Summer Swimmin

Well, Everything has been going really great lately. My new job is fantastic! I am an accountant at Integra LifeSciences which has it's Corporate headquarters in Plainsboro, New Jersey. I work on Intercompany reconciliations. Other than my new job, it has been a pretty quiet summer so far. It has been nice and relaxing just like summer is meant to be. We have actually speant quite a bit of time swimming in the pool at our apartment complex. We are definitely going to miss that if we ever move out of Ravens Crest. The crazy thing is that there is hardly ever anyone there. We go there about 3 - 4 times a week at least. It has been a lot of fun. Cody has taken to it like a fish. I'm sure he'll be swimming in no time. We put those floaty things on his arms and he just swims around the whole pool by himself. He is kind of hyperactive in the pool, kicking his feet like a maniac to get around.

Jade is more of a chiller. She just lays in her little yellow floaty tube and chills. (She must take after Becs, because Cody and I are never that calm.) I hope you enjoy some of the pictures. I intentionally didn't put any swimming pictures of me up because I didn't want you all to go blind from Awesomeness and Attractiveness! (Actually I didn't want you to go blind from the glare off of my white body. I guess that's what I get for having a desk job where I am inside all day.)

Let's see what else has gone on since I last posted. Rebecca had her birthday on June 6. She turned 6. Well, at least that is how many candles I put on her cake. I am sure putting the right number of candles on the cake would have violated some sort of fire safety code. Besides it probably would have melted the cake. (It was a Chocolate Resses Peanut Butter Ice Cream Cake). We actually had a great time on Becca's birthday and hopefully she enjoyed it too.

How about a little Cody and Jade update:

Lets start with Cody. For those of you who didn't know Cody is very short and skinny. (Not that Becs and I are Shaquille O'Neal or anything.) Anyway, we have been taking him to specialists for a while now. We finally found out this last week why he is so small. His body doesn't produce enough growth hormone. The next step is to rule out any abnormal causes of this such as tumors. They are going to do an MRI on him in July. If everything turns out ok, then they will start giving him growth hormone to help his growth.

Jade continues to progress. Ironically, the doctors don't think she needs growth hormone yet because her growth is doing well. She is eating some solid foods now, so we are pleased with that. She is also starting to roll over a little bit. Her main problem is that she doesn't have enough support of her neck. So when she rolls over it is just the rest of her body, while her head stays still. Her physical therapists and other doctors are pleased with her progression though. In October she goes to a Physiatrist. There are only four of these in the state of New Jersey. They are going to hook her up to some special equipment to help start teaching her how to stand and how to walk. In other news we were finally able to get all of her blood drawn after only going to four different hospitals to get it drawn. She did well though, a lot better then I would've. (I nearly passed out when I gave blood as a freshman in college, but that is a story for another time)

Let me see, what else have we done since I last posted? I've been kayaking a few times. Yesterday I headed over to the Delaware River. I kayaked up the canal starting from the Scudder's Falls Bridge up to Washington's crossing, and then kayaked back down the Deleware river. At the Scudder's Falls Bridge area there is a great play wave that I was able to playboat in for a while also. It was awesome. I didn't get any pictures of me doing it, but my parting shot below is someone else doing some playboating on the same wave at Scudder's Falls that I play at.

Catch up

So, now that we have a nice new computer I figured I would do a little bit of catch up on stuff that has happened. Becs has already talked about most the stuff, so I'll just touch on a few things. Becs already mentioned that we went camping. I just wanted to say how much fun we had there. We went to a nice little lake in the mountains in Pennsylvania. We brought my kayak and did some kayaking and hiking and stuff. Below is a picture of Cody looking for Salamanders. We actually were able to find quite a few. We also found a stick poking out of the water that Cody thought resembled a shark. So if you ask him about the camping trip he might tell you we found salamander's and sharks.
We also did some hiking while we were there. Cody loved it. We were following a river the whole time and he kept telling me he wanted to find where it started. Below is a video of Cody running ahead of us because he thought we were going to slow. That's kind of a miracle for Cody, because normally he is the slowest walker on earth. I guess he like's hiking.

One thing Becca didn't mention was about us going to the zoo. We decided to get a membership to the Philadelphia zoo, and we took Cody and Jade down there on the Saturday before Memorial day. Cody did really good. He even got to ride a camel.

Here are pictures of my two little monkeys. That reminds me of a funny story. When I was younger my Mom took us all to the zoo. I remeber when we went by the monkey cage one of the monkey's was making a ton of noise hollering and shaking the cage and such. My mom didn't see the monkey and instead turned to my brother Mark and yelled at him to be quiet and stop making so much noise. Of course, it was actually the monkey making all of the noise and my brother actually hadn't said a word. I guess monkey must run in my family's blood.

Here is my cute Hoodie Family. If you didn't know already, I like Hoodies. OK, I guest that is a little bit of an understatement. I love hoodies. I probably own over 50 Hoodies. I always get mad at Becs if she tries to throw one away. So, since I like Hoodies, my family puts up with it and wears them also. We even got Jade this cute little pink Nike hoodie.

My parting shot today is Becs and my dream house. It has a really nice porch and sits on a beautiful piece of land surrounded by forest. It was awesome. Although I think the lady that lived there and saw us taking a picture of her house was kind of freaked out. She probably thought we were stalkers or something. Oh well.

"Cody-isms" and a funny laugh

Our conversation today after Cody and Scott got back from the park.

Becs - I'm sure glad you guys are back from the park and didn't get caught in the rain.

Cody - Mommy, are there nets in the rain?

Becs - What?

Cody - Nets. To catch the children.

That boy cracks me up.



So Jade really laughs and smiles a lot more, but she has this kind of funky laugh. It almost sounds like she is crying, only she's definitely laughing. Check it out for yourself.

Four Events and a Funeral

Event #1:
Scott gave notice and quit his job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. After two years of a long commute and long hours it was time for a change. He has taken a new job with Integra Lifesciences Corporation as a staff accountant. Among many positive new changes the best is that his new office is literally 1.2 miles down the road from our apartment. He can walk to work if he would like. Which brings us to…

Event #2:
Scott has been commuting to his office in Florham Park for the last several months, which is about 1.5 hours each way. He has been using our 1990 Toyota Camry, Cameron, that my parents helped me buy when I was 16. It has approximately 200,000 miles on it and quite honestly has been living on borrowed time for months now. On Scott’s last day of commuting Cameron died about 15 miles from home in the pouring rain. After much effort from my parents and a soaking wet Scott we miraculously got the car back to my parents house to wait out its last days. It looks like Scott really will have to walk to work.

Event #3:
When Scott left PWC we some how were lucky enough to have him home one whole week before he started his new job. Thinking that it might be the only vacation we get this summer we of course went to the great outdoors. We went camping at one of Pennsylvania’s beautiful State Parks, Locust Lake State Park. We took the kayak for some boating in the lake and found a great little hike suitable for the family. The weather was perfect for us and we had a great time.

We also went down to the beach. Of course it was too cold to go in the water, but we had a nice walk on the sand and enjoyed the salty air.

Event #4:
It was also Scott’s birthday on May 12th. Scott has been a huge soccer fan all his life. We have been hoping to go to a MLS game since we got to NJ and finally got our chance. To celebrate his birthday we went to see the NY Red Bulls game versus the Kansas City Wizards. First we had a chance to eat at one of our favorite places, Fuji Hibachi and Sushi Grill. The game was so much fun to watch and the atmosphere was exciting. They tied 1-1, but a tie is better than a loss.

The Funeral:
On Monday, the 19th, we said good-bye to my first car, Cameron. We donated him to Outreach for use of the parts that are still good. Cameron, you served us well and I will always have fond memories of you. Rest In Peace. ; )

Stay Tuned...

So we are without a computer right now, but hope to get a new one in the near future. In the mean time hang in there because we have definitely had some big changes happen recently that we will post about soon! Till then hope you all are enjoying the Spring weather.

Party Mania

So Cody was invited to his first birthday parties that just happen to both be on this past Saturday. First we had a Blue's Clues breakfast party for Spencer who turned 3. The kids had fun playing Blue's Clues and "pin the flag on mailbox". Scott and I were invited to stay and enjoy some of the breakfast treats, including Finnish pancakes and fried-up spam, yum! We left that party in time to drive to the next party for my "cousin's" daughter's 4th birthday party. This one was at a taekwondo studio. The instructors taught the kids several moves and played some games with them. They were very nice and patient with the kids and Cody had a blast. We forgot to pull out the camera for Spencer's party, but got some good shots at Sofia's party.

Here is Cody learning how to block a hit.

Cody getting ready to hit.

Here is Cody doing the obstacle course they had set up for the kids.

PS - I put cousin in quotations because technically she isn't my cousin, but my parents have known her parents for decades, so we are practically family.

Family, Friends, Fun, Festivals, and Frogs

All right, so I haven't really posted in a while, so I have a lot of catching up to do. This post might be a little long. Lets start by going back to last Saturday, April 19. Becca had a girl's lunch with her four cousin's and sister and all of the kids. Cody had lots of fun playing with the other kids, but his favorite part was playing with the yellow lab. I guess we need to get him a dog. Here is a picture of all the kids that were there. Can you tell which kids are ours?

Since it was just for the girls and kids, I decided to spend the day kayaking. I went up sea kayaking to the Thimble Islands off of the coast of Conneticut. It is about a 2.5 hour drive from our house. It was a fabulous day for kayaking, clear skies and 70 degrees. The Thimble Islands are made up of hundreds of little islands all within a mile or two of the coast. Some of them are just little rocks above the ocean, some are big enough for one house, and some hold several houses. Here are a few of the pictures I took while kayaking.

The picture below was a little bridge that went between two of the islands.

That night after I got back from kayaking, we all went over to the Dueker's house for Mellisa's birthday. Here is a picture of the kids there.

The rest of the week went pretty well. Here are a few of the highlights below. First off is Cody slaughtering me at a game of chess. I haven't quite figured it out, but somehow everytime we play, he kills all of my guys before I can even make a move. If you ever play him watch out, he's good.
Let's see...Next I guess we'll talk about Jade's feeding test. So Jade went to New Brunswick to St. Peter's Hospital. They put Barium in her milk and used different flow nipples to feed her while they X-Rayed to see where the liquid ended up. Well, it turns out that when they used the fast flow nipple all of the milk went directly into her lungs. Basically, her epiglottis (a lid-like flap of elastic cartildge tissue covered with a mucous membrane, attached to the root of the tongue), wasn't protecting her airway when she swallows. The dangerous thing about it is that when it happens, she doesn't cough or choke. With the slow flow nipples, none of it went into her lungs, but they could tell she was still having difficulty. What we have ended up doing now is putting rice cereal in her milk to thicken it up, that way she is better able to swallow it, without it going into her lungs. She has also started to eat rice cereal a little bit, and seems to be doing well with that.


That was pretty much all we did for the week. Let's move on to the weekend. Yesterday we went to the New Jersey Folk Festival and the Rutgers Agricultural day, which was being held at Rutger's University. It was a ton of fun. They had all kinds of stuff going on there. Cody got to see some cockroach races and pet some cows and pigs. The Folk festival had a lot of good music, food and free kid's activities. Here are some of the picture's below. First up is him getting his face painted.

If you can't tell, it's a snake.

Here Cody is sharing his balloon animal with Jade, while she gets a tube feeding.

Here is Cody bouncing at one of the games they had set up for the kids.

Here is Jade, chilling in the sun at the Festival.
And finally, here are Becs and Cody chillin on a tree.

Well, that's about all for now. My parting shot below is me holding a frog that Cody and I caught this week. Cody told me he wanted to keep it and feed it flies, but Becca would have none of that in our house. I told Cody the frog would miss his family, so he let me go release him. Have a great week!