

2007-06-07T17:40:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted in a while, so this will have a couple random things.

We've been getting the summer hot+humid nastiness lately, and some decent storms to go with it, which is good since it's been really dry lately. After one of them we saw a pretty good rainbow, so here's a pic.

Yeah, yeah, I can hear what you're saying now. "We don't give a crap about your stupid Rainbow, show us the kid!" Aidan's been doing well, even letting us sleep through the night on occasion. Not bad for 7 weeks. He's pretty mellow and happy usually, except when he's hungry and goes into full riot mode. But that's an easy problem to solve usually.

Now, if only he'd grow some hair....

Baby-Fu!

2007-05-14T21:49:00.000-04:00

This weekend we went up to Jill's family's place. Her cousin Tori was having her baby shower, and it was a good chance to see all her family. Her cousin Trent's wife Jen just had a baby a week before we did, so we were also looking forward to seeing their new baby. So, of course we had to take some pictures. We put them in their diapers on a blanket for a little baby kung-fu action. Or at least that's what the flailing arms looked like to me. It was definitely a cute picture.

Aidan and Ian. Quite the cute pair. It was fun to see Aidan next to another baby since a few things were noticable that aren't when he's just by himself with nothing to compare to. First, he's definitely got that dark complection. Thanks, Mom! And he also seems to have a huge Wessman head. They had just taken Ian to the doctor last week and he came in at 8 1/2 pounds, and Aidan definitely looks bigger. I did the whole weight myself with him then without him thing and it said 9 1/2 pounds or so. Little piggy is getting bigger. It will be interesting to see what the actual weight is Friday when he goes for his 1 month checkup.

Fun stuff. Jill has two more cousins due in the next couple of months, and they're all boys. Aidan, Ian, Sebastian, and Perrin. Holidays will be interesting...

More exciting times...

2007-05-01T12:09:00.000-04:00

So, I'm very excited because that nasty little umbilical cord has finally fallen off. It happened yesterday evening, which was almost exactly 2 weeks, which I guess is typical. He's much cuter with a belly button than what looked like snake skin sticking out of him....here's a picture of him with his little "trophy".

We also had my parents visiting for the last few days. That's always a lot of fun, and my brother's wife Kerry also came up. Here's the family photo. Of course the dog wanted in on the action as well.

More Pictures!

2007-04-20T23:38:00.000-04:00

I've been so busy taking pictures and changing diapers and feeding Aidan, it's hard to find any time to actually post the pictures. But since I have a quiet moment a little before midnight after doing my homework, this seems like a good chance.
Here's one of the first ones of Andrew and Aidan together.

The little guy came out with some pretty good grip strength already. And since he was overdue, he already needed his fingernails trimmed. Doing that was a nervous 5 minutes for me.This next one is so my mother can have the pleasure of seeing me change diapers. Sweet revenge of fate. That's my father in law pitching in.

I just now noticed Sanjaya's scary mug in the background on the tv. Shudder......
This one was taken today. He's doing very well so far, and we're adjusting to his schedules. He eats like a little pig (3-4 ounces of formula or milk every 3-4 hours) and he's already gained back to his birth weight. We had a visit from a home nurse (hospital provides that routinely if you leave within 48 hours of delivery), and she said that was pretty quick. He looks like he has a touch of jaundice, but it should clear up in a day or two. He seems plenty healthy to me, and definitely has no intestinal issues....all I do is change diapers....he's a machine.
Enough rambling from me. I'm tired...

He's Finally Here!

2007-04-17T10:02:00.000-04:00

At 6:58pm on April 16th, Aidan Joseph Wessman decided to make his appearance. Well, not so much he decided as we decided for him, but at least he's here. Almost exactly 7 pounds and 21 inches long. Mom and baby are both doing very well. I think he does have that big Wessman head, but he has long arms and legs. Still trying to figure that one out...
It sounds like we'll be heading home tomorrow. He's been a pretty easy going guy so far, in my utterly uneducated and inexperienced opinion, so hopefully he'll keep that up.

Overdue

2007-04-14T20:16:00.000-04:00

So, our son Aidan has now officially overstayed his welcome. Due April 12th, and still not here. But, he's been served his eviction papers, so if he does not vacate the premises by Monday morning, he'll be forcibly removed. We will be on our way to the hospital 7am Monday morning if he doesn't come before then. And he doesn't seem to be in any hurry. Not that I blame him. The weather sucks right now, and it's warm where he is. And who could pass up a 24/7 all you can eat.
Still, he's got to go....
We'll put up some pictures when we get a chance.

New camera....

2007-03-30T19:49:00.000-04:00

With the child about to show up any day now, we figured it was time to replace the old digital camera. We'd had it since 2002, an eternity for computer gear. The old one was starting to have mechanical issues and wasn't getting along with the recent Vista upgrade. We got one of those tiny digital elph camera's, and it's pretty slick. 7.1 megapixels and smaller than a deck of cards. Now that's progress....
So, of course I have to put up some pictures!
Here's one of the baby's nursury. And one of the flower bed in front of the house. It's been pretty warm this last week, so we have dafoldils up now and tulips on the way. We also have some kind of large shrub/small tree thing with pink flowers that smell really good. I have no idea what it is, but it's pretty nice.

Skunked!

2007-03-02T21:00:00.000-05:00

So, I used to think that the dead skunks you passed on the side of the road smelled bad. The I let the dog out Wednesday morning, and she found a live one to play with just a few feet off of our front porch. It let us know it didn't want to play with her with an assault on the senses I won't soon forget. The dog seemed to catch the spray right on the top of the head. And at that point she decided she wasn't having fun anymore and ran through the front door and up the stairs, where she proceeded to try to rub off the irritating scent on her dog bed.
So, we had to stick her outside and I had to run around trying to find a place that sold skunk spray remover. Bear in mind this incident took place at a little before 6 in the morning. It turns out Walmart and Kroger don't carry that sort of thing. I finally tracked some down at a vet's office that opened at 8:30, and bought some with the people at that office saying "let us know if it actually works....". Skunk-Off it was called. Luckily it did, mostly. After hosing her down with the spray it seemed to help knock most of the scent down, and then I threw her in the shower and lathered her up with some Suave Peach scented shampoo.
Now, she is mostly better, although if you get close to her head you can still get a little stink. And when we walk in the house, it's still a little funky too, but I think it will clear up in a couple of days. I really need to get me a varmint gun...
So next time you pass one on the highway, just think to yourself "At least it's a dead one".

Ice

2007-02-15T19:45:00.000-05:00

Well, another winter storm. This time the temperature stayed around the freezing mark, so we got freezing rain. It encased all the bushes and trees (and roads...) in ice. So, now the trees look like they're made of glass. Kind of pretty. After the storm the temperature dropped, so it's sticking around. The low last night was -1, and the high was about 16, so not much melts. This storm kept us off the roads for a couple of days. I just worked from home. Jill's had Tuesday through Thursday off of school.
It's been frigid for weeks now, so it would be nice to thaw for a few days. I think maybe next week.

The White Death

2007-02-08T20:22:00.000-05:00

People around here can't handle the snow. This was in the paper the day after we got 6 inches of snow. In Utah, nobody would have been late to class. Here, the entire town shut down. I learned my lesson last year when my normally 30 minute drive home took 3 1/2 hours, so this year when the flakes started falling, I just left work to beat the jam. Good thing, since it would have taken even longer this year.
Pathetic...

The family lunatic

2007-01-26T22:02:00.000-05:00

Since I'm playing catchup here....
We got a dog in August '05. She's turning into a nutt. Her hobbies are eating, sleeping, running around like a crazed idiot, and barking LOUDLY. But, everybody thinks she's the cutest dog ever, and she's very affectionate. Which definitely beats the alternative.
So, here's a picture. She's a golden retriever-great pyrenees mix.

He's on his way....

2007-01-25T20:52:00.000-05:00

I haven't messed with this thing in like a year and a half, but we've actually got stuff going on, so here goes...

We're having a son! Due April 12th. Here's a sonagram. We're excited, but we still have a ton of crap to do. His room needs painting, the furniture is in a box or two, and we're both working full time and going to school. Maybe we're really more apprehensive then anything, but there's no turnin back now.

Anyways, I'll try not to be such a slacker.

It's a start....

2004-11-01T10:32:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm not sure what I'm going to put on this thing, but here it is. With everything that might be happening soon, things will probably get more interesting in a little while. In the mean time, here's a little place holder.