Brother and Sister

It's been awhile since we posted, but Christmas is in full swing here at the Gruett's house. Our tree is up and decorated. We've had hot chocolate with marshmallows. The outside lights are up and presents are under the tree. And, for the traditional viewing of the classic Christmas shows, I got a couple of snapshots of Emerald and David watching "Santa Clause is Coming to Town" together. Emerald likes to pretend she thinks David is annoying, but we know she really loves him.

Pumpkin Pickin'

Back on October 28th Emerald and I went out to see some friends of Liane's parents who owned a farm and sold pumpkins every October. I forgot to post them until now, so I apologize in advance to anyone who's been waiting for these pics.

Here's Emerald waiting to be taken out to the field to pick her pumpkin.

And what farm would be complete without a bouncing happy dog?

In the field, Emerald took her time wandering around, looking for that perfect pumpkin.

I think she just found it.

While we were there I took a shot of Marty (Liane's mom) and her friend. Marty is the one in the purple shirt.

And here's a shot of the couple who owns the farm. I can't remember their names, but they were very nice and made it a lot of fun for us.

Here, Emerald is getting ready for the trip to the pumpkin washing station. It was a pretty bumpy ride. She was offered the chance to ride up on the tractor, but I think she felt safer down in back.

Yep, that's me and Emerald posing with a huge piece of quartz dug up on the farm. It was very bright that morning and the photographer's back was to the sun, so you can understand why we're squinting.

Another shot of Emerald riding on the trailer back to the farm buildings.

The couple was very nice and insisted we take numerous pumpkins home with us. Ironically we didn't end up carving any this year, but we still had a lot of fun picking them out. Also, after Halloween was over and done with, a squirrel made several of the pumpkins we left out on the porch into meals, so our cats were happy with the arrangement as well.

-Bob

Rakin' Leaves

One of the fun things Liane and I have had to deal with every year since we got our first home is the annual ritual of raking leaves. Unfortunately, as we're both rather lazy in the leaf-raking department, we usually have to trick-, er, talk Emerald into doing it for us.

It amazes me, really, just how many leaves end up under the tree and all over the yard at the end of the year. In the front yard alone Emerald managed to pile up a huge pile. Of course, what good is a pile of leaves if you can't jump on in and have a party?

Star Trekkin'

By now you've no doubt figured out that Liane's posts are the serious ones and mine are all pretty much nonsense.

In keeping with this tradition, and in honor of the new Star Trek movie to begin filming later this year, here are two super-neat Star Trek photos in the format of those corny workplace inspirational calendars:

Hope those brought a smile (or a roll of the eyes) to your face.

-Bob

The Look And Feel...

Hey, something's different in here...

Wait! I know!

The colors have all changed!

Hmmm...Change is nice, but I'm not completely sure I'm liking this much.

On that note, let me warn you that I will be playing with the templates, colors, and page elements for the next couple weeks, so things might change a few more times before we find something that works for us.

If you don't like change, blame me (Bob).

David got his DOC band!

We went to Cranial Technologies (http://www.cranialtech.com/ for those that want to check it out) for David's moderate to severe plagiocephaly. That's a fancy word for "his head is flat on one side". Here is David in his brand new DOC band (helmet)! He seems to be doing very well with it so far.

It comes plain white...

And then Mommy and Emerald just had to decorate it!

It's kind of hard to tell with the flash, but the helmet has been painted a light army/olive green. It has blue letters that say "Little Tough Guy" and three sparkly snowflake-like stickers that big sister picked out especially for David.

He will have to wear it for about the next 3 months so there will be more pics to follow in the weeks ahead.

And we all wish a very happy 92nd birthday to Uncle Tim!

Halloween 2007

Here is a chronicle of the Gruettses who celebrated Halloween this year by dressing up in various costumes.

Mommy just stayed home and passed out candy.

The Cow...

Darth Vader holding the Cow...

And for those fans of the Discovery Channel show Mythbusters...

And if you don't watch Mythbusters, you should. It's a great show.

Bob is appearing as Adam Savage and the other guy (whom Bob works with) is appearing as Jamie Hyneman.

Blankies and Carrots

David loves cuddling with yellow blankie (thank you, Grammy). Here are a couple of pictures of him with the beloved blanket

And here is our first attempt (not including rice cereal) at "big people food". We chose carrots for the big occasion since big sister loves eating baby carrots. As you can see there are not many smiles accompanying this new experience.

What are you putting in my mouth???
I'm a big boy and can do it myself! (Even though they aren't very good)

Happy Birthday to cousin Kalanie!!!

Happy Birthday Kalanie! We wish we could celebrate with you.

Camp Harvest 2007

Emerald got a package today from the church with a cd-rom full of over 200 pictures from camp this summer. Here are a few with Emerald in them.

This is on the bus on the way to camp.

Emerald is in the middle row all the way to the left (white shirt).
This is of the whole camp. Emerald is in the front row, center. She's holding her pink bible up.

Fun with big sister

Here are a couple of pictures I got a couple of weeks ago.

And then Emerald thought her little brother would sleep so much better if he had a stuffed bunny to nap with.

The First Day of School

(posted by Liane)
ahhh... the best day of the year!

We started out our traditional first day of school activities with some pictures in our front yard.

And then it was off to IHOP for our "first day of school breakfast". Emerald had her favorite, strawberry pancakes with whipped cream. Bob had a pile of french toast with an even bigger pile of syrup. I had eggs, sausage, bacon, and swedish pancakes. David had 1 oz. of water.

After IHOP we went directly to Georgetown Elementary for the first day of fourth grade. This is the back of the school where all the kids congregate before being led inside by their teachers.

A few pictures of Emerald and her friends waiting for school to start.

Like Mother, like Son

I was finally able to capture a photo of David following in his mother's footsteps: thumb-sucking and hair twirling. A great combination! Unfortunately, David scratched himself on the face pretty bad today.

Emerald's new 'do

Emerald got a perm! She really wanted curly hair, and here's a picture of the final product.

Hooray For Superheroes!

This past weekend I went to GenCon 2007 in Indianapolis, Indiana, where I spent many hours ho-humming around the crowded conventionroom floor as I avoided all manner of strange and disturbing individuals in my quest to find something, SOMETHING that interested me.

Turns out I didn't have to look far. Just around the first corner, in fact, where I stumbled across the winner and two runner-ups of last year's first season of Who Wants To Be A Superhero.

Of course, I had to get a photo.


Here I am, posing with Fat Momma, Major Victory, and Feedback (the season one winner). In back are two less than savory characters: Bobby Kranson, the guy scowling between myself and Major Victory, and Matt Cowling, the guy hiding behind Major Victory's hair. These were the guys I traveled to Indiana with, and neither could comprehend what would drive me to get my photo taken like this.

The answer is really quite simple.

I am now officially cool.

-Bob

Finally! Smile photos!

This morning David was a bit more smiley than usual, so we grabbed the camera and got lucky. A new gallery is up with two (count 'em, two) photos of David smiling on the bed.

-Bob

More Smiles...

Thought I'd put up another quick post to let everyone know that over the last couple of days David has become quite the smiling baby. It's still kind of hard to catch one, as he seems to have a mind of his own when it comes to when or why he chooses to smile at all, but it's definitely becoming more and more commonplace. He's still working on getting both sides of his mouth to work together, but he's trying.

Anyway, if we're lucky enough to catch one in a photo we'll post it.

-Bob

David's First Smile!!!

No photos this time, but I wanted to put up a post because at 9:40am today David smiled for the first time...twice!

Liane and Emerald were both there and saw it. As for me, well, I'm still waiting. But that's okay. I'll see one soon enough.

-Bob

Two New Galleries

Okay, so I've been slacking off lately, and as a part of that I haven't posted to the site. Well, today that all changes! Yessir, I'm turning over a new leaf!

Well, not really, but there are two new galleries and a new movie for inquiring minds.

Enjoy!

-Bob

David At Grammy & Grampy's House

Today we all drove up to Wisconsin to spend some time with Liane's parents and to have some birthday cake. Why, you ask? Because, tomorrow Liane turns (wait for it!) 30! Yep, that's right. Just a mere 8 hours from now and she'll officially be OLD.

Of course, when you get grandparents and babies in the same room, all sorts of craziness ensues. So we've posted a new movie of David trying out Grampy's comfy chair and some photos of Grammy and Grampy doing what it is they do best.

-Bob

Four New Photos & Some New Site Features

Liane took a few more photos today while I was gone at work, so I've uploaded them to the site. Find them under the June 20th group.

Also, I've added two sets of links on the right side of the page.

• The 'Featured Galleries' links will immediately take you to whichever galleries are listed. Those will typically (although not necessarily) be the latest galleries added.
• The 'Jump To Month' links do exactly what they say: they take you directly to a specific month's galleries. At the moment, this is pretty much useless, since there are only a few galleries up, but once I add all our archived photos this will become a very easy way to jump to any month within any year with just a single click.

That's all for now.

-Bob

David's First Bath

Today David's cord fell off, and that meant that tonight it was time for his first bath. So we gave him one, and right now we have a very clean baby. Unlike his older sister, David didn't scream, kick, or cry at all while he was being dunked in the tub; in fact, he seemed pretty oblivious to the whole ordeal until he was out, and even then he took it all in stride.

We took some photos and a few movies, but due to the (ahem) unmentionables that made it into several shots, we had to omit some of the content from the site. Still, we were able to upload a small gallery of photos and one more Quicktime movie for you to enjoy.

-Bob

New Blog Page Has Been Created

The old blog page on the site has been replaced by this page, hosted by blogspot.com, so from here on out it should be much easier to update news on the site and access archived entries. I haven't figured out how to add the old content into the archives directly, or if this is even possible, and I still haven't worked out the color scheme for the blog page (which will determine the color scheme for the rest of this site), so stay tuned for improvements.

-Bob