Chicago to Connecticut

We actually did make it all the way to Connecticut! Nate was such a trooper. We really were blessed in the way that he didn't scream the entire trip like we had feared so much.

Continuing with the story...we went into downtown Chicago for a few hours and loved it! First we went to the Sears Tower which was cool. It was nice to be so high and to get such a great view of the city and Lake Michigan. The only bad thing was that we were there for a little more than an hour and it cost $30 to go to the top and $30 in parking!!! Outrageous!



Then we walked through the financial district and ate lunch. Rob and I both love city living and it was so fun to walk along the busy streets full of skyscrapers and pedestrians and cars and all the sights and sounds that go along with them. It just makes you feel so energized and in the middle of all the action. We ate at a cool place called Potbelly's and had some good eats with the locals.

We continued our walk through the city down to Millenium Park along the Magnificent Mile. There is such amazing archetecture there! It was really fun to practice our photography skills with such interesting subjects. The Chicago skyline is also very beautiful.

After Chicago we kept driving until Youngstown, Ohio where we stayed for the night and then made it to Connecticut the next day. Finally! It took us five days, but we made it!

After all the craziness of the trip, we are glad to be home with our family and familiarity of Utah. We'll get more pictures posted in the coming weeks. So check back!

Day 3 and Counting

We just finished our 3rd day of driving and we are exhausted. We're over the hump, though. Two more days to go!

Yesterday we drove from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Council Bluffs, Iowa. The highlight of that day was our stopover in North Platte, Nebraska where we went to the Fort Cody Trading Post. I liked this store because it reminded me of so many times on vacations growing up that my family would stop at one of these places in the middle of nowhere for a break. There were things to buy like moccasins, raccoon hats, toy guns, key chains, and tons of other funky little things. I remember looking at all the cool stuff with my brother Mark and we would all try and find a cheap souvenir to take home. What was also nice about this spot was that since it was a fort, there was a totally enclosed space outside where Nathan could run around and get all his two-year-old energy out. He had all kinds of fun things to explore like a tepee, covered wagons, a giant 40-foot indian, a jailhouse, and lots of rocks. Since it was all fenced in, Rob and I could just sit back and watch him be curious. It was great. Another stop we made was to Mormon Island State Park. I don't know what the significance of the place was, but it was very pretty with lots of large trees and hills. One thing we learned this day...it is NOT a good idea to bring BBQ back to the hotel room and try to eat dinner there without a high chair...

Today we drove from Council Bluffs, Iowa to Tinley Park, Illinois (just outside of Chicago). It was a long day where not much went according to schedule, but we're fine and we made it. The good news is that Nate slept for a whole hour in the car!! That's twice as long as ever before, if you can believe it. We're excited to make a trip into Chicago tomorrow for a couple of hours and will let everyone know how it goes.

Love you all!

Day 1 of the Eternal Journey

Today was the beginning of our long trek acros the country. We drove from Layton, UT to Cheyenne, WY. Boy, what a beautiful ride... Nah, it was pretty dull. But the good news is that Nate made it without a tantrum. He really enjoys the portable dvd player and we got out of the car every couple of hours to run around. We went to a McDonald's in Rawlins and there were some weird little kids there. One of them kept wrapping himself around Rob's leg and wouldn't get off!! They were so strange that Nate wouldn't play with them and even ran to get away from them. I've never seen him not like another kid! So that was our excitement for the day. We'll keep you posted on the days to come. Wish us continued luck!

It's a Girl!!!!!

Drum roll please..........It's a girl within 90 percent certainty!!!! The 90 percent is included because we had the ultrasound done a couple of weeks early; however, Julie's doctor is very comfortable saying that it is a girl! He are very happy and excited!

Yet More Pictures

This is a continuation of a previous post where I put up a ton of photos. We have taken a lot more and some (very few actually) of them were taken with our new Nikon D40. We are very excited about the new camera because it will allow us to take better pictures as home, take more pictures for our families, and take more artistic pictures.

It has been really strange to take work with the pictures from our new camera and then to edit some older pictures taken with our L6! The pictures from the new camera look sooooo much better.

Similar to the previous post, I'll go through a few sets of pictures to get us up to date (well, almost).

Near the end of June we took Nate to Lagoon for our ward lagoon day. We had lunch in the pioneer village and Nate had a fun time running around there.  We got some ice cream, played around the town, checked out the toy train museum (Nate loved this).  Then we went on the Lagoon train ride and had a really fun time! Nate saw a bunch of animals and the engineer let him touch the train! Then we decided to try Nate on the merry-go-round and that didn't to too well. After just a moment he started feeling queasy and we had to move him to an animal that didn't move up and down!

In September on a nice Saturday morning we took Nate to the Tracy Aviary. The aviary is a lot better than I remember; it looks quite updated. We saw lots of cool birds including a condor, eagles, hawks, waking birds, and even jumping birds! The main attraction at the aviary is the bird show (which we didn't see) and the parrot encounter (we elected to do this instead). Nate had such an amazing time at the encounter. He was a little nervous at first when the birds started landing on his head and eating the fruit from his hand but he got used to it quickly had had a blast! Unfortunately, the batteries in our L6 died and we didn't get any pictures! AHAHAHAHAHAH! We'll try again.

The following weekend Julie & I went camping at the Granite Flats Campground near Tibble Fork Reservoir in American Fork Canyon. We went up right after work and luckily found a good camping spot. Julie is the master fire-starter in the family so we decided that I should try this time. I had a really hard time keeping the fire going! We wondered if the wood was still a little wet or something. Finally we got it really going, then proceeded to cook some awesome hotdogs over the fire (Nathan's Brand)! We cooked some marshmallows and made s'mores.

The next morning we got up early and took the hike to Timpanogos Cave! Julie is pregnant but still made it up with no problem! The cave was really interesting and we took some cool pictures that all look the same.  It isn't really something that you can capture photographically.  We did have a very nice time though.  The weather was very nice.  We were there early enough that it was not too hot and the trail was not crowded at all.

A few Saturdays back, Julie took Nate and I to a cool playground in fruit heights called Castle Heights (this is funny because our downtown apartment building had the same name)!  This is the playground of all playgrounds!  It was designed by children fro children and it is a giant castle!  They even have a toddler area made just for kids of that age!  I basically don't have anything bad to say about this place.  Here is a map.

View Larger Map

There are a few more random shots that we have added to the September Photo Set.  We wanted to try out our new camera so we went to the backyard with a ball and had a good time!

Enjoy!

The Office on Amazon's Unbox Service

Julie and I are ecstatic for the return of The Office.  Last weeks opener was sooooo funny!  We never seem to be home at the same time on Thursday nights so we always buy them from the apple store.  This season we decided to try Amazon's Unbox Service. 

First of all the quality of the Unbox video was very good (better than the apple store video in my opinion).  The price is the same at 1.99 and amazon actually lets you download your purchases whenever necessary so you don't have to keep them on your hard drive all the time!

The player actually isn't too bad; the interface is easy to navigate, I'm not sure if it adopted my black them from XP or if it is black to begin with but it look sweet!  I'll update this post if I run into any problems with Unbox or if I feel the need to sing it praises as I get some more time on it.

Recent Pictures

It has come to my attention (thanks to Julie) that I have a bunch of pictures from the summer that either didn't make it to Flickr or were not referenced here on the blog.  This post should remedy that and I hope you enjoy the pictures.

For the 4th of July we invited my parents up to dinner and for some early fireworks (so Nate could see them).  We had a good meal at Cafe Rio followed by some fun at Layton City Park (great park by the way).  During the day, my parents mentioned that I hated fireworks when I was little and they predicted that Nate would act the same way.  Sure enough, when it came time to start the fireworks, we started slowly with some smoke bombs.  Nate was a little nervous for the first one or two but he liked them.  The next two got a little crazy and did some spinning and Nate did not approve of that; he started crying like crazy and saying, "no, no."  Being undeterred I decided just to try a small fountain but the crying just got worse.  Anyway, it was a fun day!

A few days before the 4th we went up Logan Canyon for Nate's first camping trip.  We were well prepared and felt somewhat confident that we would last the night.  After setting up camp we walked down to the Logan River (about 100 feet away from the campsite) where Nate played for hours!  He had a great time playing in the warm sun and cold river!   We set Nate up in his port-a-crib and checked his temperature throughout the night to make sure he was ok.  Sure enough, we all made it though the night and Nate's first camping trip!  Go Nate!

On July 17th my office company party was held at Wheeler Farm.  We had a good time and the food was also very good.  My office has a band called Deadline Effect and we played at the party.  It was really funny and here are a couple of pictures from the show.  LOL!  I try to figure out how to post video here when I get a chance.

NBC, Apple, and Amazon

Earlier this week, negotiations between NBC and Apple deteriorated resulting in NBC choosing not to renew their contract with Apple to distribute their shows in the I-tunes store after the end of the year.  Although the contract does not end until the end of the year, Apple added fuel to the fire by canceling distribution of the first half of the season via the I-tunes store. 

One or two days later NBC and Amazon announced that NBC's programing would be available via Amazon's Unboxed player.  The unboxed software currently does not support the mac platform.  All in all, a huge slap in the face to Apple and a big loss for us. 

I manage all of my music and video in the I-tunes and I will be really annoyed later this month if I have to buy the Office from Amazon and watch my shows using their clunky player! 

It is not perfectly clear why negotiations between Apple and NBC broke down; Apple indicated that NBC wanted to increase the price while NBC responded that it was a bundling and cross-promotion issue.  Since the shows on Amazon are still 1.99, it sounds like it may be a classic case of Apple pushing too much.

I don't feel that I can only blame Apple since a contract with Amazon was so quickly implemented.  It is clear that NBC had been working in advance with Amazon further indicating their desire to diversify the market.

We'll just have to see how the story develops in the coming weeks but I really hope that Apple will take action to get the Office back into the I-tunes store!

 

UPDATE

It seems that Apple my be trying to lower the price of the TV shows sold on I-tunes to 99 cents per episode......Interesting......

Story

All Gone Alarm

Nate has recently been learning more and more words.  He understands a ton of different words but has a hard time saying them.  This weekend he started doing something pretty funny.  Whenever he finishes eating some food or finishes a glass of water or juice he exclaims, "All gone, All gone, alllllllllllll gone."  He yells this over and over again about eight times!  It is oh so cute!

Living with a Pregnant Wife

Julie is a very fun person to be around.  She is smart, funny, and can even be silly from time to time.  When she is pregnant things tend to get a little more interesting.  She is still smart (although pregnancy brain does occur from time to time), even more funny, and still very silly from time to time.  The most interesting part of watching Julie cope with pregnancy is frustration with food.  This excerpt from her journal is very typical of her daily struggle with finding something that sounds palatable and desire to eat something that really satisfies. 

I've been craving the Desert Edge Brewery's Szechwan Chicken Pasta Salad and Parisienne Eclairs like freaking mad!!  I start to daydream about them until I salivate and my stomach rumbles.  I sure hope to be able to satisfy those cravings one day.  It just drives me crazy!

Thankfully, Julie is going to be eating with a friend of hers at the brewery mentioned above next week!  The parisienne eclairs will have to wait another year when we hope to take advantage of Delta's planned direct flight to Paris out of SLC international!  Hold on Julie!