It’s been a very busy time of year, just wanted to say Merry Christmas to everyone out there!

So today I get an e-mail at work from Laurie stating only “Call now!”.  However, that was a good 30 minutes before I got back to my desk at work to see it.  So since my cell phone reception is non existent from my desk I get up to head outside to make the call.  Halfway there I notice my cell phone battery is dead.  So back to my desk, I grab the phone and call.  The news I hear, Laurie’s pregnant!!!!!  Yay!!!!!   Given the time frame the baby should be born come late February early March.  Laurie took two EPT tests, one in the morning and one in the evening and both returned positive!

We are both so excited!!  However, on a side note there was some bad news.  No, not Michael Jackson dying and not Farrah Fawcett, my Mom fell at work today and broke her hip.  She was admitted in to the hospital this evening and will be meeting with the doctor to determine if she needs pins put in her hip or a hip replacement and then the surgery.    Everyone’s hoping that all goes well.  We’ll be visiting her shortly.

On Monday we did our 3rd annual Memorial Day BBQ.  We had quite a good turn out and a ton of good food.

Connor ended up in his pool with some guns and a beer…

We did end up with a bit of a grease fire the burned a good 3 – 4ft high and singed my hair, eyebrows and eyelashes…

But the food came out great and everyone had a good time.

And thanks again to Brent for helping us clean up after the BBQ, loan me parts for demandred, help me put demandred together and help us with clean up after Connor!

All the pictures from the day are in our photo gallery.

So yesterday (Saturday) the weather was much warmer out so we decided to try and introduce Connor to the outside once more.  Since he started walking he has not really walked outside because of the cold weather.  Yesterday we took him out for the first time and in his big boy (hard rubber/leather) sneakers.

He was nervous at first to walk on his own outside.  At first he was scared and cried a little.  After a few moments of being reassured he started walking but was stopping at each crack in the concrete to turn around until he reached another crack.  While holding my hand I helped him get past this minor obstacle.  Once past this he was all over the driveway but refused to step on to the black pavement. He was running all around the driveway, between the cars, from the front to the back, etc..  Eventually Laurie and I were able to coax him in to the street while he was holding our hands.

Once he got comfortable walking on the black pavement he was off.  We did a few laps around the col-de-sac then took off towards the main road and down the side walk.  He walked almost the entire block around (~ 1/4mile) following the sidewalk the entire way without going astray.  It was so adorable.  Laurie and I were able to walk a few feet behind him for a few portions of the walk.  He got tired about 2/3rds of the way around and I put him on my shoulders.  Once we got back to our street the neighbor’s kid, Jessie (3yrs old) was out and playing.  I put Connor down and he quickly made his way over to where Jessie and his parents were.

Shortly after this, I took this video of him grabbing Jessie’s tee-ball ball and walking away with it.  I took this off my camera phone and converted it to flash, so the quality isn’t the greatest.

When all was said and done we were outside playing for a little over an hour.  Connor went to bed almost 2 hours earlier than normal and slept straight through till his normal morning time and then took an extra long mid-day nap today!  Going outside really pooped him out.

So my ex-coworker/friend Pete got in to modeling/acting.  He had a small appearance in Sex in the City during the auction scene.  Laurie Netflixed the movie and sure enough I think I spotted him towards the upper right of the screen when they show a shot of the whole auction room.

So tonight, Laurie’s cooking dinner and I’m wandering around aimlessly annoying her and the Victory Plate commercial comes on TV.  Previously I’ve only seen it online.  So I snapped this picture of him and it’s in HD:

Click for the BIG version...

Ryan has a link on his blog to the entire video.