Great weekend... not such a great week

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Last Saturday, we headed to Hastings to visit with some friends. Ericka's parents own a "cottage" on Podunk Lake. So, Ericka and Adam brought Haven (9 months old); Jessi and Harlan brought Isabelle (5 months old); Melissa and Steve brought Jack (4 months old); we brought Jake (11 months old); Jen and Bret braved a house-full of infants and came along as well. We had a great time watching the kids all interact. Jake and Haven would have been almost the same age if Jake hadn't rushed out into the world. It should be interesting once all of them can get around as well as Jake, or even better, as well as Haven who is a crawling machine!

On Sunday, we stopped through East Lansing to go to church at St. John's where we used to go on campus. It was still pretty contemporary, but not as liberal as before, so I enjoyed it more. Then, we headed to Grand Blanc where Michele rode with Mom, Kelly, Alison, and Melissa to Jenny's wedding shower. I heard the shower was a lot of fun.

After we thought Jake had a pretty good day on Monday, I got called from work to pick him up on Tuesday. He had some sort of "eye problem", so I picked him up and took him right to the doctor. We found out that he had a contagious eye infection that had also spread very rapidly to BOTH his ears. On top of his respiratory medicine, he is now on antibiotics for his ears and is getting eye drops to help clear up the eye infection. Luckily, the drops have stopped the drainage from his eyes, so it looks like he'll be able to go back to day care tomorrow. Luckily, none of the other babies have gotten sick from the weekend.

Even with his left eye almost swollen shut, Jake still managed to have fun hanging out with Dad today. He took a bit longer naps than usual, but was still a very happy baby for most of the day.

Another Month Down

(Please click on the photo to see more 11 month pictures.)

Jake turned 11 months old today! It's big news for us because it means there's less than 30 days left until he's no longer 0 years old. It's big news for him because he won't be subjected to monthly photo shoots after one more time.

While he struggled a bit to get the hang of his little rocking chair in his 10 month photos, he had no trouble rocking the glider back and forth during this shoot. In order to get the frame in the picture, the chair had to bump the table that the frame sat on. It didn't take long for him to figure out that he was moving that table as well, and then he REALLY went to town.

Fun Winter Weekend

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We had a very nice, mostly relaxing weekend. We had dinner with the Pruss family on Friday night. Then, Michele ended up sticking around the house on Saturday, instead of going to meet up with a girlfriend, allowing us to take Jake to the water park at the rec center. Then, after Church, today, we headed up to GnGT to play in the snow and on the ice.

MPnA stopped by again for a short visit. Unfortunately, Alison has not been behaving very well at school and as a punishment, she was not allowed to play outside today. I hope she learned her lesson. DLCnM also came up this time as well.

Everyone but Lynette and Maiya got to have fun outside this time. Colin and Jake both got sled rides. Pete and Teri got to play with their grandkids outside. Michele actually skated and played around with her girlie hockey stick. And, Dan and I played some hockey with the neighbors. There was A LOT more traffic on the ice this time!

Michele has next week off of school for mid-winter break. She's got quite a few plans, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot more pictures to view next weekend. She could prove me wrong, however.

We're looking at a pretty busy weekend coming up, so I'm glad we got to relax a bit this weekend.

Happy V-Day

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I hope everyone that got hit with snow is dealing with it well. Michele had a snow day today, and after getting stuck trying to pull out onto Middlebelt, I opted to work from home. Jake got to stay home, which meant quality time with Mommy, but it also meant that he missed his Valentine party at daycare. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what happened!

There are quite a few pictures to look through this time. In some you'll see our babyproofing, and others you'll just get to see how cute Jake is!

Also, here are some photos from MPnA.

In geekier news, there is a new feature on Google that is pretty cool that you might want to try out. If you go to Google Local and search for a business, you can now call that business. When I first saw it, I assumed you'd talk through the computer like on many instant messenger clients. It is WAY cooler than that though. When you click on a phone number for a business you need to call, it will ask for your phone number. You type in your phone number, and they call you immediately. Once you answer, they then dial the business. There's no long distance fees since it's an inbound call. I think they are just testing this feature, but it works great any time I've needed to use it. You can read more about the feature here.

Baby-proofing - and more

What a crazy week. How crazy was it? Well, there's no picture for this post, so that might give you an idea. As an aside, we (and by we, I primarily mean I) are (unless you take it that we means I, then am) still looking for a new camera. As a reminder, this will be our Christmas gift to each other. Hopefully we'll get one before Christmas 2007. There are lot of new cameras coming out this spring, so hopefully one will look good and Best Buy will actually carry it.

Back to discussing the week...

Sunday
We returned home on Super Bowl Sunday after having spent the weekend up in GB and Fenton. The main reason we headed up was to spend some time on GnGT's frozen pond. Pete and my Dad helped us clear a section of ice, and then Dan and I skated while the women watched from the comforts of the condo. Alison and Colin also had fun playing on the ice as MPnA and DLCnM also came over.

When we got home, our house was not nearly as comfy as GnGT's condo. At some point, over the weekend, our furnace stopped working and our house was a not-so-toasty 54 degrees.

We immediately tried calling people to take a look at the furnace, but between the insane cold (Global Warming?) and the big game, we were only able to get a friend of a neighbor to come take a look. He determined that the electronic gas valve was not opening. Unfortunately, he would not be able to get the part until the following day.

Michele took Jake back up to GnGT while I headed over to the Pruss house to watch the game and then camp out.

Monday
On Monday, Michele took Jacob over to MPnA while she went to a conference in Lansing. Alison's school was canceled, so she got to spend the whole day with Jake and Meme.

Down in Livonia, where the house dipped to 41 degrees overnight, we were able to get the gas valve installed and the furnace fired up... for about 5 minutes. Once the furnace began to run, the service tech noticed that there was some "flame back" that caused one of four temperature sensors to trip thus turning off the furnace. He then determined that the furnace had a cracked heat exchanger. While this does not allow for proper heating, it also posed a risk for elevated carbon monoxide levels.

After a few phone calls we found out that it would be less cost-effective to have the exchanger replaced than to replace the whole thing. We got a quote and hired out the job to a local heating place.

We were able to bypass the heat sensors that allowed us to keep the furnace running and get the house back up to a livable level, and we were able to sleep at our own house.

Tuesday
With Michele at school and Jake at day care, I was able to work from home while we waited on the crew to pick up and install our furnace. By the end of the day, the house had only dipped to 61 degrees, and they had our new furnace "temped" in. It was able to heat the house, but things like the cold air exchange among other odds and ends were not finished.

Wednesday
The crew came back fairly early in the morning to finish their work. Right around noon, they had completely installed our new Lennox furnace including an upgraded air filter and a humidifier. We are hoping that these two upgrades might help with Jake's respiratory issues. They should also help when we go to sell the house.

Wednesday was also my Dad's birthday. Happy Birthday!

Thursday/Friday
Nothing too much out of the ordinary happened on these two days, which was a nice way to end the work week. And, we had heat, so that's good.

Saturday
In the early evening, we packed up and headed to Rochester for Maiya's baptism. The service was held at St Mary's of the Hills in Rochester. After the 5:00 Mass, five children, including Maiya, were baptized by the Deacon. The service was very nice, which was bad for me (explained in a bit). Maiya ended up sleeping through a lot of the ceremony, but woke up as she had the water poured over her head. You can find some photos of the event here.

Immediately after the baptism, I headed downtown for the annual UM/MSU hockey game at the Joe. Since I was asked to be the Godfather (and Michele the Godmother), I couldn't miss out on the Baptism and had to meet up with the gang afterwards. I got there with about 5 minutes left in the first period, and MSU was already up 2-0. After extending the lead to 3-0, Michigan slowly chipped away and tied the game up with a few minutes left. The game ended in a 3-3 tie after an overtime dominated by Michigan, but shutdown by the MSU goalie.

Sunday
After a busy day of baby-proofing much of the house, including the all-important gate to block the stairs, MPnA and Great Grandma Stewart stopped by. After a quick visit, we all met Mark and Kelly at Champps for a birthday dinner for Dad. Hopefully there will be another post in the next few days with the photos that were taken at the restaurant.