Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing everybody a Happy Thanksgiving, whether you celebrate it or not! We are all relaxing here at home today and will have a festive and thankful dinner later with Kaisa, Kevin and their girls!

Christmas Ale Fermenting...you tube video

Not sure if you've ever seen or witnessed beer fermenting. I took a short video clip of the fermentation of Sunday's Christmas Ale currently happening in our basement. the sound of that blup..blup..blup emission of CO2 is music to any  brewer.

I'm Back Brewin..Christmas Ale!

Today I had a lot of fun. First, we had breakfast with Randy and Lorraine. Nothing like getting up on a Sunday morning and piling the kids into the van to go have a hot cooked breakfast and a lazy Sunday morning.

In the afternoon, whilst Lynne and the girls stayed an played with Randy and Lorraine, I went to play with some grown up boys and brewed some beer (we also drank some beer). Yes I brewed a batch of beer today for the first time in almost three years. I enjoyed it a lot. I had help, Dave and Phil, two guys I have not known very long were there to help, add moral support, have some fun and help me with those beers.

We brewed a Christmas Ale, slightly late for the actual holiday but it will be just about ready for new year.

H1N1 Shots

Anja, Isabel and myself received the vaccination against the H1N1 virus yesterday. We’ve all already received the seasonal flu shot and with Lynne having had the H1N1 shot a couple of weeks ago (she is a high priority case given her pregnancy), we’re all fully vaccinated for the year. Let’s hope it works now. Normally I would not have qualified but since we’ll be having a newborn in 2 weeks (in theory), our pediatrician recommended that I too get a shot!

I took this shot last week and liked how it turned out!

A Paint Job

Today we painted the baby’s room. It was a very neutral yellow since the time before Anja was born (we did not know the sex for her), but as of today it's baby blue! The girls “helped” earlier in the morning before they had to leave to get their flu shot which then allowed myself and Lorraine to get on with the painting job. Both Lorraine and randy were a great help as always (Many Thanks again). Randy helped Lynne with the girls and then entertained them at the park for the entire morning followed by lunch whilst Lorraine obviously helped me painting!

The girls loved taking the paint brushes to the wall but that activity had a very short half-life. I think it looks great now and all ready for a tiny little baby boy (three weeks to go)!!

New Email Address

Yesterday we switched from Verizon to Comcast as our telephone and internet service provider (ISP).  I'm still fuming so I cannot  detail why we moved from Verizon without being rude. market forces in action...you don't like a service, you choose another!

Consistent with their level of service, they also deleted access my old Verizon.net email address (nice). Consequently, I have a new email address:  

paul@owenstaylor.com

I'm loving comcast (for now anyhow). All seems to be working and we now enjoy over 20Mbs download and 4Mbs upload speeds as measured via speakeasy speedtest

Pregnancy Update - 4 Weeks to Go

I haven’t mentioned much over the last few months about our next baby. I’m a little superstitious by nature so I tend and try not to tempt fate in any way by being too celebratory or excited prior to the baby’s arrival. Totally irrational I know, but we’re all allowed our quirks! There will be plenty of time for excitement later!

That being said, we (the royal we) reached 36 weeks yesterday and with under 4 weeks until the official due date, we are starting to get excited. As you know, it really could be any day now. Lynne went two and one week over with Anja and Isabel, respectively but this time she is convinced that this baby will arrive on my birthday, Dec 2nd - we’ll have to see!

Not sure if everybody knows, but according to the scan that we had at 18 weeks, there was little doubt as to the sex. It’s a boy! Of course one is never sure until the moment of arrival but those reading the scan were pretty convinced!

Lynne is doing very well. Still eating and drinking all the right things and indeed not eating and drinking the wrong things. As she did with the first two, her dedication to the unborn’s nutritional needs is amazing! She’s also swimming and cycling a lot, exercising to ensure she has strength for the birth. She’s also pretty busy at work, probably as busy as she has ever been. She hasn’t slowed down one bit, despite two active kids and a husband who jetted off to China for a week! She is an incredible woman with immeasurable inner strength, resource and determination. She will also be a fantastic mother third time too.

Raking Leaves!

Raking leaves is both time consuming and tiring! I’m quite tired this evening since I spent about four hours raking leaves and generally tidying up the garden prior to the inevitable cold weather. It was such a beautiful day here; I hope you all are getting equally nice weather. It was a little windy today but with clear blue skies, sunshine and almost 70 degrees. Not bad for November!

The girls “helped” of course, that lasted about an hour! They loved playing in the leaves though!

Carl's Retirement Party

We just returned from a retirement party. Carl Rew, a neighbor who lives just across from our house, retired this week from a long career at Purdue! We met many neighbors and his family of course who we have come to know reasonably well over the last few years! It was a lot of fun!

Santa Claus 2009

Yesterday evening’s excitement was letter writing to Santa Claus! Yes, Anja and Isabel both put pen to paper and each wrote a letter to Santa. I took a scan of each letter before we placed them in the post. Anja stated that she was very good and that she would like a dinosaur, a pen, a calendar and some Barbie’s. Isabel wanted an Alligator! Shown below is Anja's letter, the addressing and posting (mailing).

New Toy - Canon EOS Rebel T1i

Today I bought a new toy. The flash on our old digital SLR was continually sticking so I brought it into Roberts in Indy to get it fixed. I started looking around and one thing led to another, as they do!! I went for an upgrade to our current camera and purchased the Canon EOS Rebel T1i. I just bought the body since my current lens will work just fine. The real selling point for me was the ability of this digital SLR to do video!! Well, that’s how I rationalized it anyhow!! I had a camera friend (geek) with me and he then convinced me to buy a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II for taking portraits!! Hook line and sinker!!

I played around with it a little this evening whilst the girls were taking a bath, see below, now I need to take a look at the manual!!

Halloween 2009

It would be remiss of me not to mention our Halloween events on Saturday evening. Earlier in the evening we attended a neighborhood pizza party where we met with many friends and neighbors. It was a little chilly so we didn’t hang around much. We did a little trick or treating before meeting up with Emma, Matt and Adrian and then on to more candy gathering. The girls enjoyed it. They were a Dinosaur and an Alligator this year!

Last Update from Shanghai

I got back very tired on Friday evening from Shanghai. One final item I wanted you to take a look at before I close the Chinese chapter. We deliberately took the Shanghai Meglev Train from the city center to the airport. It was very impressive. Maglev, or magnetic levitation, is a system of transportation that suspends, guides and propels vehicles, predominantly trains, using magnetic levitation from a very large number of magnets for lift and propulsion. We got up to just over 300 km/hr on our short journey

The picture below is of Isabel wearing a rather cute Chinese costume I brought back. Anja would not wear hers for some reason, not for some time anyhow!

Shanghai Steamed Bun Restaurant

After meeting our last company this morning, we have essentially wrapped up our business here in Shanghai, we travel back tomorrow. Today, together with Michael Chang, our very gracious and welcoming local Lilly host, we visited one of Shanghai’s most famous restaurants - The Shanghai Steamed Bun Restaurant.

This restaurant is located in the middle of a relatively run down part of the city, a traditional housing section of the city which hosts many tourist focused shopping areas. You can see how these steamed buns, or dumplings, filled with a variety of assorted meats and vegetables are steamed cooked in bamboo pots and served steaming. One can see the local traditional buildings, the smog but with the unmistakable Shanghai World Financial Center buildings shown in the background.

Shanghai Update

Things are going well in Shanghai. Weather is beautiful, 60-70 C with no humidity. This is such a big city, it’s simply incredible. Most of our hosts are claiming its over 23 million people. We drove 45 minutes across town yesterday and there were skyscrapers for miles, with many many high rise apartment buildings.

I’m having a little trouble with the 12hour time difference. Its hard to remain focused in the afternoons at the companies I’m visiting and I’m generally wide away from 4am.

Food is really nice. Mostly vegetables actually and not a lot of meat being served. I have not eaten any additional new or exotic items since my last post. Have had some interesting and different white teas that were flower based.

The air around the city is pretty thick with smog or something similar. As you could see from my earlier picture, it is difficult to see much more than a couple hundred meters. As I look out the window this morning, its pretty bad!!

I have not had a chance to take any more photos, sorry! I’ll trying getting some today!!

6am Shanghai, China

Good Morning from Shanghai. This is the view from my 37th floor hotel room so I couldn’t resist taking a quick snapshot to write a quick post.

I'm on the East side of the Huang River looking across the famous Shanghai skyline. This picture from Wikipedia is a little better than mine.

My trip was uneventful and long. I did not sleep at all so I was pretty tired last night. We did meet some local Lilly colleagues last night for a very informal dinner which was very nice. I can claim to have eaten goose intestines, prepared in a nice soy and chili sauce.

I have constant and free internet access (hard wired) so I may post quite a bit this week. Enjoy the week everybody!

Trip to China

The posts may be few and far between next week, I travel to China, specifically to Shangai, for work on Saturday morning. This will be my first trip ever to China so I'm  somewhat excited. The trip there won't be much fun, Chicago direct to Shangai is almost 15 hours straight. I'm also a little apprehensive going with Lynne's due date so close. Only 6 weeks to go, so I should be a little nervous leaving right? Lynne would say that there isn't much I could do anyhow but, you know, I would like to be there!!

Anyhow, I plan on posting at least once next week from China, I may not get to it however!! Thanks in advance to Randy and Loraine as always for their help next week!!

Aneka Crystal Boerrigter

Congratulations to Steef, Ginette and Marissa on the birth of their daughter and sister, Aneka Crystal Boerrigter. She was born yesterday morning and weighed 8 lbs 6 oz. I have not spoken with either but we have heard that everybody is doing well.

There are more photos on their blog. I'll post another when I get a family photo.

Art.....

Tonight I have made another promise to myself, one of those that may end up like a New Years resolution, great idea at the time but will never last. I'll have to see in this case.

The girls are constantly coloring, drawing, painting, writing etc etc. They generate masses of paper, mostly with scribble or a mess, but once in a while when they concentrate it looks good. To date this is Anja only but I'm Isabel will get there eventually. To date we have been throwing these out, simply because we have not been sufficiently organized but also given the amount of paper. So, I'm going to try keeping some of the best stuff by scanning it and keeping an electronic copy. This will take some of the guilt from throwing away their "Original Art". Lets see how long this great idea lasts I can hear you all say. I'd say the same quite frankly but I'm going to give it a shot.

Periodically, I'll share some. These two were generated today. You can see that Anja both did a drawing of a heart and wrote some names. Brooke (our new nanny), Anja and Isabel (she needs to work on her S's). Not bad I think for a 4 and a half year old! We're proud of her!

(post publishing thought, given how good the second picture looks, we need to check who indeed painted this picture. We now think it may have been Kristina). If it was, Kristina we are thinking of you!!

The Sleep Fairy

Ever hear of the Sleep Fairy when you were growing up? Not me. In our house, growing up in Ireland with a house full of boys and one girl, if you didn't go to sleep when put to bed, the results were often not pretty. Well in todays new world of parenting, kids have to be coaxed into everything.

Since we returned from Ireland, Isabel has had trouble sleeping, or rather staying in her bed once she is put to bed. To be fair she has had a lot going on in her little life but sometimes, the up and down from bed would go on for hours. That was until we bought the Sleep Fairy Book. There is also an accompanying website.

The story is simple enough, two little girls will not stay in bed...that is until they read about the Sleep Fairy. I will not spoil everybody's fun totally, but the Sleep Fairy operates much like the Tooth Fairy, that is, if little girls (and boys apparently) stay in bed and go straight to sleep, the Fairy leaves a very small gift for them (really small and oftentimes something they need:).

It's working wonderfully for us, quiet as mice,............we LOVE the Sleep Fairy!!

Our Blog Address

When I first started this blog (see my first ever post), I was all excited about being able to start sharing photos of Anja with anybody who was interested. I registered with Blogger and selected "www.paullynneanja.blogspot.com" as the blogs URL. Seemed reasonable at the time, not so now given that we have Isabel and another on the way.

I have now registered www.owenstaylor.com , so hopefully Anja's siblings will not feel too left out when they read this many years from now. The old address will still work! the family picture below is from August this year, Isabel's birthday party!

Tough Time for Isabel Lately

Over the last few weeks, poor Isabel has been through a few wars. She's still battling them.

Apart from constantly having some sort of runny nose (since the day she was born), recently she dislocated her elbow whilst falling at school. This is pretty common apparently and we have since heard of other kids who also
had this happen. The doctor popped it back into place. The same week, I took her again to see the doctor after she got her thumb caught in the door. Anja and her were sparring over who would close the sliding back door. It was slammed shut, I heard it bang so it made it all the way to the jam, it was just a pity that Isabel had her thumb between the door and the jam.

Two weeks ago she has a rash or boil looking infection on her bottom. Off to the doctor again who lanced it, had it cultured which turned out to be the nasty MRSA bacterium. A round of antibiotics took care of that thankfully.

This week, she has had a fever of 103F for a couple of days so we suspected the H1N1 flu virus. It subsided but now has a rash. Another trip to the doctor today who seemed to believe that it was a Roseola virus. Pretty common in kids up to two, not much we can do about it. This was probably the cause of the fever and not the H1N1. We are also now treating a yeast infection that she appears to have picked up. This is probably as a result of the antibiotics mentioned above......

She is a trooper though. Getting through it but she is constant in the wars, recall, that this was the 11 month old who broke her leg!

Lilly Sells Tippecanoe Labs

Today Lilly announced the sale of its Tippecanoe Laboratories. This is the local Lilly manufacturing site where I started life in Lilly when we first came to West Lafayette. I worked there for over three years before my R&D position was moved to Indianapolis. It is a little sad that after 55 years our local area will loose the presence of Lilly, one of Indiana's most recognized corporations and one that contributed significantly to the local area.

This had been a long awaited announcement but I'm happy that finally those that work there have a cloud of uncertainty lifted. Most readers of this blog will know of Lorraine, well she still works there. And Samim who hosted the Eid celebration works there and we also have a few neighbors that work there.

The site will be in good hands. It was purchased by a private German company, Evoniik AG. They are already off to a great start in making their presence felt, they have offered every employee at the site a position once the deal has completed in December.

 

Our First Eid Celebration

Recently, we all celebrated Eid with a very good friend of ours, Samim and her son Navid. It was a terrific evening. I obviously knew about the Muslim holiday that marked the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, but I'll be honest, until the other day I didn't actually know it was called Eid or Eid ul-Fitr. This prompted me to read a little more. Amazing to see the differences in how this is actually celebrated.

Samim, had cooked lots and lots of great food and we were very happy to be there with her for this celebration. Thanks Samim.

 

Indianapolis Childrens Museum

A couple of weeks back, on a very wet Sunday morning, we decided to head to Indy for a visit to the museum. Anja is going through a serious Dinosaur phase at the moment so this seemed like a great opportunity.

I immediately took Anja to all things dinosaur and she loved it while Isabel and Lynne went to a few more diverse exhibits. The skeletons shown below of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Triceratops are mostly complete and are pretty impressive. We all had a fun day!

 

 

 

Happy Birthday Randy

Tonight we were over at a surprise birthday party for Randy who turned 59 today. I was part of the scheming, since I was responsible for having him out of the house between 4.30 and 6pm so that Lorraine and Shamim could prepare. We played racketball which was fun, we play reasonably regularly so there was no real need for any suspicion, indeed he taught me how to play! Anyway we had a nice evening!

This is also a great opportunity to thank Randy (and Lorraine) for all his help over the last three weeks. He looked after the girls on several days over the three week transition between nannies and really without him we would not have had such a smooth transition. The girls have gotten quite attached to him in fact! He was also instrumental in helping us fix our dryer (did I mention that we had a hectic last few weeks)!

So, thanks again Randy, we hope you had a very pleasant birthday evening!

 

Honda Odyssey.....

One would imagine that increasing ones progeny from two to three would be a relatively minor step. Well, if there is any doubt that our next child will have an impact on our lives, look no further than the picture below!

We searched pretty hard to find suitable car seats to fit three across in our Subaru Outback. It was never going to be easy so we decided to jump into the full American 2.4 child lifestyle with the purchase of a Mini-Van. We got it, a 2010 Honda odyssey EX-L, last weekend and I must say we are pretty happy with it. Not really sure if Lynne is on-board yet!!

Kristina......

I have not updated these pages for a little while....I had a gentle push from a dear friend :)

Anyhow, much has happened over the last month, we have many items to report and many many people to thank for their help. I will get to all this over the coming evenings but I wanted to first give you an update on our biggest change since my last post.

Kristina, our nanny since February 2008, had to stop working for us. Kristina is pregnant and was struck with a severe case of morning sickness. She is really quite ill, has been throwing up constantly, has been constantly dehydrated, is not eating and is frequently having to visit the ER room. She literally cannot walk around. I think she is currently 10 weeks and I'm sure everybody will be very relieved when she reaches the end of this first trimester.

We were obviously very excited to hear that she was going to be a Mommy, but were then greatly saddened when her sickness prevented her from being able to continue working. Kristina will be a fantastic mother. There is nothing more certain and we know this since we have watched and trusted her to care for our two girls for the last 18 months. She will be a caring Mom, an engaged Mom, a fun Mom, she will do this without much complaint and she will enjoy every moment of it. She will document every milestone and moment of her babies life with excellent photography and she will do all this with her life's friend and Husband. Her children will be her best friend(s) and she will mean it. Our children had a wonderful time with her, particularly the pajama days, they and we will miss her support, company and friendship each day.

Kristina - we are so thankful for everything you have done for us, get well and we'll see you soon!

Paul, Lynne, Anja & Isabel!

Imogen Heap

I don't buy music albums very often anymore, I'm guessing that's the case with many people given the trend in music sales. Online sales and illegal downloads aside, that is. Anyhow, on my way home from work today I heard a great segment on NPR featuring an artist called Imogen Heap.

The NPR segment took me to a You Tube clip of a song on her most recent album and I was petty impressed, so much so that I just purchased the actual album. Thought I'd share. This won't be everybody's cup of tea (as they say in Ireland), but some may like it. Enjoy!

Had some great food tonight by the way. I decided to try something different and stopped by an Ethiopian Restaurant in Indianapolis called Abyssinia. Lynne and I love Ethiopian food, any East African food really, and this was a real treat!!

Wabash River Ride 2009

Yesterday, Anja, Isabel and myself, together with many of our friends, rode in the Wabash River Ride, the annual century ride hosted by our local cycling club, the Wabash River Cycle Club.

We had a very slow start which was not altogether unexpected given the number of young adults/children we had on the ride. Initially we had intended only doing the 32 mile round trip. The older kids were on bikes whilst Kevin had Anna in their trailer (that required two new tubes) and I had our two girls in our trailer. We managed our first 15 mile in this fashion, out to the first SAG stop. At this point Lorraine and Lisa graciously agreed (thanks once again to you both) to take some of the tired kids back home which then allowed Randy Cody and myself to continue on with an unplanned extended ride. We set out and completed the metric century ride, covering 67 miles total for the day. This was Cody's longest ever ride and he was very pleased with his feat and rightly so!

We all had a great day which was matched only by the wonderful meal that Kaisa had cooked for us very hungry riders at the end of the day!

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Lazy Saturday Morning

After the hectic travels of last week, we are taking advantage this morning of a lazy Saturday. Aside from the usual weekend chores, all we have done today is visit with some neighbours, sit around drink tea/coffee and take some pictures.

Shown below are few. A couple of shots of a flower on the front porch (me trying desperately to be artistic), a snap of the girls playing with the multitude of dolls/babies that are strewn around our house and a picture of the weekly produce from our veggie garden. Tomatoes, peppers, chillies, tomatillos, beans and some ground cherries.

Hope you're all having an equally relaxed Saturday. I believe it may even get more relaxed later. The girls are staying with Randy and Lorraine tonight so Lynne and I are planning a visit to our local Thai restaurant :)

Isabel's Second Second Birthday Party

When we were visiting my parents in Ireland, my Mum, Eilish and others organized a big birthday celebration for Isabel's second birthday. There were lots and lots of children, neighbours, family and friends. The weather left a lot to be desired but with the bouncy castles that were ordered, the food, games and other refreshments that were laid on, a fun day, evening (and night) was had by all. Many thanks once again to all who gave cards and presents to Isabel, much appreciated!

I took lots of pictures as usual, far too many to show without the help of a slideshow which can hopefully be viewed below and all pictures viewed here.

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Family Photo

One would think that with a wedding in the family one could expect to get a reasonably decent family photo! Well this was the best shot that I got on my camera. On the day of the wedding itself, Jonathan did manage to take some family photos, some where he was also part of thanks to Triona. I'm sure we'll get to see these in time but for now this was the best I had.

From the left is my Mother, Clive, Davey, myself, Eilish, Aiden and Dad. The second, a similar shot, this time with Jonathan, obviously captured under different circumstances but unfortunately Dad was nowhere to be found (I think he had gone to bed :)!

Clive and Tracey's Wedding

Last week we were in Ireland for my brother Clive and Tracey’s wedding. We arrived at my parents house to much fanfare on Saturday morning. We were a little late getting there as I messed up the car rental details. I’m not going into that at this point other than to say that having over an hour delay in getting a car when it’s in the middle of the night after a very long flight is not good.

My Mum and Eilish had organized a birthday party for Isabel on Sunday which I’ll blog about later in the week.

We travelled to Clive and Tracey’s house on Tuesday and the wedding festivities essentially started. Did I mention that the actual wedding was on Thursday, well it was and it was a rather long day. Started early in the morning as expected and finished, well let’s just say it was late in the morning.

The festivities continued the next day, the day after and the day after but we had to bail out on Saturday morning and travel back to the US. It was a very very long trip. All were exhausted before we even left on our 8 hour trans Atlantic coupled with a 2.5 hour car journey. All told it was almost 16 hours and the girls didn’t get much sleep!

I think we have all finally recovered, almost a week later. The girls had a great time throughout the trip, thanks in large part to Lynne who was very gracious in allowing me on several occasions to take the kids off to bed and allowing me to play grown up with my family. Thank you Love!

A few pictures of the actual day are shown below in addition to the slide show! Enjoy!

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Dress Up with Daisy

Before the kids arrived, Daisy was our baby. She had a full year of exclusivity before Anja arrived and boy was she spoiled. One could argue that she's still spoiled but, lets just say not as much as the kids are. We literally have hundreds of pictures of Daisy as a pup, ahh, that first year!

Anyhow, the picture below captures the scene that I arrived too one evening recently when I returned home from work. Both girls were dressing Daisy, essentially playing dress up as they often do but in this case Daisy was the doll. As you can see Daisy was licking her lips!! I found it quite entertaining indeed and upon reflection an excellent example of how far down the ladder poor old Daisy has truly fallen.

Tonight I have been sorting pictures again. I have some pictures from Clive and Tracey's wedding uploaded to facebook which I will post here tomorrow night!