Our blog sucks...

I promise there will be some good posts soon.

Shoes, shoes, shoes

My grandmother passed away last week (you can read about her here and here) and among other things, she left a legacy of shoes. Literally. Well over 200 pairs of them. The problem? She's a size 6. After the size-6-footed female relatives had scored dozens of pairs each, the remaining mountains of shoes were up for grabs. Us big-footed relatives wanted a way to remember Grammie and her shoes also.

Meredith and I came up with the following:
Shoe art! What could be better? It was surprisingly difficult to find shadow boxes deep enough to fit shoes, but after that challenge was overcome the real creativity began.
My brown/navy themed piece. That navy shoe in the middle is a Ferragamo. We figure Grammie must have bought it when the Italian-designed-and-produced shoes averaged less than $800 each. Grammie was proud that she never spent more than $20 on shoes.
Meredith's red/black/white piece. Yes, all these shoes were my grandmother's. We hardly made a dent in the shoes left.
A piece of shoe art we made for my mom. Sorry to ruin the surprise, mom! I can promise you it looks better in person when the flash isn't reflecting off the glass.

Commuting With Carly

Come with me as we explore the sights on my way home from work.

1. On-ramp stoplights
Look closely at those signs. How did no one notice the typo?

2. High quality billboards
Spicing things up since 1990!

3. Center Street off-ramp
The bane of my existence. This off-ramp doubles my commute time. I won't complain too much since that time is 12 minutes.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I do each day!

Correction- Daniel's surgery is going to be April 30th, not May 30th. (For all those of you who care)

No Fun

That is what I will have this summer. Zero fun. After the great summer of '08 (lots of sports and different activities to keep us busy) I fear that '09 will be the anti-summer of '08. I say this because I scheduled my ACL surgery today for May 30 and that means that the next few months will suck for someone who has their fun by playing sports. The biggest disappointment is that I can't play kickball this summer and if you recall from our posts last summer I really enjoy kickball. That means that I will never reach the pinnacle of kickball like our friend from previous posts so clearly did in this picture.


After my surgery I will be bored for a while so anyone who gets bored is more than welcome to bring me a slurpee. I will also accept any other food donations. In fact feel free to make these donations at any point in time before or after the surgery.

It's a Boy!!!!

That was a test to see who actually reads our blog posts because we are actually going to have a girl!!! The doctor said she will never say she is 100% sure of the sex, but after seeing the ultrasound myself and using my 5th grade sex ed knowledge of the female anatomy I too concluded that we were going to be having a girl. I was so excited and had visions of my daughter spitting up on me, doing funny things like Elly, and playing basketball. And after that brief moment of excitement reality set in.

These are a few of the points of reality that I have thought of since this morning. I will judge them on a scale from 1-10 with 1 being "I guess I can handle that" and 10 being "What have I done".

1. I will be pooped on multiple times. I give this a 1 mainly because I expect to get pooped on. I may even laugh. I don't know why it took finding out the sex to think of this, but it wasn't an issue until today.

2. My daughter could possibly dislike sports and all that has to do with them. I give this a 5 because sports takes in most of my hobbies, but out of love I would try to get over it and enjoy my daughters hobbies. (I reserve the right to change my ruling to a higher number if my daughters only hobby is watching musicals. No worries though cause her mom and her would watch them together.)

3. My wife could spend all of our dough on cute stuff for this kid. She already sent me links to baby girl dresses today. I give this a 4 because I don't want to spend the money, but Carly is a bargain shopper so I figure I can deal with it with limited annoyance. The fact that when I told my mom it was a girl she said, "Let the shopping begin," makes me think this little girl will have more than enough clothes. (A boy would have been great because they are easy. All they need is shirts with dinosaurs and animals, but now it will be flowers and stuff like this.)

4. I am now outnumbered in my house. No matter what I say I will now be out voted. I give this a 6 because I can handle it, but it sucks because unless my girl loves watching sports I will never get to pick what to watch. (This does however help my future argument for a man room with a good tv.)

5. My daughter will date at some point. I know this is a part of life, but there is a lot of riff raff out there. I give this a 7 because I am sure it will be fine, but there is just enough of a chance she will date losers that it causes some stress.

Clearly there are many more things I could have thought about that are much more important than what I have listed, but those are the things I thought of. Now that I have babbled on for way too long I will introduce you to baby girl nielson. Ignore the immodesty of one of these pictures.

Crotch shot.

Here is our little alien. The face is sideways.Legs. I told Carly to give her more room in there. She needs room to stretch out in the picture on the right.

D-Day

Today I decided that from straight on I don't look pregnant. Daniel laughed at me. After I saw the picture I laughed too. What do you think?
Sometimes it all seems fake. Then I am faced with the reality of pictures like this. I guess I understand now why people keep asking me if I am having twins or if I am further along than I think. Nope, no multiples, and still 20 weeks. Just a short torso.
We bought a used rocker/recliner for the baby's room on craiglist for $60. Daniel loves it and he wants it in the living room until the baby comes. Where can we fit a big chair in our living room? Nowhere. There is about 6 inches of space between the back of the chair and the coat hooks. When the chair is reclined there is no space.

Oh, and Nielson fetus = boy or girl? 38 hours and counting....