Mase Free Weekend

Jeni and I sent Mase up to her parents' house last weekend. Unfortunately, rather than partying we decided to paint his room and move furniture around in preparation for Baby #2. Here's Mason's new room. The picture doesn't show his new dresser which is the dresser I had growing up with a replacement drawer from the dresser Jeni had growing up. (Yes Jeni and I grew up with identical dressers.)

The baby will sleep in a "wing" of our bedroom. It had been a third bedroom, but a previous owner combined it with the master bedroom as a kind of sitting/dressing area. It will be interesting to see how this works out. The longer term plan is to eventually have Mase and El/La Segundo/a share his bedroom.

After all of our hard work Saturday we went to a work party and then to see the new Batman movie. We were out of the house at midnight! And we were exhausted the next day as we put on additional coats of paint. Before we left to get Mason on Sunday I took some pictures of Jeni at 20 weeks. Nice!

This is a picture taken on December 17, 2006 when Jeni was ~20 weeks pregnant with Mason. She thinks that she was sticking her stomach out in this one. Interestingly, this picture is as out of focus as the new ones.

31 Flavors

I celebrated birthday 31 last week with Jeni and Mason. I took most of the day off and we went to a park to check out the koi pond and walk through the woods. Jeni packed us lunch to enjoy outside including some chocolate zucchini bread (which Mason took very seriously).

We had Chinese for dinner and then went to have custard. Mason is very serious about custard as well, but managed to smile for some pictures.

Mason really liked his baseball helmet ice cream bowl, though he wanted to put it on when he was done eating.

Mason at the ball game

Last summer, we went to a minor league baseball game in Madison, but it was hot and we didn't last very long.

Last night, we took him to see the Peoria Chiefs with Jeni's grandparents.

We had very good seats, on the third base side, in the shade and near the gate so we could feel the breeze on our backs. A park worker gave Mason an old baseball which he held onto very tightly for a while.

Mason had his own seat between Jeni and GGMa.

Mason watched parts of the game, but also liked the mascots. A real Dalmatian was stationed near our seats for kids to pet and man in a Dalmatian-dressed-like-a-firefighter costume was walking around the entire stadium.

When he got a little antsy, we took a walk to the hot dog stand.

We stuck it out until the seventh inning stretch. Mason knows many of the words to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" so he sang along and held out fingers for "1, 2, 3 strikes you're out."

After the song, they shot off a few fireworks. Mason had never seen fireworks before and was spellbound.

We figured that nothing could top that and the Chiefs were down 5-1, so we left then. On the way out we posed for one last picture.

Blog post from the past

Let's pretend that I posted these pictures a month ago when they were taken.

Jeni, Mason, and I went up to Milwaukee to see some friends. We forgot our camera, but took these pictures with a borrowed one.

Mason was ready to party.

Jeni read books to Mason and Addie, the daughter of some friends of ours.

Kasey had a good time, I think.

The rest of the party...(I think)

Happy 3rd Birthday Joe!

Mason's cousin Joe celebrated his third birthday on Sunday. Unfortunately, Mason was getting changed when "Happy Birthday" was sung and cake was cut. Jeni did get some nice pictures of Mason and Joe after they got out of the blow up pool that was set up in Joe's backyard.

It is very hard to concentrate on eating when one of your best cousins is sitting right next to you.

Mason refused to fall asleep on the drive home, so he was still awake at 10pm when we pulled into Urbana. He wondered aloud why "sky black." I guess he doesn't remember ever being up so late at night.

Gillian visits

Mason's favorite girl-cousin-of-Jeni's, Gillian, visited last week. They went to some gardens where the big excitement was apparently a frog.

First they tried to pose in a concrete boat.

Aunt Mary

Jeni's Aunt Mary and Grandparents visited a few weekends ago. Mary had never met Mason and was very excited to see him. As usual it didn't take long for Mason to warm up to her.

I think that he's trying to make a fish face....

Excuses, excuses

I have lots of excuses for not blogging lately.

• Our internet went out for two weeks. Comcast was on the case and we seem to be OK now.


• I rode in a bike ride to benefit the Multiple Sclerosis Society along with some members of my family. Here Amy and her friend Holly pose by our team sign (Ride Against MS).
  
  


• We have been traveling up to Chicagoland quite often. We visited my grandparents for lunch one afternoon.
  
  


• I'm sure that there's other stuff.

But I'm back at the keyboard ready to post some pictures of our kid!

By the way, here are some pictures that my cousin Joe took when we were out in Colorado. He is a much better photographer than Jeni or me so enjoy.