Well, here goes nothing. If this worked right, you should be able to view the ultrasound we had on Friday, right here in this post. It's a wmv file so as long as you have Windows Media Player (which if you are running Windows you probably have it), it should work. If you have a Mac, get Windows Media Player 9 HERE. I've been messing with the video alot so it loads quickly for me right now, probably because I have it cached. I would expect that you may have to give it a minute or two to load up but it should work. Post a comment and let me know if it doesn't work for you.

* Edit: Due to some confusion, I thought that I would clarify that there is no sound with the video.

Without further ADO, the ultrasound

We had our doctor's appointment today and I bet you are all waiting to see if you made the right selection in our poll. Well........if you chose 'girl'

you were.....WRONG! Jen and I were wrong with the rest of you, so don't feel bad. We are having a boy! He was moving around a lot during the ultrasound so the nurse had to really work to get the pictures she needed to get. She told us he is healthy and is right where he should be at this stage of the pregnancy. He currently weighs .95lbs.

So below are the pictures of the ultrasound that we were able to keep. I am hoping that I can get the video of the ultrasound up on the blog here in a few days. Here are the pics!

Here, his head is to the left and you can see his eyes (closed) and his nose. If you click on the picture and see the larger size, you may also be able to faintly see his ribs.

Not really sure how the nurse was able to do this one, but this pic is from behind the baby. You can see his eye sockets and eye lenses in this picture. You can also make out the spine. I think this is a really cool picture.

Here is the definitive pick that tells us it's a boy. If you follow the arrow...well, you get the idea. It was kinda funny but when the nurse first started the ultrasound, as soon as the picture came up, he was flashing us! Luckily we were wanting to know if it was a boy or a girl and not wanting to keep it a surprise. You can also see his hand, just to the left of the arrow. He was reaching down to grab his... foot. (get your minds out of the gutter!!)

In this picture the nurse actually labeled the body part because it was a little harder to make out. Right above the word 'FOOT' is, well his foot. Pretty much all for this picture.

Here is another shot of his face and this time his eyes are open. You can see a little black dot where his eye is and that is the lense. I think it looks like he is laying on his back and has his head turned to the right to look at the 'camera'.

So that was our trip to the doctor. Like I said earlier, I hope that I am able to put the video of the ultrasound up here in some form or another. It may end up being a link to click on to watch it but I am hoping to actually have it so you can view the video right on the blog. Now we have to figure out a name for the little kid. We'll definitely post what it will be once we decide. That's all for now folks!

Well, I flew an airplane for the first time today. No, not a Microsoft Flight Simulator plane, a real life, honest to goodness airplane.

Jen had bought me a "Discovery Flight" gift certificate as a graduation/birthday present. I got to use it today and she went with me and took pictures. Here are a few of them from the flight.

This is the gift certificate for the flight.



Here we are going over a few things before taxiing to the runway.



We are next up to take off!



We have lift off!!



The colors from the air were really awesome.



Here's the Mall of Georgia from about 2000 ft in the air and about 140 mph.



We flew over and made a few passes around Lake Lanier.



Here we were turning right over the lake. Even though it doesn't look like much of a banking turn you can see from how much the pilot and I were leaning that it was a pretty decent banking turn.



This picture gives a better idea of the bank of that right turn. It's a weird but neat feeling at the same time when you look to your side and you are actually looking down.



Here we are heading back getting ready to land and you can see the airport runway. This is out the left side of the plane. I actually got to perform the take-off and the landing.



Here's me and the plane we were in. It's a Cessna 172R with 160 hp fuel injected engine. I had a blast! It just re-enforced my desire to someday get my pilot's license. The instructor said that I flew well enough that if I had a log book he would go ahead and sign off for .6 hours of flight time towards my license. So of course a bought a log book. .6 hours down, 39.4 hours to go! ;-)

On the way

On our way to MO for Thanksgiving we saw these cool clouds in Tennessee during sunset.

Maybe some gold?

On the way home we saw this rainbow. Hopefully it shows up.

(Edit: looks like it came out ok. It was actually REALLY bright and the colors were extremely vivid. You could also see both ends of it. It was the most intense rainbow I've seen in a really long time.)

Welcome Jacob to our family!!!

I was able to meet Jacob this weekend when Debra* and Ben came to visit. Ben lives about 3 1/2 hours away so they were able to fit us into their very busy 'tour'. Jacob is now 2 month old. He loves to bounce and has a fixation on ceiling fans! Debra looks great, of course! and It was great to meet Ben.

Welcome to our family!


(*Tony Edit: For my family that doesn't know who Debra is, she is one of Jennifer's cousins that live in New York/New Jersey.)

No, He isn't mine!!! :)
Jennifer getting some well needed practice and
appreciation for my quiet time right now!

Debra on Mommy duty! Jacob loves baths and Debra is getting good at baby bantering moms must do!

Debra with a baby!

Wow who would have thought! :)

Bye Jacob! We will miss you.

Grow big and strong.

Keep mom on her toes!

One of my co-workers gave me this picture of the three of us. We can't do Halloween at our school but we had a storybook parade. (Yes there were spidermen and Dora's among our preschool crowd!) So we decided to dress up as Eric Carle books. Karen was the Grumpy Ladybug, Jane the Very Hungry Catepillar, and I was the Very Busy Little Spider. We had a great time. Some other Storybooks were The Three Little Pigs, The littlest Scarecrow(s) and more we had a great time!

Clown Car

Not sure how this will show up. I was following this car and it was made up to look like a toy car, complete with the thing you would twist to make it go. That thing actually spun around too.

I know it's a little late. I do have an excuse though. There comes a time when you have to reload the operating system on your computer. This past week was that time. I just finished it all up this weekend so can now post some pictures from Halloween. This first one is of Levi dressed up as a ninja. He kinda reminds me of Sub Zero from the Mortal Kombat games.

Here's Emily dressed up as a Princess with her glowing wand. She was more intrigued with the glowstick than she was her original wand so she just used it instead.

This one is of Bryson (Brandi and Cam's son. They are some friends of ours we met through Tom and Gretchen) dressed up as Dash from The Incredibles.

Beauty and the Ninja?

New Awning

Well we've got our new Sunsetter retractable awning installed now. Jennifer's dad and stepmother came up from around Columbus, Ga. to help us. It actually wasn't too bad to put up, surprisingly. We were very thankful for their help.

Here it is finally

I am finally posting the picture I was talking about from the hockey game this past Saturday. We were kinda far away for my camera phone. It was nice to be at an NHL game again.

Well, it obviously didn't go through. Saturday I had gone to the Atlanta Thrashers home opener with my cousin Aaron. I had taken a picture with my phone during warmups and tried sending it from the arena. I thought it had gone through but I never did get a confirmation back saying that it had posted. Turns out, it's because it hadn't! I'm at work right now and do not have a cell signal in my building but after work, I'll try posting that pic again. Was a great game. Thrashers ended up winning 8-1 over the Washington Capitals. They were up 5-1 in the third period with about 10 mins to go. At that point there was a pretty cool fight. Actually there were 3 different fights going on at the same time. One fight even ended up underneath a goalie net. After the fight Aaron and I left for the Marta (same as the Metro-Link for those of you back in MO.). While waiting for the train I got a text message with the final score. The Thrashers had scored 3 more times in those last 7-10 minutes. Oh well, at least it wasn't like Washington came back to win it or something.

Oh, interesting note for those of you that follow Blues hockey. Found out that a couple ex-Blues now play for Atlanta. Scott Mellanby and Ronald Petrovicky. Mellanby had at least 1 goal and an assist in the game and he is actually the Thrashers' captain as well. Hmm, maybe I can do like I did with getting a Drew Cardinals jersey to wear to Braves games. I can get an old Scott Mellanby Blues jersey to wear to Thrashers games!!

Baby shower for friends

Our small group was having a baby shower for some friends. They are having twins. The whole Thor and Diesel thing is an inside joke. It's not the babies real names. Those would be Preston and Landon.

Here are some of the pictures taken at Levi's soccer game yesterday. The first is right at the beginning of the game. The last few were just some I took of Tom (Levi's dad and my uncle) while he was coaching. Thought I would have a little fun with him. Not sure who the unofficial winner of this game was. Levi's team scored alot the first half but the other team scored alot the second half. So I guess...call it a tie.

Just a couple of pics of the whole team on the sidelines.

You guys need to go this way!

I said go this way!!!

No no no!! I really meant THIS way!

Hey all! Sorry there hasn't been any updates in awhile but not much else has been going on. Jen has been understandably tired the last few days. Actually in the last couple of days she has started getting the sick to her stomach feeling. She is doing ok though.

We are going to be going to Levi's soccer game again today. I'm taking my older Minolta 35mm camera to take some pictures and finish off a roll of film that has been in it forever. Once I get those developed I'll post a few of them up for y'all. (Hey, I live in GA. now, I can say "y'all" if I want to.) Actually I am going to be putting that camera up for sale on ebay probably. So if anyone may be interested and wants more information about it, just let me know in the comments section.

You probably also noticed that our blog has changed it's look. I have to give the Castruccio's credit for that. I saw their blog and that they had changed up their look and I thought that it would be a good idea to do that to mine as well. I was getting a little tired of the circles anyway. (So yeah, I copied you guys!! ;-p)

Big News!!!
Many of you already know but for those who don't Jen and I are pregnant!! We found out in August but haven't really started making it widely known till just the other day after our first Dr.'s appt. The appt. went really well. The baby is healthy and our due date is April 21st. Jen is doing well but is just really tired alot right now. She isn't really getting sick but her stomach does hurt sometimes, especially in the evenings. We'll I'm sure there is more that I'm supposed to tell everyone but you know how us guys are, we never have all the information. Check out the pics below and I'm sure if I left out anything, Jen will post it soon.

Here are the pictures of our first ultrasound. In each of them, the baby is upside down. You can make out his/her tiny nub legs at the top. The second picture also includes a picture of the sound of the baby's heartbeat. We got to hear the heartbeat at the time. Definitely strong! At week 20 we get another ultrasound and for that one they told us to bring a VHS tape and we will get a video of it plus the sound of the heartbeat. I am going to try and make a video file from the VHS tape and hopefully be able to make it available on the blog for everyone.

Realized today that I had forgotten to put a Gas Prices icon up for Houston. So that has been added. There are no icons for St. Charles, St. Peters, or O'Fallon MO. so I just added links for those areas right above the Gas Prices icons on the left. Clicking on any of those links or icons will pop open another window that will show the location of the gas stations with specific gas prices. Just trying to help us all find cheaper places for gas. It's a calling.

I haven't been able to find anything for gas prices in/around Salem, MO. or Weeki Wachee, FL.

To answer the question I'm sure you are all wondering....at least my mom was. Officially no one won the soccer game. At this age they don't keep score. Unofficially though, Levi's team won. I don't know the exact score though.

Levi in goal
You can click on the pics to get a larger version