Seisenta

It sounds so much nicer in Spanish, doesn't it?


Today, my mother turns 60. And just as she always tells me, "I'm not old enough to have a son that's ____ (whatever age I happen to be at the time)," today, I'm thinking, I'm not old enough to have a mom that's 60!


Since my sister already beat me to saying all of the lovely, sentimental things, I'll just say this:


I couldn't have asked for a better mom, a better Nana for our daughter (soon to be daughters), or a better family to have been a part of.


We love you, and miss you down here deep in the heart of Texas.

Happy Mother's Day!

Here's wishing a very happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there, but especially to my two favorite moms.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today is Dad's 61st birthday. Sixty one, and still going strong.

This was the first time in several years that we've been able to celebrate Dad's birthday with him in person. It's so nice to have Mom and Dad down here for a few months, even if it is temporary.

Rachel is thoroughly enjoying her time with Nanna and Dodd, and I think the feeling is mutual.

Happy Birthday Dad, and many more to come!

We all love you very much!

Why, hello there!

Yes, yes, I realize it's been almost a month since I posted anything.

I managed to be at home for three weeks and not write a thing, and then when I had to go back to work, I've been working 10 hour days and just haven't had the energy to do much of anything when I get home.

So here I am, back again. It was incredible to see everyone this past weekend. We're really glad that we and so many others decided to make the trip.

Pictures from the weekend are up at Flickr (you can see them over there on the right), but I'm going to post a few of my favorite.

Home

We made it back from our trip to New York. It was a great trip, and all of my worries about going there turned out to be just that...worries. Nothing more.

We had a wonderful time and I'm glad I don't have to be back at work right away so I can take some time to recover. We walked way more in those 5 days than I think we walked the rest of the year!

Instead of posting a bunch of pictures here (I took over 300) I'll just direct you to my Flickr photostream. If you've been checking in over the past couple of days, I'm sure you've seen those four thumbnails on the right changing every couple of hours as I upload.

I've created a few sets on Flickr to kind of categorize things, so if you want to see the wedding pictures or touristy things, or architecture, pictures of our family, gargoyles, or pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge (yes, I took enough pictures of it for its own category), they're all there. You don't have to go wading through all of them to see the things you like.

I think we're going to have to go back. Soon. The list of things we didn't do is about as long as the list of things we did do.

What's Old is New Again

I just received my Grandparent's 'weather station' this evening via UPS (thanks, Mom for sending it!). You know the one...it used to hang just to the right of the doorway. Here...let me show you:



OK, so not the most flattering picture of Grandma, but it's the only one I could find that showed where this thing was in her house.

Anyway, as you can tell from the picture, it has three dials on it. A thermometer, a barometer and a hygrometer (You know, it measures the humidity. Ha! Betcha didn't know that I actually knew the name for that. Well, I didn't. I had to look it up.)

It's been hanging in that same spot in Grandma's house for as long as I can remember. In fact, when I think of Grandma's house, it's one of the first things I remember. So anyway, when we were up north, I told Mom I was going to take it with me, and she said something about it needing a good cleaning. So when I got it this evening, I set about trying to clean it.

It's amazing what a difference a little glass cleaner can make. These first two were taken after I'd cleaned the thermometer, but not the other two:




And you can see what cleaning just half of the face of the barometer looked like:



Now it's all clean and shiny, and hanging in our house.

An unexpected trip

So, as most of you who read this blog already know, my Grandma Jean (mom's mom) passed away on St. Patrick's Day. This, of course, prompted a flurry of activity on our part in order to get up here for the memorial service on Friday.

Since trying to find airfare last minute is a financial nightmare, I decided to go with a "last minute" deal that you can find on certain websites. Unfortunately, this last minute fare had us leaving from Austin at 6 AM Friday.



That wasn't the bad part, though. The weather had a little winter in store for us, and flying into Chicago turned out to be a bit more tricky than planned.



Luckily, we did make it, just 30 minutes late, which gave us plenty of time to get our car and drive to Geneseo. The memorial service was wonderful, and Mom made it through her speech about Grandma without too much trouble. Afterward, we had cookies and lemonade in the church basement, then went over to Grandma's house to say goodbye.




(Thanks to Aunt Linda for the pictures from Grandma's house)

Friday night, we hung out with the rest of the Laleman clan at Grandma Betty and Grandpa Al's house. Since they're in Florida, we had a house party and Rachel got totally trashed.



We'll be in Illinois until Monday...enjoying this lovely weather.

Goodbye, Grandma Jean.

We sure were lucky to have known you.





Say hi to Grandpa for us.

My turn

We took the final fishing trip of the month on Saturday. There were a lot of things that Dad didn't get to do on this trip, like go fishing with a guide, but I think that overall, he's just happy that he got to go fishing in February.

After not catching much at all during our previous trips, I finally landed a big one on my first cast.



Even Monica got in on the action, hooking this little guy...



Mom and Dad are leaving Tuesday morning (weather permitting), and we'll all be sad to see them go. I think Rachel is going to miss them most of all. She's gotten very used to having "Nana" and "Dodd" around.

More to come in a few days...

Better Late than Never

If you've been waiting with baited breath for the Laleman family Christmas card in the mail, don't hold that baited breath. As I said last year, the likelihood of us getting Christmas cards in the mail is somewhere between slim and none.

And from the looks of it this year, the likelihood of me getting our cyber-cards out on time stood about the same chances.

So here I present to you, the if-I-had-gotten-my-butt-in-gear Laleman family Christmas card choices for this past Christmas, which, yes, I know, was a week ago.

Both are photoshop jobs because the originals didn't quite cut it, but have a look for yourself to see if you can spot any mistakes. I think I did a pretty good job with them.

You can see the huge versions of these cards by clicking on them.

Sixty

Yes, I'm well aware that my daughter turns 18 months old today, but she's taking a back seat for something much more important.

Today is Dad's 60th birthday. Six decades.

Husband,

father,

grandfather,


fisherman,


and all around great guy.

So after 60 years, there's a little less hair (courtesy of Sarah and I)...

...but the fish are still the same size.


Happy birthday Dad. I love you!

Ill-annoys

So we made the trek up for the week, and when we got here we were amazed at the beautiful weather.

Then, today, the weather gave us a cold, wet, slap in the face. This is one of the reasons we moved back to Texas. That, and the fact that we live like kings in San Antonio on salaries that would put us just above the poverty line in Chicago.

We're looking forward to seeing some family while we're here, but mostly we're enjoying just hanging out and having four extra hands to help with Rachel.

Congratulations

Congrats are in order for my sister and her boyfriend fiancé! They have been dating for two years, and over the weekend, Britton popped the big question.


So I guess this means that we'll have to go to New York at some point in the next year...I guess I'll have to brush up on my cussing so I won't look like such a tourist.

Congratulations to both of you. We can't wait to finally meet Britton at Christmas. We'll have the BBQ ready.

A nudge for my sister...

Ahem...don't you have an announcement you should be making on your blog?

Life's a beach...

Except for the part where you have to drive almost 3 hours there and 3 hours back with a screaming child that won't go to sleep. Other than that, it was a wonderful day!


You can see more of the pictures from our "relaxing" day at the beach here

Seven Hundrend Thirty Days

Sorry, Rachel, but your thirteen month newsletter isn't getting top billing today.

Two years ago today, Monica and I were married.

As Moni likes to tell me, "I'm the winner!"

I cannot believe how much things have changed in two years. I'm sure I'll probably say that every year until I meet my maker, but really, how much more could things change?

In two years, we've bought a new house, had a child, both gotten new cars, and I got a new job.

I can't wait to see what the next year will bring. Maybe more fish?

Because I need to keep up with my sister...

You know, I've been crazy busy this month. I can't believe it's almost the end of May and I've only made three posts. I'm sure ya'll are getting bored seeing the same old thing every time you visit Laleblog...and my sister has four posts for the month, so I need to step it up.

Speaking of my sister, she's about to become very famous. She's signed up to be a part of Bill Waldman's 365 portraits. She'll do her photo shoot tomorrow (her birthday...Happy Birthday sis), and her picture should be up Tuesday morning.

I also realized recently that it's been quite a while since I took Rachel's picture. Or posted video. I don't have any new video to post (I've shot some, but haven't had the time to pull in down yet) and we went to take pictures of the little one yesterday so we'd have a recent picture for her birthday invitations.

Rachel is learning to walk, and while she started off none too happy about going place on two feet - in fact, she cried every time we tried to get her to do it - she's getting a lot better at it...and she doesn't cry so much anymore.

I would walk 500 miles

Since March is over, we're going back to basic black.

This month's banner is up and it reflects Fiesta which takes place this month, when people feel the need to dress stupid and go out in public.

Yesterday, our family did the Race for the Cure. We had to get up earlier than we normally do during the week, and walked over three miles, but it's all for a good cause.

There were over 25,000 people downtown walking and running to help find a cure for breast cancer. We were happy to be a part of it.

And the winner is...

I make movies.

To me, this is no big deal. It's just something I do.

I like playing with audio and video, and I like making stuff for the family to watch. I teach teachers how to do it, and it's fun...a hobby, like photography.

Last summer, my Uncle Jeff approached me about helping him put together a video about some Minneapolis Moline tractors that our family once owned. The tractors were experimental, meaning that they were never in production, and the fact that our family owned them was a pretty big deal.

I told him I'd love to help out.

Over the past 9 months or so, he's provided me with photos of the tractors, and video interviews with my Great Aunts. I started picking up steam in February, putting together the story and script, and I worked a lot on it in the weeks before spring break. Over the break, I worked a bunch to finish it up because Jeff wanted to submit it for a big Minneapolis Moline collectors convention which was this weekend.

But it's really all about Jeff. Without his work over the past several years uncovering this story, this documentary never could have been made. He has done all of the legwork, all of the research...I just put it together in the 10 minute nugget you'll see below.

I found out last week that the video was going to receive an award. It got a preservation award from the Minneapolis Moline Collectors Club.

It's funny, because I've never really received an award for anything I've done for fun. I once submitted a photo to an art show, but didn't win anything for it. I just did this to preserve a part of our family's history, and here it wins an award.

So here it is...my award-winning documentary. I guess I'll have to put that on my resume.

And we're back...

I think that driving to Illinois this last time was the cure for driving to Illinois ever again.

In other words, we're flying the next time.

Our trip back wasn't bad, but the trip up...my oh my.

We left on Friday night, which was planned, but what wasn't planned was that it would take us damn near 20 hours to get to mom and dad's.

This is usually a 17 hour drive. I've made it in 15 1/2 hours before.

Not 20.

We left around 6:30 and we expected to hit traffic in Austin. That was around 8 PM. Then at 10, we came to a standstill outside of Hillsboro (not even to Dallas yet) and traveled at anywhere between 10-30 mph for the next 10 miles because there was construction. But there wasn't any construction actually going on...just reconfigured lanes which evidently confused EVERYONE who was driving north.

Around midnight, we had finally made it through Dallas, and were traveling at a pretty good clip. Then, suddenly, everything stopped. I was trying to see what was going on, but it wasn't until we had sat for almost 45 minutes that we saw all 5 lanes of the expressway were being forced off onto the access road.

After we got past that (now 6+ hours into our trip) we headed up the road some more trying desperately to get out of Texas. Then at 1 AM, the road was closed again, this time in Sherman, Texas, just south of the Texas-Oklahoma border. This one was really big because they even had the access road closed...an air life helicopter was sitting on it. So we had to traverse through Sherman to get back on the expressway.

We finally made it out of Texas 7 hours into our trip. This portion of the drive usually only takes 6 hours max.

And so went the rest of our trip. Between having to stop in BF Misery (or Missouri) to sleep so I didn't run off the road, and having to rescue a runaway truck that some kid forgot to put in gear, WHILE keeping Sparky's leash in my hand, it was one hell of an adventure.

But we made it there, and we made it back. Grandma Connie and Grandpa Rick enjoyed having their granddaughter around, and Sparky enjoyed playing with Rhett.

We had a great week, and enjoyed visiting with the folks we saw and I'm sorry that we didn't get to see everyone, but when you're traveling with a 9 month old, everything is on a tight schedule. We had a limited amount of time at each of our destinations, and the only days we didn't travel somewhere were Monday and Thursday. Every other day we were on the road for at least 4 hours. I think our next trip is going to be just to Bloomington.

And have I mentioned that we're flying?

Goings on in the extended family

Congratulations to my cousin, Ben. He was recently promoted to Sergeant, and his mom, my Aunt Linda, got on a plane to go see him. This is a Big Deal, and judging from the photo of the two of them together, she made it out to Washington, DC just fine.


Congratulations, Sgt. Carter!

Turkey-lurkey

Happy late Thanksgiving!

We had a house full of people yesterday, which means that we spent most of Wednesday cleaning and putting the finishing touches on our move in.

The bird came out just fine, and I didn't have to call mom for any help! The ham was really good too, after spending 5 hours on the smoker. Mashed potatoes? Check. Gravy? Perfect. Everything came out just fine, and now Monica and I are spending a lazy day together resting our weary bones.

Last weekend, we spent some time sunning ourselves on the deck as a family. I put up our mood lighting while Rachel jumped around in her jumper. Monica shot some pictures, and Sparky kept a lookout on the yard from the steps.