Fall Photos - kids and leaves

Before we get too far into Winter, and since it's been quite a while since I've posted anything here, I thought I would share some fun pictures of the kids that I took one (rather warm) sunny Fall day.

These next couple are of the kids jumping off of the swing into a small pile of leaves. I love the mid-air shots.

"What does constipation mean?"

Sitting around the table eating dinner, talking about our experiences earlier in the day of taking a new friend from Switzerland around town, Amy told another friend about a squirrel we saw on the campus of Notre Dame. We had stopped to watch it and take pictures. Amy noted how it walked kind of funny, "like it had constipation". "What does constipation mean?", Haley asked. Conversation continued, the adults ignoring the question. "What does constipation mean?", Haley repeated. Our friend from Switzerland spoke up, saying that "it's when you can't do something you want to do". The rest of the adults found this clever answer to be quite funny, causing us to laugh, and continue laughing for some time. (Yeah, maybe you had to be there.) After laughter subsided, Amy felt compelled to explain to Haley more fully what she had meant by that word. Upon hearing her explaination, our Swiss friend began laughing with embarrasment as he realized that he had not fully comprehended the meaning of the word, himself, until that moment, and realized why his comment had been so funny to the rest of us. We all had another good laugh.

Big Guys Gotta Look Good Too

Make sure you check out the picture at the end of this post!

This falls under the category of "friends of WesSpeaks". It's all about a store in Elkhart, Indiana called Big & Tall Outlet (formerly Value Center Big & Tall Outlet). It is owned and operated by none other than my own parents.

Now, I'm not big or tall, myself, so I don't go shopping there for myself. But, I'm rather fond of the place and the people who work there, some of whom I've gotten to know a little bit. The place did help put me through college, after all.

But, I don't want to give you a commercial for the place, just the basics. You can check out their site at www.bigandtalloutlet.com (where you can currently watch one of their TV commercials featuring local celebrity Charlie Adams). The site has a pretty decent assortment and variety of merchandise available (and is growing all the time), but a visit to the store, and it's 9,000-square foot showroom, will provide the full range of options for anyone looking for sizes starting at Large Tall (LT) or 1X up to 8X or occasionally even 10X, I think. (Pant waist sizes they carry go from 36 to 72, at least, I believe.) They also have a blog at bigandtalloutlet.blogspot.com.

Contact info:
info@bigandtalloutlet.com
1-866-BIG-MENS or 574-293-0111

This is pretty interesting. I just found some other guy who blogged about Big & Tall Outlet, who just seems to be a regular customer that's pretty excited about the nice clothes and good prices. You can check out what he has to say at:
www.nosweatpants.com/2008/12/05/big-guys-gotta-look-good-too/

Now, one last thing. Here's a picture of a guy who came in recently and found some clothes to fit him. He's Igor Vovkovinskiy, and is supposedly one of the ten tallest people alive. You can find out more about him (how tall he is, his shoe size, etc.) at bigandtalloutlet.blogspot.com/2009/03/igor-vovkovinskiy.html or do a search on his name. (That's his mother on the left and my dad on the right.)

Out with the old, in with the new

Due to transmission problems, it was time for our 1995 Mazda Protege to go. I bought it in December 1998, right before we got married. It was a pretty good car for us, and I'm sorry to see it go.

But, I'm excited to now have a 2004 Honda Civic that's pretty sharp, and that I hope will last us quite some time.

Flower Art

Just looking through some photos from this summer, and found this, which Haley put together.

Amy's Yearbook Photos

Here's some of my favorite yearbook photos of Amy (from YearbookYourself.com). There's a couple of them that I kinda dig.

My Yearbook Photos

Here's some of my favorite yearbook photos (from yearbookyourself.com).

Landscaping Changes

Yesterday we spent basically all day working on our front door walkway landscaping. We took out all of our strawberry plants, rearranged some existing plants (mainly hostas), added some new ones (asters and crocus bulbs), removed/replaced warped wood edging, and finished with some mulch. We did some minor work in other areas in the yard, but focused on the front entryway. It was dark by the time we were adding the finishing touches and watering the plants. Here's a few before and after photos:

Before...

After...

And we are glad today is a day of rest.

Weekend Update

After listening to Toby Mac at the World Pulse Festival...

At our church's Sunday evening Tour De Grille...

The mosquito bite song...

The Chocolate Cupcake Dress

Short version... Amy got a dress. Her mom said she looked like a chocolate cupcake. We're pretty sure this meant she didn't like it. Amy returned the dress. This got me thinking...

Dog watching, Free Chicken, and Free Slurpees

Today our family was charged with taking care of Nifty, our neighors' dog. This was, of course, fun and exciting, especially for the kids, who ask almost weekly, or so it seems, for their own dog. Around 5pm, Amy and the kids went over to let Nifty out for the second time today, and to feed him. Somehow, after getting in the neighbors' house and letting the dog outside, the sliding door locked behind them, and most unfortunately the key had been left inside on the table. They were locked out of the house! I received a call at work, just as I was about to leave, with the news. Since they hadn't fed him yet, and the food was locked inside, I stopped at Meijer on my way home to buy some dog food. After verifying that the neighbors' house was very secure (...we tried every way we could think of to get in...), we settled on bringing Nifty home with us. We gated him in our kitchen while we went out for dinner.


We went to Chick-Fil-A for dinner, for Cow Appreciation Day. Because we dressed like cows, complete with the "Eat Mor Chikin" slogan, we all got free combo meals. I guess this is a yearly event every July 11, so get your costumes ready for next year.


We then went to 7-Eleven to get some free 7.11 ounce Slurpees for 7-Eleven day, August 11 or 7/11. (Supposedly the same promotion is done on November 7 in many other countries where the date is notated in DAY/MONTH format.)

We decided to head home after that, since it was already getting late, instead of stopping to redeem a free movie at Family Video for the kids' report card A's. We came home and had fun playing with Nifty.

Brace yourself

Amy got her cast off today and replaced it with a hinged brace. She will be going to physcal therapy at least twice a week for a while, beginning Tuesday to help get the movement back. She can't move it much, presently. But, soon... soon.

Amy's Arm Update

I'm sorry I haven't provided a more timely update, but for those of you who don't already know, Amy had to have surgery (later in the week after the accident) to screw a couple bone fragments back into place. The fragments had tendons attached to them and needed to be reattached to the main part of the bone. Here's the x-ray showing the three screws that she has.

After the surgery, she had a splint for about a week. Here's her arm after the splint was taken off, right before the staples were removed, after which she was given a cast.

Amy and I went on a company golf outing last weekend (fulfilling my minimum/average golf quota for the year). This was supposed to be Amy's second time golfing ever, but, alas, she was only able to ride in the golf cart.

So, I worked from home for a couple weeks to help Amy and the kids. (Yes, I often worked in my pajamas until quite late in the day.) I didn't shave for a week (and a day, I think). Here's my scruff right before I shaved it off.

X-Rays (and me)

Here's the x-ray photos.

This is me, taking a picture of myself in one of those half-globe mirrors on the ceiling in the hospital, outside the x-ray room while I waited.

Happy Memorial Day weekend!

Amy Dislocates Arm

About 20 minutes after finally arriving at my parents' house to visit with them, my sister's family, and some cousins who had come for part of the holiday weekend from out of town, Amy tripped over something outside and fell on her left elbow, dislocating her arm. I saw her fall, and it looked bad. Unfortunately, it was. We left our kids with family and rushed to the hospital. They took care of her fairly quickly as far as hospital experiences go. Here are some pictures. You can see the bone where it shouldn't be and see how much her arm swelled up.

We were supposed to watch our neices overnight tonight, but my sister offered to take our kids for the night, instead, so that was nice. Amy didn't break anything, but there may have been a tiny chip off a bone. She will probably need to wear the soft cast and sling for at least a week, and is supposed to see an orthopedic doctor early this week. I'll follow this up with a post including the x-rays.

Mysore

Saturday, I went sightseeing with a co-worker from my office and three from the Bangalore office. We drove almost 3 hours to the city of Mysore, where we visited a number of picturesque and historical sites. Among them, one of the highlights was the Mysore Palace, seen in the first picture below. (There are some great pictures online of this place lit up at night by small white lights attached all over the exterior, though we weren't there at the right time for that.) The second picture is on the palace grounds, though the structure was not part of the palace, itself. Part of the experience included paying for them to store both our cameras and shoes, separately, for a small fee while we toured the inside of the palace.

These next two pictures were taken outside of a temple we saw. We decided not to (pay the fee to) go inside this one, but we walked (barefoot, again) through a much larger one earlier in the day.

Food, Sights

Here's some more pictures from my trip. I haven't gotten out much, really. I've either been at the office or at the hotel, which is about 2 mintues away. And, though there is a cafeteria at the office, today I got to go out with a few people for lunch, so I was able to see a little more of the area and take some pictures.

Breakfast at the hotel this morning.

Not sure what this is called, but there's a lot of them.

Just snapped this as he rode by.

Roadside stand.

Arrived in India

I've made it, after many hours and little sleep. I exchanged 50 dollars in the airport for 1850 rupees. It's about 2:30 AM, here, so I'm going to try to get some sleep before heading in to the office.

Our California Vacation

We went on a family vacation to California from February 29 to March 13. We stayed in Twentynine Palms with some friends for a couple nights, and went to Joshua Tree National Park with them. We then visited some other friends in the Indio/Palm Springs area. We went to Disneyland and LegoLand with them, and also made a trip to San Felipe, Mexico (in the Mexican state of Baja California) together. On our own, we visited Hollywood, San Diego, and drove up the coast back to Los Angeles where we departed from Burbank. (Three weeks and a couple days after returning, the airline we traveled on, SkyBus, went out of business.) Here's a few pictures from the trip.