Eli's Comin'!

Eli's Comin'! At 1 lb. 2 oz., with a heart beat at 141 bpm, our baby BOY is healthy and strong.

He's got my nose and cheekies. Heart breaker for sure. And he's drama. Had his arm in front of his face half of the time. You know, the "woe-is-me" pose.

Mom remembers that one ...

And here's the money shot. Much better resolution than last time. You can see where the tech is pointing his cursor at ... that's right - cock & balls! Full-on baby package.

Welcome to the family, Eli Scott Bacon.

Belly Shots

I wanted to wait awhile before posting belly shots ... for too long it just looked like I had eaten too much. Here is our 1st belly shot at 14 weeks...with shirt down.

14 weeks full-on belly. The shirt holds it in a bit.

16 weeks...and finally feeling better! YAY!

I had my 1st prenatal massage that week. Totally worth it - and necessary, especially since I had to give up wine!

16 weeks...behold baby Bacon, but look I still have some definition!

20 weeks...

Feeling great! I have more energy, but I've moved up on the clumsiness scale ... which depending on how well you know me ... ya ... it can get worse.


20 weeks ... definition gone, watermelon/basketball forming.

We actually saw the baby move two weeks ago. It was really a trip! It looked like waves on my tummy. Dave saw it too which was amazing since he has yet to feel the baby kick. We have our 3D/4D ultrasound on the 26th so be sure to tune in for new photos and if we are crafty enough to figure it out...video!

Flavor of the Bean!

We had our first formal ultrasound today, and here's our little bean.

Taryn says jelly - I say coffee. Go figure.

Everything looks and sounds great and the baby couldn't be healthier, or move around more. Lots of twisting and turning and waving of the arms and kicking with the legs. I'm gonna slip Taryn a Red Bull when she's not looking to see what happens. It's a double whammy, 'cause she hates those things.

Here's a closer look at the profile of the face, with the arms and hands. Taryn thinks the baby has my "cheekies," so we know it'll be good looking ...

And ... drumroll ... It's A Boy!
Finally we know the flavor of the bean, and it tastes of testosterone and smells of armpit hair. You can kinda make out the label that the ultrasound tech put on the picture for us and directly under the "s" you can just make out a teenie weenie! A Teenie Weenie!
Now we just need a name ...
We invite everyone to leave their suggestions under the comments section.

Leadership Conference FY'09

Over 10,000 of us swarmed into New Orleans for five days. Everything from business meetings and awards dinners to community service and street fairs.

Here's the property where I did my volunteer hours. I was able to meet the woman who lived here and hear her story first hand. I guess many of the homes that were lost had been in families for generations. Lots of the people around town are New Orleans born-and-raised. I know, kinda hard to imagine having been born in Stockton, huh?

Lunch at the Saint's Superdome. Pretty cool. Nice turf.

We packed all 10,000+ of us into the Hornet's stadium.

That's a lot of highly caffeinated people.

And of course the evening isn't complete until Bono comes out firing with his particular brand of self depricating rock-star humor.

Still pretty cool, though ...

Proud to be a partner.

Our First Anniversary

Here's the top portion of our wedding cake. We kept it for the year and sat down to enjoy it, only to find that it had turned to frosted cardboard. I think the tradition of keeping and eating your cake on the 1st year anniversary was meant to drive home the point that after that first year, everything in your marriage turns to frosted cardboard.

I thought it was a beautiful and poignant metaphor.

Taryn hit me.

I was just joking.

We spent our night at Teatro Zinzanni. It's right on the waterfront in S.F. off the Embarcadero. Think Cirque de Soliel, Cabaret, Beach Blanket Babylon and Burlesque all rolled into one, with a 5 course dinner to boot. The place was incredible. Insane, but incredible. I don't think we stopped laughing from the moment we sat down till the show ended some 3 hours later.

Here's Taryn in the lobby before the show started. She's standing in front of some crazy musical contraption. The thing took up an entire wall.

And here's me with full-on fat laugh face and Shakespearean attire. I was one of a lucky three selected to compete for the part of Romeo to Ms. Christine's Juliet. It was quite the interesting dating game. And Todd, think back to One-Week-Early at SOU. Yes, it was way crazier - and much more embarrassing - than that. I sang "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" in falsetto. I played naughty musical chairs with plenty of gyrating and grinding. And I picked the erect sword from the bunch to win my "prize." So I acted out a scene on stage with Ms. Christine here, then fed her grapes on the float that was rolled through at the end of the show. Taryn was laughing so hard she almost peed herself. (The guy from the other couple sitting at our table was so wasted I think he did pee himself) As you can clearly see in the photo, I was laughing pretty hard too.

Halloween '08

Halloween is the best holiday of the year! And it always comes early for the Bacon's. Here are our first three pumpkins for this season (I say first three because we have at least one more to finish). This one looks like IT, as Taryn says, which she doesn't appreciate, but really it's a throw-back to one of the best movies of the 80's - Killer Clowns From Outer Space!

This one is the face of the Headless Horseman from Sleepy Hollow.

And this is Taryn's masterpiece. It's the Evil Monkey from Family Guy. It was her first time attempting to do shading. She calls it her Everest, and for good reason. It took over 5 hours to complete! But it's as sick as it gets people!

Baby: Week 16

Our first appointment with Kaiser was definitely an interesting one. We were both psyched about checking out the new facility and doing our first formal ultrasound to learn the gender of the baby, but at 2am the night before, Taryn got really sick. She started running a fever of well over 100 degrees. When we finally made it in to the facility, they recorded her temp at 101.7. Not good! Because she was so dehydrated we weren't able to do the ultrasound, so no news about the flavor of that jellybean yet. But Taryn is feeling much better, and the baby couldn't be healthier! (Our formal ultrasound is scheduled for Nov. 4th)

We were able to hear the baby's heartbeat, which is exactly where we want it to be. But because it's on the high side of the healthy average, Taryn's pretty certain that we're having a baby girl. God help me! We came away with these two pictures of the little bugger. In both you can see pretty clearly the head and spinal cord - both of which are perfect! And in the top picture you can see parts of the developing brain. That's right, we're having a genius!

Neathamer Wedding!

After 5+ long years, I finally got a chance to come back to Ashland. The town's as beautiful as ever. Some definite changes since my last visit - namely the house @ Grant Street. For those of you who remember what it was, go check it out. Here's a shot of the new library that was just being built the year I graduated ... pretty fancy ... Taryn and I took a walk through campus and I grabbed an SOU t-shirt. I needed something to remember the school by other than all the parking tickets ...

I got Taryn to try the Lithia water again. And again she hated it. And again she didn't think it was very funny. Good thing she loves me ...

Here's Laura and Cory at the rehersal. They were married in the garden @ the Ashland Springs Hotel. You can see Ellen and Joe looking on, and Cory's Best Man John doing Jesus knows what. Lots of blahs and yahda yahdas during the rehersal - just as it should be. And you can't see her 'cause she's behind the camera, but Taryn was rockin the IPOD on a crazy BOSE system.

The proud father and the blushing bride.

Here's a great shot of the couple @ the rehersal dinner @ Alex's restaurant in downtown Ashland.

Learn from Laura & Cory: friends = cheap labor. Use it well and use 'em up. They got Chinch to man the camera equipment, though I think he enjoyed the POV. And here's a great look at how nervous Cory wasn't. I thought he was gonna lose a liver during the rehersal, but day of, he took it like a champ. Put me to shame ...

Laura's sister Joelle (center) was the Maid (Matron! ... sorry ...) of Honor. Hannah was her wing woman. Joelle's reading was fantastic - she made everybody cry. Though with Hannah and Laura it wasn't too hard. A big Congugalations to Joelle and James on their little man! If only we could all have a head of hair as lushous as he!

And here they are. Beautiful. Well, if you could see Laura clearly I'm sure you'd agree she was stunning, but until we get a better picture you can take my word for it. The day was perfect - all that a wedding should be. Because perfection is what you get with http://www.reverenddave.com/. And remember, that comes with MC and DJ services included.

Beautiful. And so happy. Congugalations! We love you!

http://www.reverenddave.com/

We finally had a chance to check out their new townhouse in Medford. Nice place guys. But you think with all the room that Renegade and Paunch would have lost some weight running around ...

So long from the 541. We'll see ya soon. Have a great time in Hawaii.

Baby: Week 8

My boys can swim!

Today was our first appointment, and things couldn't have gone better. Everything is progressing as it should; Taryn is healthy and the baby is healthy. We have a due date of April 2nd.

It was pretty incredible to see the baby's heart beating. And thank Jesus there was only 1! Although the little donut to the bottom-right threw us for a loop. I've never sweat so much in my life. Taryn always threatened me with twin girls - said it would be karmic retribution. It's not funny.

... so here's our baby jelly bean, no word yet on the flavor ...

Mexico Vacation

This was our pirate ship with it's crew of corsairs. It took us out into the Gulf where we battled 2 other ships and came away with some mad booty. Think: half dinner theater / half crazy disco party. But hands down the best lobster ever!

A shot of the kids before the open bar ...

This is the Cenote we visited on our way back from Chichen Itza. Those things stretching from the freshwater in the cavern below to the opening of the well at ground level are the roots of an old tree.

The water was really nice, but there were catfish everywhere. Freaked me out. Last time I shared space with fish I got too close and one chased me halfway down a Tahitian beach. And left two bruises. Though neither myself nor the fish swam nearly as fast as Taryn. Any quicker and she would've been running on top of the water. Guess that's payback for the "Bee Incident"

Taryn enjoying a mango something-or-other. And yes, it's a virgin!

Todd & Mackenzie enjoying lunch @ Carlos & Charlie's. The waitor was a big fan of Todd's. A big fan. We thought it was a funny joke, until things got a bit uncomfortable.

Yeah ... about this uncomfortable ... Good thing his wife's such a good sport.

The Great Pyramid @ Chichen Itza. One of the 7 wonders of the modern world. They stopped allowing people to climb it's steps, but you can still get right up to it's base and experience the immensity of it's scale.

Here's a shot of the Astronomy Tower. We had a pretty fun conversation with our guide about the origin of the Mayan's calendar system, as well as some of their older myths. Our guide was pretty good. His name was "Juan!" ... no, I mean ... now I forget ... Thanks a lot Todd.

See? Not just a post card. We really were there!

On our last day in Mexico, strolling the avenues of Playa Del Carmen, we finally got to see a monkey! He liked Taryn.

Yup ... there's just something about monkeys ...