Congrats to Kim and Craig...

... on the safe arrival of Brynn Simmons K. A healthy baby girl, weighing in at 7lbs, 9oz. Mom, Dad and Big sister are doing well...

So much for freedom of the press

So I've been studying for my Green Card interview...The first amendment to the US constitution guarantees the freedom of the press. Apparently the founding fathers never met my wife. After posting the last writeup on our weekend with Nate and Bri, she started bugging me to change things... "I don't like this picture of me." and "We didn't go there... that was with my mom and dad.", "Will you put up a better picture here? I don't want a picture of my fat pasty self"

Next it'll be "Eat your broccoli, you love broccoli." Sheesh.

Watch out, Americuh, Big Brother (Sister) is alive and well!

:)

Good Times Come to Nashville.

We were lucky to have more visitors last weekend as Nate and Bri flew in for a few days. Bri brought along her photo gear, which of course resulted in a multitude of awesome pictures of Fletcher, Laura and Henry. Her photoshop powers will be severely tested, however, making me look more like a combination of Brad Pitt, Daniel Craig and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.




Weekend fun included a trip to the Yazoo Brewery - a local legend for delicious and effective beers. Check them out at http://www.yazoobrew.com/



Yazoo is located in an old car factory called the Marathon Motor works building. Marathon built cars in Nashville that were considered to be superior to the competition in the period leading up to WWI. Apparently, however, the managers were the same guys who now run GM, as they went under as quality slipped, market share shrank, and production technologies outgrew them. Also similar to GM, there seems to be a great nostalgia for this problem plagued product... weird.




Anyway, the brewery is in a very cool building, and there is a taproom and beer garden (courtyard) where you can sample the wares during selected hours. We took Fletcher on his first Brewery tour on Saturday. The tour guide thought it was pretty cool to have a baby in a Bjorn learning about beer. I'm still not sure how I feel about that...





It seems that Nate and Bri enjoyed hanging out with Fletch. Bri continued giggling even as she was drenched in spitup from shoulder to the toes of her right foot... an event that inspired Nate compose one of his trademark original musical hits, "The purple burpasaurus". Fletcher enjoyed that one a lot!


Beth came over to hang out and have dinner on Saturday, and helped Laura and Bri prepare a delicious dinner of shredded beef tacos, some sort of corn salsa and Kim Kennedy's famous spicy pineapple 'vegetable'. It seems that Laura misjudged the type of hot peppers to add, however, as my face melted off when I ate it, which has never happened when Kim made it. (Food promo shots unashamedly stolen from Bri)







Sunday we managed to squeeze a fair bit of work into a busy (and hot) day. Drew scraped and painted a soffit and finished up some cedar shingle work while Fletcher, Laura, Nate and Bri headed to Star Bagel for breakfast then coffee sipping shopping for used books and assorted baby parephenalia at such favorites as 'Target', 'Costco' and 'McKays'. Since I'm always working, I hear talk of these places, but forget what they are actually all about. Ask Laura. She makes the money, she spends the money. It's only fair.


After cleaning the paint debris up, (and cleaning Drew up), we headed to the Rosepepper Cantina for a late lunch. After sampling delicious Sonoran cuisine, Bri had a big smile on her face and headed for the airport in good spirits.