Hey there, internets

It's been a minute. I'm writing this in Vacaville, California. My wife is pregnant with the second child - a boy this time! And my little girl has progressed all the way up to walking around the house and saying precious things like, "shoes", "twooooooo?", and "daddy".
Oh, and I'm buying a house back home in Silsbee, Texas. Weird how life changes in just a few dozen months, huh?

Here's how the whole house-buying thing went down.

We realized that there's a free $8000 floating around for first-time homebuyers, so we decided to start looking. In the course of looking an awesome house came up for sale really close to my mom. Of course, the owner was asking way too much for our budget. So we looked some more and found a really good house in town with a pool, hot tub, nice-looking, cheap, plenty big, etc. We made an offer and didn't get that house because they decided to sell to a "safer" buyer.
Disappointed with all the remaining houses, we pretty much decided to cut our losses and wait for something better to come onto the market. In the mean time we would save up some more cash for down payments and such.
Then the owner of the first house came back into the picture. Guess he talked with a realtor and they weren't going to put the house on the market for nearly what he originally offered. So we found a reasonable middle ground and the rest is history.... hopefully.

We close in 10 days. The wife and baby are going to be there beginning sometime in August (I think) and stay until #2 comes along. I'm going to try and find a way to get back home more.
The current project is only allowing one trip home per month. It's been working out okay because the wife and baby are here too. It'll be more difficult when they are not here with me. I miss them severely when they're gone. Who knew I was such a family man?

Til the next time, internets.

quarterly blog update for Q1 - posted late

On March 5, 2008, after many hours of labor and more than a few tense moments where we thought a C-section may be needed, my beautiful daughter was brought into this world. We named her Emma Jane. She was 7 lbs. 14 oz. and 21.5 inches long at birth. Since then she's nearly doubled her weight and lengthened herself by about 3 inches. Did I mention that she's beautiful?

I'm not going to post pictures of her... oh who am I kidding? I can't help it. I've been sending pictures of her to every person with an email account that I've come across since 1998, when I got the AOL and started internetting it up. I'm smitten with her and she pretty much ignores me unless I stick my tongue out at her, in which case she smiles big and sticks hers out too. We've been bonding.

Here she is.

One of the many cool things about having a baby: when I'm holding her I am totally allowed to fart... out loud even.

In other news, we are still in the STL area, but have moved away from our previous house. Thanks (many, many thanks) to our landlord's negligent handling of a completely broken sewer line, we were able to break the lease and move into a much (much, much, much, etc.) nicer place. We got nearly double the square footage (and a basement! and a garage!) for $100 more per month.

As for work, it still happens pretty regularly. I'm splitting time between 2 projects and working on getting another one set up down in DFW. If at all possible, we would really like to move back home and be near my family. The problem is that jobs in my industry just don't exist there. At least not in the immediate vicinity of my oil-industry-soaked hometown.

As for the wife, she's pretty much bounced back from the whole pregnancy thing. She is looking good and doing a fine job of putting up with me. (hi, baby). She's also doing a wonderful job for a first-time mom.

All-in-all life is great. Things are quite different than when I started this blog. And that's absolutely fine with me.

insert cliche about how long it's been since we talked

So... I'm having a little girl in March (see the picture?). no, it's not like that episode of The Cosby Show where the males get pregnant ("it's a sloop with 3 masts") ... my wife will actually be doing the child-birthing, but I'm still involved and stuff. We're naming her Emma Jane. Emma was The Wife's choice and Jane is a family name from my dad's side.

Married life is pretty damn good. I think being a family man is what I was meant for all along. It helps when you're totally in love with your wife and stuff. Cause that's probably the deal breaker. If you're not in love then marriage probably sucks.

So you know, I'm typing this in my in-laws RV in Brazil (Indiana). It's a big one with a gas heater that crapped out on us last night. it was frigid when I woke up this morning. Indiana is cold right now, but there's no snow.

In other news, we are moving to St. Louis next week, so from now on you can find me in Saint Lou-ay, where the gun play ring all day and some got jobs and some sell yay while others just smoke and fuck all day.

I don't think that stuff will be happening on our cul-de-sac though.

Work is good. It's going pretty well. A bigger bonus would've been nice but it still beats the $50 gift cards we use to get at the old job. Plus it was pretty much all my bosses idea to move us to the STL (that's what I like to call it - that or "The 'Lou") and they paid for the relocation, which is awesome. He's really trying to take care of us and I appreciate that.

And last but not least, the DALLAS COWBOYS are doing fairly well. Don't know if you heard, but they're 13-2 (that 13 wins and 2 losses... which were fluke lossses by the way). Tony Romo is definitley bouncing back, just like I knew he would...

Til the next time I get a few beers in me with nothing better to do....

All hitched up

I am a married man.

It was a beautiful wedding and everyone had a good time. I'm glad it's over so we can relax some now and concentrate on getting this baby out of my wife. Here is a good pic of the rehearsal so you know what it looked like. Maybe when the photographer's pics get here I will post more. Hold your breath. Y'know, since I post on here so often and everything....

Cowboys won a shootout tonight against the Giants. We were there and I screamed my voice away. The offensive play calling was good. The defense was not.

If Eli "The Face" Manning can throw that many TDs against us we might be in trouble.

I'm tired. Just wanted to give you a quick update and leave you with this....

Left-to-right, that's my uncle (mom's side; he married us), my cousin (mom's side; he sang), my great-uncle Bob (PawPaw's brother) and my PawPaw (father's side).

First, notice the look of shock on Bob's face. That is his picture-taking pose.

Now notice the fancy dress shirts my Bob and PawPaw broke out for the wedding.

Bob's is a whitetail deer pattern with forest background. PawPaw's is a bunch of moose silhouettes.

I share genes with these people.

All we need is the 12-gauge

Kind of got some big news. Sort of a life-changing day this past Thursday.

It started out like any other day. I went to work. I worked. I drove home from work. Jess was making her "pshghetti", which is awesome by the way (she used ground italian sausage).

And we were standing in the kitchen looking at Willie and tasting the sauce when she drops the bomb on me.

"I think I may be pregnant"

like whoa.

smiling cause I had an idea this could happen, I says, "wow. I'm going to be dad? that's going to be expensive...". My humor does not recognize proper timing.

So she took a few (4) more home pregnancy tests just to confirm. All came back "pregnant".

Before I knew we were pregnant I was going to save some money and pop the question around Thanksgiving or Christmas. This little incident sped things up a bit. So we got engaged now and we are getting hitched at my grandparents' place in Creede, Colorado over Labor Day weekend. Should be really nice if the weather is good.

I can't believe it's really happening but I'm excited. To think, I'm going to be a daddy and a husband. Holy crap, I'm getting old.

We got our rings yesterday and my Uncle Quincy has agreed to perform the ceremony, so that will be awesome.

Here are our rings. Her's is a 2 carat combination engagement and wedding band with 3 diamonds in the middle representing past, present, and future and a "cascade" of smaller ones extending to midway around the band. Mine is grey.

Willie the Wimp

He's a mama's boy.
He's scared of his own treats.
And he shits in the corner when we're not looking.

But he loves to play fetch.
He's an excellent lap dog.
And he makes me laugh.

Also, I COULD blame him when I rip a nasty fart. (I could, but why would I?)

Back to Texas

Jessica is all moved in at 6230 Farrah Drive. We made the 16 HOUR drive this past Saturday dragging a U-Haul trailer that kept us from going over 70 mph the whole way. It was not fun.
But she's there now and I'm in Indiana for the last (work-related) time. Hopefully...
I'm really glad she made the move. It's the first time I've lived with a girlfriend.

I had a stone cold reality check the other morning when I woke up and looked under my sink... THERE WERE TAMPONS IN MY BATHROOM. Not just one or two, or even an empty wrapper in the trashcan. There was a big pink box staring up at me. That's when I knew it was for real.

So I said I wasn't getting another dog right away after Mak passed on. I had all these ideas that I wouldn't be able to replace the "Best Dog Ever". I didn't want to heal. I wanted to silently mourn him a good year or two.
But I couldn't just leave Jess at home all week completely alone... and I really missed having a dog around.
So we went to a couple of animal shelters Monday morning just to look around and see if anything caught our eye.

The first place didn't really have any dogs like she was looking for (small-to-medium, fun, housebroken). I was secretly only looking for one kind of dog -- old, blind, grumpy, and smelly. They just don't make them like that anymore.

The next place was just down the street and smaller so I didn't have high hopes. We walked in and asked if they had any smaller dogs.

The lady said, "We have some Chihuahuas" (I almost walked out right then.)
"... and a Schnauzer." (I peed a little bit.)

They opened the door and I saw him in his cage. I would've taken him right then but we decided to look around anyway. I didn't really even consider the other dogs, but they all deserved a chance right?

So we went back in and got him out to play with. Once Jess was sold on him I was so happy. Here he is -- Willie Mays Hayes.