Lucy's Flower

This morning at church there was a single rose on the altar to celebrate Lucy's birth. Her birth was also listed in the bulletin and up on the projected screens/TVs.





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Family Visit

Tonight we had a few more family members stop by to visit Lucy. My Aunt Sharon, Uncle Dave, Kim and Ali stopped by to see her and bring her some cool gifts!

Train Day

Today I took Eric out for the day. Shannon is still recuperating at home with Lucy so we headed out to have some fun. Our first stop was the Whittle Shortline Railroad store in Valley Park. We've been there numerous times, but he always has fun playing with the train tables. From there we headed over to the Museum of Transportation which is only a couple of miles away. We walked around looking at all the big trains plus they had some new fire engines on display. Afterwards we then went to the West County Mall to ride the rides, have lunch at Chick-fil-a, visit the Apple Store and then play on the indoor playground. After all of that we headed home. Eric was pretty worn out and fell asleep immediately once we hit the road.

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Eye-Fi

Right before Lucy was born I began making some changes to the way we take, store and organize photos. One gadget I bought to help with that was the Eye-Fi memory card. There are a few different models. I bought the 2GB Share model. What makes the Eye-Fi different than a normal SD memory card for your camera is that it has WiFi built in. Your camera can then connect directly to your wireless home network (802.11b/g) to transfer photos as opposed to hooking your camera to your computer via a USB cable.

Originally I hadn't been too interested in spending money to eliminate a cable, but then I saw some reviews that changed my mind. What the Eye-Fi could do is help speed up my workflow for importing photos. Typically I'd get home from a family outing and whenever I'd have time to work on the blog I'd have to first hook up the camera then import the photos. With the Eye-Fi you can walk in the door, turn on the camera and just set it down. At that point it immediately starts transferring your photos over your wireless network to your computer. That way when I have time to work on the blog the photos are already there eliminating one of my steps.

The other scenario is for the holidays or birthdays when everyone is over at our house. During those times I can be walking around shooting photos and have the photos uploaded to my computer at the same time. Again, when I'm ready to work on the photos they're already there and I don't have to manually import them. You can configure the Eye-Fi to store the photos on a location in your computer or a drive attached to your computer. Also, you can configure to have the photos simultaneously uploaded to an online photo storing site such as Flickr, MobileMe, Picasa, Facebook, etc.

So far I've been really impressed with how well it works. If I had a "desktop" computer that was always on it would probably work a little better. Since my main machine is a MacBook Pro I have to make sure the lid is up or that it's turned on. I see quite a few people on the Eye-Fi forums asking them to add the ability to send the photos to a network attached storage (NAS) drive to help eliminate the need for a computer. That's the only feature I'd really like to see them add, but as it stands with it's current features I've been happy.

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Photos

Today we received some new photos of Lucy and Eric.

This is Lucy's first professional photo taken in the hospital.

At Eric's preschool they had a photography service come in and take pictures of the kids. These were Eric's best photos from the set.

One Week Old

It was one week ago that Lucy was born!

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Potty

As I write this I'm still sort of borderline wether to make this a blog post, but it's definitely worth celebrating. Eric went to the potty by himself in his special toilet this morning. It's just another step on his road to becoming a big boy. With a little sister now he's having to grow up and take on some additional responsibilities.

For obvious reasons I didn't take any photos or make a video. I sort of wish I had, though, since while he sat on the potty he was reading an advertisement circular looking at the toys while we all stood around congratulating him.

New Banner

Today I decided to update the banner at the top of the blog to now include Lucy. I've usually used a professionally shot family photo for the top, but since we don't have one with all of us and Lucy I decided to go with a montage. I'm not 100% happy with it and will probably change it sooner rather than later. Still, it gets Lucy up there at the top of the blog.

Home

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Halloween

Not only did Shannon make Eric's Halloween costume, but she also made one for Lucy. Her costume for her first Halloween was a sack of sugar.

My parents watched Eric this afternoon, but they brought him by in the evening so we could trick or treat at our neighbors. Since we already went for candy at the Magic House, Zoo and preschool we just wanted to let our neighbors see his costume.