Snow Day, Part Duex

Um, yeah...it got worse. We moved back to San Antonio to escape this kind of stuff!


Actually, the surface streets are just fine. Wet, but drivable. It's the bridges over creeks and stuff that people forget about. The state has taken care to shut down interstates and overpasses, places where people could get into big trouble, but those creek bridges seem to be causing people problems, too. Of course, not for us, because we actually know how to drive in this stuff.


Last night, our power went out (looking at the ice in these photos, you can probably guess why) at about 6:30, just as I was finishing cooking dinner. Monica and I waited it out until 9:30, then packed up the family and headed over to Maria and Gregg's. At about 11:00 we realized that our power was finally back on (we called and our phone rang, as opposed to going straight to voicemail) so we packed everyone back up and headed home.


We would have spent the night at Maria and Gregg's, but Rachel was having all kinds of problems going to sleep over there. I guess she's getting to the point where she recognizes when things are out of the ordinary.


Our power went out again around 7:30 this morning, but luckily, this time it was only our for about 90 minutes.


Enjoy the photos.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Do you see that? There, on my truck.

Yes, I need to wash it...but there, on the bottom part...


Yup, that's ice. We're getting freezing rain here in San Antonio and it's a huuuuuuge deal. All of the schools are closed, and the morning shows have been on the air going on four hours now. I don't know why...there's nothing new to tell us. Last night, they told us all of the schools were closed, this morning, they could have told us in just their usual couple of hours that interstates are closed (because it's evidently really hard for TXDOT to get a truckload of salt from the panhandle) and so now they're just showing us all the same footage, giving us the same forecast, and showing us the same accidents hour after hour.

The media around here does this with any major weather event...they just can't tell us what's going on and shut up. They have to stay on the air constantly and give us bascially nothing to watch. If people are holed up inside their house, they don't want to watch the same thing over and over...we'd like some entertainment, please, and just keep that scrollbar going across the bottom of my screen. It does the same thing you all are doing...tells me the same thing over and over.

But as you can tell, it's nowhere near as bad as the ice store they had in St. Louis earlier in the week.


But, this is San Antonio, after all, and anything out of the ordinary here is a big deal.

Halfway to 70

How did I go from this


to this


In just 20 short years?

On another note, when did "20 years ago" become part of my vocabulary? I can remember feeling, for the longest time, that 20 years ago was part of some distant past that happened before I was born.

Now it's something that happened when I was in junior high...almost high school.

That's enough to make anyone feel old.

And what in the hell happened to my 20's? It's like I turned around twice and I'm halfway through my thirties.

I think I'm done having birthdays.

Month Seven

Dear Rachel,

Yesterday, you turned seven months old. Your father was sick from all the junk in the air, though, which is why this is a day late.

So...what a month! A lot of firsts for you yet again. Where to start?

You were baptized this month, which means you're well on your way to being a non-conformist Catholic, just like your Momma and Daddy! Actually, we were very excited to have you baptized and you have wonderful Godparents in Maria and Gregg.


You haven't started crawling yet, but you're trying. You push yourself up on your hands and you're starting to get the leg motion. I can't wait to see what Sparky does when you finally become mobile!


You sit up on your own all the time now. You still fall over from time to time, but it's not happening that much anymore. What's really fun is to watch you play. You really love to explore everything around you, and lots of times you do things that make us wonder what you're doing and why you're doing it. For example, when you decide you're done with your bottle (which I'll get more in depth with in a minute), I'll hold it up to see if you want more, and you'll lean forward and touch your forehead to the bottle. What is that all about?


Other times when you're playing, and a toy is just out of your reach, you'll stretch forward as far as you can, and even lift your butt up off the ground just to try to reach it. Soon enough, you'll be able to just crawl over to it, which scares the heck out of me, considering that you still think everything is there for you to put in your mouth.


You've become quite vocal over the past month, and usually when your mother and I are trying to watch something on the TV. Thankfully, we picked up a DVR this past month, too, so we can pause and rewind our favorite shows and start watching them again after you go to bed. Without fail, we'll be trying to listen to something on the news, or be in the good part of a TV show and you will start, "Ahhhhhhh ah ah ahahhhhhahhhaaaaahhahaaahahaa." You'll go on for minutes on end, and I'm sure this is just the start of the many ways in which you will annoy your parents. But you're supposed to. That's what kids do. At least you're not telling us off. At least, I don't think you are, but I don't speak baby, so I'm not entirely sure.


Your first Christmas was last month, and girl, did you ever rake in. I think you probably had more gifts than everyone else combined. It was really nice because you got to see your whole family.


Because of Christmas, our house is now officially full of your toys. We haven't even lived there four months yet, and already we're out of room. You certainly have a great time playing with all of your new stuff, though, which mostly consists of you rolling it away from you, holding whatever toy you have and banging it on the floor, and putting it in your mouth.


Speaking of your mouth, you have two new additions in there! You started cutting your first teeth on Christmas night, which made our Christmas night oh so fun, but now that they're in, you're doing much better. Every once in a while, you'll need your teething toys, which turn you from a screechy, crying mess, to a cooing, happy mess in a matter of just seconds.


Eating has taken a 180 degree turn from last month. Last month, we were having a hard time getting you to keep solids in your mouth. Now, you've decided that you don't like your bottles so much. within the last couple of weeks, you've stopped drinking all of your bottles, but you will eat virtually everything solid we try to put in your mouth. In fact, there is only one time in the past month I can think of when we had more food than you wanted to eat.


And a last first for the month, you went for your first bike ride just a few days ago. Actually, I did the riding, you just got pulled along behind me. I guess you can call that a ride. I can't wait to take you for more rides after the weather gets nicer. You love the outdoors so much, and we love taking you.


You interact with us more and more every day, which makes every day fun and exciting for us. We just can't wait to see what you'll do next.

Love,
Daddy

Updates!

OK, so I know these probably aren't the updates you're looking for (Mom) and they're certainly not the droids you're looking for.

Yeah, that was stupid, but it just popped in my head and I had to let it out.

Anyway, I've finally gotten around to adding some photos to the old photo page at namelal.com. If you've never checked out the rest of the site, you really should. I've put a lot of work into it, so look at it, already!

Anyway, you can just take out the "blog.html" up there at the top of the page, and that will get you to the main site. From there you can click on "photos" and peruse some of the pictures I've taken.

Or, if you're lazy, you could just click on the link I've conveniently placed for you on the right side of the screen.

Don't Dream It's Over

Monica and I have two days (including today) of vacation left. Then it's back to the grind. Back to our routine. Back to getting up when it's dark out.


We had a great Christmas. The whole Laleman clan was here in sunny San Antonio. While it wasn't as warm as I would have liked, the weather was definitely more favorable than what we usually drive up north to experience at this time of year.




Rachel had a great time and totally raked in. She especially loved playing with all the wrapping paper.


Dad and I managed to play lumberjack (insert Monty Python song here) and cut down the two dead pines in our back yard, and get some rather large dead branches cut off the live oak.

It was so nice to have everyone here.

New Year's Eve with a baby in tow was quite an experience. Rachel took a late nap yesterday and decided that she really didn't want to go to sleep even though it was two hours past her normal bedtime. She fussed and fought and cried, until Monica took her for a little car ride, and she finally nodded off. Of course, at midnight, when all of the fireworks started going off, she promptly woke up. It's going to be a lot of fun trying to get her back on a routine.

Now, the Christmas decorations are down (because I knew it would never happen if I didn't do it now) and it's time to get back to our daily lives.

Why can't someone pay me to just sit around and do this all day?

I couldn't resist...

Merry Christmas everyone. I just had to post the picture of Rachel that I photoshopped last week. It's nowhere near perfect because I didn't really take my time with it, but it's funny nonetheless.

I call it Rockin' Rachel...



Just for comparison, here is the original. You can see why I had to do what I did...it was an appropriate extension.

I got yer Christmas card...RIGHT HERE!

Because we're procrastinators around the Laleman household, the reality of the situation is that none of you will likely be getting a Christmas card from us in the mail.

We'd love to mail them out, seriously, but there's just so much other stuff to do.

So in the interest of saving all of us a lot of screaming and wondering just where that Laleman Christmas card is, here are a couple of choices for you to print out and put on your mantle.




We might, and I stress the word might here, get around to taking some family Chirstmas photos later this week, and if we do, I'll post additional Christmas card choices here.

Happy Baptism!

Month Six

Dear Rachel,

Today you turn half a year old.

Your half-birthday is also the exact same day as your Grandpa Rick's birthday.

Happy Birthday, Dad!



This past month, you started holding on to your bottle almost all the time when you eat. We can even put you in your car seat, give you your bottle, and let you eat all by yourself. The only time we have to help you out is when you get close to being finished, because you have a little trouble turning the bottle up enough to get the last ounce or so.


The eating solids thing, though, has taken a turn for the worse. You used to concentrate on eating, but now, you're just so happy that we're giving you food, and so distracted by everything around you, it's almost impossible to keep anything in your mouth. We'll put a spoonfull in, you'll smile and start talking, and it will all run out. It makes feeding you very frustrating.


Something that's very exciting for us is that you've started to sit up on your own. You're still getting the hang of it, but you can certainly balance yourself. We can put you in a chair or on the couch, and as long as you have some support behind you, you can sit up on your own for quite a while.


You're very interested in your world and will reach out to touch new things. You really seem to love the remote control and the calculator. It makes you fall over when you're sitting up, but it's great that you're exploring so much. I just wish you wouldn't explore everything with your mouth.


You also figured out in the past month how to turn over from your front to your back, which is a huge relief for your mom and I since we don't have to flip you back over when you get frustrated or tired of being on your tummy. You just do it yourself.


The next big thing for you is going to be crawling. We've seen you trying in the past week. When you're on your tummy, and there's something you want that just out of reach, you'll stretch out toward it, and pull your knees up under yourself and try to push and pull yourself toward whatever it is you want.


We're excited that this month will be your first Christmas. I can't wait to see how you react to the Christmas tree. We went out to eat with some of Mommy's co-workers the other night and you loved looking at all the decorations at the resturant. It should be fun to see what you do with wrapping paper. I'm sure you'll probably try to eat it.


So that's it. We're through the first six months. Every day, you're growing and learning, and as always, I can't wait to see what the next month will bring.

Love,
Daddy

It's beginning to look a lot like...

...the midwest.

OK, maybe not, but we did have sleet yesterday.

Of course, it was 40 degrees outside, but it still freaked out the natives.

I was off for the day because our sitter's husband just arrived back from Iraq and she had gone up to Ft. Hood to pick him up. I had gone to visit some friends and found out it was sleeting around 3:00. We got on the road at about 3:30 and it took us an hour to get home.

No accidents, just slow.

As I was driving through our neighborhood, I noticed that all of the roofs had ice in the valleys. It was a pretty odd thing to see in south Texas.

Catching up with the Lalemans

It's amazing how quickly time flies by when you don't have much of it to spare.

It doesn't seem like it's been a week and a half since I last updated the old Laleblog. I can also see that I need to update the banner, because it's December and, well, it's not November anymore. And that's November's banner up there.

So what have we been up to since our warm and sunny Turkey Day?

Freezing our butts off.

It got incredibly cold (for San Antonio) last week, and so we've been conserving energy and staying warm. And shopping. Without much success, at least on my part.

Actually, we have been pretty busy. The day before Thanksgiving, we decided to take the plunge and buy laminate floors for our living room and (we thought) dining room. The day after Thanksgiving, we rested, then Saturday, I started taking our the existing flooring.







Those first two pictures are from the realtor posting, so that's not our furniture, but all of the tile in those pictures was scheduled to come out. The third picture, you can see how ugly the carpet was.

So anyway, Saturday morning, bright and early, I pulled out the carpet in the living room and hallway. It took all of 20 minutes. After Monica got up and left with Rachel, I started taking out the tile.

It took me the rest of the day.

To do a little patch by our back door, maybe 15 square feet total, took me almost 3 hours. That's when I decided a bigger slegehammer might be helpful. The part by the fireplace took about the same amount of time despite being a much bigger area. The 10 pound slegehammer took care of most of the work, until it broke.

That's right, I broke a slegehammer taking out tile.

Of course that made the decision not to take the tile out of the dining room that much easier to make.

On Sunday, I started laying out the moisture barrier, which took most of the morning.





Because of the 45 degree angled walls in our living room (our house has all kinds of strange angles), the first part of the laminate required lots of cutting. By Sunday evening, I had about 1/4 of the floor done.



It took me until Wednesday before I finished, and I had to take 1/2 day off work to get it done. We still have transition pieces and baseboards to put in, but the floor is done. I don't have a good picture of it yet becase we moved the furniture back in the room and it's still a bit of a mess.

It looks nice though, so chalk up another home improvement project as a success. There's plenty to do in this house, and I'm looking forward to working on it and making it our own.

I took this weekend off to just spend time with the family and attempt to shop for Christmas presents. Next weekend I'm going to tackle the Christmas decorations.