After much discussion, Cindy and I arranged to meet with her parents in Annapolis to celebrate Sue’s birthday at her mother’s house. On the way to Annapolis, things took an unfortunate turn. On the way up there, Cindy’s grandmother took a tumble while out around town, and injured a rib, her hand, and a leg. Much to our releif, she was a little battered up, but overall she was happy and in a good mood.

We did continue with the celebration of Sue’s birthday along with some much delayed presents for Cindy’s father also. For Phil, we decided upon a theme that went thorugh several of the presents. He got him some Old Spice, Old Fart Wine, and Nuts roasted in Old Bay seasoning. It was not long before he was able to guess his theme, and just chuckeled a little bit. We were nicer to Cindy’s mother, and just got her some things that she wanted without going into a theme.

Sunday concluded with another trip to the Hospital after another minor tumble by Cindy’s grandmother. Again, she was alright minus a little bruising but she still had a happy demeanor. Afterwords Cindy and I drove back down to Christiansburg and the end of another long weekend.

-Matt

This weekend found Cindy and myself on the road again, this time up to Maryland and Pennsylvania. The trip was to visit family and help in the celebration of Katie’s fifth birthday. After leaving Christiansburg a little later than we had hoped (see my other post for Friday), we got up to my parents house late on Friday night. We spent some time chatting while my dad worked on Katie’s birthday cake. Ironically enough, I found out that both my mother and I are looking at taking some of the same Oracle exams in ordered to get certified…

Saturday morning, my mother, Cindy, and Katie took Katie off to her various sports activities that included soccer and gymnastics while my father and I went back to work on the barn that has been in the building stages for many months. My dad and I got the cake and headed to my sisters house in PA, and if anyone lives in PA, they will know that the roads are really bad. So I am driving while my dad has the cake on his lap, and we hit this one really bad bump and the cake up flying into the air. My dad did manage to catch it but not before one of the turrets hit the roof of the truck and came crashing down. A little fixing and no one was the wiser…

Saturday afternoon was spent with Katie, Alex, Chris, Christine, Cindy, Liz, Arlene, my parents, and myself all having fun. Katie got lots of presents that she could not wait to play with. As always, a fun time was had by all. A large portion of the afternoon was spent getting ready for the party that was to follow on Sunday for Katie and all her friends. This party has a Princesses and Knights theme, so we were making chocolate covered lances and other party accessories.

When Sunday came around, my dad and Hayward got working on the barn some more while the rest of us got together to start preparing for the party. My mom took Katie and Alex while Chris, Christine, Cindy, and I went over to the local YMCA to start decorating for the party. When we got there, we found out that the room that they had reserved still had stuff in it due to a fire-drill at the end of the day on Friday. We were moved up to the mezzanine overlooking the pool. Sure the view was great, but the heat, humidity, and chlorine smell did not add much to the location.

Right on time, all the kids started showing up. There were 16 kids total at the party including Alex and Katie. The activities for them started with cup decorating and filling sandcastle jars with a colored sugar. Everyone was happy to get out of the hot room and go down to the gym to play on the moon bounce in the shape of a castle that was rented. This was followed by the kids riding Chris and trying to hit a piñata with an 8 foot lance that he made. Finally Chris had to tear down the piñata and spread the wealth to all the kids. The kids then proceeded back into the party room for some milk shakes and cake concluded with opening of presents…

After a long time of chatting with Chris and Christine, Cindy and I went back to my parent’s house to get a little sleep before heading out early the next morning. All and all, the weekend was a lot of fun and helped us realize that we do not want to adopt 16 children all of the same age �?� Hopefully pictures will get posted from this weekend (since we did take quite a few)… So check back soon…

UPDATED: the first set of pictures have been posted here

-Matt

This afternoon I got a new toy in the mail, it is called a Macro Coupler. Basically it is a ring with two sets of male threads on it so that I can mount two camera lenses face to face. The reason this is so cool, is that it provides a great deal of magnification. To illustrate, get out a dollar bill. Look at the eye on Washington, well just the eye filled up most of the image when I took a picture using this macro coupler.

This means, that I am going to try even more up close and personal images with various things that I can find. There are several disadvantages to using something like this, there is only a very small distance that is in focus. The way to help increase the Depth of Field (how much is in focus) the standard technique is to use a higher F-stop with a longer picture time. The only way to do that with something like this is to have a good tripod… I have not gotten the time to try some images like this using a tripod, but I am crossing my fingers that I will get some great results. Look back in the future to see what I can come up with.

-Matt

This weekend was spent down in Augusta Georgia with Cindy’s brother and his wife, well more importantly Cindy’s new niece Kayla. Cindy saw Kayla just after she was born in December, but we have been unable to go down and visit with them until now. Part of that is due to all the other friends and relatives going down to visit, so we had to wait for a free weekend.

Nicole was fortunate enough to get the weekend off, so we all get to spend the day Saturday together. After going out to eat, we all went for a stroll down on the River Walk in Augusta Georgia. It is a nice scenic place to walk around, and of course it was a great day weather wise. After doing that for a while, we stopped by Cold Stone’s… which if you have never been to one, you do not know what you are missing. Basically, they start out with the basic ice creams and then allow you to select any number of items to have them mix into the ice cream. It is really good, and Cindy loves their Cake Batter Ice Cream.

That evening we got together with several of Nicole’s friends from the hospital at Applebee’s. We all had a great time laughing and joking around. Everyone got a chance to hold Kayla and comment about how cute she was while Nicole drove back home to get a bottle because no one thought to look under the table for the bottle that had been dropped there when we got in there.

Sunday we got to spend some time with Kayla and Craig as Nicole was at work. WE did mange to get some food and bring it to the hospital so that we could all have a nice lunch together before Cindy and I departed.

Here are some of the pictures from this weekend…

-Matt

After thinking and debating the issue since we first got engaged, a date and location for the wedding has been nailed down. The wedding will be held on September 4th, 2005 at Nesselrod on the New in Radford Virginia. (here are some pictures we took there before.)

We want to thank everyone that has been involved in the decision making process, especially Cindy’s parents, in the endevor to pick the most optimal location and date… Now that we have a date, I am sure that a lot of the other issues will begin to fall into place…

-Matt