Boy, Oh Boy!

We are going to have a baby boy!!

We had our 20 week sonogram today and learned that Baby Remington is a HE! :)

He was so wiggly that the technician got frustrated that he wouldn't be still! This doesn't surprise me because this morning I watched my belly move for the first time from baby kicks - WOW! (I've heard that 20 weeks is early for that so I'm probably in for a "bumpy ride!")

Jer is already planning baby's first dirt bike and how we'll take the baby along backpacking.

We couldn't be happier!

Cheers!

I'm halfway through my 19th week so I thought I'd check in to see how big our little olive can is these days. While every different source gives different sizes, according to my favorite book, the baby weighs between 7 and 8 ounces and is 8 to 9 inches long. (Seems crazy to me, but what do I know?!)

And this is what I found in our kitchen that is that size:

Does this seem ironic to anyone else? Hmm...

Cheers to Baby Remington!

Three years ago today…

Jenny and I were enjoying our first day as a married couple. We were surrounded by family and friends in one of our favorite places in the world, Key West. We had an amazing wedding day, which was preceded by an amazing vacation with family and friends the week prior in Islamorada. We are truly blessed to have such an amazing group of family and friends around us.

From Wedding Pro Portraits, November 2005

It’s been an amazing journey, and really it has only just begun…

First Flutters

Baby Remington introduced him/herself to me last week with our first "little flutters." It was amazing! At first I didn't know that it was happening until it stoped and then happened again. :)

After my yoga class on Sunday, Baby Remington was tumbling a lot. Baby must enjoy yoga as much as I do!

Ghosts of Halloweens Past

As we wait for the trick or treaters to show up tonight, we were just talking about how three years ago, we spent Halloween in the Florida Keys with some wonderful friends and family. It was just after Hurricane Wilma, so the weather was a little cool, and we basically had the place to ourselves. (Which is good when you are a group of nearly 30 people!)

Here's how we spent the day:

We hung out at the pool...

...and played on the beach...

We dressed up...

...to go out to dinner..."Table for 30, please." (Remember the lights kept going out because of the power after the hurricane?!)...

The "kids" went trick or treating around the hotel...

We played games on our patio...and drank a lot...Again...

Happy memories! Happy Halloween!

Voted Yet?

We did our duty over the weekend and got the snazzy "I voted" stickers to prove it!

Texas still has early voting for one more day (through Oct. 31) so go do your part, Texans! We looked up a sample ballot on our county web site -- this helped us make sure we were ready to vote for each office and proposition. :)

Now go do it!

Backpacking: Big Bend, November 1999

I moved to Texas at the end of the summer of 1999. While I was enjoying my first wonderfully mild fall, I definitely found myself missing the amount of time that I was used to spending outdoors backpacking and camping back home. It wasn’t so much that you can’t do those things in Texas, as much as it was that I still hadn’t yet learned of all the opportunities available.

Knowing that I wasn’t going to make the trip up North for the Thanksgiving holiday, I decided to figure out a way to spend it in the great outdoors. A trip to my local REI turned up a copy of Laurence Parent’s “Hiking Big Bend National Park”. My then-roommate at the time, Susan (another transplant from the frozen north), who was always pretty much up for anything, agreed to join me.

Little did I know that this would be the first of many trips to the park and to the region, which has turned out to be a Texas-based surrogate for my beloved Allegheny National Forest, which is where I first truly fell in love with the outdoors.

Photo Album: Backpacking Big Bend, November 1999