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 :)

True Believers

Well hockey season is officially over with as far as I'm considering it. My beloved Pittsburgh Penguins are out so with that, I really don't have a lot of invested interest in who wins Lord Stanley's cup. Just as long as it isn't the Flyers or the freakin' Bruins. It's tough when your team doesn't make it very far into the playoffs. Especially since they were on fire pre-playoff season. There's always next year. We've got a great team full of some amazing players so I have high hopes that they'll come back in October hungry to win the cup.

So it was a rainy day off. Not a lot I can do with a kid who'd rather be outside exploring and having fun. At one point it stopped and we were able to take Remi out for a short walk. She always loves going for walks. Said "hi" to this couple checking a house for sale down the street.

 I FINALLY found the original dog picture for the portrait I should have completed a few months ago. If Mia sleeps, I can actually work on it :) Did a tiny tiny bit of work on it today. I've got SO much more to do, but I hope I can pull it off. I've got other projects I wanna get done so the faster I get this out of my house, the happier I'll be. Nothing else to discuss for now.  Hoping this crappy cold weather disappears. Jill's sinuses are kicking her ass a little bit. Possibly Mia has a cold too. Never fun. Here's a picture of Mia trying to text someone on Jill's phone. Silly kid.

HOCKEY NIGHT IN MILWAUKEE

Let's talk about Hockey. Easily my favourite sport of all time, right next to soccer. I've never been a fan of football and basketball is more fun to play, then to watch (barely). Baseball is fine for the most part. I'll cheer on the Brewers and White Sox when I can. I've always looked at hockey players as knights. Armed with a stick that is also their tool to score goals. When they get on the ice, they're going to battle and will do anything to win the game. Soccer probably seems boring to some because the halves are longer then short 20 min quarters in football and the scoring isn't crazy high..but it takes patience and skill to be able to hit your mark from a good distance. It takes a hell of a lot of skill to kick a ball as far as they do, as apposed to throwing it.

My love of hockey started young in grade school. When we'd get some hardcore raining back in the house I grew up in, part of our backyard would flood some...and if we were lucky in the winter, it'd freeze and we'd get our own personal pond. Sure the ice was choppy and crappy at times, but it worked. We could walk out our backdoor and play hockey with the neighbor kids. And if we didn't get a good rain one year, we'd pack up our skates and sticks and head to a pond down a few blocks. I've never been the best ice skater but I've always loved hockey in it's entirety. In the spring/summer, we'd play street hockey. My oldest bro would DIY make me some goalie pads out of cardboard, some used shin guards and whatever else we had. It was a BLAST. I love playing goalie despite not being the biggest guy out there, but being quick and agile helped. :) I remember one or two nights playing at night in the driveway of this storage facility. We played real late into the night and it was so much fun. My brothers are pretty great and in January of 2011, we all got to play hockey again on an outdoor rink in -2 degrees weather. It was cold as hell but So worth it. I had purchased some used skates for 30 some bucks earlier and it proved to have been a wise investment. Last winter I didn't get to play with the guys sadly, but I know we will skate again.

Today, my little bro stopped over and we exchanged thoughts on our beloved Penguins against the filthy Flyers. Both quite nervous about tonight's game. Because I don't have cable, he kept me updated tonight throughout the game. a 10-3 win for the Pens couldn't have made me happier. Still in it, and I'm STILL smiling.

"Get in the fast lane grandma, the Bingo game is ready to roll."

That's all for now people. Thanks for reading :)

Back In Your Head

Man, my art is taking a major back seat for me lately. I don't know why. I have an unfinished project I need to complete but the picture is missing. DAMMIT. I've got other projects I wanna start too, but Mia's getting more needy..but that's okay, right? Went to the doc today. Mia's 21 some pounds and 29 1/2 inches long. Man, she grew fast. She can eat anything now and start drinking whole milk. It's crazy, because I remember having to hold her little head up as relaxed in my lap drinking formula. Now she's little independent Mia wanting to drink/feed by herself. Today she tried her very first slice of PIZZA. Glass Nickel's chicken/Alfredo sauce/mushroom/spinach. It's amazing, really. Glass Nickel is one of our favourite pizza places. She also tried fish, and milk. Not bad for a girl who had two shots today.

Other then that, nothing else to talk about. Been thinking about how much I wanna play in a band again lately. It's such a conflicting thing: wanting to be an active musician, but loving the life of a dad. Planning something I can't talk about (you'll find out later). The Pittsburgh Penguins are in the playoffs (but lost today). Not a good way to end the night :(. All I need is a Pens jersey and I'll be a happy fan. LETS DO THIS PENS!

That's all for now :)