videos from 3.29

Exervideos!



This one is sideways.  oops.

A trip to Lowes

Tim wanted to stop in at Lowes this weekend.  Attison and I went to the lighting section and stared at the disco ball.  

this is too much

Do you like the sound of children's laughter?  Oh man, this video is full of it.

Spring photos

We had some "Spring photos" taken a few weeks ago.  Attison was cold, hungry, and maybe getting a tooth.  We have 12 photos, and these are the 3 best.  I'm not super thrilled with any of them. 

This always makes him smile.  But I had him wrapped in that blanket, and he's wearing a white sweater against the white sky.  We had a lot working against us here.  But seriously, look at that smile.

These were taken Palm Sunday.  2 things:

1. Attison did a really great job of waving the palm leaves to represent Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. (side note, I find it interesting that there is a Wikipedia article dedicated to this topic)

2. While he chewed on the palms I whispered to Tim "I wonder if they cleaned these before I let my kid chew on it?" In response, he pointed to the bulletin where there was a list of tasks that you could sign up to help with during Holy Week, in preparation for Easter Sunday.  "Cleaning the palm leaves" was one of them.

So after 30 minutes of taking pictures of a distracted, cold baby, we just let him chew on those palm leaves and snapped this gem.

 Then we ran to the car, nursed him and he immediately fell asleep.  Once again, I think the only person traumatized by this experience was me.

Exercausing

Dance monkey, dance!  (what is that from? why do i say that?)

Habishack

The week after Easter, the Pitt Habitat students built the Habi-shack.  We stopped by to show Attison his first Habi-shack.

 We have so many fun, happy memories of this shack.  We also have many "other" memories of this shack, which mostly make us think "Whyyyyyyyyy?????"

That is the same plywood paneling that I slept on for a week. Here is what I told the Pitt News (circa 2007?)

The rest of that article goes on to explain how difficult it will be for us to give away free hot dogs (an activity that is traditionally done at the shack every year) when we have to cook the hot dogs off campus.  Oh the injustice!

For those who have no idea what I am talking about:

Each year, the Campus Chapter of Pitt Habitat for Humanity constructs an 8'x12' shack to help draw attention to the fact that so many people throughout the world live in substandard housing.  The students plan activities for the week to draw other students over to the shack, in addition to those who just stop by and say "what the heck is this mess?"  

When we were students, we won a $500 prize during Pitt's International Week for being the student group with the best something or other and some stuff or things. We can't remember why, but we got $500.  So we used that cash to buy new supplies for a new shack.  

The new shack was designed by the one-and-only, civil engineering major and dedicated habitater - Tim Raufer.  I had a huge crush on Tim, so I offered to drive him to Home Depot to get prices and skew numbers for all of the materials he thought we would need.  (Little did I know I was setting the bar pretty high for all future trips to Home Depot.)

Then we built the shack in panels.  And stored it in Tim's basement.  And various other basements that we drug it into and out of for the next 3 years.  And now, a new generation of kids are dragging that old wooden crappy crap into and out of basements twice a year.  

And they will forever have the shack in their memory as a thing that they did.  And hopefully they will be compelled to contribute to making the world a better, safer, happier place for those less fortunate than themselves.

This is Tim and I in 2006 building the shack.  It is being built in the exact same spot this year as it was then.  With the same materials.  If you're on Facebook, you can view the album of us building this shack HERE.

Easter day for serious

You've seen the Easter photos, but here is what really happened on Easter.  Cause' a 5 month old ain't have no Easter egg hunt...specially' when it's raining. 

You may have noticed, sometimes I write things (like the sentence above) that I would actually say, because sometimes I like to throw all rules of grammar out in the yard.  Imagine me saying the sentence above in my best thug voice.