Back in September, Brenden went to his first day of kindergarten. It seems just like yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital. I can’t believe how quickly he is growing up. He’s working on writing, reading and math. He’s enjoying it and we work on homework throughout the week. Here are some pictures [...]
I discovered something odd about my thinking the other day. Some of you may not know this, but my mom died in 1984 when I was 6. The thing I discovered is how deeply this affects my thinking about other people and their parents. If someone older than me mentions that they are doing something [...]
This weekend we took the family to Hand Camp at Camp John Marc put on by the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital For Children. This is a camp for children with a limb difference between the ages of 4 and 9 and their families. We’ve been waiting to get to go to this camp since Brenden [...]
It started with a phone call. I was standing in line at Target when I got a call from my wife. She was nearly in tears and said to me “My passport is expired”. This was at 1:55 PM. The major problem: we were supposed to be on a flight to the UK at 5:40 [...]
I love this video my wife took of Emily drumming in the house. Especially the little “flourish” at around the 35 second mark.
Last year, it snowed a lot for around here. We even had a White Christmas. This year, Brenden was so looking forward to snow on Christmas, but we had to explain to him that it doesn’t always do that. It didn’t snow this year for Christmas, but today it did snow and Brenden was very [...]
Today, my beautiful little girl turns two! Happy birthday sweetie! Here’s a recent picture of her playing with just about everything she loves.
Before I get into the meat of this post, let me show you three pictures. 2004 2005 2010 I have been overweight for as long as I can remember. In 2004, I weighed 280 pounds. The picture above was taken in May of that year at Caprock Canyon in west Texas. A couple [...]
A long time ago, I mentioned in some photos about an awesome holiday train a man in my neighborhood sets up. This year, thanks to my handy-dandy iPhone 4, I was able to get a decent video put together. As you can see, it’s quite elaborate and the kids absolutely love it! The train runs [...]
Last year, we decided to start a family tradition of going out and cutting down our Christmas tree. Our great friends Jerry and Kris Scott told us about this farm they went to called the Walls Family Farm. We decided to go and had a great time. This year, we started down the path of [...]
At the end of October, I decided to make a rather large change in my life: I quit my day job to pursue iOS contracting full time. An opportunity presented itself that would allow me to work from home while developing an iOS application for a large company. This would also lend itself to allowing [...]
Funny how the time flies and you only post links to your blog. Heck, it wasn’t even me. It’s an automated thing. Well, here’s a honest to goodness actual post! Friday, my little guy turned 4. He’s growing up so fast now. We took him to Chuck E. Cheese’s that night for some fun and [...]
Now that my work’s busy season is finally winding down, I can post some of the things that we’ve been up to. Emily continues to grow and grow and grow. Maggie’s got the update post for you to check out. Brenden’s also been growing and learning so much. Since my last post, he’s now able [...]
After going to the Train Show last Saturday, Brenden and I went back there Sunday for some additional looking around. Brenden really, really likes playing with Thmoas the Train Engine toys here at home and when we walked in, we went by the vendor who had some large Thomas the Train Engine model train sets [...]
Brenden has been very into trains of late, almost exclusively playing on his Thomas play table with all his Thomas trains. As a reward for him being a much better sleeper this week ( which is another post in itself ), I was going to find a model railroad place to take him to. As [...]
In the interest of giving some equal time to the big brother, I present some pictures of Brenden…and sneak in a couple of Emily. Brenden has been enjoying having some of the baby stuff back out. He really likes Emily’s car seat as seen here: He’s also been having all of us play trains with [...]
We’ve made it home and Brenden continues to love his little sister. This morning the first thing he asked me when I got him out of his bedroom was “Where’s the baby?”. It’s pretty cute. He’s also very gently with her. Here are more pictures. Brenden checking out his sister in her hospital roller crib [...]
On Monday January 5, we welcomed Emily Grace Burleson to our family. She was born via a planned c-section at 3:58 PM and weighed in at 9 lbs 12.3 oz and was 19 in long. Maggie and Emily are doing very well. As for me, I’m excited as I was when Brenden was born. The [...]
The past two days have been long, but amazing as we saw a lot of family and friends. Brenden had a blast as he got to play with his cousins from California while also playing with a ton of other kids. I should tell the tale in pictures. We start visiting my best friend Andy’s [...]
Every year for the holidays I make my favorite appetizer: a ham and onion cheese ball. I learned the recipe from my dad and I’m going to share it with you. You will need: 3-4 packages of Philadelphia Cream Cheese ( I do not recommend the fat free version for this ) 8-16 oz deli [...]