Emily and I at the Jeffrey Animal Hospital Pet Expo

Police K9 Exhibit

Surprise Visit from Papa

Emily dressing up her pet rat in Barbie clothes

Downtown Detroit, Always an Adventure

Daddy/Daughter Date with Em

To the pet store to play with every single puppy and then to McDonalds for dinner.

Gotta Love Spring

This tree in our front yard is beautiful, but it smells like snake musk. Nasty.

The Rat likes my pancakes

Ben hurt his finger

Before and After: My New TV

This is my new TV, a 55" Samsung TV.  We got a wall-mounted TV in order to get rid of the entertainment center.  Maddie keeps telling me she thinks it's too big.  I think she's nuts.

I was amazed at the rats nest of cables that I'd accumulated over the past 5 years.  Everything from XBOX, Mac, TV, Audio, Video, Networking gear and VOIP routers.

Bob Rays came over and helped me run the electrical and hang the bracket to make sure it's well-hung. I fished the cables through the wall, through the siding and back over into the corner of the room.  It is a work of art!  I still need to run one more HDMI cable and re-run the Cat 5 networking and speaker wire.  Hope to get to that this weekend.

Gotta like it when you walk in on this...

Yes, she is texting with her toes

The latest addition to our family

What a life!

How Emily Eats Pancakes

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Maddie and Cathie were hanging out watching the movie A Walk to Remember.  I came and laughed as I saw the two of them cuddling on the couch, each with their phones out, texting.  Even funnier was the fact that Cathie was back on a regular 9 key pay since her blackberry is on the fritz due to a slight "over-moisturization issue".  Maddie's fingers were flying as Cathie struggled.

Hanging with Papa

My Dad came over today to hang out with us.  We had a great time, not doing much of anything special, but just hanging out as a family.  We went to the library, went out for ice cream, stopped at the pretzel shop and then came home and played cards.  My Dad and I even measured everything to hang my new 55" LCD TV.  I'm still gonna need Bob Ray's help....

Nice Hat!

While Cathie and Maddie were at the Taylor Swift concert, Nate, Em and I went to see the movie "How to Train a Dragon".  On our way out, we saw this 50 year old guy wearing this hat.  If you look closely, you'll see that this is a pink Hannah Montana hat.  Brilliant!

The movie was great.  The 3-D wasn't too obtuse, and the story was great.  I kept thinking that it was the story of Emily, if she were a viking.  The boy sees the best in the Dragons, befriends them, loves them, and risks his life for them.  Just like Emily would do in the same situation.

Jerome "The Bus" Bettis

On my flight to LA, I flew through Atlanta and was upgraded to first class.  As I watched the guy in front of me sit down, I swore it was Jerome "The Bus" Bettis.  After the flight attendant called him "Mr. Bettis", I was pretty sure.  If you've never heard of The Bus, he plays for the Steelers, and is #5 in the NFL for all time rushing yards.  He's a Detroit native, one a bunch of super bowls and been to the pro bowl 6+ times.  After we landed, he was kind enough to give me an autograph for Nate, which I got in my handy-dandy Xerox notebook:

When Bettis asked me how to spell Nate's name, my brother Dan's suggestion was the best one, which was to spell it "E-Bay User".  He was a nice guy from my brief conversation with him.  He was very up-front about his hatred of Sidney Crosby, which is how I know he's a true Detroit native.

Em's First Mountain Bike Ride

Paintball with the Youth Group

We had our annual youth group paintball game yesterday.  This was Maddie's first year ever playing and Nate's third year.  We had a huge crew of about 45 kids and leaders go and it was great.  The event was at Killer Paintball's indoor course out in Romulus's.  I decided this year to wear an old suit I had moth-balled in the back of my closet just to change things up.  I figured it would give a whole new meaning to the idea of a road warrior or corporate raider.

Maddie wasn't planning on going right up until the time we got to church, and had a change of heart at the last minute.  Maddie was pretty nervous about getting hit, but she hung with me and did pretty well.  Some of the boys were teasing her, explaining they were going go after her out there.  I think she liked it when I explained that anything they did to Maddie, they did to me, and they knew that I didn't really care about getting hit - not to mention my wearing a suit which likely gave me super powers.

She was great after her first hit in the mask, so I figured she was about ready to venture off on her own after a few games in, and felt like quite the bad Dad after she came back in after getting lit up pretty badly.  She didn't let that stop her and jumped right back in, even playing a few rounds of speedball, one of the more brutal up-close paintball games.

Nate brought a crew of 6 guys with him and they all had a blast.  They were all big Modern Warfare 2 fans, and on the van ride over it was funny hearing them talk about war in that context.

Somehow my suit made me stand out a bit and I ended up getting lit up here and there.  I got to exact my revenge on the kids during a sniper round.

You can see the rest of the pictures here in Picasa.