The Nursery: Take 2

So the Nursery is really starting to come together. We have all of the furniture pieces in place now. About half of the bedding/decorative pieces that Taryn and Cathy are working on are finished. As you can see, since we're renting and unable to paint the walls, Taryn got creative and found some great decals. Nice and retro. The valance is up, the crib skirt is on, and the pillow for the glider is ready to go. We still have some record albums to frame and hang around the room, plus a clock for the wall and a lamp for the bookshelf, but we're getting there.

Here's a close-up of the bookshelf. It's originally from Taryn's nursery. Her father made it, her mother kept it all these years, and her brother painted it for Eli to use. You can see the Fraggles - friggin sweet! Gobo and Whimbley! Also all of my old comics - a ton of Spiderman, X Men and Superman, plus a bunch of randoms like Venom, Sabertooth, etc. Not to mention all the monkeys ...

Here's a shot of the glider. You can see the pillow that Cathy made. That's the same theme that we'll have on the crib bedding/blanket. The glider is the most comfortable thing ever. And it's huge! I called dibs on it after Eli gets bigger to use as my football chair. No backsies.

Here's the hutch all cleaned out and ready for the diaper necessaries. Our little gray cat (Momo, or Monkey, or Hyde, or Scruffy Fluffy ButtFace) has claimed the changing pad in the name of the Mo. When he's lost, that's where we find him - curled up and squish-faced. Makes me wish we had sheets made out of the thing ...

And here's another shot of the closet. Still can't get over how nice it is to have a walk-in for the nursery. The extra shelves we got are fantastic. We have a huge stash of diapers, plenty of room for the swing and bouncer, and the Belly Fun Time thing - Thanks Margie! And as you can see, we're collecting a nice supply of clothes. I still think the coolest is the Atari onesie. Or the gray long sleeve shirt that says "I drink until I pass out." His stuff is already cooler than mine ... Taryn told me to get used to it ...

New Belly Pics!

Here's the Babe at 32 weeks plus. Still pretty petite, considering we only have 7+ weeks left.

Here's the Belly in all its Glory. Behold the Baby! Behold the Comfy Pants!

Surgery Update

My Surgery is set for February 13th. I'll be in Pleasanton at the Deer Valley Medical Center. Taryn and Mom will both be coming with me. I say it's to keep each other company - they say it's because I'm a big baby. I'll be stuck at home going stir crazy for about a week and a half. I'll be appreciating the PS3 Taryn got me for my Birthday more than ever. I think Kendall's planning on coming up to hang out and keep me company for awhile. I asked him if he would be my Wet Nurse. He said he'd get me ice cream, but no sponge baths. What a rip-off. So if anyone else is bored between the 13th and the 23rd, I'll have plenty of time.

The House

So here's the place. A beautiful area of Danville, CA. 2k square feet, 3 stories, 3 bedrooms and 2 1/2 bath. And we finally have a garage! And a backyard! Here's the front door ...

Our main family room. Hooray for vaulted ceilings and high windows.

Here's the formal dining area. Still don't have our dining furniture yet, but we're working on it. Sexface, you might notice your wine shelves mounted on the wall - and Bill, your wreath is center stage.

Here's our living room. Looks familiar, right? It's just like our old apartment. Oh, and it's Christmas time ...

Here's our kitchen.

Our backyard. Nice brick patio leading all the way through the side yard to the front of the house. We even bought a chiminea for those cold Bay Area nights. As you can see, the cats love it.

A shot from our stairway.

A shot from our catwalk. To the left is our master bedroom, to the right are the two spare rooms (the guest bedroom and the nursery).

Here's our guest room. We even have Bill's water color hanging on the wall.

Here's Eli's crib. We're still working on the bedding. Taryn and Cathy are doing it themselves. Also the curtains.

Here's our glider. May not seem all that special to you folk, but this bad boy is gonna be the best thing we've ever owned (aside from the sleep number bed, of course).

Here's a random shot of the nursery closet. It's nice that it's a walk-in. Plenty of room for all of Eli's crap. Again, we haven't yet decorated, or even had all of the furniture arrive, so things are still in the works. We'll update as we finish.

So Eli's nursery used to be the office. Here's a shot of the loft (which used to be my special music space, with guitars mounted on the wall, my amps out and hooked up, and all that good stuff), which is now our library/office. Since I spend more time reading, writing and working than playing music these days, it's still a nice getaway space.

This is looking out from the loft to our master bedroom. As you can see, my music equipment has been strtipped down to the guitars that fit on a single rack. Everything else has been relagated to storage in our finished attic. We must be getting old ...

Belly: Week 27

Here's the Belly at week 27. Still pretty petite, but looking good.

This is the Sexy shot ...

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.