Ty’s Weblog

Mira turns one year old today.

I can hardly believe that it’s been a whole year all ready. She has been a wondeful addition to all our lives. Seeing her and Xander play together is one of the most wondeful things I’ve even witnessed.

We are very lucky to have two great children in our lives.

Dene had a wonderful wedding today. It was a small service, just the parents, Dan’s kids, my family, Neya, and Brey. It was very beautiful. I’d never seen a service involving someone who already had kids, and they part where the minister talks to the kids was amazing, that was the closest I came to open crying.

I managed not to cry though, since I was running the video camera and didn’t figure that was what they’d want to hear when they go back and watch this.

Afterwards, we went all went out ot eat, and the food was wonderful. We all had a great time.

Well, we’ve finally made it to Columbia for Dene’s wedding, which is tomorrow.

The traffic was horrible around Mooresville, NC, so we ended up being a lot later than we planned.

We’re all here safely though. Xander was thrilled to see Nannie when she got to the hotel. Mira is still warming up to her.

Tecmo is releasing an upgrade to Ninja Gaiden via XBox Live. Not a patch to fix bugs. An upgrade to the game.

New enemies, new weapons, better AI and an improved camera. Of course, it’s going to make an already hard game, even harder. Still, it’s a classy move on their part.

I’m glad I got a year of XBox Live for Father’s Day.

The upgrade is due out in August.

Mira said, “Ma Ma” today.

Now, to be fair, we don’t really know for sure that she meant her Mommy.

We were walking around Babies R Us looking at strollers. I happened to be on the other side of a row of strollers and Mira couldn’t really see Kate very well. I was walking back around and saying, “Let’s go find your Mama.”

Mira let out a clear and concise “Ma Ma.”

Kate’s head jerked around and we both just stared at each other for a moment to see if we both heard it.

She’s not done it again since, but it sure sounded like she meant it to us.

I want a Time Table (it’s down at the bottom).

The Dali Clock is pretty neat also.

I can’t believe I forgot to mention this on Father’s Day.

Mira took her first steps on Sunday.

I was sitting on the couch with Xander. Kate was sitting on the floor. Mira was standing in front of me holding onto my knees and looking over at Mommy. She turned towards Mommy, let go of my knees and took about two steps and grabbed Mommy.

I watched this and looked back over at Xander. Just as it was sinking in what had just happened Kate said, “She just walked to me!” We were all very proud of her.

No real repeats yet, but she has taken her first real steps now.

I had a wondeful Father’s Day today. I’m lucky to have two such wonderful children.

Xander gave me a flower he made at should out of a tracing of his hands. It was very nice and he was very excited about giving it to me. He spent the whole day wishing everyone the the family a “Happy Father’s Day”.

It was a wondeful day of being at home in my pajamas, spending time with my children and watching the race.

So we showed Xander all the changes that we’ve been making in the basement today.

Kate’s mom was up this week, and the two of them did a lot of work clearing out some space in the basement. We took that space and taped down a carpet remnant that we got from Home Depot in the corner by the sliding glass door.

Then we got a Wave Climber and set it up down there. We also moved Xander’s plastic picnic table and the rocking fish down there.

Xander loved it. He and Mira played down there for a good 30 minutes this afternoon before quiet time arrived. It looks like he’ll have a lot of fun down there this summer.

Mira’s play is highly supervised, of course. We have to put her on the slide and help her slide down, but she seemed to love it. She enjoyed the rocking fish as well. I don’t think it’ll be too long before she can play on it by herself.

Xander had a wonderful time as well, and he loved helping his sister as much as he enjoyed his on playing.

Xander has dubbed the whole setup his “playground in the basement”.

Today was Xander’s last day of school. He’s had a great year this year. I’m amazed at how much he has learned in the past few months. Sending him to school was the right thing to do, even though it was hard on all of us at first. He has grown up a lot and learned even more.

They had an indoor picnic at school to celebrate the last day. Xander took two of his favorite things, cantaloupe and lemonade.

RCR has announced that Dave Blaney will be taking over duties in the 30 car.

That’s nice. I was afraid for a while there we’d keep a driver a whole season.

I do like Dave Blaney though. He’s one of those underdog drivers I like to see do well whenever they are able to run a race. Maybe with a ride every week, he can make something from it.

I picked up DDR Ultramix for the XBox yesterday. I spent an hour playing it last night and it was a lot of fun. It was also a good workout, which was half the reason I bought it.

Kate played it a little after she got home before we went to bed, and she enjoyed it also. So it looks like we have a winner in the ‘how to get Ty to exercise’ category. This is the kind of thing that I can stick with. I need a game to exercise. It didn’t have to be a video game. It could have been something like tennis or racquetball, but I just can’t make myself exercise for the sake of it.

DDR is a lot of fun. It uses up a lot of energy, and I felt really good when I was done! I can hardly wait to get it set up again tonight to play.

So we were watching qualifying this afternoon in the family room. Xander was sitting on the couch. Kate was in the kitchen talking to her sister on the phone. I was sitting on the floor keeping Mira in the family room playing.

Mira noticed Kate standing in the kitchen and crawled over to me to try to get to her. She climbed up my left leg and got herself to standing there as she often does. This time she let go of me leg though. I looked down and saw that she wasn’t touching me anywhere, actually. She was standing up all by herself giving her Mommy a big smile. It only lasted a few seconds, then she fell down on her bottom, but it was the first time that she’s managed to stand on her own. We were all very proud of her.