I’ve been trying to get caught up on web site updates and I’ve made some progress in the last week or so.

First up was pictures from Alex’s baseball playoff game. I didn’t take any pictures during the regular season so when we had our first playoff game I figured I had better take a couple.

Next up are pictures from the Chick-Fil-A Cow Appreciation Day. Once a year Chick-fil-A hands out free meals if you come in dressed as a cow. Alex and Andrew really got into it and they decided to go with a Star Wars theme. (Imagine that.) After dressing up in their cow costumes they made up name tags with their ‘Star-Cow’ names and headed out for free chicken.

And lastly I finally got around to pulling together the boys yearly pictures. We took them ages ago but it was really difficult going through them to pick out the better ones since a bunch of them just don’t come out. I tried to take them early in the morning so the sun wouldn’t be beating down on us but then the trees in the backyard cast harsh shadows so that part of the body is in bright sun but then the face is all dark or vice versa. Anyway, here are Alex’s pictures and Andrew’s pictures.

This week we tried giving Caroline her first rice cereal and I have to say that she was not a real big fan. I’m pretty sure Alex and Andrew had the same reaction the first time they tried it but eventually they came around. You can see all the excitement here.

Friday night Alex, Andrew and I went to the Frisco RoughRiders game. It was a 7:00 start but even at that time it was about a 100 degrees out and by the time I ended up walking around the entire stadium looking for the will call window I was covered in a layer of sweat. Earlier in the day I had a larger lunch and between that and the heat I wasn’t even hungry but the boys were sure able to pack it away.

When we arrived they both got hot dogs and a drink which they followed up with ice cream in the third inning. (Not real ice cream though, I couldn’t find any in the whole stadium but they had those ridiculous ‘dippin dots’ stands ever couple of feet. I assumed that the dippin dots people probably had some type of exclusive deal with the stadium to deprive us proper ice cream.) In the six inning Andrew kept saying how hungry he still was and so it was off for nachos and a funnel cake. Nachos, it’s a 100 degrees out! I’m not sure what his fixation was with nachos but he wasn’t going to let me leave until he had some.

I took a couple of pictures of the boys during the game and since Andrew was getting a little tired he just kept telling me to “take another one” and he’d make a goofy face, we’d look at it and laugh, and we would do it all again. There’s a couple of them below.

Keeping with the baseball activities Alex finished up his baseball season today with two playoff games. They had a morning game which he played really well and got a hit for an RBI and then scored a run. They won the game in the last inning with an in the park home run that scored three people which kept us alive to come back and play in the second round of the playoffs in the afternoon. In the second game he got two doubles which is the best hitting he’s had all season. I took a bunch of pictures but I’ll need to sift through before I can post them online.

After two long years I finally took the time to put together a new picture collage for the home page. (I think it was Deanna who told me the one from 2007 was getting kind of old.) I used to construct them by hand using Adobe Photoshop Elements which was really a pain since I had to find the pictures and then manually cut and paste them all together, and get them in the right spot so it’s fits together. It used to take me a couple of hours to get it all done which is why I had been putting it off.

But a while back I started using Google’s Picasa as my photo catalog and they have a cool collage feature so all I have to do is select the pictures and hit the make collage button. It does all the hard work of puting the pictures together and making them fit together just right. Took me less then half the time to put this one gether then the other ones.

This year they had an after school chess program at school that Alex participated in. On the last day of class the parents were invited to come and watch and then be there for the end of year awards ceremony.

I took a couple of pictures of Alex playing and getting a trophy which I posted to the web site. He received a medal for trying to teach Andrew how to play and then a trophy for his tournament play. The teacher really liked Andrew and gave him a medal as well since he was able to name a bunch of chess pieces. Since that day he’s been picking up the chess set and tells us that he ways to play but I keep trying to direct him to Candy Land or something that he has at least a chance of playing without direction.

Andrew turned 4 a couple of weeks ago and we had the traditional family party at the house and a week or so later we had a party with his school friends at Boomerangs, the bounce house mania. He had lots of fun and I updated the website with the pictures.

We took the boys to the park last week to work on Alex’s baseball skills and Jen took some pictures of Alex, Andrew, and I playing which I posted here.

As an aside, I haven’t played baseball since I was in like grade 5 or 6 and I have to say I really, really stink.

Well there might no be pictures of you up here and I think there’s only one or two that I actually show up in but that’s beside the point. It’s been a while since I’ve actually posted anything on the web site and tonight I sat down and put together three updates. Count em, three. Never mind that I’m actually about to go blind after staring at this screen for the last three hours, it’s what I do to keep you happy.

First up are more pictures of Caroline. I’ve been told a number of times that people have been asking for more pictures so here you go. There’s some really good ones in this set now that she’s more alert and making some expressive faces. (That or she’s got gas.)

Second, I’ve pulled together a couple of pictures from Easter. We took the boys to Andrew’s school where they were doing a community Easter Egg hunt and to be honest I think they had more people show up then they anticipated. There were about a zillion kids running around, the lines for the activities where huge, and at one point the sheer number of kids overwhelmed the volunteers as they just started to Easter Egg hunt before they were ready.

And lastly, hot off the digital camera memory stick are pictures from Alex’s birthday party which we did this weekend. Last week we did a small family gathering and this weekend was the official broomball party at the ice rink with his friends.