That's my girl.

So the other day, Mel was sitting at our desk at home, working on the computer when she heard something that sounded like a gulp coming from underneath the desk. Let me back up and say that we keep a small trash can under the desk with aluminum cans in it that we will recycle (for not much money). Let me also say that Penny Lou is always crawling under the desk. So when Mel looks down, she finds Penny holding up to her mouth, as if she's guzzling, one of my empty (or what I thought was empty) cans of Coke. I know there wasn't much in there, maybe a drop or two. But Mel said she had a little bit on her face, so there must have been something in the can.



So yeah, that's awesome, our 7 month old is officially going to be a Coke addict, just like her old man. Maybe this explains why she wouldn't go back to sleep early this morning.

I'm so proud.

Easter

We had a lovely Easter Sunday. First off we went to a friend's ward to see them bless their baby. Then we thought, "what better place to spend Easter than at the Temple?" So, on the way home we stopped off to walk around and take a few pictures. Mel and Penny looked wonderful in their new Easter clothes. Then we got to hang out as a family, watch The Masters and eat some great food.

Here are a few pictures, more can be found here:

Family picture at the Temple.




Penny with the bunny rabbit that grandma sent to her.


The Easter Bunny left Peanut some starter ears.

Videos, finally.

So, Penny is over six months old, yet we've never shared videos of her on our blog. There is a reason for this. No, we are not ashamed of her! And no, it's not because we don't have a video camera (we do). It's because our video camera is ridiculous. Let me expound. So, we have a Apple computer and we have a Canon video camera.

Wait, let me back up. When we were engaged, we bought a Sony DV video camera. We loved that camera, and used it quite a bit for a few years. Well, right after Penny was born, the Sony decided to go haywire and die. So, we needed to buy a new one to document the lil one. After dragging my feet, then looking around, we settled on the Canon FS11. I read several expert reviews and a couple user reviews, and it seemed like a good one. We weren't ready to get an HD camera, since they're expensive, and changing by the day, but we wanted something decent. I felt that this one was a good middle ground camera—we'll be able to use it for a few years till we're ready for HD.

Great, right? Wrong. I suppose I should have read more user reviews. The camera itself is nice. It's compact, pretty easy to use and seemed to take quality videos. So what was the problem, you ask? I couldn't get the videos onto my computer. Awesome. For some reason, the camera films in some weird format that my Mac didn't recognize, nor did I have any software to convert it. The camera came with software, but of course it only works on Windows computers. So I did a bunch of reading online.

To try and make a long story not quite so long, I basically found that, to convert the files, I needed to buy the new version of iMovie, which also meant that I needed to get the new operating system, Leopard top run it. Great. Of course I had been wanting to get Leopard, but I was going to wait a little while to take the plunge, but now our hands were forced.

What bugs me the most is that everything else I've ever plugged into my Mac has worked without a hitch. Most of the time you don't have to even use the software that comes with the device. It'll just work. But this camera was the only one that didn't. How can Canon design something so narrow that it ignores all the people with a Mac that's more than one year old? It's lame.

Canon, you get a demerit.

Anyway, I got it to work. Yeah! And now that I've put all of you to sleep, here is a clip of Penny giggling at a ball. This was taken in Arizona when Mel was there visiting family.

I get a kick out of it everytime I watch it. Hope you do too.

They grow up fast, don't they?

So this past week Mel and Peanut went to Arizona to hang out with Mel's family. The trip had two purposes:

#1. Allow the two of them to hang out with family, whom we don't see as often as we'd like. Mel's family had been wanting us to come out, especially since we missed the mini-family reunion last month. Plus, we'd been wanting to show off Peanut, since she becomes more awesome by the minute.

#2. Allow the two of them to actually see and interact with humans. Rob has been working some pretty long hours of late, and this week (and month in general) was going to be no different. So while he was putting in 14-16 hour days, why not let them have a little fun?

They had a grand ol' time with Lew Dog, Tauna, Emblebee, Bebo, Jen and the girls. But, much to Rob's surprise, Penny changed immensely while they were gone. First of all, she went from crawling a couple of feet to moving constantly around. Plus, when she left, she was almost bald, and now look at her! It's crazy. You're away from them for one week and all of a sudden they're off to college or something.

She leaves for a week and all of a sudden she's Rapunzel.


Robot and Frank are so glad to have them back, even if they have a hard time recognizing them. So let that be a lesson for you, don't let them out of your site ever again.

Christmas (a bit late)

I am retarded, and never finished our Christmas post (obviously).

So, now I am redoing it (for the second time), and instead of telling a story with words, I'll let pictures do the talking. We drove to Utah to spend Christmas with Rob's family, and had a great time. It was Penny's first experience with snow (as seen below!).

Click on the link to view our pictures so you can see some of the things we did. Most importantly we just were able to chill with family, and we all loved it. I know I'm lazy, but oh well, just deal with it.

Christmas Pictures

As a treat, I'll give you a sneak peek of some of the fun we had on the trip. Here you go.

Penny in her awesome snowsuit. She was not happy!


Rob in his new coach's shorts that double as Christmas shorts.
If this doesn't fill your heart with Christmas Joy in March, nothing will!

More January fun

As I discussed in my earlier post (85º in January), it was an unseasonable warm January, and part of February as well. I find myself missing the rain and cold, but it is fun to get out and spend some time in the sun. In the past few weeks we've been able to do some fun things, here is just a taste of what we've been up to.

We spent an afternoon in Little Italy, where we ate our favorite deli sandwiches from Mona Lisa's.
We did some shopping and ate frozen yogurt in La Jolla.



Tried Papa's favorite hat on Peanut.


Visited Balboa Park, one of our favorite things to do.






Penny got herself a new toy, which, as you can see, she absolutely loves (making our lives that much easier).


We visited Dré and met her new awesome kitty, Jack.


Some of us grew beards.


And the beards turned into mustaches.


Some of us just couldn't help being extremely cute.


Jason and Amber had us over for dinner a couple weeks ago, and we had a blast hanging with them. Penny loved seeing her cousins, Mireya and Caden and she even modeled a cute new poncho for Baby Fabulous.




We had dinner at Islands. Mmmm, Islands.



And finally, we spent an afternoon in Ocean Beach, which was both fun and interesting.



This was a sweet wagon parked next to us in OB.


All in all, it was a fun month, as you can see. Hopefully we can get out and have some more fun in the next few months, although Robot's work might make that a little difficult. We'll see!

I like to open my mouth, drool and generally just be really cute

My new interns

Good news, I got me a couple of interns. They started on Friday, and they are the cutest interns I've ever met. One of them is kind of young, but she's something of a child prodigy.

Okay, so not really. Lately I've been working long hours, and it's a trend that has no end in sight. I'm not complaining, just stating a fact. However, the big downside is that I don't get to see my leading ladies as often. But never fear, the wifey and lil Peanut decided to stop by the office on Friday and brighten my day. It definitely worked! Everybody at work had been asking when they were going to stop by again, so they were all pleased as punch to see the two of them.

Here are a few pics of the first day with my new interns (I wish):




Hanging out with Peanut in my office.


The wifey, looking as hot as ever.



Playing with "Granny Jane"


She seemed to love the bean bags. Maybe we need to get one?