A Long December

Well December has arrived and with it the first signs of winter... snow!! After all the waiting for Summer to arrive (which it never really did) Winter has snuck up on us. We went out this

morning with sunny skies and come home to snow just coming down by the buckets full. And it was not just your garden variety snow, no, this snow was the good stuff. The kind that snow forts and legendary snowball fights are made of. Jack was so excited, he kept chanting "snow, snow, snow" until we got dressed and marched out into the feathery whiteness. He wasted no time making his first snow angel. It was a blast. We were catching snowflakes on our tongues having snowball fights. Jack is one good shot with a snowball although he tends to aim low.. hehe

We are still awaiting the arrival of our baby girl. She is definitely very active and giving every indication that she will be here very soon. We are still undecided about her name. We will probably have to meet her first before one of our choices seems right. Our bags are packed, car seats in place and baby sitters eagerly awaiting. Just when we had gotten used to 8 hours of continuous sleep again. Oh well, as Lou Reed said "It's the beginning of a great adventure"... Happy Holidays!!

Fall in the Emerald City

Well Fall is here and the clouds are moving in. Although, this started out as a pretty mild Fall for us so we actually had the leaves change color. Some Falls are rainy and the leaves turn brown and fall off in the rain and wind. Not like the one's in Tennessee. That was amazing.

That is a self portrait of me. I put my face on a van parked across the street...for fun. I am keeping busy and trying to stay out of trouble these days. Staying in more and working on freelance design, ebaying misc. odd items, reading and making my craft brew. Summer is typically a break for some home brewers because we are just too busy enjoying the sunshine and don't want to be slaving over boiling gallons of beer for hours on end. Now it is chilly and the brewers are back in action. Brewing with grains is hard hard work and takes lots of concentration and on-the-fly adjustments. My last brew session had me waking up at 6:30am to gather my equipment, double check my calculations and etc. and then I was finished brewing and added my yeast by 5:30pm. Seriously. Currently up is 'Howling Wind Winterspice Ale.' Should be ready by end of December. Then a heavy dark stout for January which will be nice after coming in out of the rain or after hitting the slopes.

That's a photo of Tamara and our buddy Todd taking photos of a collection of old casino signs in Vegas this past summer. Tamara is settling into her new job with the arts part of the city and she is liking it except for her more regimented time schedule. All in all doing well. She is also taking part in a 'Write a Novel in a Month' website. She is now past 30k words! The idea is just to write and write and write until you have a novel of so many thousand words at the end of the month. Then, your reward is that you actually wrote a novel. That is great and I am proud of her. It is expected to be rough around the edges. You don't have time to really edit as you go to meet your quota. Almost all novels are written and rewritten and rewritten and so on. Maybe it is a future classic? All I know is that it is set back in the early 90's. A meaningful time for both of us.

That's it for now. Next time we will post some photos that may be more relevant to the blog- I just had these handy. Take care. Love you all.

-Joe

November in a Nutshell

Hi Family,

November has been a pretty eventful month. Let's start with the fact that baby girl wants to come meet everyone sooner than expected. Last week Brenna started feeling more contractions than usual and went to her doctor. Well, we find out that our little girl is trying to be born 6 weeks early. So they prescribe Brenna medication to stop the contractions. Our plan is to try to put off the birth until end of November when the baby will be developed enough to not need the ICU. Well the medication does not stop the contractions and the doctor ups Brenna's dose and puts her on half day bed rest. So far that is working and we are biding our time till after Thanksgiving.


We also continued to have issues with those pesky rats. This time it was an ominous odor coming from the attic. Well we have two rooms on each side of the house with attic access, one in the kitchen and one in our back guest bedroom. So I went to our handy home depot and got suited up for digging around in insulation looking for dead rodents. I crawled into both spaces suited up like the feds searching for ET. I found the corpse of a long dead rodent in the area we smelled the offending odor but it seemed to old to be producing such a stench. Then we got the idea that maybe the smell was coming from below the house. So I got down into the crawl space and tried to locate the next. Again, I found the remains of a long dead rat. We had to postpone the search due to the baby stuff and the need to get all the preparations in order. The smell since has began to subside but brenna's legendary olfactory senses continue to detect interlopers about. I will keep you informed. We miss you guys and hope the fall is treating you well. Keep up the effort to try to use the blog.

Love,
Paul, Brenna, Jack and Baby Girl

p.s. the names we are thinking of are Molly, Elizabeth or Anna Marie

In the dark

Hey,

Well, it happened. Our power is out due to a downed tree up the road. The winds gusted up to 60MPH and there are over 35,000 people without power. Here is a pic of Jackaroo and I braving out the outage. Luckily Cindie and Dave invested in a gas powered generator to power the entire house. So we were without lights only long enough for me to gas up the generator and hook it up to the house. It looks like we could be out for a while tonight. Things could be worse. Jack and I played with puzzles and little people toys. We also read books and sang songs. Brenna had to go back to work for a late night meeting. Well. that is all for now. We will let you know when the power is back on for good.

Love You,

PBNJ +1

Paul, Brenna, Jack and Baby Girl part 1

Hey Family,

Just thought we would take a stab at breaking into the blogasphere. Well Bren and I played hookie today from work. We hung out at bookstores, had coffee and shopped a little - it was a nice grownup day out. We also had a OB appointment and heard the baby's heartbeat 140 bpm - very normal. The baby is doing great and Brenna is progressing nicely. We talked about how we wanted to have the baby natural if possible but would do what was best for she and the little girl. We are still looking for Jack's "big boy bed". He is so ready to get out of the crib. He keeps asking when his little sister is going to get here. Very soon...

Oh yeah, not sure if we mentioned that the house had a large family of rats nesting in the garage!! That was an ordeal, we ended up finding 4 dead ones thanks to our noses and some CSI like skills by yours truly. One had actually gotten behind the walls and I had to cut through the wall to get it out. Anyway, we are busily preparing for a possible windstorm tomorrow. The generator is ready and the clothes are washed. I will post more soon.

love,

pbnj +1

First Childress Blog Entry!

Hey guys! This is going to be our new collective blog site. You enter your information here and then press the 'publish' button below to add it to the blog! If you have any questions, just ask me or Paul.

We are doing pretty good these days. Tamara is preparing for her new job with the Mayor's Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs and I am working and starting up my freelance business and already have some customers. It's nice to get a little extra money now and then.

The cats are fine. They are feeling at home now after the move. We are still getting rid of things and trying to really make our place a comfy place to come home to. I am also in the middle of brewing a beer that should be ready be the end of the month. Can't wait.

Hope you all are well. Please use this blog! You can even add photos. Ask us how if you need help. Call me up even and I'll walk you through it.

Ok. Take care and hope to see your blog updates soon.

Love,

Joe and Tamara