Memphis pictures

Yep, I found the camera and got around to it, so here's a lot of pictures. In fact, 114 of them.

2009-05-10 Memphis trip

For those who don't want to manually go through them all, here's a slideshow:

Spring is here!

A few pictures to illustrate what spring is all about here:

Snow storm (belated)

This post is about a storm that's already ancient history, but I figure we just washed the road salt off our cars, so I can still post about it. Besides, it has pictures of Afton in the snow!

This storm hit Sunday evening over to Monday. All I got out of it was a half-day off of work. I did get some good pictures though, and Tracy got to have fun with Afton in snow.

I took Cocoa to a local state forest where she got to tramp around in the snow, and follow bunny tracks, as well as meet a big ol' grizzled German Shepherd who lost one of his legs. his owner said it was the first time he had been out since he lost the leg. He was about twice as big as Cocoa!

The storm also illustrated a few issues with the house: The gutter has come loose on one end, and need to be fixed. the icicles are NOT a good thing. Unfortunately, I don't have a 20 foot tall ladder to fix it with, and I don't want to pay the necessary 200 dollars for one.

Saturday

Saturday's schedule:

Wake up.
Help friends move into new house.
Go to ward Christmas party (we arrived right after the benediction)
Watch Afton cry on Santa's lap.
Go to Lowes for materials for attic hatch replacement, plus a staple gun.
Get a haircut.
Tracy goes to work.

While tending Afton:

• Take friends who we helped move into their house to Dulles for Christmas vacation.
• Buy new chipset fan for PC.
  
• Measure Attic Hatch
• Cut plywood to fit
• Paint Plywood (spray paint primer)
• Feed Afton
• Swap Northbridge chipset fans on the PC so it's about 10 db quieter.
• Clean up spit-up from the motherboard!!! after Afton dirties it.
• Put Afton down
  

Staple fiberglass insulation to the back of the new attic hatch.
Put foam insulation around edges of hatch.
Install hatch while making sure Afton doesn't wake up.
Watch BYU lose to Arizona.
Explain to Tracy why I hate watching BYU lose in such a pathetic way.
Go to bed.

Picture Dump

I figure I need to put some more recent pictures of Afton up, so:

Notes from a hurricane

Tropical Storm Hanna is currently centered in Southeastern Virginia. we've been rained on since last night, and the rain should pick up for about 2 hours, then calm down before midnight. Here's a few shots:

What we've learned so far? First, our house does leak, specifically around the doors. We;re probably just going to need to get both doors replaced. The front door may be salvageable if we get a storm door. The back door? We need a new frame, I think. I can't tell exactly where the water's getting in, but I think it's leaking in through the damaged/rotting trim, and going from there. Go figure, huh?

Still, so far, this isn't nearly as bad as the storms while I was in Puerto Rico, but we still have about 6 to 8 hours or rain left before things calm down. the worst is yet to come.

Next week

Next week I will not be at work. instead I will be bicycling the entire C&O canal with my Venture Crew. This means I won't be at my computer, and posting regular posts will be a challenge.

Weep not, dear readers, for I shall have my phone, and will try some mobile blogging. I won't do video because we've seen just how bad that is, but I'll take pictures and text some posts to the blog.
I doubt I'll have signal all the time, but when I do, I'll post.

Happy Mother's Day

I hope this looks familiar. As a Mother's Day Tribute, I present this hymn. It's one of the hymns that Mom made us sing when we argued with each other. I flipped past it today in church, and the memories all came flooding back.

Post Pregnancy Imbalance

Ok, so my equilibrium is way off. I never realized until I started playing volleyball again. I can't jump anymore, at least not straight up and down. Hopefully it will get better. I'm not used to playing so off. My game tonight was really depressing. I was off on everything, but oh well, it was still fun.

Below are some more pics of Afton. She is getting bigger by the moment and is really starting to smile! P.S. She is also starting to sleep more at night which makes me smile more! :) Afton was also blessed on Sunday so there's no turning back! :) It was a beautiful blessing.


Below Afton is in her blessing dress that Margaret made. I was so impressed that she could make something like that.

More Afton

Okay, you finally got more pictures of Afton. I hope everyone's happy.


Oops.. How do that one get in there?

Afton's First Bath

Afton's first bath was tonight. Her umbilical cord fell off this week, so we can finally give her a real bath. She did really well, except when we turned her over to wash her back.




Also, She has more pictures here:

Afton

Yes, she has eyes!

For all those people who doubted: Yes, Afton has eyes.

We also finally figured out how to get her to sleep in her bassinet: swaddle her tight. The yellow blanket isn't tight enough. You have to do it by hand.

More baby

Just one picture though. The hospital recommend that the baby lay on Mom's chest, and they encourage Dad to do it too; take your shirt off, lay on the pull out bed, and put her tummy-down on your chest. Cover her up with blankets, and let gravity hold her to you. She really does like it; she calms down no matter what, and goes to sleep. Apparently, she likes to be able to hear your heartbeat, and she won't argue about letting you generate heat for one side of her, either. It's almost like the nice cozy space she was in before she got unceremoniously kicked out.

For any statistic seekers out there (Mom), Afton, when born, weighed 7 pounds, ad was 20.5 inches. (Note that Matt and Amy's baby was also 20.5 inches!) Her ahd an APGAR score of 9, (out of a possible 10).

However, when she was weighed tonight at 5, she had lost 11 ounces. We're working on some feeding 'regulation', and we'll see how well we can get Tracy and Afton working together.

The camera's batteries are dead, and my contacts are getting tired, so I'm going to bed. Bye!

More pictures, straight from the source

You don't need the paparazzi when you've got the papa! Okay, so it's a bad play on words. Sheesh. Always demanding. More pictures, better puns, etc., etc. ;)

Last night's sleep was terrific, even though we got interrupted. We did the 10:00 feeding, but had the nursery handle the 2:00 feeding. Smart move, I think. Tracy and Afton have the nursing think fairly well handled, I think, but we'll see just how good it is after we leave the hospital.
I think last night was the best Tracy's slept in at least two weeks, perhaps even two months. Her bladder has more space, there's no baby pressing on internal organs, etc.
This morning's feeding went well, too. Tracy and Afton did well together.
I, today, am going to go home, clean up some, find a car seat, and crash for a few hours on our bed.

Live, from the Prince William County Hospital!

And do I mean live!

Afton Michelle Scoresby was born this morning at 7:31 AM, Eastern Time.

Tracy went into work yesterday complaining of cramping, and she assumed it was just Braxton-Hicks contractions. She called her doctor's office, and they asked her to come in for a quick look-see, and they said she and the baby were fine. The "cramps" got worse through the day, and as night fell, they started getting worse. She didn't sleep (well? no.) at all because of them, and at 3:30, woke me up, saying that we needed to go to the hospital. The contractions had gotten much worse, andshe said that they only felt better if she bore down. (yeah, that's a sign, a BIG one.) We took care of the preliminaries, and headed in. We arrived at the hospital at 3:45 AM. When we walked in, the labor and delivery nurse, who was one of the ones on duty when Tracy went in in December, recognized us, and looked at her, and was kind of skeptical, right up until a contraction hit, and she said, "That's the face of labor." We went into an L&D room, and when she got Tracy on the bed and took a look, lo and behold, Tracy was dilated to a 7. By the time her doctor arrived and checked her, about 4:30, she was a 9. She got an epidural at about 5-5:30ish, and 10 minutes later, the doc broke her water. At about 7:15-7:20, they decided it was time to start pushing, and so Tracy really pushed, and Afton was out at 7:31, weighing 3175 grams, 6.999 pounds.
Tracy was terrific. Even through the pain before the epidural, she was great, once she had the epidural, she was calm and collected, and when the time came, she pushed the baby right out. The nurse said she was kind of skepticall when Tracy came in because women who are at a 7 normally don't look happy, even between contractions.

Afton has been a happy girl so far, although she's really just slept most of the time, and only really wakes up when we move her.

Thanks to everyone for the support we've got, everyone who's helping us out right now, and anyone else who's been praying for us.

Mountain biking in freezing rain

This morning, the Venturing Crew went Mountain Biking. We had scheduled to go to Elizabeth Furnace, but the difficulty of the course, as discussed by others, and the distance, meant that we had to find somewhere shorter. Instead, we found Conway Robinson State Forest, a 10-15 minute drive from my house, and a much easier course. I wok up before 7:00 am to head out and check the trail conditions before we attempted to put all of us on the trail. They were marginal, but some trails were better than others. I figures we'd try to stick to the good trails. Unfortunately, I hadn't accounted for the day warming up. Instead of drying out, the frozen ground under the trails started melting. We got one loop in, and then they got bad. We did another mini loop that took us just as long, but was a terribly muddy mess. Unfortunately, we had to get through the mud to do it. It messed us all up, and I'm afraid we may have damaged the trail some, too.