My favourite Sound

If you listen, you will hear:
Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books

It begins...

Our lives will never be the same... :)Go Baby Go!
Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books

Bunny Wishes

Happy Easter everyone! Spring is just around the corner!

love,
Becky, Scott and Liam

If you can't bark with the big dogs, get off the porch

Never underestimate the competitiveness of The Suburban Parent. Scott and I have some toughening up to do as Mommy and Daddy and we had our first lesson on Saturday.

Every year, Carmel parks and rec hold an Easter Egg Hunt for kids from babies to pre-teens. We had planned to go once Liam awoke from his nap on Saturday morning. The little prince woke up at 9:30 so we had plenty of time to get ready and head over to the park (a 5 minute drive) for the egg hunt at 10:00. We planned to mosey on over, chat up a bunch of similarly-minded parents, revel in the "oohs" and "ahhs" from on-lookers as they see the cutest baby (ahem...of course that would be Liam) dressed up in his little knit outfit and, oh yeah, get us some Easter eggs!

So, down the street we drive, heading to the intersection where we need to turn right to get to the park and we come across a traffic jam at the intersection. (We live in suburbia in the middle of a developed cornfield in Indiana. There ARE no traffic jams.) This "traffic jam" was the line up of all of the other Suburban Parents trying to get to the park for the egg hunt, too. The 5 minute drive turned into a 25 minute drive as we followed the line of cars like a herd of cattle into the overflow parking lot for the park, far, far from the actual site of the hunt.

We finally got parked and hiked over to the starting area for the hunt (which was just a big field scattered with eggs--what kind of hunt is that?!) when we heard the "on your mark, get set, go!" of the hunt organizer. The hunt (read: race) was on and we were still moseying on over (well, a fast mosey at this point...). Needless to say, by the time we got over to our section (the 'hunt' was cleverly organized by age--so our group was the 0-2 year olds) there was nary an egg left on the ground and proud parents of 8 month olds paraded past us with the 25 eggs that their not-even-sitting-up infants managed to wrestle from the 5 month old beside them. Hmm, I kid you not.

(sorry it's blurry--I was snapping and quickly moseying at the same time!)

So, not wanting to be a disappointment to our first born, Scott and I wandered aimlessly around the field in the hopes that maybe one tiny little plastic egg lie hidden under a blade of grass...but with no luck. Our first egg hunt with our first child and we were failures.

There was many an egg-less child that we passed by who also had failure parents in tow, sharing comforting words of, "Don't worry, we'll do our OWN egg hunt at home..." which was often met with, "But I wanted to find eggs here...today...at the park..." Oh the heart-break. At least Liam had no clue what we were doing and that he missed out on some free candy and prizes.

We spent enough time in traffic on our way there and people were making the mass exodus out of the park, so we decided to stick around a bit and walk around and watch the kids open their eggs. We hiked up the hill and took pics of the scene below.

We came across a pair of 4 year old girls with their Suburban Moms delighting at their load of eggs they 'found' and I decided to ask to borrow an egg, just to get a picture with Liam. The one mother said, "Sure!" but if she could have attached a chain to that egg to make sure I didn't break and run with it, she would have. So, we took the picture and quickly returned the egg.

Now we can pretend that Liam got at least one egg and he won't know any differently.

But, for NEXT YEAR, Scott and I already have a plan. FIRST, we're getting there early. Even if we have to camp out. We'll be at the front of the pack. SECOND, we're bringing our own eggs. Seriously. No child of mine is going egg-less ever again. THIRD, we're bringing EXTRA eggs for the sad little misfit egg-less children whose parents also underestimated their neighbours' craziness. FOURTH, Liam will not hoard his eggs and will be encouraged to share with these aforementioned misfits. We gotta take care of The Little Guy.

So, besides a disastrous egg hunt experience, Saturday was Liam's 7 monthiversary! We took our monthly pic of him with Puppy on the couch:

We also spent the afternoon at a birthday party for a little boy in Liam's village playgroup who turned one. We rounded out the day with a lovely dinner out to celebrate Scott's new job and Liam's 7 months of wonder and joy.

Well, I must sign off now. We'll see you next weekend, Mr. Easter Bunny. I hear there's a neighbourhood hunt at the school down the street. Scotty, git your eggs!

love,

b

Making Lemonade

That's what we did with those lemons!

It's been busy since the last posting. Scott was offered a couple of jobs and had a couple of jobs in the wings (which if he had waited longer may or may not have materialized) and finally made the decision to be a performance engineer for a start-up ALMS team. ALMS= American LeMans

There are so many parts to this that are definitely 'lemonade-y'. First, the position is a promotion from his last job and he will be much more free to explore many aspects of engineering racecars. Second, he got a significant-er raise (I say "significant-er" since he already got a significant raise with his last job). Third, the ALMS series runs a schedule that contains about half of the races that the IRL runs, so Scott will be home more with me and Liam! And he can continue training for triathlons! And we can go on vacations together! And we can have some weekends in the summer to do summery-type things!

Lemonade has never tasted so good! :)

Anyway, I put up some new pics on phanfare (click here), so pop on over and check it out.

I leave you with this picture of Scott and Liam and I out and about today, enjoying the 16 degree weather, since Scott had today off.
And since Scott was all ours today, he joined me and Liam for storytime at the library! Liam was proud to have brought his daddy to show his friends!

Well, it's bathtime and bedtime for Liam. Have a great rest of the week and weekend!

love,

Becky

That's Racing...

Hi all,

I wanted to make sure I posted on Leap Day! Happy Leap Day! :)

So, the latest news is that Scott's race team is shutting down. It has been a busy past two weeks in racing with Champ Car and the Indy Racing League merging, leaving only one open-wheel series in North America. With the merger, the owner of the team decided he "didn't want to play anymore, so he's packing up his toys and going home". This development leaves a lot of good people out of work, Scott included, and looking for jobs.

It really sounds worse than it is. Seriously. Scott's got great contacts and I have complete faith in his skills and abilities--he will find something very quickly. It may be here in Indianapolis, or it may be elsewhere, but regardless our little family will be fine. If all else fails, here's our backup plan:


:)

Anyway, we'll keep you posted on the goings-on. We're hoping to stay in Indy...it's great here! Liam and I have met a lot of friends--both for mommy and for Liam. Scott has been hanging out with other racing-types and is getting involved in the triathlon/marathon world here as well, so we're doing well here!

Anyway, I'll leave you with these quotes from driver Paul Tracy--ever the outspoken one--regarding the closing down of his team and the loss of his ride:

“I’m in shock and I’m very, very disappointed,” Tracy told SPEEDTV. “Right now, I need to quickly regroup, regain my composure and then start looking for another ride – and I mean in IndyCar. The team may be done, but I’m ready to go racing.” “I got a call from Neil (Micklewright, president of Forsythe Racing) this morning and he said, ‘I’ve got some bad news for you,’” related Tracy from his home in Las Vegas.
“Neil said he’d been trying to get a hold of my manager but he was having a colonoscopy today. That’s ironic ‘cause that’s what I feel like I got.”

I guess a lot of people felt that yesterday. Oh, Paul...you should be a poet. You're wasting your talents.

Love,

b

So many things to say...

Here we are at the beginning of February, Liam is 5 and a half months old, and is already starting to talk up a storm. I met with some other moms here for a playgroup and one mom (of 4 children) said to enjoy these first moments of chatter since they are so sweet..in the beginning. :) So, Liam and I had our first little chat of many:

Also, please visit my other site for photos and more videos:

http://albums.phanfare.com/beckyraymond

And here are some pics from January. We moved, got a new bed, a new haircut, learned some new tricks, went on the swing for the first time, played a lot and explored our new neighbourhood.

Hope you enjoy it! I'm off to change a stink-a-bum!

Love,

Becky