Happy Birthdays!

I'm on a boat!

After 2 long days in the sun, I am going to keep this short and hope that a picture really is worth 1,000 words. Sunday we had an amazing day up at the lake celebrating Grandpa Bruce's birthday, relaxing, laughing and taking Reagan for her first boat ride. We had originally planned to get in the water with her little life jacket, but Mimi thought better of that since Reagan's toes probably look pretty appetizing to little snapping turtles. Instead, we opted for a leisurely ride on the pontoon boat, gently cruising and enjoying the day.

Reagan and Grandpa:


Reagan in her new playhouse:


More playhouse:




Reagan loves steering wheels:



Later in the day, Reagan's Great Aunt and Uncle came over along with the Great grandparents and we had a tasty dinner on the deck as the day wound down. Truly a perfect birthday and day at the lake!


In other big Reagan related news, she is officially mobile. Late in the week she figured out how to put all of the pieces together and move under her own power. Now that she knows this, there is no stopping her. She is crawling everywhere and trying to get into everything! While it is very exciting, I am trying to resist the urge to coat everything in the house in bubble wrap!


Shake n' Bake

On Saturday, we celebrated Grandma Margie's birthday by surprising her with an Indy Car experience. She was able to drive an Indy Car at an actual racetrack after receiving some basic instructions. Since she normally cruises a little fast on the interstate, we figured this was a safe way for her to speed on an open track. Since the forecast was really hot at the track, Sarah and Reagan stayed in town visiting some friends and spending some great time with Grandma Candy and Poppa Bob.

Grandma Margie with our cousin Kirt:


Ready to go!


The selection of cars:


Kirt taking off:




We had a great time, even though she was off to a bit of a rough start (oddly enough, Indy cars must be made for taller people since it was tough to reach the pedals). After a few laps, just as she was getting comfortable and up to speed it was time for her to head to back to the pits. Kirt had a much easier time adapting to the car and was in the car and off the starting line like a shot. I think his top speed was somewhere around 140 MPH, very impressive for the first time in an Indy Car!

Soak up the Sun

If we are not soaking up the sun in central Illinois, then we are soaking because of the sun, or soaking from the rain. Anyway you slice it, summer is here and it is HOT. The forecast is for more HOT and mostly sweaty. Have I mentioned the temperature (it's hot). Okay, I'm done now.

We will keep this update short and get right to the pictures. Sunday we had a great first Father's Day and Monday night my volleyball team won! Tuesday we headed up the lake for dinner with Mimi and Wednesday night we had dinner with the Great's and Mimi. Tonight Reagan tried butterscotch and demonstrated how really, really close she is to crawling. She gets up on her feet more than she does anything else, scootches around for a bit, then just sits back down. It looks she is getting in a sprinting position and might surprise us all by just taking off in a flat sprint one of these days.


Here is our veggie list from this week's CSA (sorry, no pictures of veggies tonight- we will have some still life shots next week):

1 bunch of red radishes
4-5 zucchini – this well be a reoccurring theme for a while.
2 yellow summer squash
5 standard cucumbers
1 burp less cucumber
1 bunch of arugula
1 head of Napa cabbage.

Now for pics from Tuesday night:

She's not sad, just thoughtful:

Reagan with the giant Tootie Bug:

Giving the Tootie Bug a kiss:

Diggin' the Bug:



That's all for tonight! Hopefully, I can work on some videos to upload for this Sunday's post.

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem

First off, Happy Father's Day to all of the fathers who follow/read about our goings on.

Next, I have been putting this post off all day, mostly to celebrate Fathers Day with my family and mostly because it is nearly impossible to summarize this past week. Here goes my best effort.

Monday I headed towards the Bahamas with my father in law for a little "Man - cation". Our plan was to boat from Florida down to the Exuma's to do some fishing and relaxing. More on the trip in a moment...

Sarah was headed out of town for work on Monday night, so Mimi had Reagan all night by herself for the first time! Big thanks go to her for all of her help last week especially watching her all night and then most of Tuesday as well! Reagan has such fun with all of our family Sarah and I are truly blessed to have such a great support system all around us.

Wednesday Sarah and Reagan headed to Great Grandma and Grandpa's house for a nice visit where Reagan had tapioca for the first time. That may be her favorite food so far.

Friday Sarah had to have an emergency dental procedure that required her to be put under, so our amazing family came to our rescue again with Great Grandma/Grandpa Kitty, Grandma Candy and Poppa Bob helping us out by driving Sarah to and from surgery while watching Reagan.

So while all of this was going on, I was in the middle of the ocean, spending most of the week on a boat. We left Florida at first light on Tuesday headed for Bimini to clear customs and then on to Highborne Cay (pronounced "Key"). We made amazing time in the crossing - while some parts of the trip normally see 6-8 foot seas, it was incredibly calm - so calm and clear we could count starfish on the ocean floor. The total trip took a little more than 12 hours and found us at Highborne by sundown.

Not all sharks are bad (I'm not sure how to type the Jaws theme)


Smooth as glass (our captain and friend Big Dog is on the right)


Sunset on the ocean:


We spent the night catching up with some friends that Sharky (Bruce) and SeaBean (Kelly) have known for a while. Dock Diva and her husband Flyrod were very hospitable to us and gave us a nice cool place to relax and let us rest up for fishing the next day. I am not sure if I was over served or over tired, but I slept great that night.

The next day we fished for a while in the morning with Flyrod and Big Dog, mostly to kill some time until the tide came in until we could get to the next island. Dock Diva prepared a great lunch for us and we headed down to the next island when the tide was right.

We arrived safely, met up with some more friends and had a great dinner (my first Kalik and conch fritters of the trip). That night we got a good night's sleep and headed back to Highborne the next day to pick up FlyRod for some more fishing. After a few hours and mostly barracuda bites, there was some discussion about heading up to Harbour Island to eat dinner and spend the night. We didn't really have any where to be, so we changed course and headed about 2 hours to Harbour Island. Highlights here included a tiny store to buy deodorant, toothbrushes and a couple new shirts since we smelled like we had been fishing all day. That night we had a great dinner at a local spot and even had Brooke Shields sitting at the table next to us.

The next day we tried to head out early since we had essentially kidnapped FlyRod (he went out thinking he was going fishing for a few hours and got caught up in this overnight adventure), however, there was some bad weather and no gas on the island so we had to make our way to Spanish Wells for gas. Spanish Wells supplies most of the worlds lobster - if it doesn't come from Maine, it probably comes from this little island.

After a few hours on the water and running into some more bad weather, we finally delivered FlyRod back home about 30 minutes before he had company due to arrive. The next day Big Dog and I were headed out, so we called it an early Friday after having dinner with some great friends on the island.

I had an amazing time (the pictures and the stories just can't do an experience like this justice) and I can't wait to get back down there with Sarah and Reagan.

A few more pics:

That's all for now, we will have some more pictures and videos of Reagan during the midweek post.

-GunShy back to 1-6, Out.

Reflections

I (Sarah) have the honor of creating our mid-week blog update! Apparently I have free reign, but I was told not to forget to announce the produce that we received in our weekly CSA pick-up! I was excited this week to find out that we had such a variety of items!

1 bunch of onions
1 head of lettuce either red sails or green oak leaf
1 bunch of arugula
1 bunch of red radishes
1 bunch of spring turnips
2 yellow straight neck summer squash
5 zucchini summer squash
1 pint of strawberries

I am very excited to try the strawberries! And when I was picking up the produce, I ran into our friend Tami who suggested that we shredd the zucchini and freeze it if we can't eat it all. Great thinking! Zucchini bread in the fall and winter sounds delish!


So on to why this update is titled "Reflections". I was thinking about all the current pictures we post, so I went and looked at all the pictures we have taken of Reagan since her birth. We have close to 1,000 pictures. This only includes the one that we have kept and categorized as "Reagan". It was so fun to look through them and see how much she has changed in the last 7.5 months, so I thought I would post a few of my favorites.

This is Reagan and I still in the hospital.


Daddy & Baby Girl



I also have a few developmental type announcements for Reagan! She now has 5 teeth! Five! And she isn't even crawling yet! Although she is close and I think it will happen within the next week or so! She has also started bouncing to music. I was watching a movie last night and a song by Gloria Estefan came on and I look over to see Reagan watching tv and moving to the music. At least she has good taste in Latin music!


That's all for now. It's been a blast updating this week!

We went out last night!

Not only is that the name of a Kenny Chesney song, but we actually went out to see Kenny at Soldier Field last night. We had a really great time - we will try to summarize the high lights of the day.

We arrived in Chicago around 11AM and hung out at my brothers place until the weather got a little nicer. We then started heading south to the field, killing a little time at a country bar and then heading to charity event at a bar that one of Andy's friends was hosting. A quick phone call got us on the list and we were able to drink on the roof of a bar and support a good cause for a few hours.

We then continued our way south to the field, stopping at a couple of other establishments and noticing more and more cowboy hats as we got close to the field. By the time we got to the stadium, there was not much of a line, so we made our way right in. As I was going to get a couple cokes, we ran into one of our friends from work that we had been tyring to catch up with all day. She had 2 extra seats next to her so we moved to their section for the show.

This is Sugarland opening for Kenny:

The show was AWESOME. He played just about all of his biggest hits, and then after about 90 minutes they started covering songs by Bob Marley (the drummer from the Wailers was on stage all night), Steve Miller, Tom Petty, The Eagles - it was a blast!

More cowboy hats:


The most embarrassing part of the day was when I was talking to one of my brother's friends at the roof party. At one point in my story, he raised his hand in the air so I gave him a "high 5". I then realized that he was actually waving at 2 of their friends that just walked in. We all had a good laugh and he thought it was great since his friends showed up and he got a "bonus 5" out of the deal.

Grandma Candy and Poppa Bob watched Reagan while we were out on the town. We really appreciated this and it looks like they had a great time too!

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That's all for now!

Veggies, Info and Toes

Happy mid week!

Why the mid week post you ask? Well, today was the first day that we participated in our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). What is a CSA you ask? Well, for a flat rate, we get 15-16 weeks of locally grown fruits, vegetables and spices from a farm near town. We are looking forward to all kinds of exciting vegetables and fruits this year that we can eat, cook with and freeze for use in the winter. The first week had the following items:

1 bunch of French breakfast radishes
1 bunch of green onions
1 bunch of garlic scapes
1 head of “Truckee” – dark green oak-Leaf
1 head of red oak Leaf
1 bag of mixed greens
1 bunch of spring turnips.

We also get weekly e mails about how the farm is doing, what was just planted, what is growing, what is being harvested and what we should see in the coming weeks.

How 'bout that? We live on the edge when it comes to veggies, right? As the kids say "That's how we roll".

So before we show off some new pictures of our daughter, we thought we would not talk about us, but talk about you. We present the following stats about our blog and it's visitors that we think you may find super amazing or maybe interesting or maybe amusing. It's also possible you will claim you don't really care, but I think deep down - you do. I'm an optimist.

Since April 1st we have had:

• 1,220 visits
• 1,724 page views
• Visitors from 5 countries (full disclosure - 2 of them were my brother in Europe)
• Visitors from 18 states - Illinois leads the way, Pennsylvania is in second with 111. From there Virginia and North Carolina battle it out. Other states worth mentioning are Arizona, Texas, Washington DC, Missouri and Florida.

Most people find our site by bookmarking us or coming via e mails, but we have several friends who list us on their blogs. Most of our referrals come from either our family in Pennsylvania "Boo and Bee", our friends in North Carolina over at the Daily Craziness , or from our friends Joe and Lindsey's site.

It's not really as scary as it seems...I don't know specifically who you are, your address, where else on the Internet you visit or how often you vacuum (yet).

Now, Reagan's pictures:

That's all for now, I have to go since Grandma Candy brought over fixin's for strawberry shortcake with fresh strawberries courtesy of Poppa Bob's parents!

If you enjoyed this post, leave us a comment - and let us know how often you vacuum!

Rainy Day Ramblings

It has been a rain filled central Illinois week for sure. Most of the week found Jeff pacing in the basement begging it to stop raining. Luckily, the basement only took on a little bit of water and the dehumidifier was able to knock it out in a few hours.

Aside from that, we had a very nice weekend. Without much on the schedule (something that it becoming more and more rare), we hosted a casual dinner on Friday night for Grandma Candy and Poppa Bob (after Grandma Candy watched Reagan Friday afternoon). Reagan was very happy to see them over at our house - she just lights up when she sees any of the grandparents - it just never gets old! They came over for pizza followed by grilled pineapple with French vanilla ice cream with cinnamon - a perfect summer treat. We were able to laugh and visit on the deck after she went to bed - a welcome benefit of the 7:30 bedtime.

Saturday morning we packed up the van and headed to the Farmers Market with Grandma Candy. We found a few great items that included locally raised ground pork, creamed honey and a Jamaican rum infused syrup! After that it was was pretty lazy, with Sarah spending time with Mimi while Grandpa Bruce watched Reagan. They had such a great time they watched her until the evening, leaving Sarah and I to do some much needed housework and generally wonder what we did before we had Reagan.

Sunday was rainy again, so we packed up and headed up to the lake to spend a little time with Grandpa and Mimi. After a couple hours up there, we headed back to town to wind down for the evening. Sarah is now baking a few kinds of fudge, I am sampling fudge and working on photos!

One more note, this week we joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group. We essentially bought a share in a local farm, so we get a TON of fresh fruits and veggies weekly. We will have more on this midweek as well as more pictures in the weather holds out!

Enough stories - on to the pictures! As a note, you can always click on the picture to enlarge it.

Check out the new tooth! Tooth Count 2009 sits at 4!

One more from last weekend with a little artistic treatment.