It's summer time - let's go!

I know one is supposed to follow the rule of thumb that says baby pictures at birth, three months, six months, nine months, so on and so forth. Dave and I love Brenden to pieces but haven't exactly followed said rule of thumb. In fact we had three week pictures done and then eight month pictures done. Maybe a move across the USA didn't help matters but does that make us bad parents, nah.. just realistic. Maybe I get caught up in taking pictures on a daily basis that are candid and not posed but I make myself do these staged photos because I don't want to be labeled a "bad Mom". Anyhow here are Brenden's, er.. thirteen month pictures (well actually taken one day under the thirteen mark so I can actually check the box that says twelve month pics).

Now don't be surprised if I don't have the obligatory eighteen month pictures taken. Besides I think I take enough of us on my own and dare I say better ones???

Parental Unit visit

My Mom had been to see us when we moved to Cherry Point but my Dad hadn't gotten a chance to come until a few weeks ago (see previous blog entry). It was great to have them both here and for them to see Brenden at his current, er..very active stage of development. I took them to Fort Macon, The Aquarium and to Tryon Palace in New Bern where we also saw some other Civil War sites. I am going to go back to Salt Lake City, Utah in less than three weeks to attend their 50th wedding anniversary cocktail party and dinner. Such a tremendous feat to celebrate a milestone like being married for 50 years! The downside is that Dave won't be able to come with me. To boot, he will be gone for five weeks after that for jet training in Yuma. I have gotten spoiled with having him around and being such an active Dad. That time has come to a hault I am afraid with all of his training now moving into high gear. I guess we can't have it all - all the time!

Here are some pictures of my parent's visit - it was a great time!

Tryon Palace Gardens. So beautiful this time of year:
Tryon Palace Gardens:
Aviation exhibit in Havelock:
Fort Macon:

The Cuteness at 12 months old.. thinking he is king of the world...

The last month...

.... we have had a lot going on and now it is quiet again so I can take time out to breathe and catch up or rather for you to....

I went to Washington D.C. for two weeks to start IVF #4 last month at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Thankfully Dave's Mom had said she could come out to N.C. for the two weeks I was gone to take care of Brenden while Dave was working. The coordination of the trip and caring for baby was not an easy task. Fortunately my friends Marilet and Perry let me stay with them in Quantico, VA (which made the trip into D.C. an hour) which was very sweet of them. Unfortunately the day after I got there, I got into a car accident and my car was hauled off for two weeks in the body shop. No one got hurt which was fortunate but it made an already stressful situation worse. Not a good way to start off. Marilet was sweet enough to let me use her car and again made my life easier. Thank God for good friends!

When Dave, Shirley and Brenden did make it up there for the final week of the process, we had a few days to sight see and to try to take our minds off of the emotional and physical roller coaster known as in vitro fertilization. It's a necessary evil in our lives and for those of you out there that don't ever have to go through it, consider yourselves very fortunate. It's something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. That said, when it works -the outcome is more than worth it (for us that would be after two failed IVF's and having success with IVF #3) so we wanted to try it again.

This time around I had a chemical pregnancy which means I had a small enough level of HCG to test positive but the levels didn't double on the second test and thus.. nada.... We did have one embryo that made it to day 6 blastocyst stage and thus could be frozen so we will try again in a few months but for now we are going to enjoy the summer with Brenden and pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off. Trying to have a 'glass is half full' attitude. It turns out that gets harder and harder to do after these cycles. I do appreciate all of my friends and family's well wishes and pep talks. They really do help!

On a lighter note, not only did Shirley get to spend two weeks of time with Brenden but my parents also came out to help us for a week and a half so there was some very good family time spent together which was awesome. I also saw a lot of interesting things on my trip like George Washington's Mt. Vernon as well as many Civil War related buildings, cemeteries, historic sites. I took hundreds of photographs and it's hard to choose the best ones for the blog but here goes:

Mt. Vernon:

Marilet and 4 month old Ava. She is the sweetest baby and helped me curb my missing Brenden so much!

Shirley, Dave and Brenden touring the National Air and Space Museum: He was fascinated with the museums and pointed at most big items:

The front of the Jefferson Memorial:Washington Monument as seen from the Jefferson Memorial:

Brenden October turns ONE!

I can't believe it's been a year since we had Brenden. It seems on the one hand like yesterday but on the other seems so long ago that he looked and acted like a baby. Now he is walking and starting to talk. How can all of that happen in 365 days? He got lots of gifts from family. He is one lucky little dude and so are we. Happy 1st birthday Cute...

He wasn't liking touching the cake with his hands - such a civilized boy..
so we gave him a fork to eat and he was good to go (no mess to clean up)!

and he was done... all cleaned up and ready to open gifts.... Gifts from Aunt Kristen: Train rider that Grandma and Grandpa Barton gave him- he loves this! Helping Dad put together the red wagon that Nana and Papa Slay gave him: Wheeeeeeeeeeeee:

Kat comes for a visit

My very close friend Kat came out to visit me in Cherry Point and we had a ball. We have been friends since high school and have remained close even though we don't live in the same state. She just had her second baby seven months ago so we are both in the same boat on being older Mom's. We took a day trip up to Washington D.C mostly because I had to be seen at Walter Reed for IVF #4. It was great to have seven hours of girl chit chat and reminiscing on the drive up and the same on the drive back. Dave and I also took her to his squadron to check out the Harrier jets. Here are some pics:

North Carolina has these wacky little family cemeteries on family land. This one was from the 1800's - the Majette family:

Kat says she always wanted to be a jet fighter pilot... I told her she was crazy...

First Haircut

Brenden's hair was getting very long and very curly. Very cute for a baby but we still thought it time to take him to get his first haircut. He did very well and I have to say he looked like a little adult sitting in the barber chair. Where did our baby go? I forgot my camera so I was reduced to taking pictures with my Blackberry hence the poor quality images.....

Cuyamaca Communication Arts Building gets award from CCFC.

The Communication Arts Building at Cuyamaca Community College that Tom Christian and I did (Tom was a former Partner at NTD Architects where I also worked for 8 years) was given an Award of Honor by the Community College Facilities Coalition (CCFC) in November 2008.

Tom and I started work on the design of the building in 1999 before the project was shelved due to lack of funding. Once the bonds passed and the project resumed, it took four years to complete. It is one awesome design that I could talk about for hours. Since I won't do that here, I will put a few pictures of the project up and the text of the publication that came out in November 2008. I think this is definitely one of my favorite designs that I have had the privilege to work on. The construction document phase of the job was something else. A thirty foot tall retaining wall that no one will ever see because the buildings are set into the grade. My Structural Engineer Josh wanted to kill me over this project!

NTD Takes the Cake in Community College Design Awards
November, 2008
(Sacramento, California) November 11, 2008 – NTD Architecture, a 275-person award-winning design firm with seven offices across the West, has received two Awards of Honor from the Community College Facilities Coalition (CCFC) for their design of the Communication Arts Building at Cuyamaca College and the Lincoln Joint-Use Public Library at Twelve Bridges Learning Center. The firm was officially handed the award certificates at the 15th Annual CCFC Conference, which took place on November 6 in Sacramento.

“Being given a CCFC award is a monumental achievement for community college designers and community colleges alike,” says Jon Alan Baker, AIA, Partner at NTD Architecture. “Not only does it assure us that we are giving our clients the top rate designs that they expect of us, it also shows that we are giving the students the best type of facility in which to learn.”

The Communication Arts Building earned its award in the Growth category, which encompasses new community college facilities. Completed in the fall of 2007, the 84,000 square foot facility features a 400-seat theater with support spaces, an acoustically optimized music department, a 100-seat digital theater capable of wide screen cinema projection, art labs, and a lobby that serves as the main gallery space for the fine arts program. Optimal use of day lighting reduces the building’s energy footprint.

What is this big white furry thing you are wanting me to touch?

Yesterday Dave and I took Brenden to the Grant's Landing Community center where they were doing an Easter egg decorating and meet the Easter Bunny event. He is much too young of course to know what's going on but we wanted to get him out to see other kids. He even got to 'find' two Easter eggs which he loved to shake the entire rest of the afternoon. Verdict is still out on what he was thinking when he met Mr. Bunny.

He even got gifts from both Grandma Barton and Nana Slay:

I love this warm (not HOT) weather!

Time to shed the clothes and put the sunscreen on. I am so sick of being indoors and my skin and mood are showing it. Today, besides cleaning the house which I hate more than just about anything, we got out the splash pool for Brenden. It's also an excuse for Dave and I to sit outside, relax and have a beer -ahhh now that is more like it! What more could one ask for on a Sunday? Of course Brenden didn't know what the hell we were putting him into but he eventually assumed it wasn't going to bite him:

The intro to the spash pool:


The splash pool ~part two:

Newport Pig Cookin' Contest.. it's a big deal around these parts.

Yes.. it's true we went to the Newport Pig Cookin' Contest today and it was...interesting. Apparently about 100 contestants stay up all night cookin' pig to be judged the next day. These guys take this stuff seriously. They have trailers with their pit BBQ's that they haul from all over the state. North Carolina BBQ is pretty good I would have to say. I couldn't eat all my pig but Brenden did help us out a bit:

Of course we had to do something civilized afterward so we went to the Aquarium. It's the old stand by for something to do here on the weekend. I finally got a picture of Brenden smiling with his teeth showing. He is getting two more. Oh boy..