Gooooaaaal!!!

Well, not really a goal - but it was a good effort.

Today was Joshua's first soccer game. He did surprisingly well considering he had only one practice before the game. He got to experience playing on the field for a majority of the game and a little time in the goalie position. It took him a while to warm up to the situation and get a bit more aggressive to the ball, but once he did he was able to dribble the ball up the field a few times and get close to scoring.

I'm hoping soccer will take a bit better than basketball did. There is so much randomness out there right now, it gives him more opportunities to actually get the ball under his control and make an impact to the game.

Now I should cut the grass in the backyard and play some with him :)

Thanksmas!

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and so has another Thanksmas. This is a time when the family gets together and celebrates Thanksgiving and also does a gift exchange. As you can see, we get quite the gathering at the house for a few days of good fun.

This year was the first year that Tammy's sister, Becky, and her husband Anthony were able to attend. They recently moved from Florida to Sierra Vista giving them the opportunity to join in the festivities.

As with every other Thanksmas, there is food, drink, more food and of course the video games. We mostly got together to play a bit of Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour, but we also had the opportunity to get a few games of Scene It! in as well. As for food, we had both a ham and turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. After a couple years of either roasting or buying the turkey from Honeybaked Ham, deep frying the turkey for a couple of years then last year's AJ's adventure I decided to give a new method a try. 'Oil-less' frying of the turkey in an infrared cooker. It took about 3 hours to cook the 16lb bird, but it was easy and delicious. I will definitely continue on the trend of using this cooker. It doesn't get much easier.

Another one down - and many more to come!

Thanksgiving Feast

Can you find my little pilgrim?

Joshua had his Thanksgiving feast with his Kindergarten class. There are two K classes at his school, his class were the pilgrims and the other class were the Native Americans. They sang a few songs then headed out to have their feast. Not much to the feast though - just a cookie a cracker with cheese and some cupcake thingamabob.

It's pretty amazing that they can keep all the kids in one place like this for the feast - good times. :)

Urban Dare - again!

21 seconds.

That was the difference between first and second place for the Urban Dare Scottsdale race. Who came in first? Well, I can tell you it wasn't Ed and myself. I would have to say that the second place finish is mighty good considering that the last time that I actually run of any distance was last year's Urban Dare!

In the picture here along with Ed and I are Jen and Paul. They 'challenged' us to this race. We ended up beating them by around 40 minutes. It would have been nice to win the event, and there were probably a number of areas where we could have improved our time - number one being the ability to not cramp up during the race :) That would be my fault.

You can see more about the race here: http://urbandare.blogspot.com Check out the Scottsdale link.

Chess Anyone?

Today marked the first chess tournament that Joshua has ever participated in. It was not only Joshua's first tournament, but it was the first chess tournament experience for any of us! Little did we know that the tournament was going to last all day. It started with checkin at 8:30 in the morning and didn't finish until after 4:30 in the afternoon. Talk about a long day.

I would have to say that Joshua learned quite a bit during the tournament, from learning extreme patience (one of his games lasted over an hour!) to documenting proper notation of the moves throughout the game. He did well enough to earn a 5th place trophy! Even though he said it was really boring at times, he still wants to play in the next tourney. At least next time we know what to expect.

Just a day - but it makes me a year older

Yup, I just celebrated my 35th birthday. It doesn't seem so long ago when I would think of what it would be like to turn 35 and thinking that it was quite a long ways away. Well, the day has come and passed and I must admit I don't feel like I'm 35.

Sometimes I do feel like I move slower, and I do have a few more aches and pains - especially after playing a bit of volleyball. Overall, I feel pretty good.

We celebrated by having dinner at Firebirds. We were joined by Ed and Maria and we had a good time eating, drinking, eating more and doing more eating. Good thing I'm playing v-ball today!

Oh, what did I get for gifts? My lovely wife got me a new lens for my camera (55-250mm f4-5.6 w/ IS) and a membership to a microbrewed beer club, which sends me 12 bottles of beer every month! whoohoo! My mother-in-law got me a charging stand for my wiimotes and IronMan on Blu-Ray. I like presents. :)

Remodel time!

Remember how I said 'new appliances' with my last blog entry? Well, here they are. Our dishwasher went kaput about a week ago. It was to the point where we had to do multiple cancel/drain cycles before we could even attempt to take out the dishes. With the dishwasher not draining right, the dishes weren't getting very clean either. It really didn't help that the tines on the dish trays were rusting - not so pleasant.

As you can obviously see, we got stainless steel with black accents. They are all Maytag appliances, and the range has a double oven, which will definitely help out when thanksgiving comes around and we need to put this sucker into overdrive. The Home Depot crew installed the range, in which during the install they noted that we had the entirely wrong gas hookup for the range. The previous hookup was a line for gas dryers, not for a range! Also when we took down the existing microwave we noticed that the protective plastic was not removed even though it blatently states on the microwave that the plastic is supposed to be removed before use! I also had the joy of pulling out and installing the dishwashing machine. It was fun and all, but I'm glad its all done.

We opted not to get the new refridgerator at this point, as the one we have now is working just fine. I'm sure we will be getting a new one in a few years anyway when we plan on doing a full remodel of the kitchen.

Here is the new entertainment center. Both the TV stand and the audio rack are matching components from Bell'O. Everything looks so much cleaner with the big unit out of there. Now you can see all the speakers and the subwoofer again. The wires have also been as organized as possible. You know, the built in entertainment center was nice and all, but I like this setup much better. It's much more flexible and it has a much less restrictive look to it. With this new setup I was able to reduce the wire usage quite a bit, as I know which wires I am now using for all of the setups. It also helps that the old XBox and the VCR have been taken out of the equation.

The old TV stand has migrated upstairs, as has the VCR. As for the XBox, I think we are going to sell it. It's modded - anybody interested? :)

In transition

Wait a minute... Is that right? You know, it looks like the entertainment center I built 5 years ago, but where is it?

What you are looking at is where the entertainment center used to be. Over the weekend, I proceeded to pull it out. As you can see, there are various colors of paint on the wall. You see the original white, then the first light tan/lavender type color and finally the peanut butter color. Oh, what is that dark brown spot you say? Well, that is the chocolate color that is probably going to be going into the gameroom.

Pulling out the entertainment center revealed a few patches of carpet which were left in because the entertainment center was covering those areas when we installed the laminate flooring. Thankfully we have quite a few boxes of laminate left over. I was able to successfully patch the areas where there was carpet so it looks like it's been complete all the time.

You see that little square of tan just to the upper right of the brown patch? That's the color we are going to paint next. I have since patched the holes in the wall and I will be re-texturing portions of the wall that need it. Then of course we will paint the walls and wait for the new TV stand and audio rack to arrive in the mail.

I will post pics as soon as I get everything setup again. Oh, and have pics of the new appliances (yes, I said new appliances... :))

One more picture

Okay, so this entry isn't much different from the last one. I just wanted to get a new picture up of the car after it's first wash and to show the different look with the windows tinted. Apparently even though the window sticker had the dealer added option of tinted windows, the car was delivered without the windows tinted. Of course I had to mention this to the salesman and the problem was quickly remedied. The salesman I had is pretty young, so he works pretty hard and goes out of his way to make the customer happy. He even dropped me off and work and delivered my car to me when it was done!

2009 Nissan Maxima

I have been itching to get a new car, and have had my eye on this beauty ever since I saw early production spy shots on the web. This is the newly redesigned 2009 Nissan Maxima. I used to have a 2000 Maxima that I purchased back in Santa Clara, which I sold for the Hyundai Sonata that I just traded in. The Hyundai treated me well, with no major problems, great gas mileage and a smooth quiet ride. But who was I kidding? How long do you think I would last in a base model 4 cylinder car? Well, a little over 3 years :)

Now, this car just blows the Sonata out of the water. I picked up the SV Sport with the Technology package. It's got leather, a CVT Transmission, full power everything a navigation system and backup camera. It runs smooth as silk with seamless acceleration thanks to the CVT transmission. Plenty of power from the 3.5L V6 engine. iPod interface, compact flash slot, 9.3 GB harddrive where when you put in a CD, it automatically rips it for you and you don't have to put that CD in the car ever again.

All this talk about the car makes me want to go out for a drive :)

Dogfish Head 120 min IPA

Holy Cow.

I had the pleasure of finding some of these at Whole Foods about a month ago. I finally decided to grab the bottle and enjoy it. Enjoy is an understatement. Given that this bottle of ale has an alcohol content of 20%, this thing is pretty darned potent. One whiff and you can definitely tell that this sucker has a bit of some extra kick.

The additional amount of alcohol is a bit to get used to, and this is definitely not a brew I could have every day. The flavor is wonderful and the hoppyness of the IPA is definitely tasty. Not a chugger, but a pleasant drink that leaves you feeling pretty good the rest of the night. If I find it on the shelves again, will grab another bottle. It's something to sip and enjoy - which I did.

A little Lego project

Yup, this darned thing is built out of Legos.

My mom decided to surprise me with a little gift while were were picking up a bucket of Legos from the Lego Store in the Chandler Mall. It's the 'Death Star II' which consists of a 100 page instruction booklet and a whopping 3449 pieces. Definitely a beast of a Lego structure. I started working on it on Tuesday and have been working on it off and on until I finally finished it today, on Saturday. I don't know what it is about Legos, but I can just build and build - endless fun!

I will probably be keeping this thing in the gameroom somewhere next to Yoda and definitely out of the way from little hands. I just hope I don't drop it during transport!

What's Your Wingspan

Yup, I've got the wingspan of a bald eagle. Yes, my arms are long.

I mean jeez, look at the little girls face in the picture. It's like she is saying, "what a freak with those long arms!" :)

This was taken from a recent trip to Minnesota at the beginning of summer to visit my sister. If you couldn't tell already, it's from the zoo. Ahh, that was a good trip - lots of food, some touristy outings and Cheese Curds! Squeak, squeak.... YUM.

A little basketball

We signed up Josh for basketball at the YMCA in Chandler. This pic is of him at his first game a couple of weeks ago. He is really enjoying himself at the game and at practice. Basketball at his age is pretty hectic with no structure. Basically, the only rule is that you cannot steal the ball from a player as long as they are in control. There are no travelling calls, and no score keeping. He likes to run, and this environment really allows him to show his stuff. We got him an intermediate (28.5") ball to play with and he is getting pretty good at shooting the ball. He's got good enough form to push the ball out and make a shot every once in a while.

I hope he is able to keep it up through the summer - and I am sure he will. He is getting to know his fellow teammates and he loves having friends around!

Mario Kart on the Wii

I had a gift card to use, and I have been looking around for something to use it on. I finally decided to get a game for the Wii. No, not Wii Fit. I got Mario Kart! It comes with a steering wheel, but it wouldn't be right just to have one, so I picked up an extra for good measure. You can see from the pic that Tammy and Joshua are enjoying the game (well probably Josh more than Tammy :))

It certainly does take some getting used to steering the vehicles when the steering wheel doesn't have a solid base to ground to, but it seems to work alright. We have only played multiplayer so far, so I haven't gotten to see what is in store in single player mode. Of course, knowing our track record, we will just play a little here and there and not really get too far in the game. At least we get to have some fun doing it!

You know, now that I have taken a good look at the picture - it's amazing how fast Josh is growing up. He starts Kindergarten in August!!!!

Jazz in New Orleans

We are trying to start a yearly trip with friends to places that we have never been before. In our inaugural year, we decided on a trip to New Orleans for the Jazz and Heritage Festival. Who might these friends be, you ask? Ed, Maria, Mark and Christa. You should know Ed and Maria by now. :) Mark and Christa are the couple that Tammy and I went to go see get married last year in Florida during this trip.

I would have to say that the trip was a smashing success, and we can't wait to take another one. Let me recap the events of the weekend...

Tammy and I left late afternoon on Thursday after getting all of details settled on who was watching the kids. Briana enjoyed her weekend at Girl Scout PA training, while Joshua spent the weekend with her aunt and cousins in Glendale.

Of course, the first thing that I accomplished after arriving at the airport was to finish off a most excellent 'Ultimate Margarita' at the airport. I thought it was going to be a small drink, but I was able to fill about 3 glasses with the shaker that was provided with the drink. After a stopover in Las Vegas (where we got to ride a shuttle along the tarmac to a different terminal) we finally arrived in New Orleans around 12:30 in the morning on Friday. Our plane must have been the last plane to arrive that evening, as the airport was pretty barren except for the passengers from our flight. We settled into our cab which we shared with another pair of gals who booked a room at the Westin (oooh). Let me tell you , the cab driver was pretty aggressive - so I had a few white knuckle moments during the ride. You don't expect to feel too safe when you are in a minivan cruising down the freeway at 90 miles an hour, weaving in and out of traffic. We checked into our room at the Baronne Plaza, which is about a block from Canal street and 2 blocks from Bourbon St. An interesting thing though was that when we first got to the room, the TV was on and it looked like the porcelain throne was already used. Everything else in the room looked untouched, so I figured that somebody must have checked into the room and quickly turned around to check out. More on that later...

Bright and early the next morning, we met up with Ed and Maria (they stayed at the same place as we did) and walked over to La Quinta where Mark and Christa were staying. After some conversing, we decided to walk over to Mother's and have some breakfast. They had a very simple menu, basically eggs, grits, meat and some great biscuits and there you go. After eating our meal, and slipping around on the floor, we headed over to the Jean Lafitte National Park French Quarter visitor center for a quick tour down to the Mississippi River. It was an interesting tour (and free!) with a unique tour guide who couldn't open his eyes. He must have had his tour script written on the backs of his eyelids or something. The tour ended in Jackson Square were we took a few pictures then we headed down the road where we picked up some Praline goodies from Evan's candy. We walked over to Cafe Du Monde to catch the start of a little parade being held for the New Orleans Hornets who made it to the second round of the NBA playoffs. Once that was up, we headed over to Central Market, which is the home of the original Muffaletta. After standing in line for a bit, we got our muffalettas (we each ate a quarter of one) and enjoyed the atmosphere. Tammy didn't care for the sandwich really - especially with the olive salad that was generously spread throughout the sandwich. We walked around some more perusing the shops, stopped at Cafe Du Monde for some beignets (french doughuts covered in a generous helping of powdered sugar) and drinks. Eventually, we ended up at Pat O'briens for some Hurricanes. I didn't really care for the flavor (kind of fruit punchy) but they have a bit of alcohol in them, so I didn't really care. After the drinks, we walked down Bourbon St, caught a street car back down to the French Market, walked around more then finally caught another street car to take us back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. For dinner, we had the pleasure of enjoying an evening at Emeril's New Orleans - the first restaurant Emeril Lagasse opened in New Orleans. The service was excellent and the food, while good, wasn't as good as we would have expected it to be. After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to change. From there, Tammy, Ed, Maria and I headed down to Bourbon St. to catch some of the action. We didn't drink anymore that night, so it was a pretty tame evening. Tammy did get a Tarot card reading from a lady in Marie Leveau's, but that wasn't as exciting as I would have liked either. :)

Oh! I forgot to mention, when we went back to the hotel to change that is when we found out why the previous tennant to the room left in such a hurry. One of the water pipes in the room was making this terrible whining sound. It never went away and maintenance couldn't do anything about it so we were given a different room with a better view. As another plus, it was a renovated room with all new beds, marble counter tops and a flat screen HDTV!

Saturday was the day we had reserved to spend at the Jazz Festival. Thankfully, the festival didn't start until 11:00 AM, so we were able to sleep in some and take our time in the morning. We purchased our tickets at the Sheraton Hotel and also took a shuttle from the hotel to the fair grounds. It was raining all morning, so we knew we were in for a wet day at the fairgrounds. One of the main goals of being at the festival was to enjoy the food. And boy did we enjoy the food! They have scores of different types of food at the festival, and it was all excellent. From the poboys to the fried plantains we were in heaven. Getting around was a bit of a chore though because of the amount of mud from the rain. Nevertheless, the day was fun with good food, music and beer. After the fest, we headed back to the hotel in the shuttle and proceeded to change, and meet at the bar in the Sheraton to eat some burgers and watch some of the San Antonio/New Orleans playoff game.

On Sunday, we got up early enough to meet up once again for breakfast. We ate at the Coffee Pot, which was very good. Good food, good service and good company. It was a good way to end the trip. We parted ways after breakfast, as Ed, Maria, Christa and Mark all had earlier flights than Tammy and I. After some souvenir shopping and a quick trip down to the Garden District by street car we headed to the airport and jumped on the plane home.

All in all, an excellent trip. We had some discussions about what we are going to do next - I believe Chicago is at the top of the list!

Need a trim?

That's Phil.

He's not happy. In an attempt to save some money, we decided to purchase some clippers so we can give our miniature poodle a quick buzz every month instead of taking him to the groomer. Well, after our first attempt, we only got halfway through the shaving. He's kinda jacked right now and I think we really need to give it another try.

Got any grooming tips? We can certainly use them.

A little v-ball in Rocky Point

After playing volleyball all these years, I never jumped at the opportunity to take a trip to Puerto Peñasco for the bi-annual volleyball tournament put on by http://www.outtatownproductions.com/. Now I know what I was missing! I teamed up with Paul, Chris and Natalie and travelled down to Mexico for a weekend of fun in the sun. Of course, the trip isn't all about volleyball. Sure, it's a big part of it, but with all of the 'downtime', you have to get out and get a little drink on.

Did I say 'a little'? Well, we drank more than our fair share on the evening we drove down. I won't get into the dirty details, but let's just say that we didn't quite make it past dinner :) Not a good idea considering that we had the tournament to attend to nice and early the next day. Needless to say, we didn't feel like playing much at all during the tournament. Surprisingly enough, we played well enough in pool play to seed in 4th for the double elimination tournament. From there, we knocked off one team after another before eventually reaching the finals. Oh, did I tell you that we played in the C bracket? Some people would call it sandbagging...

Needless to say, after some hard fought games (we lost our first try in the final - thank goodness for double elim!) we came out on top and triumphed over the other sandbaggers in the pool.

Now that we finished at the top of the division, we are required to go up a level when the next tournament comes around. When is that you may ask? October tourney, he we come!

Quick Trip to Pinetop

Over the Easter weekend, we went up to Pinetop, AZ, to spend some time with family. Tammy's sister did a timeshare exchange for a week up in Pinetop. It was nice to get the cousins together for the weekend, even if it was just for Saturday and Sunday. The snapper above is right before the Easter Egg hunt began.

We spent the time just hanging out and enjoying each other's company. Drinking bottles of wine, and even heading out for steak dinner on Saturday night. Unfortunately, the experience we had at the restaurant was sub-par, with terrible service and mediocre overpriced food.

The drive to Pinetop from Phoenix is about 3.5 hours. Tammy got the priviledge of driving up there, while I drove the way back. Most of the trip is along a 2 lane highway, with a period of time in the twisties going through the Salt River Canyon.

Since the weekend was so quick, Tammy and the kids went back up for a few more days as Bri is enjoying her Easter/Spring Break. It will be nice to have everybody back in town though, I don't quite know what to do with myself when everybody is gone...

Mold!

A couple of weeks ago while giving Josh a bath, Tammy decided to go searching for a smell. Of course you would find 'smells' around the toilet, but she found something else. Mold. From the picture above, you can see a discolored patch next to the toilet. When you pressed against it with your finger, it would squish. We didn't know it was mold right away, but we gave MoldEX a call and a guy came out and did air quality measurements and took samples from around the toilet. After a 48 hour period, he came back with the results. What was found was abnormal levels of the dominant mold varieties "Basidiospores" and "Stachybotrys". I will let you Google those.

From there, we scheduled removal and remediation of the mold. We were kicked out of the house for a day so we got to stay in a hotel for an evening. Fun right? Well, not so fun given we had another family emergency that same night. I won't get into that story now. Thankfully, the mold damage was not worse than first estimated, so it wasn't a huge remodeling project.

Here you can see the patch that they performed to get rid of the mold. We were most concerned with the mold going beyond the toilet area and to the tub, which would have been quite a bit of work to fix. It was found that the mold was coming from a bad seal from the toilet. Ew.

So, this is where we are at now. We are going to be tiling the bathroom and also the master bathroom. At least we get a new look from the experience and we finally get to get rid of the carpet in the master bathroom!

You know, I can't even remember the last time I posted anything up on my blog. Well, it's time to get started again!

The holidays have passed and I am posting on Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's! I would have to say that Christmas was quite a good time, and the family had a blast opening up the gifts for the day. I would get into details on gifts and stuff - but I must admit it was quite a while ago and it's kinda fuzzy in my brain so I am not going to attempt it.

Oh, what is that pic that I have posted? That is a picture from one of the rock formations at Pyramid lake just north of Reno, NV. Tammy and I went to Reno for a week during the New Years to celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary. Yes, I know that our anniversary wasn't for another 2 weeks, but it was the best time we could get away. If you couldn't tell, it was very cold when we were up there. We even gave snowboarding a try. I had quite a good time going down the slopes while Tammy, well, lets just say that she had some difficulties ;) Until I write again...