Sprinkler System Installed

Well, I decided to be a bit ambitious this past weekend and I put in a sprinkler system. Everything went fine for the most part, with a few exceptions. First, I'm pretty sure a 160-lb man was never intended to run a 1000-lb trencher. Let's just say I felt like I got run over by truck after running that thing for 5 hours. Second problem, coax cable that's buried 3" deep in your yard is no match for aforementioned trencher. So not only did we lose our internet and TV for 2 days, but we lost our free extended basic as well. Now we actually get what we pay for, basic cable.... which totally sucks!

One of the many trenches... straight as a politician.

The jerk that took away our free cable.

The work crew. My neighbors Darrin and Bernard.

Before.

After. The finished product. Zone 1 in action.

PS - Funny story. My neighbor Bernard is from the Congo. He said, "in Africa I would just pay someone $50 and they would come and dig these trenches for me. Why are you doing them?" I informed him that in America it costs just a wee bit more than $50 to get someone to do this for me. More, as in $1800. I thought he was going to pass out when I told him :-)

What has Norah been doing lately....

Hi all. Just thought I would give you all an update on things and include a few pictures. On Friday, July 31st we are finalizing the adoption, yippee!!! We are looking forward to having all this legal stuff behind us and moving ahead as a family. Below are a few pictures of Norah, hope you enjoy.

Our little cowgirl

Reaching for everything, this time its the bottle

Norah loves eating her shoes

Howdy partner

Relaxing on the couch

She's already doing her hair in the mirror... oh boy.

Norah at her first Twins game. They beat the Tigers 4-3!!!

Black Hills Camping Trip

I'm turning into a prolific writer here all of a sudden. Two posts in one day! On Thursday of last week Jamie and I went out to the Black Hills to go camping with her mom and dad, and Emily, Doug and Ellie. Its a 10 hour drive from Rochester which I was not looking forward to with a 5 month old, but Norah continues to impress us and she did awesome on the trip. The kid is amazing, on the way there and back she probably only fussed for a total of 20 mins. If you say we are lucky, you're wrong.... we're blessed, big difference :-)

We, er I, was totally not prepared for the weather out there. It was 90 degrees by day, but dropped into the high 40's by night. Since I took along one pair of pants, one long sleeve tshirt, and one fleece, I spent the better part of every night freezing my butt off. We kept Norah in the tent with us the first two nights, but because it was so cold we decided to put her in the camper with Jamie's parents.

We had a good time and saw lot's of stuff. We drove the Needle's Highway, went to Mt. Rushmore, ate at the Purple Pie Shop, went to 4 Mile Town, (start sarcasm) and probably the most exciting of all, the CrazyHorse Monument (end sarcasm). CrazyHorse was one of the weirdest things ever. We went for the free laser light show which started at dark. We got there about 90 mins before it got dark, so we sat there and froze our tooshies off. Then when it did start we got to hear for 30 mins about how evil the white man is for stealing the red man's land. And after hearing how much we white folk suck they finished it off with a moving song, Lee Greenwood's "I'm Proud To Be an American."

We brought Jamie's "new" camera along too. About a year ago she bought a new Nikon D300. It was slightly more than "holy crap!" and just less than "that's it, give me your credit cards." The problem is, she never uses it because she doesn't know how to use it. So I bought a book at Barnes & Noble which is basically a how-to for the D300 and read that on the trip so we could actually start taking some pictures with it. Anyway, here are a few from the first batch.

Adoption Update

Its been awhile since we've updated what has been going on, so I thought I better get out here and write something.  On Tuesday of last week there was another meeting with the judge to discuss the paternity action that the birth father filed.  Like two months prior, he failed to show for this hearing.  So the judge dismissed the birth father's rights and we are now free to move towards finalization! 

We still have to wait another week or so to call the courthouse to set up the finalization, but that is the last thing left to do.  Then I'll officially have papers to prove that I'm Norah's father in case she decides to claim I'm not when she's a teenager and hates me ;-).  We plan to throw a little party as soon as the finalization is complete.  If you live in Rochester we'll let you know, if you don't live here, well, you can celebrate with us in spirit.