The Baby Bracket is Here!

Hello my friends,

After two great years of baby brackets in 2006 and 2007, we were all disappointed when the 2008 Baby Bracket was canceled last year due to lack of funding, declining ratings, and of course, no baby. But thanks to a recent bailout from Congress, the completion of the Large Hadron Collider, and of course, a baby, I am happy to announce the commencement of the 2009 Great Reese Baby Bracket. Commence, you bracket, commence!

For our new players, the game goes like this: 64 boy names have been chosen by me and Laura as our potential pool of names. Names face off in pairs, with the name we prefer going on to the next round to face off with yet another name, so on and so forth until we get to the end and have picked the name of the baby. You make your picks of what names you think will win, and the person who gets the most picks right will be crowned The Supreme Baby Bracket Winner of All Time. At least, until 2010 when the next baby comes along.

This year, rather than filling out those dreadful excel spreadsheets and me grading them by hand, everything has been automated and put on the web. The website interface is a little tricky at first, but just read the instructions and you should have no problem. If you do, let me know and I'll do whatever I can to help.

The baby bracket is here:
http://www.bracketmaker.com/tmenu.cfm?tid=307965

Click the "Predict It!" link above the bracket to get started. It will give you the instructions you need to play. Please note, if you played the Xmas Madness bracket you can use the same login and password.

The bracket closes for submissions midnight, March 8. Feel free to send this to your family and friends, as we'd love to get as many players this year as we can (especially now that I don't have to do all the scoring). Have fun, and good luck!

Nick

William is 18 months old!

Yesterday was William's 18 month well-baby check up. Besides the fact that he cried every time anybody looked at him wrong, he did great. For some reason I had made the appointment for the one time of the day he always needs a nap, so I was asking for a cranky baby!

Everything looks fine with him. He is on track with his development and he is in the 50th percentile for his weight and his height, which is 26lb, 3 oz and 32.75". And for cuteness, he's off the charts.

William waiting for the doctor.

Pippa waiting for the doctor, so she can ask him a million questions!

Cookies and Sledding

During the colder weather we don't seem to be going out quite as much as when it's a little warmer, so we have been staying home and baking more. I got a cookie cookbook and a cupcake cookbook for Christmas, so we have been trying some of those recipes. Pippa and I usually wait for William to go down for his nap, and then we get baking. However, the first picture is of William when he wasn't napping. He learned a trick from Pippa and now he is always carting the step-stool around the kitchen so he can climb on it and see what I'm doing. This time he wanted the bubbles from doing the dishes...


So, the second cookie I wanted to make from my book was a milk chocolate cookie. I had everything I needed and a Pippa on hand to help clean up. She used her tongue and face to get the paddle clean.

Ahhh, sweet reward!

After the week, Pippa and William were ready for some outdoor time with Daddy! The weekend weather was absolutely lovely, so we took them up to the sledding hill on Mt. Bachelor. William spent the first hour asleep in the car, then woke up long enough to get a couple of runs in. Pippa is a sledding fiend and just can't get enough. Here are some videos and pictures of them sledding:

Daddy and Pippa racing Wyatt Johnson

Pippa's first big solo run

Pippa, William and Daddy on Will's first run ever!



Daddy and Will sledding

I'm going to be sitting this activity out for the season. I just get to watch and run around with the camera and any non-sledding kids.

Sleepy Kids!

I don't have any new photos to post today, but I do want to brag about my children and how quickly they are growing up!

On December 31 we moved William, my little 16 month old cherub, into his real toddler bed. We didn't know what to expect because with Pippa we waited until she was 20 months old and for months she would fall asleep on the floor behind her door. It has been 6 nights so far with William and after we put him down we don't hear a peep. He falls right asleep on the bed and just doesn't get out until morning. Nick and I have lost NO sleep from moving him and he seems to LOVE the bed. He's getting so big. Our next step is moving him in with Pippa in a couple of months...

I am also beginning to really work on the toilet training with Pippa. We're still going back and forth with diapers, but she seems to be getting it finally. For 2 days in a row she has peed on the potty. Of course, the bribe of marshmallows, stickers and a chocolate really do help. I'm excited about only having to buy diapers for 1 for a while. Those things are pricy!

Christmas 2008

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Our Christmas was a lot of fun and tasty food, and our New Years eve was a quiet one spent at home watching movies and blogging.

We started getting Pippa and William hyped up about the idea of Christmas for the last month, with Advent calendars, Christmas trees and decorations and the special Christmas WordWorld and Super Why! They knew something fun was up.

On Christmas eve William was especially tired, so he needed to go to bed extra early leaving Pippa to prepare for the arrival of Santa. He did, however, get to enjoy opening and playing with all the gifts the next day! Here are some photos from our very white snowy Christmas...

We decorated the cookies and left them out for Santa with a little Whiskey

An Eden tradition, reading "The Night Before Christmas" the night before Christmas

After Santa came, but before the kids woke up

William checking out some gifts

The aftermath

Then there was the snow to deal with...

8" or so on Christmas eve, on top of the other 8". Lots of shoveling for Nick to do!

Making snow angels

Coming to throw snow at Will behind the sliding glass door. He gets too cold and miserable in that much snow.

Snow days in Bend

It has been snowing. A lot. A whole lot. Today (Christmas Eve), it has been snowing non-stop since we woke up and now it's just about bedtime. We have maybe 6-8" of new snow on top of the 6-8" we already had from the last week of storms. Our Christmas is certainly a white one. Here are a few pictures of the kids playing in the first snow of the season, before it got deep!

Oh, Christmas Tree

This post is a little delayed, however I had to show you where we got our Christmas tree. It was a really fun day and Pippa still talks about it nearly 3 weeks later! In Oregon in November and December you can go buy a permit for $5 which allows you to go into the Deschutes forest, select a tree shorter than 12 feet, cut it down and take it home. This is what we did. It was so much fun, and not only did we get a $5 tree out of it, but it was a very impressionable fun day out for Pippa. Our tree is 9' high and the freshest tree we've ever had. Pippa is very proud of it, and surprisingly they are both very good at not knocking it down. Here are the photos from our day out...

Auntie Jess carried Will, Pippa was strapped to Daddy's back (she wanted to be carried, and it was best because of the uneven ground), and I got the backpack with the saw. We went with our friends, the Johnsons.

Jess carrying William

Pippa helping Daddy with the chop

The tree is ours now. Muwhhhh, ha, ha!

Tying the tree to the car for the 30 minute drive home

The tree is up. Notice how all the ornaments are higher than a toddlers reach?