The Nixnerd

Nikki and I realized recently that we forgot to post the picture on the right from our trip to Washington, D.C. last November.  Most odd.  This is our favorite picture!

As usual, click on the photo to get into the photo gallery.

It’s been two months and I’ve finally taken the time to get some photos up on the blog for Christmas. Usually I would back-date a post like this but since it’s been so long I’d feel awfully bad about that! My apologies for all of you (Belinda!) who have been waiting (patiently — thank you!) for these photos. I’m sorry that there are so many of them but there were just too many that I couldn’t exclude them. I tried to arrange them into sub-albums to make it a little easier to navigate. I hope you enjoy them all! As usual, click on the photo on the right to get to the photos!

[February 25, 2008 - Update] I’ve finished uploading all the photos to the site and you are more than welcome to check them out.  Enjoy!

Today, we decided to do something a little different. We took him to the restaurant with us, got a high chair, and fed him at the table. He got to eat breakfast with us. Big Boy! From there, we came back to the room where Nikki got ready for her presentation. Zaiden and I walked her to the conference. He and I came back to the hotel room to hang out while we waited for Nikki. We played around on the bed until he started to get fussy. He was awfully tired by that point so I put him in his car seat and did “the daddy swing” until he fell asleep. He stayed asleep while I got some blogging done (and you thought I was writing this as things went along? :). Nikki got back, we packed up, and headed for the Air and Space Museum! Woot woot! (I was secretly happy that Zaiden slept so he would be awake for pictures, today!) (more…)

We got up this morning after a wonderful night’s sleep. Zaiden slept from about 8 until 3, then until 7. It was awesome! I’m so proud of him!
We fed the boy breakfast then mosied down to the hotel’s restaurant and had a huge breakfast and decided to go for a quick walk before hitting the sites. During our walk, we realized how close we are to the APHA conference. We went on over to get Nikki registered and she went to find where her station is going to be, tomorrow, while I kept the boy asleep. Next, back to the hotel to get all ready for some site seeing. Of course I have a very special T-Shirt to wear in Washington DC — it has a head shot of both George H. Bush and his son, George W. Bush. Underneath the two shots are the words, “Dumb and Dumber.” (more…)

Nikki and I got up bright and early at 4:45 am to head to D.C. Let me rephrase: we set the alarm for 4:45 but actually got up around 4:00. Yes, FOUR. It was Daylight Savings Time and I didn’t turn the alarm clock back. I’m just used to my computers setting the time for me so I didn’t think about it. NUTS. On the bright side, we had plenty of time to feed Zaiden and finish getting ready to go. We had a nice leisurely morning before hopping in Black Beauty (that’s Nikki’s Vue for those that don’t recognize the name) and heading to Starbucks (and you thought I was going to say the airport, didn’t you?). (more…)

Today was the Zoo’s annual Halloween event, Boo at the Zoo. Courtney and Rachelle were staying with us for the weekend so we had them bring their Halloween outfits. They dressed up and we put Zaiden in his first Halloween outfit, Tigger (I wanted him to be an Ewok but the costume was too big — bummer — but he was SO CUTE as Tigger!). We took the three of them to the zoo and had a wonderful time. In addition to the usual “zoo stuff” (animals … duh), there were some performances going on and the girls got to go trick-or-treating.

We met up with Mike and Diane and their children, Sophie and Jaylee (anyone have an idea how to spell that? anyone? any help at all?). Tonight we’ll be watching Jaylee because Mike and Diane are going downtown to try to score World Series tickets (go Rockies!).

As usual, click on the photo at the left for a little photo album of this event. Of course, the only photos I have are of the few we took of Zaiden before we left. I’m awful at taking pictures. eek …

I felt a little guilty asking but Nikki had no qualms about it — so I did a little 4-wheeling, today. I took Georgia pass from Jefferson to Breckenridge and it was beautiful and wonderful. Jefferson is the first town you come to after going over Kenosha Pass from Denver on 285. From there, you take the first road West up to the top of Georgia Pass. The top is on the Continental Divide and the view of South Park is just wonderful — I liked that almost as much as the view from the scenic lookout near the top of Kenosha Pass.

From there, I took the road down towards Breckenridge. There is another trail, there, that was marked for high-clearance 4×4 vehicles, but I a) was by myself, b) in the FJ and don’t have much in the way of recovery equipment, and c) (most importantly) am a father and don’t want to orphan Zaiden. If I were with someone more experienced (Chris, for example), I would have happily gone. Maybe another day.

When I reached the bottom, I just found another trail or two to go “play” around on. It was pretty fun. None of the trails I took were very intense but it was nice to get into the mountains, go 4 wheeling, and get to know my vehicle a little better.

The trip home SUCKED. It took me 2 1/2 hours to go from “the tunnels” to the house. Crikey there are a lot of people in Colorado these days.

Zaiden’s Grandma B (Nikki’s mom) came to town last Wednesday. Over the weekend we took a couple of nice drives and had picnics. On Saturday, we went to Sedalia in the hopes of seeing what “all the buzz” was about. Belinda (aka Grandma B) is in the market for some real estate and was told to check out Sedalia instead of Estes Park. There wasn’t much in Sedalia so we took off for a drive up into the mountains. We ended up having a picnic along Rampart Range Road. We snapped a few photos to commemmorate the event. AJ and Rachelle came with us and it was quite a fun little outing. (more…)

We went camping with mom, dad, Paul, and Marlin over the weekend in Buena Vista. Here is a recap of the trip. Clicking on any of the pictures will take you to a gallery of photos we took during the trip. Throughout the weekend, everyone was so happy to see Zaiden, talk to Zaiden, and play with him. He was so cute with everyone — all smiles.

Day One: Thursday August 16, 2007

Nikki and I had gotten mostly packed on Wednesday night. I just took a long lunch to try to finish things up. I was hoping to get all packed and showered up before heading out. Unfortunately, packing took longer than I expected and I had to shower after nikki got home. We got Moose in the FJ and took off around 4:30. Before hitting the road, we went to pick up Zaiden from day care (Nikki had a metting in Thornton, that day, and decided to come home after the meeting rather than going to pick him up, first). Luckily, he had eaten fairly recently and we were thinking we could make it to Buena Vista before he needed to eat again. Quick stop for gas and we were on our way.

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Nikki took Zaiden to our last Kaiser group meeting on July 18th (2007). All the other mothers showed up with their babies (and for a change all the fathers showed up, too — and THIS is the meeting I missed! DOH!). They took some great photos and Zaiden was quite the little mac-daddy. He was holding hands with this little girl, Kailey. Nikki said they just stared and stared at each other. How cute. As usual, click on the photo to the right to get to the other photos.