Important Notice

We had a doctor's appointment today. While we were there we learned that the hospital where we will deliver is changing it's visitation policies.

The new rules are that if you are not the father or a grandparent you are not allowed in the room. Seriously, that's it. So, if you were planning on coming to visit us in the hospital, then I don't know what to tell you to do. I want everyone to come and try to visit, but don't be mad at us if they don't let you in. It's not our wishes; new hospital rules to prevent the spread of H1N1.

What do you all think? I appreciate the protection but hate that my family and friends will not be allowed in, unless we someone can get around the rule. I guess party at our house 2-3 days after Landon comes...

Wingman Day

I've was busy at work this week. The normal work stuff was going on, but I was also planning one of the activities for our Wingman Day, which is like our team building day. I was part of the planning committee for this day's events; it's one of the perks of being one of the newer people in the office.

A friend of mine that I work with, Wes, and I were tasked with creating an event for the Wingman Day. They wanted something outside, that promoted health and wellness. They mentioned a GPS scavenger hunt or race. We decided to do a GPS Amazing Race event. We began identifying locations and course routes about 3-4 weeks ago. The Wingman Day was going to be held at one of the lodges on base which is bordered by 2 lakes and a wooded campground area, so we had a lot of places to choose from. Also, nearby there are some horse training areas and stables which provided us with plenty of locations.

After a lot of planning, thinking, and decision making, we finalized our course and put it to the test earlier this week using the rest of the planning committee for a dry run. After the test run, we made some tweaks and everything was ready to go for Wingman Day this past Friday. We had told people earlier this month that the course would be about 1.5 miles of walking plus activities, so we didn't expect everyone in the office to participate. Despite the long course, we had a fairly good turnout for our event with 12 people total out of about 50 people in our group. The other people were playing Name That Tune or Family Feud after eating a very large lunch inside the lodge.

Overall I think everything went really well. Some of the challenges involved riding a bike to collect clues in order to solve a brain teaser, others involved using the nature trail information boards to answer questions or keeping your balance while walking on 2 wooden planks carrying jugs of water over and around obstancles. The end of the game came down to 2 teams having to play a game of cornhole (the bean bag toss game) and had to make 3 shots. Team 1 was way ahead until the plank walking challenge. They fell off and had to restart and Team 2 quickly caught up. Team 2 took a quick lead in cornhole, making 2 shots (had to make 3 total). Team 1 rallied and sank 2 shots a few minutes after that to make 3 total and ended up winning the race by about 2 minutes over Team 2. Team 3 was about 4 minutes behind Team 2.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the course and said they want it to be an annual tradition. That's fine with me as long as I don't have to plan it. The logisitics and planning of everything was a lot of work. Ensuring that all the instructions, clues, materials, equipment, and people were in the right place and had the right details was a lot of work. It was fun coming up with ideas and testing them to see if they would work as you expected and thinking through all of the potential scenarios was fun. Wording the instructions properly was also interesting and challenging since there were subtle tricks or ideas that we wanted to leave open to interpretation whereas other situations we had to be explicit in order to prevent a controversy over interpreted rules. The rewards of seeing everyone having a good time and navigating the course you designed was a lot of fun, but I would like to participate in the challenge next year if someone decides to make a year 2 challenge rather than plan another one. It was a lot of work and I'm glad it's over.

Despite the success of the challenge, by far the biggest hit of the Wingman Day was the cake Christi made. She was nice enough to make a cake for the event. I took some pictures of the cake and they are posted below. The logo is the official seal of my office, which is the Warner Robins ALC Engineering Directorate. I had been telling people Christi is a really good cook and does great work baking cakes and other things. I now have about 10 people requesting birthday cakes and more wanting to see pictures of her work. It tasted even better than it looked, which means it was delicious. Her and her mom made the layers and she decorated the cake. All hand made, of course.

Cake top with EN logo

1st Baby Shower

Good morning everyone. Today we have our 1st baby shower at our church, New Heights Baptist (where we got married.) Yes, even though we are looking around for another church, we still consider this our church.

We are very excited to see what we get. We're registered at Burlington and Target, with most of the good things at Burlington since they had better products and a much better selection. Unfortunately, Burlington is on the older and not quite as nice side of Macon. We're hoping people won't mind going over there and looking at our registry there because we liked the stuff much better there, although we will be very happy with anything we get, regardless of what store it came from. We were very surprised at Target's lack of selection and even after registering with them, a lot of our items are no longer carried or are not available in stores. We did not register that long ago and we did not register for any clearance items, either. Basic stuff like bottles, a diaper genie, etc are disappearing. I'm not sure why that is happening, but thankfully everything at Burlington is still showing as in stores.

We've been blessed with everything we have gotten so far and are very excited to get together with some family and friends today. The date is getting very close and we're anxiously awaiting Landon's arrival. The 1st baby shower is just one more thing that makes you say, "Wow, I'm about to be a parent", "Holy crap, I have no idea what I am doing", and "What the heck are all of these things we registered for? I don't know what their purpose is." I know, I have a lot of learning to do and it will probably come the hard way. It should be fun. At least it will give me a lot of good stories to write about...

After the shower I'll post some pictures (if I remember to put the camera card in.) Time to get ready for church. Have a good end of the weekend.

Things not to say to a pregnant woman

In case you're wondering, no I did not say what I am about to write about. Rather, it's something Christi tells me all the time people say to her.

What is this I am talking about? It can be phrased many different ways, but it has one meaning - YOU'RE GETTING BIG. Frequently used similar terms / phrases include, but are not limited to the following:

• You've gained weight


• Dang that shirt is working hard


• Wow, you must be due soon


• Are you having twins?


• You sure are getting big


• That is going to be a big baby


• Be careful not to knock that picture over with your belly


• etc

You would be surprised how many people say these things. I'm certain most people don't mean anything by it, but telling a pregnant woman she's getting big is not a good idea. Why you ask?

First of all, she knows she's bigger than she used to be. She has another person inside of her - it generally causes your belly to get larger. The baby will put on a lot of weight in the last 2-3 months and she knows it will affect her. Second, one of the struggles of being pregnant is the weight gain and how it affects your appearance. I know she's asked me many times if I think she looks fat or if I think other people can tell she's pregnant and that she's not just fat. I've talked with other fathers / expecting fathers and they said their wives went through this as well. It's generally not a good idea to comment on how large a pregnant woman's belly is getting. You wouldn't comment on a non-pregnant woman gaining weight, would you? It's the same principal. With everything going on, the last thing they want to hear is that someone else thinks they are as big as a house.

So what can you say? If you know the person well, you already knew they were pregnant. In that case you will have noticed the size increase. Since you are close, you can mention that she looks like she is progressing well, etc. If asked by the pregnant woman if you think she is fat/large, it's usually best handled by noting that yes, she is larger than before, but the baby is growing and that she looks great (because she does. Pregnancy is beautiful.) If you don't know the person well, usually it's best to ask when she is due. This is great because it lets the pregnant woman know that you can tell she's not fat. From there you can transition into easy conversation about anything. One footnote - if you happen to ask someone you don't know when they are due and they are in fact not pregnant, you're on your own.

I hope everyone has learned a valuable lesson here today. I'll have some more pregnancy wisdom later.

Wedding Weekend and Other Events

We spent the holiday weekend just south of Savannah for my best friend Kam's wedding. I was a groomsman in the wedding and had to be down there a day before the wedding. Since it was a holiday weekend, they decided to have the wedding on Sunday instead of Saturday. However, that turned out to be bad for a lot of the groomsmen and other attendants because many places were not honoring Columbus Day as a holiday this year. Thankfully, Christi and I both had the day off.

Christi was furloughed on Friday, so we had initially thought we would drive down to Savannah Friday night and hang out there and arrive at the wedding location on Saturday. We decided against it though because it was easier to relax Friday night and drive down Saturday morning. Before we left, we stopped at Cracker Barrel and ate breakfast. They have a few new breakfast places and they were delicious! The ones we had were the cinnamon apple struesal french toast and the chicken biscuit breakfast. Both came with eggs and bacon. Very tasty. They also have a new healthy breakfast with eggs, bacon, yogurt with almonds, apples, and something else. I was going to get that, but I couldn't bring myself to because I had every single thing in my refrigerator and I hate paying for something like that when I could have easily made it myself.

After a delicious breakfast, we mad the trek to Midway, Georgia. The wedding was to be held at a converted farm that had a huge amount of land. The name of the place was Palmyra Plantation. When we got there we thought it looked nice and quaint. Next to the entrance / parking area they have a giant pen with an ox named Northern Spy in there. He was huge and his favorite food was apples; I fed him some later in the day.

Saturday we got settled in our room, which was supposed to have a king bed. Technically it did, but it was 2 twin beds that were pushed together. We did not get keys to the room, which was odd and somewhat unnerving. We were booked to stay there 2 nights and definitely wanted to have keys. We had gotten the impression that we had to stay at this location and everyone else would be staying there as well. As it turned out, we were the only couple staying there that was not part of the family. That is, her parents, his parents, and his sister and brother-in-law stayed at the farm, but the other couples did not. A few of the single wedding party split a room at the barn, but everyone else stayed up the road at other hotels, which turned out to have more amenities that our room. I'm not complaining, but to be a bed and breakfast on private land that was 4-5 times the room rate of all the surrounding locations, we expected more. Not only were the only couple staying there that night, we were the only PEOPLE from the wedding party staying Sunday night as well. Again, we had gotten the impression that we should stay both nights. No big deal, but some miscommunication I guess. We ended up talking to the owners after the wedding Sunday night and they let us leave without charging us for that night. They were very nice and the location was beautiful, but we were ready to go home.

The rehearsal dinner was at a local crab restaurant, the Shell House, and it was really good. After the dinner we wanted to watch the FSU-GT game but they didn't want to change the tv's from LSU-Florida. After talking with the other wedding party, the guys (minus the groom and groom's brother) went back to other hotel and watch the game. The reason we did that is because despite having 13" tv's in our rooms at the barn, there was no satellite or cable. We managed to watch the 1st half of the game, which was crazy because of all the scoring, before heading back to the barn. It was late but when we got there we found the groom and groom's brother huddled around a computer. Apparently the barn had WiFi and they had brought a computer and were streaming it on ESPN360.com. We all watched the rest of the game and cheered the Jackets onto an exciting yet worrisome victory.

The whole weekend everyone was talking with Christi about Landon and making sure she was comfortable, which was nice. I've known Kam since I was 4 years old and I know his parents really well. They are both very nice and it was good to see them again. They had to move to North Carolina around the time we graduated high school and we haven't been able to see them much since then. His parents were especially cordial to Christi and wanted to make sure she had everything she needed. Their oldest daughter has a 16 month old son, Drake, who was also there and we spent some time talking about babies and how exciting (and how much work) it is to be a parent. Kam's dad was trying to get me to talk Kam into having a grandson right away. I don't think they are planning on that anytime soon, though.

The day of the wedding we were busy getting things ready for the ceremony and reception. We did manage to squeeze in some volleyball and play a game of washers earlier in the morning. Despite raining most of the day before, the wedding day had excellent weather and was beautiful. There was a large crowd attending and although it was a bit hot, everything went well. Right after the ceremony, after the wedding party was leaving, a piece of moss fell from the tress (there were big oak / willow trees everywhere) and almost nailed the preacher. Good sign? I hope so.

The reception had some good food, but it was overall OK. The appetizers were the best (crab cakes and fried shrimp) and the best entree was the barbecue with a side of mac and cheese. They had a band that was pretty good. The best part was the best man, a friend from college, singing their first dance song. He also sang during the ceremony and did a great job both times. Kam, the guy who was getting married, and another friend discover that the best man, Brandon, could sing really well during college. He had never really sang before until they started playing guitar together one day. Pretty cool. I think the best part of the weekend, besides seeing my friend getting married of course, was being able to catch up with a lot of college friends who I haven't seen too often since graduation and see what they have been up to. It was good times hanging out with friends and I definitely enjoyed that.

The newlyweds were leaving to go to Charlotte to catch a flight to Nevis that night. The ended up leaving about 1 hour before we expected them too, and after that the reception ended suddenly. There was one middle-age couple who were way too into the dancing. Well, really it was the guy, who was doing a bunch of crazy moves and grinding / getting his wife to do some stuff that she didn't really look like she wanted to be doing. Very weird. Anyway, after the reception we left and headed to the hotel where everyone else was staying. The reason we did that was because my brother, Blake, is in school at Georgia Southern and I had told him we would be in town and wanted to see him.

The next day, Monday, we slept in late and then drove to Statesboro to see Blake. He's a civil engineering student there and had just got out of his physics class. I was happy to hear that he is doing well and he made an 85 on his test that had a class average of 47. I always try to get him to go to GT, but he doesn't want too. He's not a fan of Atlanta. Anyway, after talking some we went out and ate a great lunch with some good conversation. We don't get to see Blake too often, so it was good to see him that day and catch up with him some.

On the way back home it rained very hard, but Christi slept through it all. I hate driving in the rain, especially on I-16. The 18-wheelers always kick up so much spray and drive very fast in the rain regardless of how hard it's raining. My Accord is just the right height for them to splash a lot of water on my windshield. Awesome. We manage to make it home safely.

I know you are wondering something. We went to a wedding out of town and stayed at this Plantation with beautiful scenery and livestock outside of our room. We attended the wedding and a reception of one our best friends and also went to see my brother while heading home. Where are all the pictures??? The answer - there are none. It's my fault. I packed the camera in the case but left the memory cards on the computer desk. Epic fail.

We had a good time but it was a busy weekend. Thankfully the short work week allowed us recover some during the week, but this weekend is going to be busy as well. Christi is at the Mossy Creek Festival with her mom and I'm at home getting some work done on the cars. After lunch I am leaving to go to the GT-VT homecoming game! Tomorrow we will be going to a new church, so hopefully that works out well. We've been to a lot of places and found some that we like, but nothing has seemed to fit, yet. I may be playing soccer Sunday afternoon, but it will depend on how dry the soccer field is.

This post is getting huge. That's what happens when you wait an entire week before updating! Stay tuned for more updates, thanks for reading!

Georgia Tech - Georgia

I heard this earlier in the week, but I wanted to post this and get everyone's opinion of it.

Apparently the athletic directors at Georgia Tech and Georgia are in talks to play 1 game, either in 2010 or 2011, at the beginning of the season. That is, the normal end-of-the-year rivalry game would be played at the beginning of the season, ala Miami and FSU. Personally, I don't like it at all. I love having this game at the end of the year and I think with our offense we will always be better at the end of the year. Of course, the pro to it for GT is that Georgia always has several players suspended for the first game of the year.

It appears they are doing this in response to the Chick-fil-a Kick-Off Classic that has featured several big name SEC and ACC teams playing in the heart of Georgia, which is a big recruiting advantage for them. It seems that they are working on this as a 1 time trial and if it is a success could become a permanent change. I think it would be played at the Georgia Dome every year, so it would be a neutral site, which of course means it will be 30,000 GT fans and 60,000+ UGA fans. That's another reason I don't like it.


What do you all think? I know I have some GT and UGA readers (that never post in the comments!) Am I the only one who hates this?

Landon, Friends, Family and some updates

I finished watching The Office. What a great episode.

I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted. A lot of things have been going on since I last posted. The main thing we have been doing is getting ready for Landon. We registered at Burlington and Target for some gifts. The countdown has reached single digit weeks, which is a little terrifying to be honest, but at the same time is very exciting because I'm ready to see him. I think we've bonded more over the last several weeks. When I first felt him kick, about at the 18 week mark, it was random and I had to wait on Christi to let me know when he was kicking. Lately, if I talk to him he will kick and anywhere I put my hand he will start pushing back against it. Pretty cool. The other day he was hurting Christi and I told him to move to the other side - and he did! I'm not making that up, and I really didn't think he would listen, but he did.

Speaking of Christi, Landon is causing her some pain. She's definitely having some stomach pain and discomfort from Landon growing. She did have a pinched nerve in her lower back, but thankfully it seems to have gone away. One of the big things right now is her feet are swelling a lot (her being on her feet all day b/c of her job doesn't help.) He is also poking her a lot. Since he's getting pretty close to his birth length, she is getting a lot of Landon's knees and elbows poking her. She was telling me other day they play games while she is teaching. If she is sitting and can feel him pushing against her, she will push his elbow or knee or foot back. She'll leave her hand there and he will push back against her. They do this all day. I'm jealous.

Other people have been able to feel Landon as well. It's cool to watch the reaction of someone else when they can feel him kick. It's like it suddenly becomes more real than it was before. It's crazy.

Besides Landon, we've been keeping busy hanging out and going over to our friends house. Last weekend I played in my high schools Alumni game vs the current high school team. Surprisingly, the Alumni won. We never win. We had some good players (I'll include myself in that) who were in decent shape and really took it to them. Typically the Alumni team is really good for about 10 minutes and then trying to not to die of exhaustion for the other 70 minutes. We played really well and won 5-3. We were up 5-1 and screwed around for the last half of the game. It was a lot of fun.

We've also been able to spend a lot of time with our family over the last few days. We watched the Georgia Tech - Mississippi State game at the Grizzard's house. We also spent the majority of the Sunday hanging out with them, which was fun. They've been really great to us and are very excited about Landon coming. It's awesome to see how excited everyone is about the newest family member. My family is excited as well, especially my mom. We haven't been able to spend as much time with them as we would like, but when we do we have a good time. My grandparents are also very excited. They are the ones who bought us the stroller that we love. They also came over recently to see Landon's room in person. I think everyone is a little surprised we were able to do that room ourselves (with help from Mr. Mike.) Overall I'm very pleased with it.

This could be much longer, but it's getting late. I have to stop waiting so long in between posts. Hope you all have a good, long weekend. Check back later for more updates - thanks for reading!