I'm 10 months old today!

A lot has happened this month. I have a total of 4 teeth so far, I can crawl and sit with the best of them, and I've started pulling up on things. I predict that by 11 months I'll be walking.

Transportation day

One of the local churches has a transportation day where they have over 40 different vehicles that kids can check out. Lauren is checking out a fire engine in this picture.



The real star of the show was the helicopter. You can see the helicopter coming in for a landing which sounded cool until you realize that it's landing on a gravel dirt area. We didn't actually get to see it land because I was shielding Lauren with my back from the blowing debris.



You can see the dirt patch and all the family and kids on the perimeter.



Lauren was really excited to sit on the school bus.



There was even a flyby.



Good old fashion transportation. Lauren was excited about the horses although she wasn't the only one.....



She had a helmet on but it kept falling off. This particular shot was a staged photo after they had already removed her helmet.



Unfortunately time was running short so not all the "kids" could check out the vehicles.



Future pilot?

Happy Chinese New Year!

Watch out Dole!

Slicing fresh pineapples is a pain. You have to make so many cuts and then you have to remove the eyes etc. so I bought this pineapple slicer/corer. I wasn't sure it would work when I bought it but after using it, I'm glad I bought one. You cut off the top of the pineapple and then just turn the slicer into the pineapple. The slicer removes the core and slices the pineapple as you turn it.


Then you just pull the pineapple slices out. If you wanted to do a fancy presentation, you could fill the empty pineapple with some food.


Perfect pineapple slices just like out of a Dole can. :)

New car seat

We recently bought another car seat, Sunshine Kids Radian65SL from Albeebaby.com since Cole is starting to outgrow his infant carrier. We really like our Britax roundabout but the one bad thing about them is that they are really wide. You can't fit 2 of them side by side. The Sunshine Kids car seats are highly rated and have a slim profile. They are also really heavy since they have a steel frame. In this picture you can see the Radian65(left) next to the Roundabout(right). Notice how high the Roundabout sits as well as how bulky it looks.

Would you do it again?

The answer is no. We decided this time around to put up a temporary pool fence instead of a pool net like we did in our last house. The net is great because once it's on you never have to worry about the kids getting past it. But the problem is that you need to have the discipline to put it back on every time you take it off. This didn't always happen. The other issue is that you can't clean the pool when it's on. So now our old pool has a nice ring of algae around the edge.


Here's the before picture without the fence.


Here's the other side. The pool fence is by Pool Guard.


Here's the before picture.


One of the reasons we went with this company was that they were going to make an additional fence piece that would jut out from the wall a few feet so that you couldn't swing around the fence. You can see the extra fence in this picture.

Telephone or Network.....

Our new house was wired with Cat5 wiring throughout the house but unfortunately they were all connected for telephone lines. Who uses a land line these days? Since we don't have a need for a telephone, I converted the wires to be network lines by adding some connectors and plugging them into the router.


Here's the Ethernet cable crimper I had to buy in order to put the connector on. It's surprisingly easy to do. One problem I ran into is that there are 2 standards for how you arrange the wires in the connector. You can see the standards here. I wired one outlet with the wrong standard but it still worked fine. I'm not sure why but as long as it works, I'm not complaining.


Here's a before picture of our network panel.


Here's the after picture.

I'm 9 months old today!

I'm crawling now! I bet that's why we moved. They knew I needed more space. There's been talk of a gate to keep me confined but I think they are just bluffing. I also started daycare this past month and I've had a runny nose since. I had my first fever after just 2 weeks at daycare.

New house = New projects

We moved into a new home right before Christmas. While the house is an upgrade in many respects, it also has lots of things that need changing. The thermostats are some of them. The house had these non programmable thermostats which might work if you are home all day but we needed something you could program.


I installed two Honeywell visionPRO 8000 touchscreen thermostats. I bought these off eBay for the price of a lower model at Home Depot or Lowe's. The nice thing about these is that you can set the fan to a circulation mode (turns the fan on 3x/hour) to help keep the rooms the same temperature.

Another bathroom remodel

I know what you are thinking. I thought they were done with remodeling their bathrooms. Well this one was for my mother-in-law. The vanity and top were all ready so all I had to do was demo the old stuff and install the cabinet, countertop, and faucet.


Here's the after picture.

I'm 8 months old today!

A lot has happened this month. As you can probably tell, I'm not at home. I'm in Vegas! Not bad for my first trip. I also got my first tooth this past month and my 2nd one is about to come in. We also moved into a new house just before Xmas. I still can't crawl but I predict by next month I'll be crawling all over the place.

Wild Wild West

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, we decided to checkout the gila river farmer's market. There weren't many vendors (you see almost all of them here) but the cool thing about it was being located at Rawhide - a western town. Highly recommend the $5 breakfast if you go.





What's a visit to the wild west without a horse ride?




This isn't Thomas.


The farmer's market even had a pie eating contest, pumpkin pie of course.

Zoo Lights

Here's a picture from the ZooLights at the zoo. Basically the zoo decorates the park with lights.


The Zoo has a member preview where it's only open to members. One of the benefits is the free carousel rides. Lauren loves riding the carousel.


Cole enjoying the lights from his cozy carrier.




The gorilla actually travels across the vine. I set a long shutter so you can see all of the action at once.

I'm 7 months old today!

Can you tell what I'm doing? I'm pretending to be a crab! Don't I look just like the crab on my shirt?

I see you!

To Do list

Since I'm staying at home till the New Year, I created a To Do list for things around the house. The first one was replacing all of the ugly brass in our house. The last remaining brass pieces were the door thresholds and sweeps. Here you can see the before. This one doesn't actually look too bad since it matches with the door but for consistency I replaced it.



Here's the after picture.



Here's an after picture of another door I did. I replaced a total of 4 doors. Each door took about 2 hrs to do. I usually could finish a door a day since Cole would nap twice for about an hour each time. By the last door I could finish in about an hour.



Another item on my to do list was to replace the Saab's worn out trim. The material they used in the trim didn't stand up to the desert sun.



Here you can see the installation of the new trim piece.



Here's the after shot. It looks so much better now.