Hurricane Season

Greetings. Last week I decided not to write a weekly blog post due to some personal health things going on in the family, that I really didn't want to write about/talk about or even think about. So with that out of the way, let's continue shall we? Tomorrow is our 4-year wedding anniversary. It's amazing. 4 years ago I was hanging out with my family, the night before my wedding. Later in the evening (about 1am) I laid awake on the floor of my bro's room thinking about how amazing and important of a day was the next day. I was way too excited to be marrying the woman of my dreams, the love of my life. Man, that morning of our wedding, I was super stoked and couldn't wait to see my bride in her beautiful dress. With all of our friends and family on top of that rooftop that gorgeous spring day, all I was focusing on was that beautiful woman walking down the aisle. It was the same girl who walked into accounting class at Carroll College that took my breath away. 4 years just flew by. One moment, we're getting married, the next we got a house, a dog, traveled and are now parents to an adorable little girl. I absolutely look forward to what's in store next. Are we doing anything for our anniversary? Nah. I work 2-10 thursday night. She works as well. We talked about going out Saturday night, but I dunno if she's still up for it.
Slowly making progress on the dog portrait (yawn, right?) Had a pretty nice day off with Mia and memaw who's visiting for a few days. Mia's been getting into chasing Remi around the house with either one of her toys or one of his. It's cute, but Remi always gives me this look like "duddeee leave me the hell alone kid!" haha. We had dinner tonight with my mom at New China and it was hilarious watching Mia play with chopsticks and eat noodles. She wasn't crazy about dessert and was quite unsure about the orange cube of jell-o on her plate. She tried crab meat tonight there. Seemed to like it, which is good.  Been thinking about wanting to play in a soccer league again. I suppose I'll wait to play soccer till Mia's old enough to kick the ball back to me. Haha! :)

That's all for now. Adios and thanks for reading :)

The Empire Strikes First

Hello friends and acquaintances. Beautiful weather we're having right? That's always my go-to thing to say at the store when I feel like I need to talk up the customers. Yeah, it's stupid but for the ones that kinda linger after their transaction is complete, I feel like I have to say something. Sometimes customers tell me what they're doing today without me even asking. "So today, I picked up my kids, then got dinner ready, THEN..blah blah" okay okay. So anyways, not too bad of a day off. Great day to take Mia and Remi to the park. Lots of big kids there today. No one for Mia to play with, even though she was saying "hi" to everyone. They loved petting Remi though. He was flashing his big lovable eyes at them. The same eyes that roped us into adopting him. For dinner, spaghetti tonight. Always tasty. Mia loves playing with the noodles and sauce. Mia got a swing set last weekend (thanks Grandpa and Memaw Ridenour!) So now we'll be able to play on the swings every morning!

Time for some good old fashion ranting. For the record, I seriously dislike cell phones. Why? because they can be nothing but a pain in the ass, for both Jill and I. My last cell phone didn't even make it a year before the battery just crapped out and I had to replace the battery..Yet THAT battery also crapped out. So last year, I picked up a new phone. This current one turns it self off and restarts every once in a while. NOT fun. Why are the cheaper cell phones (through AT&T) made horribly? Is it a ploy to buy some 2-300 phone? Jill's phone isn't much better so we're hoping that once her contract is up in MARCH, we can get out of AT&T and get on a family plan. Why? Well I feel like for the money I pay for my cell phone, I'm not getting enough bang for my buck. So lately I've been researching and reviewing different companies and plans to see what's the better option. I also feel like I'm going to be dropping some good $ on some new phones for both of us. Would love to get an iPhone, but I dunno if we'll be able to afford them. May have to get some phones a tad cheaper or something. I just want a good quality phone that doesn't have as many issues as my previous ones. Any recommendations?

The dog portrait is getting OH so close to getting complete. Can't wait to rid this beast and get paid dudes!! Next project will be a picture of a hockey player for my pops followed by (possibly) putting together a Tumblr site for my art. I've been meaning to build a proper site and my friend Micaela recommended Tumblr. It'll take some time, but it should turn out great. I also need to update and upload some photography work to my Thrill Factory Facebook page.

Thats all for now-Later, thanks for reading!

Bridges,Squares

Well, we survived our first wedding that we brought Mia to. Ran a little late to the ceremony but MADE IT! Mia looked gorgeous in her blue/white flower print dress with matching color bows she didn't want to wear. As I watched my cousin walk up the aisle as her now husband waited, it reminded me of when I got married and how excited I was to see Jill in her wedding dress. The feeling is truly amazing being the guy standing there awaiting the person you love most who's about to join hands and marry you. I remember like it was yesterday...Anyway, Mia did quite well in the church. Kept saying "Hi" and "Bye Bye" a lot, while making stink faces at my family. Always fun. Towards the end of the ceremony she started to get a little bored and fidgety so I walked her out and in a few minutes it was over with. After a nice nap, Mia was ready for the reception later in the evening. She enjoyed clapping with everyone during the speeches, got a VERY nice plethora of food and devoured her own slice of wedding cake. What kid doesn't love wedding cake or cake in general?

After words, her and I danced to the Beatles (my father in law would be SO proud) she had such a great time walking around the dance floor and trying to sing along. Overall, the evening was great. Couldn't stay too long because she was uber tired, but the next wedding Jill and I will most certainly dance :)  Just gotta survive the drive to Peoria first.

Hooray, Jill and I got the day off together :) Woke up a little later then usual which was great because Mia slept well last night. Sadly, it was raining though this morning but thankfully not for too long. I was able to finish cutting our grass. towards the end of it, Mia and Jill came out and Mia was waving like a crazy kid. Totally made me smile.

Was hoping to complete my dog portrait this week, but I don't know if that'll happen. I've got like, 14 hours left of work to probably get into it. maybe 10. I was approached recently to play drums in an all-cover band. I just don't think it's in the cards to happen. These guys wanna play 40 songs and half are bands I really could care less about. If I ever consider playing in a band again, I want it to be mainly original stuff, not Pearl Jam or any songs about cowboys. Music is very important to me, and I want to be a part of something creative, original and in vein of what I like. Plus the guys/girls have to be real down-to-earth. I can't play with grade-A deuchebags anymore. Totally sucks the fun out of playing and performing.

That's all for tonight-:)

Writing A Letter

LOVE the warm weather today. Especially because I was off from work :) When the weather is nice, I can take Mia outside and she really enjoys that. This morning the pouring rain woke us up and we weren't able to take Remi out. Luckily the sun came out early in the day and we could go for a nice walk/jog. Makes me want to get a jogging stroller. AND a Bicycle. :( Hopefully this summer I can find one. So the other day when I was playing with Mia, I remembered that my mother in law took Mia down and let her play with my drum kit. The first and only time I ever took her down to play with it, she was petrified of the cymbals. No biggie. Well I guess my mother in law said she didn't seem to mind, so Tuesday, I thought "hey, let's try this again my Mia.."

 Well believe it or not, she had SO much fun! I gave her one stick and she hit every cymbal, my snare and the two toms. Gave her TWO sticks and she would alternate sticks on the snare drum. WAY RAD!!!!! I know she's just exploring and playing around with the instrument, but it makes me so happy to see her enjoying herself. She still likes playing with my bass guitar, but this was a new smile for her. Something different. She figured out that "If I hit something on this drum kit, it will make a noise and if I hit EVERYTHING on here, they all will make noise!" Couldn't get some good pictures, but got a few. I told Jill about it later and she suggested we do a photo shoot with my drum kit and Mia outside sometime. Should be a lot of fun.

Speaking of fun, we've got our first wedding of the year this weekend. My cousin's getting married Saturday and we're bringing Mia. Should be interesting and possibly challenging. She's never sat through a full catholic mass before or even been to a wedding so hopefully she doesn't cause a ruckus. The last wedding Jill & I attended was in Fond Du Lac and her parents were kind enough to come along to watch her. I'm thinking we'll do alright. We've got another wedding this month in Peoria. Then one in June in Waukesha. Man, I remember when Jill and I used to go to a bunch of weddings a year. Some to attend, others to photograph. They were fun times, but photographing weddings got to be pretty stressful, so that shipped graciously sailed.

Back to work on my dog portrait. Finally able to focus on this beast of a picture. Maybe complete it in a week or so. Then I can start other projects including some sports art for my dad's "man cave" in my parent's new house.

Adios and thanks for reading :)