It's hard to believe Summer is over, time definitely flies when you're busy! The kids are still enjoying school, although Tyler no longer loves the bus (thanks to some punk-a$$ fourth grader squirting juice boxes in kids faces...not Tyler's but he wants nothing to do with the bus anymore) so we're not pushing him to take it, but trying to encourage him to get back on. I know he will eventually. He is playing recreation soccer and really loves that... he played goalie the first game and scored a goal from his own net, and last week he was out there and scored 3 more goals. I know I'm bragging, but hey, that's what this is for right? :-)
Anna is also having fun at school, but has the separation anxiety when Katie first leaves her. She will get in the groove in no time I'm sure...it's only been three days so far. She goes M-T-Th for the morning, so she's not quite used to the routine yet. She also started ballet classes on Monday afternoons. LOVES that.
We don't tend to take many pictures these days, but I have a couple here...

2011_09_20

2011_09_08

Well today was Tyler's first day of kindergarten. Full day, 5 days a week. He was super excited to ride the bus, and he had a great day. The phone rang at lunch and was Tyler's teacher, Mrs. Read. This was of course our worst fear with his nut allergy, but she just wanted to know if he could buy a "hot lunch". Apparently he ate his entire lunch during morning snack, and wanted to buy himself lunch! We're proud of him for taking care of himself and not just sitting there with no food. It was great to hear that he was AT school period, since we had been worrying about him all morning (hey, it's hard to send a 5 year old off to a full day of school on a bus at 7:30 for the first time). He likes his teacher, talked about new friends, and had fun. So far, so good!
Anna starts preschool on Thursday (she has "open house" on Tuesday, again, to meet the teachers and stuff, who she already knows because it's where Tyler went for two years). She is very anxious to get started, and SO excited.

In other news, we are totally unscathed by "tropical storm Irene"...we had some flooding in the backyard, but it was gone in 24 hours. Didn't reach the fish pond. The power went out for a few hours, but came back on before morning. Vermont got it pretty bad down south of us, but we basically just got some heavy rain. Hope you all are doing well also!

2011_09_02

2011_08_23

2011_08_04

2011_07_10

Here's a random assortment of pictures from the past few weeks. T-ball is over, and ended with the last few games of the kids hitting over-hand pitching, so that was pretty neat, and then last Sunday, Katie's sister got married! The wedding was perfect, and the rain held off...There's a lot of pictures from that (sorry to those of you who don't even know Beth and Jacob, but some of their family couldn't make it up (the wedding was at Gail and Paul's house in Peacham, VT) so I wanted to share a few more than just the kids :-)

2011_06_29

The kids at the driving range:


Tyler getting a hit:

2011_06_01

Anna had a little dance recital today at Essex High School up on the stage (I say little because the full shin-dig was all ages/levels, and lasted three hours...Anna's class was second, and lasted about 4 minutes :-) She did great!!... I don't think I could go out on a stage in front of a full house...it was totally packed! People were turned away at the door by the fire marshal it got so crowded... Fortunately, we were there early and got seats in the front row. We had our doubts that she would go through with it when she realized how many people were there, but she proved us wrong, and we are SO proud of her.

Here's a couple of clips... I grabbed with the camera. If you don't know the song (I'd be shocked if if you did), it's from Pinnochio and it's called "I've Got No Strings"... hence the suspenders with the tutu.

I've got a ton of pictures to go through from the past few weeks and a trip to Story Land, but wanted to share Anna's dance tonight.

2011_06_12

2011_05_30

Recognize anyone on this page?

http://shelburnemuseum.org/learn/families-and-kids/

2011_05_07

2011_05_10

Happy Easter!

So it's been a long time since the last update, I know. I've been busy working on finishing the basement almost every night after the kids go to bed and just haven't taken the time otherwise to download the pictures from the camera and put some up. I don't have many pictures to prove it, but it's coming along well. Framing, electric, lighting, and half the sheetrock is done.
The pictures go from most recent to oldest... you could probably figure that out by the snow in the last few pictures and the Easter eggs in the first few :-)

2011_04_24

2011_03_26

2011_03_21

Just a few more pictures and videos from Katie's camera now that she's home:

2011_02_25

Katie and the kids are in Pennsylvania visiting Beth and Jacob. They work at Whitetail resort, and are teaching the kids to ski!

Skiing at Whitetail, PA

Skiing Day 2

2011_02_20

A lot of people have asked me if I am "working on" the IBM 'Watson' super-computer which is going to be competing in Jeopardy on Feb 14-16. The short answer is "kind of". To build 'Watson', they connected 360 IBM Power7 microprocessors (2,880 total cores), along with 15 terabytes of RAM, and some incredibly smart software. The processor itself is what I work on, and it's primary application is in an IBM server, not to play Jeopardy!(in case you were thinking it was a waste of money). But that is one of the chips that I have been involved in developing, so I do have a little skin in it I suppose. Hopefully it doesn't crash. If it does, I take it back... I had nothing to do with it.

If you're interested, or have no idea what I'm talking about, check out this video:

 

 

enough snow already!!!