On Wednesday March 29, at 9:21 AM PDT, we welcomed Caroline Elizabeth Burleson to the world! She weighed 8 lbs. 6 0z and was 20 inches long. She and Maggie are both doing very well now 3 weeks later. She’s been an incredibly chill baby making sweet coos when she wakes up and only resorts […]
On January 12th a very close friend of mine, Jordan Breeding, died from colon cancer. It was the end of a long series of events that started with a car hitting him in April. I was living with him at the time as Jordan had graciously offered me his couch to sleep on while I […]
Not longer after we got our first dog Bailey, we quickly realized that she had a lot more energy than we were ready to deal with. We decided to her a companion dog to play with and be able to burn off energy with. That’s how we ended up at the SPCA one July day […]
I got this idea of posting beginning of school year and end of school year photos from Linda Sharps (who is hilarious on Twitter). It really shows how much the kids change over a relatively short time and yet we don’t notice it because it’s happening so gradually. First, Brenden: First day of 1st Grade […]
On the morning of May 30 I got one of those calls you never want to get. The nursing facility where my dad was doing physical therapy called me at 6:15 AM and left me a message because I had Do Not Disturbed enabled. I noticed the message shortly after 6:30 when my alarm went […]
I’ll never forget the first week after we got our Black Lab-mix rescue Bailey. We came home after an evening of celebrating my birthday in 2003 to find Bailey, who was in a puppy fence in our kitchen, had turn up a foot-wide circle of our linoleum. She was super lucky she was a very […]
Our daughter Emily has this really cute thing she does when she’s eating something she’s been told is spicy. Or is something that has been spicy in the past but isn’t necessarily spicy this time around. She takes a bite, then yells “‘Picy! ‘Picy! ‘Picy!” and grabs her drink and takes a gulp. Wash, rinse, […]
On June 1, Maggie and I celebrated 10 years of marriage. It’s been an incredible time and she’s the best wife and friend I could have ever asked for. To celebrate we took a trip to NYC. It was the first time we’d been back to the city since 2007 and we had a great […]
Our little boy keeps growing up. This past week, he graduated from Kindergarten. It’s been amazing watching him mature and learn during this school year. He’s learned to read and to do math as well as being very good at spelling tests. While we’re very excited about him graduating, it is a little bit sad […]
Last weekend, the kids and I made our way back to Hand Camp for our second year (you can read about last year here). We almost didn’t get to go this year as we were initially wait listed. On Tuesday of last week, we got a call from the people who organize the camp that […]
Back in September, Brenden went to his first day of kindergarten. It seems just like yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital. I can’t believe how quickly he is growing up. He’s working on writing, reading and math. He’s enjoying it and we work on homework throughout the week. Here are some pictures […]
I discovered something odd about my thinking the other day. Some of you may not know this, but my mom died in 1984 when I was 6. The thing I discovered is how deeply this affects my thinking about other people and their parents. If someone older than me mentions that they are doing something […]
This weekend we took the family to Hand Camp at Camp John Marc put on by the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital For Children. This is a camp for children with a limb difference between the ages of 4 and 9 and their families. We’ve been waiting to get to go to this camp since Brenden […]
It started with a phone call. I was standing in line at Target when I got a call from my wife. She was nearly in tears and said to me “My passport is expired”. This was at 1:55 PM. The major problem: we were supposed to be on a flight to the UK at 5:40 […]
I love this video my wife took of Emily drumming in the house. Especially the little “flourish” at around the 35 second mark.
Last year, it snowed a lot for around here. We even had a White Christmas. This year, Brenden was so looking forward to snow on Christmas, but we had to explain to him that it doesn’t always do that. It didn’t snow this year for Christmas, but today it did snow and Brenden was very […]
Today, my beautiful little girl turns two! Happy birthday sweetie! Here’s a recent picture of her playing with just about everything she loves.
Before I get into the meat of this post, let me show you three pictures. Â 2004 2005 2010 Â I have been overweight for as long as I can remember. In 2004, I weighed 280 pounds. The picture above was taken in May of that year at Caprock Canyon in west Texas. A couple […]
A long time ago, I mentioned in some photos about an awesome holiday train a man in my neighborhood sets up. This year, thanks to my handy-dandy iPhone 4, I was able to get a decent video put together. As you can see, it’s quite elaborate and the kids absolutely love it! The train runs […]
Last year, we decided to start a family tradition of going out and cutting down our Christmas tree. Our great friends Jerry and Kris Scott told us about this farm they went to called the Walls Family Farm. We decided to go and had a great time. This year, we started down the path of […]