Happy Birthday Dad!!

What a day, back in 1953

Allen Park was introduced to a new Tait, little Henry

All those years pulling pranks and playing on Oceana

But it wasn’t too long before you were on a ship in California

“Hey Tait, want to come to my house to celebrate the holiday?”

“Sure, thanks for the invitation Donnelly.”

Seeing the German shepherds and Rocky may have been scary

But then, of course, in walked Mary.

Back on the ship, and off to Vietnam

And back on the mainland came little Jason.

A couple more children and a move to Michigan

“Schoolcrest looks nice; lets start buildin’.”

Sooner or later you wanted woods and a water well

The obvious option: Move to Farwell

Al Gore screamed as the trees started fallin’

Once you burned a few and the police came callin’

“Hey Dad, where you off to this time?”

“Oh, just up the hill; tryin’ to make some wine.”

These days, grand children run around at your feet

For you and them, the visits are always a treat

“Hey papa, can you help me find a stick for a s’more.”

“What? No, grandma’s lying, I don’t snore.”

It’s difficult to sum up 57 years in a blog post

But here is what I’d like to say most:

You’re a dad with wisdom, integrity and love

You taught by example, always a cut above

You were quick with a buck from your billfold

“Always keep your eye on the ball,” you told

You taught us boys about respect and honor,

to love our wives like you loved Her.

I think it really comes down to one thing:

For us, dad, you are the king.

I know I’m just one lad

But from all of us: We love you and Happy Birthday Dad!

Pregnancy Update

Just wanted to give everyone a little pregnancy update! Shaina S. has asked me numerous times for pictures of my baby bump, so I finally got around to taking one and posting it. I kept telling her it was nothing remarkable...now she can see for herself :-)

So today I am 21 weeks. More than halfway there! I started feeling the baby move on the 28th of March (19 weeks). I had kinda thought that I felt if before that, but this was the first time I was absolutely postive. Stephen got to feel her moving for the first time on Wednesday night (the 7th of April).

I had another ultrasound this week because the last time I went there was some stuff they couldn't see, but everything is great! I also started another job for the next 12 weeks filling in for a photographer at the Times Herald who is ironically on maternity leave. So far it's been going really well. There was only one day where I was just totally exhausted and had to come home and take a 2 1/2 hour nap before I went to my job at the Y. Since I started working at the paper I figured that I'd probably be lacking motivation to get to the gym. Something at the Y happens to coincide with my time working at the paper. It's pretty simple, it's called the Dot Challenge, and you basically just log all your workouts (the minimum goal is 3 times a week for 30 minutes) on a big chart for the next twelve weeks. Not anything earth shattering, but it's been a good way to keep myself accountable for getting my exercise while pregnant and taking on another job. And that's about it. I'm going to try to take a baby bump pic every week for the rest of the pregnancy since I was a horrible slacker at it for the first 20 weeks.

This was right before the gym. So excuse the hair and no makeup. I had my hair like this at Dan and Kim's this weekend one night before I was going to bed and Alden said I looked crazy! It made me laugh.

4D ultrasound. Kinda creepy looking.

Love her little nose. This is at 20 weeks.

Gettin' Hitched!

My little sis is getting MARRIED! Holy cow! I'm so excited for her. Her boyfriend, now fiance, Caleb proposed at the Cherry Blossom Festival in D.C. this past weekend. A nice man offered to take their pic in front of the reflecting pool and then Caleb said, "We might as well make this an action shot," and got down on one knee and proposed. So great to have pictures of it. My sister has lots more on her blog, but you have to be invited to look at her blog because she thinks she's really cool (actually, she just doesn't want her students to find it.) Anyway, I stole this pic from her page to post here. She is coming home tomorrow for her spring break and I can't wait to see her! Welcome to the family, Caleb. A baby and an engagement in one year, my parent suuuuure must be excited :-)

Details

Last night was Mexican night. Yay! I love making fajitas, and tacos and salsa and rice and all that good stuff. It's so satisfying. Although, I really would have enjoyed a margarita. Oh well. Anyway, I found a new salsa verde recipe in Details magazine of all places. It was really good, and really spicy. But it was just what the smokey shredded beef tacos I make need. It was so good. I even went all out and made these delicious fudgy brownies in a skillet for dessert, which I ate right out of the oven with vanilla ice cream of course.

Making the salsa.

The finished product. Sooo yummy!

Broken Glass

So a few weekends ago Stephen and I were visiting the Herman clan in Kentucky. We reluctantly drove home on Sunday night arriving home at 11 p.m. to find that our kitchen cabinet with all of our bar stuff and wine glasses had fallen off the wall. Glass was everywhere. Every single beer mug, wine glass, pilsner glass, martini glass, decanter, etc. that was own was broken. While I would rather come home to this than a giant flood in our apartment, it was still very frustrating. The good news is all of this stuff can be replaced. The better news is we have awesome landlords who wrote us a check for everything that was broken and then some without even batting an eye. The best news is last weekend we went to Crate and Barrel for a little shopping spree.

After we had that big flood last winter and everything got fixed up we came home from a hockey game to find water on our kitchen floor. It was raining really hard and there was a weird thing happening on the roof and water was coming down the brick wall behind that cabinet. They fixed it, but after time the back of this cabinet got moldy and rotted away.

A big mess.

All cleaned up.

A Baby Girl

So Stephen and I had an ultrasound yesterday and found out we are having a baby girl! We are very excited, to say the least. The doc said everything looks perfect. She weighs 9 oz. so far. I get to go back in two weeks for another one because she would not cooperate for some parts of the exam, so hopefully she'll be in a better position and be a little bigger so they can get what they need. Here are some of the pics from the ultrasound.

Sky Blue Sky

A high of 48˚ today in Port Huron. Stephen and I went over to the Lake Huron to check out all the ice. I love our lakes. Totally worth living in Michigan to be able to enjoy them. There is also a huge ice bridge out there that you can't see in any of these pictures. The Coast Guard is concerned that with the warmer weather it's going to cause some big problems in the river. You can read about that here if you're interested.

Anyway, the ice out there is pretty cool. And the sky was so blue today! Love days like today.

You can see more pictures of the ice here.