Hello you happy peoples...

My long lost (or not) friends! How are you all doing? It's been some time since I last blogged. I do apologize for leaving such a crucial part of your life empty for so long. Truly, I should not have waited so long. What's happened since I last got on here? Let's see...

It's been six weeks since my last post. Ike had just gone away and the city looked like crap. Sadly, there are still a whole bunch of places even around here that still look like crap. There are people on Eldridge Pkwy just today getting their fences replaced. Probably just cuz their insurance companies are overloaded. I dunno...

So, what else? Katelyn can almost crawl now. It's crazy, she's seven months old tomorrow, and all the sudden she's scooting all around everywhere. She has two little teeth we like to call "teefers" for some reason. It sounds cuter when you say it out loud.

Have you voted yet? We did early voting. I didn't want to at the time, just because it ended up with me being a little rushed for work, but it worked out a lot better than it would have if we had gone later. I heard that some people have had to wait like three hours to vote. That's nuts. But at least people are voting.

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So yeah, I started that post two days ago and am now finishing it.  I took the TCLEOSE exam today.  It's the test you take if you want to become a police officer.  That is a stinkin' hard test.  Glad it's over.

In other news, Daylight Savings being over was wonderful.  That extra hour of sleep was terrific.  Did you wake up/go anywhere early?  I did.  I woke up at 6:30 instead of 7:30.  For a weekend, that's way too early.

This is a bunch of random thoughts put together, so I'm going to go for now.  When I think of something better to say, I'll try to post again.   Later,

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Been a While...

My friends and readers, I am back.  It's been some time since I last spoke to you, and of course, much has happened.  I'm sure by now you all know about hurricane Ike.  I worked quite a bit of overtime during the storm, so I'm not complaining, but I'd like to talk about this last week if I might.

Melissa and Katelyn have been gone since Thursday.  It's the longest I've ever been away from Melissa and the first time I've ever been away from Katelyn.  I miss them both so much.  I just found out they're coming home tomorrow, so at least it will be better soon.  It's been weird being all alone for so long - it'll end up being 11 days total.  That's a long time.  I've been surviving, so don't freak out (thanks very much).  Many friends and family members have been watching out for me, and for the hospitality, I thank you.

We got power back here on Sunday afternoon, so we haven't really been hurting over here.  I did have to throw away everything in my refrigerator; that wasn't fun.  It's a pretty depressing sight.  A lot of people in my Academy class still don't have power.

So yeah, I went and saw Traitor.  It's a pretty good movie.  It's a little strange because it's coming from the viewpoint of Islamic terrorists, and they're not usually portrayed as the "good guys."  NOTE: I'm not putting personal feelings about this, because I don't want to start a discussion.  I'm just saying it was strange to see it from that viewpoint.  Pretty good movie overall.  I'm excited to watch "Righteous Kill" when I get a chance.  It's a Robert DeNiro/ Al Pacino movie about some cops.  Can't go wrong there, huh? :)

Well, only have 9 weeks left in the academy - very excited about that.  Means we've got a total of 44 working days left.  I know, you're thinking, "isn't 9 weeks of 5 days equal 45?"  Yes, it does, but we have Veteran's Day off.

OK, going to bed now.  I had thought about making a nice long post, but I'm just too tired.  Later,

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Can You Believe It?

Surprise!!  I'm not dead!!  It has truly been forever since my last post.  I don't even remember the last time I posted.  Yes, I could have checked, but I didn't feel like it.  So how have you been?  If you're reading this, then yes, I mean you.  Please, leave a response involving my question.  Don't leave me feeling alone and unwanted.

So gosh, what all has happened since I last posted??  I am in the police academy right now.  We're in week 15, and good grief it's hard!  I can't go into detail as to what we're doing, but believe me it IS hard.  I'm learning so much I can hardly process all of it.  I'm not allowed to post pictures yet, or I'd do that, so just imagine me in a very professional uniform.

Here's weird for you:  I am listening to (and of course singing with) John Mayer.  Yeah, I used to think he looked like a crazy strung-out druggie, but since he cut his hair and started dating Jennifer Aniston, I figured he seems pretty normal, and he really has some pretty good music.

Have you ever watched an episode of FRIENDS?  It's my favorite TV show ever, and I only got to watch it for the last couple seasons.  Yeah, we weren't allowed to watch it when we were younger.  I understand why, because it's not exactly a show about role models, but it's funny and I connect with the characters.

So Katelyn is Four and a half Months old now!  She's getting so big now.  I don't have any pictures with me right now, but I'm sure there are plenty on Melissa's blog (check my LINKS list on the right).  She found her toes last week and figured out how to roll over.  It's so stinkin' cute.  I can't believe how fast it's going.

Wanna hear something weird?  I can't think of a whole lot to talk about!  Yeah, well I used to catch my inspiration from my job and things I read online while I was "working."  I can't really talk about what's going on at my job now, so it's kinda hard to think of stuff to talk about.

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OK, someone leave a comment and give me a topic to talk about.  If I'm gonna keep this blog going, I'm gonna need a topic to work with.  Help me out people!!!

Later,

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No, I'm not dead...

Dear Friends and Family,

Yes, I know it's been forever and you probably can't believe that I'm actually posting. Before you get your hopes up, I don't have that terrible much to talk about. The Academy is going well, but I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to talk about on the internet. I'll find out later and tell you all about it. I can tell you that getting up at 4 AM every day is getting a little old. I get about four hours of sleep each night and if you've ever been a parent, you know that's pretty decent sleep, but I'd prefer at least two more hours than that. Melissa can testify that I'm doing my PT (Physical Training) because I am (finally) developing some nice muscles (Pictures to come later...maybe). :) We start our Skills training in about two weeks. Skills consist of Driving, Shooting, and Defensive Tactics. We are all very excited to get a break from the classroom and endless lectures. I have missed being able to update you all on totally random crap from my head all the time, but please know it's either take time to blog or spend time with my wife and daughter and they will always be more important.

So if you read melissa's blog (ordinaryexultations.blogspot.com) you'll see that katelyn is growing big and strong. She has recently discovered how to use her voice so sometime's we're blessed with some very cute cooing and other times with totally random screeching. she's not usually upset, just experimenting with her abilities I suppose.

Anyway, I'm going to go for now. Maybe once we start skills I'll put up a picture of me in my uniform. Hey, at least it would be something. Later,

$

For those of you that don't read other people's comments, James was "friendly" enough to update all of you on my life.  Thank you James.  Anyway, it inspired me to finally post.  I have been wanting to.  Don't think I've enjoyed torturing all of you by not posting.  I am so sorry my public.  I decided I would give you some pictures, and then I'll talk about how things have been going.

Here is a picture of some baby I saw in my car today.  She's pretty cute.  Ok so maybe she's mine.  That's right, who would have thought that half of me and half of Melissa could look so cute.  What's that, you all expected this?  Ok, well fine.  (Sigh) she's growing so big so fast.  It's speeding by.  Slow down child!  Parenting is awesome, but I don't think anyone can warn you enough.  They need to write  book about parenting called Everything they Forgot to Tell You.  Only problem with this book being that they would have to update it every six months.  They should make one of those for Marriage, too.  Again, the update rate would be a little much to keep up with.  In all seriousness though, life is awesome with my ladies.  I couldn't ask for a better home life.  My wife is the most incredible, beautiful, graceful, and patient woman in the entire world, and I love and appreciate her so much.  I'm so thrilled that Katelyn was born in time for Mother's Day.  I got her some nice stuff for tomorrow.  Ok, well I hope she thinks it's nice stuff.

I haven't talked about my motorcycle in a while, but I have added a new part, so I thought I'd mention in.  As you can see in the blurry picture (stupid cell phone), I have added a windshield to my Honda Rebel.  I think it makes the little bike look a little bigger.  It makes a huge difference on the highway, and I'm pretty sure it increases my gas mileage too.  Of course at 75 mpg, I'm sure not hurting.  I'm going to be using this bike a whole lot more in the future since I'll be driving to the Police Academy every day.  It's not that much longer of a morning commute - probably about 35 minutes now instead of 7.  Compared to some people I know that's a pretty short drive time, so I'm not complaining.  I've been so blessed by other people that this windshield is the first upgrade I've actually had to pay for.

Sweetheart, you can skip this section if you want to, because you hear so much about these every day.  I have new guns.  I sold my Glock 23 and bought a Glock 22 and a Glock 27.  For those of you that don't know (most of you), all three of the guns I just listed are all .40 caliber pistols.  The 22 is the full size model, the 23 is the compact, and the 27 is the sub-compact.  To recap in English, I got rid of the medium size and got the big and little sizes.  I'm going to use them for my duty and back up weapons when I work for HPD.  I have taken them to the range and they are wonderful.  The Glock 27 is the smallest pistol Glock manufactures.  It is TINY.  I can hide it anywhere.  Something I didn't include in the pictures is that the Glock 22 came with night sights.  They look like regular sights in the daylight, but if you get them in dim lighting or no lighting, they glow a very nice green color.

Glock 27

Glock 22

Both.

So in other news, I have finally quit my job at Best Access Systems, and I couldn't be happier about it.  After one month, I have been accepted into the Houston Police Academy.  I'm so excited to finally be on the road to Law Enforcement.  It's going to be six months before I'm on the streets, and a year until I can start doing extra jobs and fun stuff like that, but I'm working on it now.  I was so tired of waiting.  I can hardly believe that it's really happening.  I will have more to post on the academy once it starts of course.  I will keep you all updated.

I'm going to pick up dinner now (KFC, yummm), so I'll talk to you later.

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She's Encaptured!!

My dear friends, it has been a while since the last post. I would apologize, but I've been so busy with the HPD hiring process, a hungry baby, and a tired wife that I just haven't had the time or energy to post. On the bright side, I have LOTS to talk about!

Item One: Katelyn has her days and nights mixed up. The poor thing sleeps all day long and eats all night long. She's getting better, and oh my gosh she's so cute when she sleeps. We have taken many more pictures and a few videos. Someday we're gonna be watching those videos with her future husband and she's going to wonder what was wrong with us.

Item Two: we had a lot of fun last week - we found termites in our apartment. We didn't know that's what they were at first - we just knew bugs in apartment = bad. We went to the front office and asked for help and they told us they couldn't do anything. Then they threw us out of the office. If you are ever looking for an apartment, don't choose Stonegate Villas - they don't care about you. Tell your friends. Anyway, it's been an issue - we had someone come out in 30 minutes and tell us it was termites, so I told the office on Saturday. They called me on Tuesday so say "we don't think they're really termites." Obviously that didn't sit well, so I told them to try again. They called me back with, "ok, they are termites, but we don't have anyone available to fix the problem - we'll try to squeeze you in on Wednesday." I got a call today to say "ok, our bug guy says they were blown in with the wind, so we can't do anything about it." Wonderful isn't it? So the way I see it, if no more bugs show up, we're ok. If bugs show back up, I'm going to capture some and set them loose in the front office and THEN see if they care. At least that's what I'd like to do...

Item Three: Polygraph tests are freaky! They put all this crap on you and then drill you for like two hours about lying. I was so freaked out the whole time. It's like walking through a metal detector - I'm always afraid of setting it off even though I have nothing to hide. Either way, I passed the test. Assuming HPD doesn't find anything in my background that I don't know about, I should be good to go. I'll be so glad to get out of this current job. It's almost hard to believe that in less than a month I could have my dream job. Here's to hoping it goes well!

Item Four: You're probably still wondering about the title to this post. The first week home with Katelyn was not a week of much sleep for Melissa or myself. It led to more than a couple cases of gibberish talk. Melissa tried to wake me up one night and I replied with "She's encaptured!!" I have no idea what that means. It's a product of sleep deprivation.

Item Five: If you haven't seen the movie Dan In Real Life, let me warn you - it's depressing. I watched it with Melissa the other night, and it left me so depressed by the end that I wanted to find a dark closet and hide from humanity. His character echoes so many feelings I used to have as a kid it's not even funny. Strangely enough, my parents love the movie. I dunno. I didn't like it. I liked the bloopers and the special feature on the soundtrack better than the actual movie. The music is good on that movie. Look up the artist - Sondre Lerche. He looks a little funny, but he's really good with a guitar and has a pretty good voice, too. I think I'm gonna get the soundtrack cuz it's all his music. Check it out.

I probably should get back to work, so I'm going to go for now. Leave a comment if you have any interesting news. Later,

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My Daughter is Finally Here...

Well ladies and gents, she's finally here.  Some of you are probably thinking, what, you're only just now saying so??  But hey, when you have a brand new baby, you run out of time for a lot of things.  We've been busy not sleeping.  Don't be deceived, we couldn't really be much happier, but we are a little tired.  Our sweet princess doesn't require as much sleep as we do during normal hours.  No, she prefers to sleep when we're awake.  Oh well, one look at her, and you just can't be upset.  She's so perfect.  I have lots of pictures.  I'm only showing you a few because I haven't figured out how to get my pics from the camera, but i have a few from my cell phone that i don't think anyone else has.  Here we go...

I took this Thursday night.  Kind of a gangster look...

I just couldn't resist.

Look at those big beautiful eyes...

I think she heard a noise or something...

This is shortly after birth, I think just a couple hours...

With Grandma Susan

With Mommy right after birth...

With Grandpa Randy

How precious is that...

My favorite

About as peaceful as she gets...

With Aunt Bethany

Biiiiiiiiig yawn, liiiiiiitle mouth

At rest...

What did you just say???

This is cool because this represents a four generation span...

With Ryan

How adorable!!

Doesn't get much better than this...

Out cold...

Wish I could sleep this well...

So cute you could eat her...

Up close and personal

Mommy was tired too...

More pictures to come soon!!  Stay Tuned!!

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Hmm...

So I wonder, how come nobody's left a comment asking where I am, how I'm doing, if I'm even still ALIVE??? Maybe you all take me for granted. Then again, only like ten people read this blog...Ok, eleven if you count the mysterious anonymous commenter (who are you?). Still, ok whatever.

So yeah, Katelyn is still not here. Baby girl is one hour away from being nine days late. She is nearing Daddy's record, and that is not necessarily a good thing. We would much rather be counting the days that she has spent outside the womb than the days that she is spending still inside. Baby girl come OUT!

This almost feels like a long weekend, but here we are again preparing to start a new work week. I am comforted by the fact that I probably won't have to finish this work week because my daughter will be born. Oh, I got to do another ride along with Jersey Village PD. That's police department for you civilians out there. Anyway, this time I got to ride with James instead of someone I've never met. We pulled over lots of people, went really fast on the highway, and arrested someone. Ok, I didn't do any of those things, but I got to watch James do them. It was really cool. The only thing more fun that going on a ride-along is being a cop on patrol and getting to do all that stuff.


What...the...HECK does "crunchy" mean????? My wife and Lynne used it tonight, and I don't understand. I thought about just asking, but then I figured, "hey, if I put in on the blog, then they'll answer on the blog, and everybody else will get to learn, too!" So smart am I.

Can't think of anything else for now. Later,

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Day 283

So, we're three days late. Still no baby. That's ok though, because if she's not out yet, God must not want her out yet. That's not really any consolation to Melissa, because it means the baby is still inside her body, but at least we know she'll be here soon. Worst case she'll be two weeks late, that's about as long as we're willing to let her stay in. We're happy letting Lynne have the record among us for latest baby. Melissa has tried just about everything for getting this baby out, and Katelyn has dropped a LOT, but still no baby. We're trying not to obsess, but we want her here NOW. If she could just see all the stuff we have waiting for her, she'd be out here two weeks ago. This little girl is gonna have so many cool clothes and toys and stuff, she should come out and enjoy them. In other news, there is no other news. Umm, no seriously, no other news right now. Nothing's really going on, we're not going anywhere anytime soon other than the hospital. You will know when the baby is here - I'll post about it, and we're going to build her her own blog for pictures and stuff.

Question, when you see a movie like The Patriot, 300, or Gladiator, (I know all you women love these movies) do you care if it's 100% accurate? These three movies are on the list of the top 10 most innacurate movies. Stupid little facts. For example, in 300 the men didn't wear just the little speedo things, they wore bronze armor. So what?? What woman watching that movie wished the men were wearing more? And for the guys, we couldn't care less, because the action was great. Granted, some of the things about that movie could have been left out, but overall a good movie. You get my point. Which matters more, the accuracy or the story line? I'm gonna say the story line matters more. Unless it was something that affected me directly - some family history or something, I would rather see a good movie with a few smudged facts than watch a boring accurate movie. Aren't movies supposed to entertain anyway? I dunno. I'm not expecting a right or wrong answer here, just wanting your opinion.

Anyone see Brittany Spears on TV last night? That's right, she was on How I Met Your Mother. Her acting is even worse than her singing. Although she didn't look half bad. That poor girl just couldn't handle the fame and pressure from her younger years. Too bad. She should go get a real job or something.

Anyway, I'm gonna go for now, gotta work cuz I never know when I'm gonna leave for the baby.

P.S. Look up the news story about the woman where they took out her organs to remove cancer.

Later,

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No, I'm not dead...

It's been a long time again, I know. Many things have been going on. Looks like we're finally selling our stupid Explorer this week!! Yay!!! That officially means that I can go ahead with my HPD application, and Melissa can for sure stay home and not go back to work. Yay! It has been a huge stress lately because if it hadn't sold, well, things would have been really tight. But that's over now, or will be by Saturday.

So I got a new phone! My Verizon account renewed so I got one of these. Oh yeah, that's totally a bowl of water. It's waterproof. How cool is that? Lynne and Melissa are insisting that it is NOT babyproof, but who cares, what really is? I'm gonna keep telling myself that it is. Oh well, it's cool.

So what's up? Melissa is due on Saturday. That's right - this Saturday. We are soooo ready for that baby to get here. Melissa has been put on modified bed rest because of high blood pressure, so one more reason she'd like the baby to get here.

I could talk much more, but I'm really behind at work and should get back to it. Later,

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