Recent 'Brief' Happenings

Because we are both feeling a little lazy these days (work overload, winter chill, and general sleepiness?), I decided to make this entry short & sweet. Carol's 60th Birthday: First off, thank you Mark for inviting us to Florida for mom's 60th birthday bash! It was nice being able to spend time with everyone and celebrate the big event together. Mom, thank you also for my maternity clothes...they are definitely coming in handy! Christine’s Birthday & Brian’s Visit to NY: Thank you Brian for helping to make my birthday weekend VERY relaxing and fun! Neal and I both apologize for the state of New York’s massive snowstorm, but wasn’t it exciting trying to roll suitcases through 18 inches of snow? We very much enjoyed cozying up, watching movies (the commentary at Court Street 12 WAS very entertaining & not to mention ‘oldboy’), and eating yummy Thai, lobster, and Italian dinners. Let’s make sure that during your next visit, Darian will be able to explore with us and that it is at least 60 degrees outside. THE Snowstorm: We apologize in advance for dragging our poor canine friends through the snow, but it was so much fun watching them prance around with their booties & six layers. After 15 minutes of acclimating to their first taste of ‘real’ winter, they were pretty good sports. Ok, peeps…back to the dissertation (: Thinking of you, Christine

The NEWS

The NEWS! Hello everyone. It’s me Neal again. I’ve been on a Blog Hiatus for a while since work is kickin my ass! My partner, Christine, took over for a beautifully written blog to fill in the other day. I am extremely happy that she is learning this Bloggin stuff too! I, with the blessing of my gorgeous wife, am making my triumphant return for the most important news of all… We had our nineteen and a half week anatomy scan on Wednesday, February 1, 2005. We met with the Sonogram technician and she escorted us into the superduper powerful sonogram room. The technician proceeded to zoom in and out of our little one and check every part of the anatomy. It was truly amazing watching what technology can do. The Tech zoomed in on each of the bones and measured them all. Our little one has 5 fingers and 5 toes on each hand and foot. The brain development could be seen clearly, and one of the areas that I was pretty anxious about was when the tech zoomed in on the heart. You could clearly see four chambers and the little heart… beat, beating along! For those of you who don’t know, my nephew Dakota, had some heart problems when he was a little baby and actually had to have open heart surgery when he was less than six months old. He is doing wonderfully now, but it was extremely scary for my brother and sister-in-law, as well as the rest of the family. So, to see the heart and chambers of our little one developing was very exciting. Back to the scan… The tech zoomed in and out of the pelvic region a number of times to check on the kidneys and bladder and such. Christine and I would always perk up when we thought the tech was close to the area, but it was pretty hard to figure out what was going on unless the tech told us what she was looking at. Finally, the tech zoomed in clearly on the pelvic region and we were able to see pretty clearly that we are definitely having a ……..? Oh, did I tell you guys about my adventure in Las Vegas? Yeah, around January 3rd I flew out to Vegas to see my buddy Brian who was working out there… Ok, fine, I’ll get back to that story in a second. Christine and I are proud to let everyone know that we are having a beautiful little princess!!!! It’s a GIRL! …… …….. hold on a sec, I have tears in my eyes and can’t see the screen clearly….. Ok, I’m back now. Seriously, this is such an emotional time. On Thursday night, I felt her kick for the first time. Wow! Does anyone else think its nuts to have another little human being growing and kicking and moving inside another human being? Maybe its just a guy thing because we don’t actually experience it, but it is remarkable! We have been tossing around some names lately but haven’t decided on anything definite yet. If anyone of you want to throw out ideas, please feel free! Currently, the following names have been considered: Elyse, Ashely Autumn Navrat, Samantha (I agree with you Michelle, that is a great name!), Lauren, Kaylie, and Madison. On Thursday night, Christine and I flew to Tampa, Florida for Christine’s Mother Carol’s birthday party. Happy Birthday Carol and an additional shout out happy birthday to our roommate Sara, and step sister-in-law (is that right?), Amy who also share birthdays with Carol (Feb 3). Carol took us to my first ever visit to a Baby’s R Us superstore in the midst of torrential rains in Florida. We literally had to walk through six inches of rain in the parking lot just to get to the store! Crazy weather! Anyway, if you all have never been to a Baby’s R Us (like me) you would be shocked. It’s like a Sams club except all things babies. Do you really need all that for a baby? (Don’t answer that…) Carol treated Christine to some maternity clothes and we got some very good ideas for baby cribs. Tonight (Saturday) we are heading to a party at Dave and Carol Barry’s for Carol’s Birthday celebration. Should be a good time. Ok I’m posting in a separate blog, but I’ll continue with my Vegas story and other happenings since I last posted back in December. Neal & Christine

Other Happenings

Other Happenings We went to Boston for Christmas to visit Dick and Susan. We had a great time. I was able to provide them with a bunch of my books on tape and they let us burn their CD collection. That was awesome. They have some great classical music and a good collection of musicals/Broadway songs. I also helped them set up their Web Cam and we were able to speak to Susan’s brother Johnny who is over in Iraq. That was very special and we were all very happy to be able to see his face and hear his voice. Keep up the Great work Johhny! And of course, stay safe. We are thinking of you! One of the cool things that Dick and Susan gave us for Christmas was a year subscription to NetFlix. They know how much Christine likes to watch movies and it was a perfect gift. We actually, spent a little bit more money and upgraded our subscription to get unlimited movies sent to us with the ability to have 3 out at any one time. It is a great product. Oh, and we took a bus for the first time to Boston from NYC. It was a LimoLiner which is an upgraded greyhound type bus with leather seats, TVs, Internet Access, dinner, snacks, and drinks. It was a great ride and cost less than flying. On the way back, it got a little long because of traffic and our seats weren’t the greatest of configurations (facing directly across from two strangers) but it was still comfortable. Back to my Vegas story… so, I joined Brian in Vegas. His company picked up the tab for the hotel room at Paris. So, while he worked all day, I mooched off of the hotel digs and went gambling. It was a tough week!!!! By Thursday, I was down a lot! More than I have ever been down in my life. Scary. But, then… I learned how to play craps. Starting at 8AM until 5 PM with a 20-minute break for lunch, I won back nearly all of my money playing craps and periodically jumping on the black jack table. With the winnings in that one-day, I was only down a few hundred dollars for the week. For me, that wasn’t bad since we went out to eat every night, had an adventurous evening at the clubs, lost 200 on the Fiesta bowl, and bought drinks all week. I was pretty happy with the whole trip and it was great hanging out with Brian. When Christine went to Minneapolis for our friend Jen’s baby shower, Jen’s husband Darin came out to visit me for the weekend. We had a great time being mellow and exploring the neighborhoods of Brooklyn. We ended up going to Williamsburg (right across from Manhattan over the Williamsburg Bridge), which is a dive/up-and-coming warehouse area. Lots of artistic types live there. On a recommendation from a bartender, we found a bar called Bembe, which was sweet! It had a Brazilian flavor to it with a DJ spinning percussion influenced jams. They also had two bongo drums that people could sit down and join in the jams. Very cool. I also had my first drink with Guarana in it. Guarana is an extract from some Brazilian plant that is one of the main ingredients in Red Bull. Guarana can be purchased in a powder form (which I didn’t know). The drink we had was a crushed ice Coconut rum with Gurana powder. It was awesome and kept us lively for quite some time. Other Items: We want to say congratulations to Todd and Marissa who we just found out were pregnant with their second baby! Congratulations and we miss you guys! Sadie and Celia are doing great. Sadie was having some bladder issues again, but we started her on some antibiotics and it seems to have helped. She is still adorable and full of life and energy. For my job, I think I am going to be traveling to London for two weeks in May. One of my goals when I started working for the OCC 13 years ago was to travel internationally. Well, it looks like that might happen. I am pretty excited. Christine is doing well and feeling good. She looks definitely pregnant and beautiful! Wow, she is sexy! Ok, I have typed until my fingers are numb. I’ll try to continue to populate this blog as much as possible. And, if I don’t Christine did a great job, so hopefully we’ll see more of her style! Take care everyone, Neal & Christine