Last month we continued our annual tradition of taking the boys yearly pictures and we’ve finally gone through them and picked out the best ones.

Here is the set from Alex. We had to get creative this year to keep Alex out in the yard to get a good set of pictures because after out thirty shots he figured he was all done. We tried bribing him with “Let’s get some action shots with you kicking the ball.” “How about one more, just move over here.”

Here is the set from Andrew. Right now Andrew is all about making goofy faces when the camera is on him so it made getting this years pictures a little challenging. In the end we had all sorts of pictures with him making funny faces but out of the bunch I think we managed to get a couple of good ones.

I’ve finally put together all the Washington/Virgina Pictures from our trip a couple of weeks back. You can find them all here. I’m not sure there’s anything more I can say about this trip that I haven’t already said so enjoy.

What a bonus, two web site updates in one day.

The first page is Alex’s Hockey/Skating lessons that he had been taking over the past couple of weeks. We managed to get him signed up for a free learn to skate/introduction to hockey class where that included all the equipment and skate rental. There where 30 kids in the class and only three coaches so there wasn’t all that much instruction going on but Alex had a blast. So far he hasn’t expressed any interest in going out full time for hockey and for that my pocket book is grateful. Later in the summer he is signed up for another learn to skate class through the City so maybe that will be enough.

The second page has pictures from the Gymnastics class that Andrew and I went to over the past couple of Fridays. It was a 45 minute class where the instructor did an overview of the exercises that we would be doing for the day and then it was pretty much free time for Andrew and I to go around to the ones he liked the best and do those. When they pulled out the trampoline I thought I was never going to get him off it but he was way more interested in jumping off the mats and swinging from the bar.

I’m trying to get caught up with all the stuff I need to do for the website and so tonight I just sat down and threw together Alex’s birthday pictures. As it turns out I don’t seem to have that many pictures from his actual party that we did with his friends at the park. I guess Jen and I were so busy herding the kids around, getting the food out, doing cake then gifts that there wasn’t much of a chance to step back and take many shots.

Anyway, for what it’s worth here you go.

A couple of weeks ago I had a sleep study done at the advice of my neurologist. Personally I think he has been angling to have me do one for a while and Jen has wanted me to have this done as well so I finally relented. I don’t think that I showed too many signs of sleep apnea but I do snore, Jen said I stop breathing at night, and during the day I find that I’m tired enough that so some nights I can go to bed at the same time as the kids. By the time the study came along I was kind of wishing they would find something to explain my tiredness.

I’ll spare you the details of the actual study but it turns out there isn’t anything wrong with my sleep. I do stop breathing at night but apparently it’s only one time more per hour then what they consider normal. Something like 5 times an hour is ok and I averaged 6 for the four hours of sleep I managed to get.

Since they didn’t find anything one of the strategies the doctor suggested to combat the tiredness was to make sure I wake up at the same time every day, including weekends. Unfortunately for me I go swim before work some days which means I’m getting up early those days and the days I’m not swimming I need to get up early as well.

As a result it looks like I’m going to have some free time to fill and this morning I used it to get the pictures from our New Orleans trip together and posted to site.

A couple of weeks back we managed to get a pretty decent snow fall where it actually snowed over night and then again on the next day so when it was all done there was enough that we could actually have a decent snowball fight. We took a bunch of pictures of everyone having fun in the backyard and getting wet in the snow.