And Ryan/Emily pre-wedding pictures, too

We went bowling and then to an Italian restaurant with family and the wedding party the day before the wedding.  After dinner, a few of us went out for karaoke.  It was an awesome time.  Check out the pictures, here:  http://westfolk.smugmug.com/gallery/4085187

Let's see some Christmas pictures!

I have posted Christmas pictures to Jeff's smugmug site.  They are just a sampling of the fun that was Christmas morning and dinner with the family.  Pictures from Ryan's wedding to come soon!

http://westfolk.smugmug.com/gallery/4084964

Pics from the family get together

As I mentioned earlier, we met with the Perry's and Bennetts for some awesome Ham and Potatoes and complete yumminess!  And there were presents involved!  Any way, here are some pictures from the festivities.  

Tallinn Perry, Mirenne Perry, Quinn and Kallen

Brian Perry, Tammy Bennett holding James Bennett.  (Super cute!)

James checking out his new... box!  He didn't care about the toy. :)

In case you need to find us

We already did some gift exchanging with our friends, the Perrys and Bennetts.  Steve and Tammy Bennett gave us some awesome super-soft sheets for our bed (oooohhhh.... sooooffft...) and Brian and Juliet gave us this cool doormat.  Juliet special ordered it, and it actually shows the real coordinates for our house!!

Quinn took the above picture.  Here is Kallen's version:

Oh, what fun are we going to have with him as he gets older, eh?  ;)

Future Olympic Swimmers

Quinn and Kallen have been taking swimming lessons for the past few months.  They love it and have been getting much better!  Here are some awesome pictures of each of them during class practicing diving and jumping in to the pool!  Watch out Michael Phelps!  :)

Quinn diving like a pro:

Kallen setting up for a big cannonball:  Note how the instructor is hiding her face from the coming tsunami!  :)

These were taken Dec 12, 2007. 

Let's talk TV

Did anyone watch the Heroes season? It was pretty good.  I don't think it was good as last season, but it was still fun to watch!  I hate Sylar, though (credits to the actor!) and am bummed they brought his powers back.

How about Chuck?  What a fun show to watch.  The setup is totally lame, and each episode relies on a big leap of faith, but the characters and the fun/sexiness of each episode (it shares the director from the Charlies Angles movies) make it hard to miss.

We also watched Tin Man.  We liked the idea, and enjoy Sci Fi and all that, but didn't like Zooey Deschanel.  The actress that played Azkedelia was awesome, and I liked Alan Cumming, too, but in all I give it a ... meh.

Eva is watching a slew more TV (I usually play video games, duh) but these are the shows we watch together (and are waiting for Lost).

Hopefully pictures will return soon.

peace out

The Ladies love the Games

Here is a cool article from the Seattle P-I.  It is the industry that I am in, and it even mentions our site!

 

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/videogames/342095_casualgames.html

We were elfed!

Thanks to Jill (and our friend Gina) we found this cool site, brought to us by OfficeMax!  It lets you load your face on to dancing elves.  It is pretty funny!

Check it out!

Pictures coming!

Well, Eva got an early Christmas present.  She has been asking for a new digital camera for months, and our last one finally kicked the bucket.  It wouldn't hold a charge in a newly-recharged battery for more than a picture or two.  :(

So, we went to Costco and got this.  It is really cool!  Hopefully we will be more able (and willing) to whip out the camera for those awesome "cheese" moments.  Like this:

or this

or...

or ...

(all of these come from the new camera).

Stay safe and warm!

Emmett's Birthday Pictures Are Up!

Jeff posted some awesome pictures of the kids and family at his site on Smugmug. Check it out and see how cute all of our kids are!  :)

Celebrate Good Times, Come On!

Wow, what a week!  Thanksgiving was awesome (sorry, no pictures).  Eva kicked butt with her turkey, and everyone brought EXCELLENT food!   Mom, Layne, Grandma (GG), Ryan, Emily and Kadi (from Ryan's school) came to our house to celebrate.  And it was wonderful.

Earlier in the week we got good news and bad news.   Bad news is Ryan is going to be deployed to Iraq with his Navy reserve (he switched from Coast Guard a couple months ago) unit in February.  He will be doing customs checking on soldiers on their way home.  It's hard to digest all at once, but our support goes with him and our hopes for a quick and safe tour.  Law school will go on hold until he returns next December.  Good news is Ryan and Emily are going to get married in December!!!  December 30, to be exact.  It is going to be a much smaller event then originally planned (it is kind of on short notice due to the deployment) but I think it will be very awesome!  Keep an eye on their blog for pics and stuff.  :)  Congrats, Ryan and Emily!

Finally, we had a party for Emmett!  He is already 1 year old (OMIGOSH!) and we had a little family shindig to celebrate.  He and the family had just returned from Michigan to celebrate Thanksgiving with Jill's family, and they were all (finally) rid of various sicknesses.  He is getting SO big!  And what a happy kid!  Clara was just adorable, and was trying hard to convince everyone that it was 'her birthday, too.'  We had homemade pizza and yummy pear cake and just a blast.  Thanks, Jeff and Jill for inviting us, and I will link to pictures from that party when Jeff posts them on smugmug.  Anyway, gotta go to work.  Need a break from all of this partying.  ;)

SALE ON MSN GAMES!

If you have ever played one of the awesome download games, but didn't want to drop 19.99 on it...

 

For the first time ever our ENTIRE catalog of Download games is available at 50% OFF!!!

This sale will run from November 21-26, 2007 (ends 11:59pm PST)

All you need to do to take advantage of the huge savings is enter the coupon code  'thanksgiving'   (all lower case) during check out.

Click here for more details on the sale and a preview of some of our top titles: http://zone.msn.com/en/general/article/thanksgamingsale.htm

Already know what games you want to buy?  Click here to get started: http://games.msn.com

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are having a big gathering at our house this year.  Mom, Layne, Grandma, Ryan, Emily, Kady (Ryan's friend from Law School) and a friend of Kady is coming to join us.  It would be much better if Jeff and Matt and their families were here, but we hope they enjoy their day with Jill and Karen's family.

 

Top things I am thankful for (I know it is cliche, but humor me):

1. Family (especially Eva, Quinn and Kallen)*
2. Friends (you know who you are)*

• My house (not a mansion, but great for us)
• My car (2007 Acura TL Type S) vrrroooom!
• My job (yay!  games!)
• Video Games (I love you, guys!)
• Good food (Eva's cooking, Indian, Thai, etc. etc.)
• Good beer (although I get to enjoy it less and less - stupid diet)
• Good music (one day I will talk about that)
• Graham crackers
• Spicy popcorn
• Sour candy
• A new shirt
• Comfy shoes
• Long naps
• Short naps
• Sunday mornings
• Saturday nights
• Funny Internet videos
• Cheese sandwiches
• Volleyball
• Good books
• Good comics
• Space travel

*These are the only two in order.  Everything else is just random.

Enjoy your holiday!

Little geniuses

Eva was off with Juliet at her wine club, and the boys and I tackled their homework for the week.  They did awesome!  I asked them to each take a picture of each other, then Quinn insisted on taking one of all three of us.  Can't you just SEE the intelligence in their faces?  It's obvious they got that from their mother.  :)

Happy Veterans Day

The kids are out of school today, and I get to enjoy this blustery day huddled in a 5 hour meeting about the PC Version of Gears of War.  I can't complain too much when my meetings are about games.  :)

Yesterday we watched Evan Almighty.  It was funny and heart warming and we all enjoyed it.  The end credits were hilarious, too!

Anyone have any suggestions for my gout?  It has been pretty consistent in my right foot for almost 6 weeks now, and is driving me crazy!  No drug treatments have worked yet, and it's not like I eat a lot of sardines.  :(  People are calling me Mr. Hop-A-Long now, cuz I am always limping.

Art critic

Mom sent me this paper of some guy going off on art drawn by little kids.  It is a bit over the top, and you may not like this type of humor (Eva didn't find it that funny) but I think it is hilarious and laughed out loud (or "LOL'd") a number of times.  If you want to check it out click here. (Note, swearing involved).

 

Oh, and Super Diamond pictures are up.  Check out Emily and Ryan's blog!

Construction Boys

Recently, the boys and our neighborhood friend, Austin, have found it quite fun to nail together pieces of scrap wood in the shapes of jets and rocketships.  They spent a good 2 or 3 days in the past couple of weeks working on their 'projects'.  I will have pictures of the creations later, but here is one of the artists.

Congrats Matt

Mom told me that Matt got a great promotion at work!  Something like a Vice President or something!  That is AWESOME!  Congratulations, Matt!  You rock!

Oh, and make sure to check out the super cute pics of Matt, Karen, Gavin, Abe and Ella at their blog.  Nice Hallowe'en costumes, gang! 

Super Diamond was Super

We had a great time at Super Diamond!  We met Ryan and Emily and Jeff and Jill and Mom and Layne and a number of friends from Ryan's Law class at Benihana before the show.  It was awesome! 

The band Stay Tuned started the show.  They were a lot of fun!  They play classic 70's and 80's TV Show themes ('Gilligans Island', 'Silver Spoons', 'GI Joe', etc) and rock 'em up a bit.  Good times!

I know that Emily and Ryan took a lot of pictures (there were probably upwards of 30 people there for Ryan by the time the show started) so keep an eye out on their blog for updates.

Hallowe'en horror!

Don't these give you chills of awe and terror (at the same time?)

Quinn as a Kick-A** Jedi Padawan.

Kallen as a horrific EMPORER of EVIL!  (Capitals are mine).

Like the decorations in the back?  We (Eva) are awesome.  :)

Bird Torture

On Sunday (Oct 28) Kallen noticed that Yellow (our parakeet) had a number of feathers covered in wax. So, the three boys took Yellow out of her cage and proceeded to gang-preen her. I am sure she thought it was unbearable, but we did get a lot of wax. :) Eva snapped these pictures during the proceedings.

Editors note: No birds were harmed (at least physically) during the filming of this post.

Finally the world will know my power

In case you hadn't heard, I am terrorizing Haiti and other Caribbean islands right now.  Jeff, Matt and Ryan know what it is like when I get mad.  Now the world shall feel my wrath!!!

 

Why do I do this to myself?

It is 6:30am on a Saturday morning.  It is frickin' cold out there, and the entire family is tucked in and snoring under warm blankets while I eat leftover pizza and Diet Coke.  Why?  Because I am going golfing this morning.  Golf is this ritual of grief, discomfort and frustration that I put myself through for "fun".  We (Brian, Steve Bennett -aka Steve-O-, and I) are playing 9 holes at Druids Glen because, while cold, it is one of the few non-rainy (in fact non-cloudy, which is why it is so cold) days we have had on a weekend for quite a while.  Ah well, wish me luck. 

And have any of you joined facebook?  It is a place, like MySpace, where you have friends and pictures and stuff.  It is much less picture-oriented than MySpace, and much more about leaving each other messages, playing games (facebook has it's own way for people to write games for it), 'poke'ing each other, etc.  If you have an account, look me up!

No, you can't have a pony

Even if you have brain cancer.

Where I work

For those of you that I haven't talked to in a while, I thought I would do a little self-promotion of my group's website.  I work at Microsoft for the Casual Games group.  Currently I help support the MSN Games page here:

http://games.msn.com/en/root/default.htm

If you want to try some games, my favorite FREE ONLINE game is probably Peggle.

I really like the download games, too.  Try Mystery Case Files: Ravenhurst and Azada.  They have one hour free trials that are a blast.

Let me know what you think!  Happy playing!  :D

Song Sung Blue

For Ryan's 30th birthday, we are going with a big crowd to see Super Diamond at the Showbox in Seattle on November 2.  I haven't had the opportunity to see the real Neil, but hopefully this will be a adequate substitute.  Regardless, it will be a BLAST.

Here they are! Pictures!

This is an 'old' one.  This is Quinn and Kallen heading to the bus on the first day of school this year.  Quinn is in 3rd Grade, and Kallen is in 1st.

 

Now, for more recent news, we went to a pumpkin patch with the Perry's (the aforementioned Juliet, Brian, Tallinn and Mirenne) on Sunday, Oct 14.  There was a cool corn maze with an Old West theme.  It was gorgeous weather (I wished I had time to golf) and we had a great time!

Quinn had a nice mint stick before we entered the patch.

Kal hammed it up in the Old West Main Street mock up.

A picture of all the kids in a group on a tower inside the maze.

Kal is looking for someone to post bail, while Quinn calls the comfy bed as he waits for his lawyer.

Finally posted the coat!

I picked up this great coat at a Filson's sale last year, and it didn't fit me or Eva.  I put it up for sale on Craigslist last year, but didn't get any bites.  It is definitely cooling off here in the Puget Sound, so I finally put it up again.  Wish me luck.  :)

Post 2: Soup Day

Ever have one of those weekends? It is rainy, you don't have a lot on your to-do list (at least not a lot that you HAVE to do) and all you want to do is sit in front of a fire, read books, play video games and generally stay in your jammas all day. Today is one of those days.

The boys are munching on chicken 'n stars soup, with a side of raw Ramen ("crunchy") noodles. It is a mess, but they are loving it.

Eva escaped for a while to go wine tasting with her friend, Juliet. They try to get to their favorite wine shop at least once a week. When she gets back, we may go hang out with Juliet's family (Brian, Tallinn and Mirenne) for some lasagna and games. We always have fun with them.

Hopefully you are enjoying your weekend. Perhaps with soup and ramen noodles, too. :)

This is my first post

I will post things about me, Eva, Quinn and Kallen.
And Kasey and Tomo.
Oh, and Yellow occasionally. And maybe the fish.