Paul and April
Pictures, ramblings, general stuff…

OK, this post is half test and half bragging because I am making it on my cell phone. April and I both got Motorola Droid phones and so far have been very pleased with them. This thing is almost more a small computer than a phone, it does so much. For me, it replaces an iPod, a GPS unit, it watches my five email accounts, replaced my alarm clock, and a bunch of other stuff I’m forgetting right now – and its no bigger than my last phone. Long story, short – it rocks!

The worst thing on it is the camera though. 5 megapixels but you can never be sure it is going to take a good pic – I really hope a software update will fix it.

Now is the test part of this post – adding the pictures I took with the phone’s camera when I first got it:

The ‘official’ name is Afterglow but I have a mental hangup on that word so I whined until they changed it to “Hangout” for me A good chunk of the youth group from our church came over after Sunday night’s service to get some eats, play some games, and generally hang out. It was a great time; I know I’m going to sound like an old geezer but I was really impressed with how well-behaved and cool all the “kids” were – I expected at least one or two of them to be snotty but they all seemed super nice. The foosball and pool tables saw more action than they’ve seen all year; the PS3 got to actually play some games instead of just serving as my media center. And I’m forgetting something……oh yeah! Bella was just beside herself with joy to have all these kids over just to see her.

Well this was a first – instead of a car show, a tractor show. The weather was a little iffy but it has been raining for the last two weeks straight and it stopped for today so while it was cold, at least it was dry.  One thing that really caught me off guard was finding out that the property is owned by a Steve and Carol Lee which happens to be the name of my parents.

Click here for April’s impressions of the show.

I tiled our kitchen floor when we remodeled the kitchen – unfortunately I apparently didn’t do enough prep work to the underlying floor for the tile and after several months the mortar started to crack. The floor isn’t perfectly level and while I did put down tile backer boards it wasn’t good enough.  The floor still got compliments and unless you walked on it every day you probably wouldn’t even notice but it really bugged me.  SO  we figured we would try something different and laid down a concrete floor.  The concrete was laid down with a trowel to give it some texture and then we stained it with one coat of “oak” and then laid down an epoxy sealer over the top.  The stain manages to gives off about six different shades of color because of the texture of the floor.  The pictures look pretty good but you’ve really got to see it in person – it could be mistaken for granite.

Cool – the Goodyear blimp just went right over our house. That sucker is LOUD.

From Various

From Various

For my dad’s 70th birthday on June 25, we made a surprise birthday visit up to their place in Indiana. My brother and sister came up too so it was a nice little family reunion. My parent’s place sits right on a lake so we floated around on it in a paddle boat and went out and explored the countryside a little. A bit down the road is a place called Billie Creek Village where they have several pioneer-time and turn of the century buildings as well as some covered bridges.

This huge bug was in our house! If that was a spider, April would be cowering in some corner yelling KILL IT!!!!

From Various

My awesome sister – who I for some reason believed to be an evil witch when we were kids – offered to watch the baby while we went somewhere. So we went 4 hours away to Charleston, SC to spend some time together alone. It really is an adjustment to be together for so long and then have a baby added to the mix – and then to go away from your baby for just a day or two and miss her like crazy — this parenting thing is weird…

We stayed at the original Citadel and did quite a lot of walking around town taking in the sights:

Since we moved up to North Carolina, we try to make a trip up to the mountains in the fall to see the leaves. If you catch them at just the right time, they are pretty stunning with all the various colors and brightness. This year we stayed at the Chetola resort in Blowing Rock and just had a nice relaxing weekend.