Autumn Leaves

So its the end of the semester ...... that went by fast. This semester was good, but insanely busy. I taught a number of research classes, along with all the usual tech/web projects I am working on, plus the whole customer service thing. I really am looking forward to the time off for Christmas. It will be exciting to have family in town, and to take a little time to get out of the "routine."

Milo is going great, he is keeping us on our toes by getting into everything. He started crawling backwards at about 5 months, and is now mastering the art of crawling forward. He has also started pulling himself up on things. I had to lower the crib today because he was pretty near to being able to pull himself up out of the crib. Everybody that sees him comments on what a happy baby he is. I don't have any pics to post right now, I'll try to do some of that on the next post that I make ......... that will probably be like 5 months from now. So in the meantime I hope everyone has a nice Christmas and gets to spend some time relaxing.

Ferret Math

Anyone who has owned ferrets or been around people that do for any significant amount of time have probably heard the term "ferret math." Ferret owners are unique in that they constantly find themselves in situations where the number of ferrets in their household is always changing. When ferret owners use the term ferret math it is usually with a smile and what they are really saying is that they were only planning on owning 2 ferrets, and somehow now they have ended up with 4, or 6 ........ or 10. But ferret math also can have a sad connotation, in that ferrets can be prone to getting sick, and they are also prone to getting themselves in trouble because of their extremely curious nature, so sometimes ferret math refers to losing a ferret.

We recently experienced ferret math when our ferret Kyzer got sick. We lost another ferret a couple years ago, Lola, to cancer (lymphoma to be exact), and turns out Kyzer had the same cancer. He wasn't showing any signs until this last Monday night, and then it just took over very quickly, I had him at the emergency vet last night, where they kept him overnight, and this morning I took him over to a exotic pet specialist, but by then it was too late, and Kyzer didn't make it.

As anyone who has been around ferrets knows they are each very unique and have their own little personalities, Kyzer was a very interesting and funny ferret, he loved his toy snake with the squeeker in it, he always had to make sure his snake was safe, and would hide it, and walk around with it in his mouth all the time. I could always count on Kyzer to give Kristin a little nip now and again, just to keep her on her toes. : ) Kyzer also liked to watch me play the didgeridoo, but then again everyone likes the didge.

So now we have only one ferret left, Jezy, she was actually the second ferret we got and is close to 6 years old now. The pic on the left is a picture of both Kyzer and Jezy, I am holding Kyzer and Kristin is holding Jezy.

Endless Summer

So its been a while since the last post, and I suppose you could say I've been busy. I am back at work and getting back into that routine after some time off, Kristin is still off for the rest of the summer so she is home with Milo. I am sure that is what most of you are wanting to know about , he is doing great, he is getting a little chunky, and we are continually surprised at how fast he grows.

He has lost his "newborn" look for the most part, I think a lot of that has to due with his hair growing in, which at this point looks blonde, but sometimes it seems like it has a little bit of a red tint to it. He is well over 12 pounds now, and when we went in for the last checkup he was little bit over 21 inches tall. He enjoys playing with his mom at home and listening to music, even the worship leader in the band I play in at church noticed how attentive he gets when we start playing, he seems to like acoustic guitar a lot, and he also seems to enjoy Creedence Clearwater Revival and Zeppelin (maybe someday we will be treated to a trio rendition of the Immigrant song with Milo's cousins).

Another thing he really likes is the didgeridoo, if I play the didge and I put it close to him he will move his feet and put them under the didge so he can feel the vibration.

He makes us laugh everyday with his perfectly timed smiles and the conversations he seems to hold with himself. We had a good fourth of July, just kind of hung out at home and watched the fireworks from our balcony in the evening.

On other exciting news we got a new car, I had to sell the green 2 door Civic I had been driving since we couldn't fit the car seat in it, and when Kristin and I both go back to work we need 2 cars that can hold the car seat. So we ended up getting a used 2007 Toyota Rav4, we got a really good deal on it and it has only 24,000 miles on it and is still under factory warranty because its only 2 years old. It is a blue color, the official color on the vehicle description is Voodoo blue, whatever that means.

Other than that, as I mentioned before, I have been back to work for 3 weeks now, I am getting back into the work routine, and starting to get a lot of projects done. The summer is usually the time that I spend working on webpage projects or other technical projects behind the scenes because I am not constantly bombarded by research help requests from the students. So I fell a little bit behind when I was off with Milo, but am catching up quickly, and hey the more I have to do the more secure the job is right!!!!!

Some of you know we have been looking for a home for the last month or so, we have found some nice places and put a few offers in, but nothing has worked out as of yet, we found a home that we had an offer accepted, but the inspection didn't go as well as we hoped and since the home was bank owned, the seller was unwillingly to drop the price or fix the issues found in the inspection so we withdrew the offer. We are still on the hunt, we know there is a place out there for us, I hope we are able to find it this summer though so we don't have to move when we are both back working. That is what is going on for us here in SD, I'll try and not let so much time get away before my next new post.

Look out World

Saturday May 16 4:30 am - I am awoken by what must be the most traumatic sound in the whole world ...... my alarm, seriously, if I hear the sound my alarm makes at any point in the day other than when I am sleeping it makes my skin crawl, if I hear it when I am sleeping I have annoying dreams until I figure out the source of my aggravation ..... that is either here nor there though and some of you are probably wishing I would get to the point, while others of you may be wondering what the hect I was doing waking up at 4:30 am. Well I had to take my coworker to the airport because she was flying to Guam for PIBC's TRACS visit. So I drop her of at Lindbergh Field make it home around 6:00 am, just in time to see the highlights of the Mancheseter United Arsenal game, which ended in a 0-0 tie, but it was enough for Man U to win the Premier League this year, just in case you didn't know.......

Let me back track in my story a little now....... in case you didn't know my wife had been pregnant, here is a picture (now all of you who kept asking for a pregnant picture can stop hassling me......Mom), I can't remember how far along she was when this picture was taken, but I would say about 8 months. So ... let me see.... oh yes Man U..... right ...... so its now 7:45 and I think I hear somebody stirring in the bedroom so I go in and see if Kristin wants any breakfast or anything ...... aren't I the sweetest guy ....... which she says she will get up and get because she can be kind of stubborn sometimes, she had been complaining the night before that she was feeling uncomfortable and we decided to call Triage, and while she is on the phone with them asking questions her water breaks, which the tell us we need to come in, but it would be ok to eat breakfast first, this is about 8:00 am. So we get into Triage around 9:30 am, they take her right in, and within 30-45 minutes we are in the delivery room. So this whole time the nurses had been asking Kristin if she was having contractions, which she said she had a few in the car, but she didn't really think so. So they hook her up to the monitor to watch her and the baby, and the nurse says well there I am seeing that you are having contractions, says when Kristin would have had one and Kristin says "Oh that is a contraction." So we are hanging out in the room and about the point she gets to 4 cm, the contractions are very intense and she get an epidural. The epidural works great and we are able to just hang out and talk, watch tv and read (basically all the same stuff we like to do at home) the doc came in at one point and laughed and said that was the first time he had seen a woman reading while she was in labor. So we wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait...... did I mention that we waited a long time. About 8:30 pm the nurse comes in and says ok you are ready to start pushing, that Kristin is going to push with her and then when the baby is closer to coming out the doc will come. So she says to wait for the next contraction and we'll start, which before that happens she gets a call and says that we'll wait for the next contraction when she gets back, she has to take care of something. So she comes back in about 5 minutes and says the people in the next room had to have an emergency c-section, so the doc was going to be with them, and we'll wait to start pushing for 30-45 minutes. They turn off the pitosin, or whatever they were giving Kristin to speed up her labor since her water broke sort of early, and we wait and wait and wait ..... we really didn't wait as long this time, but it felt long. So the nurse comes back in about 9:20 or so and we start pushing. Kristin does 3 or 4 sets of pushes and everything is good, then out of the blue the nurse hits a button and says she needs another nurse in the room right away. She starts moving Kristin all around, adjusting the bed trying to get Kristin at a different angle, in what seemed like a second there was 6-8 people in the room looking at the monitors, putting an oxygen mask on Kristin, moving her around, and I am standing there thinking what in the world in going on. So the doctor finally gets Kristin in a good position and I notice on the monitor that the heart rate of the baby which had been low was now back to what it had been throughout the labor. The doctor says that the baby is under stress and we need to get him out right away. So we (the doctor) ended up have to vacuum the baby out with a suction cup looking thingy he puts on the baby's head, which then forms a vacuum so he can pull while Kristin is pushing. So he does this and Kristin does 4 pushes and the baby is out. He had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck twice, and really throughout the labor they kept saying he seemed like a "sleepy baby" so I think the nurse might have suspected that the cord was around his neck. But he came out, he had (has) a bruise on his head where the suction cup was, it looks like a yamika right now. But he came out and everything was fine, mom and baby were (are) good, we stayed in the delivery room for a couple hours and then went up to the recovery room where we stayed until Monday morning. So we are home now and adjusting to life with a baby and so far everything has been going good. Here is the info for the baby (birth). Our son is named Milo Draven Owen, he was 7 pounds 3 ounces at birth and was 19 inches long. He was born 9:47 on May 16. This makes things particularly easy on me as his birthday is May 16, Kristin and my anniversary is July 16 and Kristin's b-day is Sept. 17 .... oh and my birthday is July 24 (hint hint hint). So here is what most of you are interested in probably the pictures. The 3rd picture is Milo getting his hearing test. So everything went really well, even though we had a brief 15-20 second scare towards the end of the delivery.

Spring Madness

So I was threatened with bodily harm if I didn't include pictures in this post, ok maybe not with bodily harm, but I was threatened with a certain somebody self censoring themself from this blog if I didn't put in pictures, and since it is strict policy of mine not to negotiate with threatening demands, there will be no pictures in this post. MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (thats maniacal laughter in case you didn't know). Actually the real reason there is no pictures is that it seems that every chance I get to make a post I don't have my flash drive with me that has my pics on there.

This semester is stretching me right now. I have more things to do and less time to do them at work, which is making things a bit stressful. Enrollment is down at the college, and last week we had some lay-offs, so we have less library employees, which means I've picked up a number of new responsibilities, while at the same time having my hours shortened a little bit. Thankfully, I agreed to teach a computer class for the adult program, which starts in April, so even though I am losing hours, because of that I am not losing a lot or any income, and of course since I have less hours I get some extra time off, which is nice. At least things look very positive for the Fall semester, the college has many students interested in coming here for Fall, so the attitude on campus is that once we get through Spring everything will get back to normal.

Things at home couldn't be better, everything is going great with Kristin's pregnancy, we are having fun getting the bedroom ready, we bought a crib on Monday, and have gotten a nice shelving thing to keep books and toys in, I took a huge load of things to the Goodwill and now my closet and music room (or baby room I guess) is starting to take shape.

I played drums at church for the first time on Sunday, and realized that my drumming skills are VERY VERY rusty. I haven't really been able to play my set in close to 2 years, so it was a bit of a challenge, playing 4 new songs that I had never drummed to before, after not playing drums at all for a while, and then only having 45 minutes to learn the songs on Sunday morning. So it was a little rough, but it came out ok.

So thats a quick summary of what is going on in S. Cal, more posts and yes even pics at some point to come.