The Rode Family Blog

Top 10 of 2010

2010-12-30T14:57:00.021-05:00

I went back through our 2010 calendar and selected my 10 favorite memories from 2010.

Number 10:
Wrapping up my accounting education at Towson University I took Tax II and Cost I this year. I loved Tax II and I especially loved Cost! My experience with Towson's accounting department (3 years ago) started off with disappointment with the qualtity of the instructors, but finished successfully. 2011 will bring the challenge of the CPA Exam.

Number 9:
Jimmy Buffett Concert #7 - Labor Day Weekend

This year I compiled the largest tailgate for a Buffett concert that we've ever had. I went to my first Buffett show in 2007 with just 3 other friends. In 2010, we took two van-loads - 16 people altogether! There was lots of food & drink, fins & fun!

Number 8:
Football success - the Ravens & Camo Pirates

Despite not making it to the SuperBowl in 2010, some of my fondest memories are a result of the Ravens success. The dominating playoff victory over the Patriots comes to mind - along with the large gathering we had at our house for the Divisional loss to the Colts, which included a "front-yard tailgate", bon fire and all! My fantasy football team, the Camo Pirates entered the year as 2009 Champions and have recently finished as repeat Champions in 2010.

Number 7:
Saturday with my brother

Back in October I spent a fun afternoon with my brother Will. We started the day by seeing Jackass 3D at the White Marsh Theaters. Later that afternoon we participated in the brewery tour at Heavy Seas (formerly Clipper City). We learned a lot about the beer-making process and enjoyed lots of free samples. What better way is there to spend the day with your brother?

Number 6:
Magic Kingdom 2010

We made our annual trip to Walt Disney World this summer. Our visit to the Magic Kingdom was especially fun this year because we were joined by Uncle Matt and cousin Artie. It was also Delaney's first visit - at least for half of the day. It was probably the hottest day of the summer, as you can tell from the sweat on my shirt, but also one of the most fun days!

Number 5:
Pirate Cruises

How many different pirate cruises can you go on in one year? Well, if you're me, then two! While in Florida we took an evening cruise, hosted by Captain Hook and Mister Smee, complete with food and drink, sea chanties, and fireworks. In September, Laura and I were invited aboard the Fearless - the Urban Pirates' ship for our friend Kara's birthday. It was a really fun evening of bar-hopping, topped by a BYOB cruise through the Inner Harbor at night. We might have had too much fun!

Number 4:
Cousin Weekend and Turning 30

For weeks leading up to my 30th birthday I tried to come up with the best way to celebrate. The result was perfect! Two of my cousins already lived in Florida, so it was just a matter of gathering up Will and Beth and heading south. In late January, Will, Casey, myself, Beth & Amber (along with our significant others) spent a long weekend at Casey's house playing games, grilling out, drinking beer and enjoying the transition from my 20's to my 30's.

Number 3:
Birthday Parties

We celebrated Delaney Mae's first birthday on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon in April at my parents house on the waterfront. Many of our closest family and friends participated in the celebration. Mackinzie Joy turned five in typical fashion - at "the bouncy-place"! Ultimate Play Zone featured so many moonbounces, slides and games. It was especially fun for Kinzie to invite her new friends from Kindergarten!

Number 2:
New York City!!

Number two on the countdown is the most recent, but also one of the best. Laura and I got out of town for the weekend to experience New York. We spent time with our friends Chris & Lauren, did lots of sight-seeing and also had a nice dinner with my old roommate Jeff. The highlight of the trip came on the last day when we caught a taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. If you haven't seen our short appearance on TV check this out. It was a weekend I won't soon forget!

Number 1:
Ocracoke Island, North Carolina

We spent a week in July in the Outer Banks with the Sroka family. At the end of the week, we piled into the Highlander and headed south on Route 12 until it came to an end in Hatteras. I drove onto a ferry and we cruised to Ocracoke Island. It was just one night, less than 24 hours, but this is by far my most favorite thing we did all year! There was lots of pirate history. There was a simplicity about the place. The isolation of being on a small island, along with the company of just my wife and daughters gave me a really good feeling. The Rode family will definitely be visiting Ocracoke again in the future - but probably when the girls are a little bit older.

We are just a little over 36 hours away from 2011. I hope the new year brings many more memories!

Breakfast with Mickey and the Gang

2010-07-28T10:11:00.010-04:00

On our first Friday morning in Florida (July 23) we headed into Orlando to have breakfast at Chef Mickey's. We did this last year with Mimi. This year's special guest was Uncle Matt! Both he and Kinzie were super excited to meet Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, & Pluto! When we arrived at the Contemporary Resort, we were seated and started making our plates full of sausage, bacon, eggs, pancakes and "Mickey" waffles. Our anxiety heightened when the fanfare music began to play and the announcement was made that the characters would be greeting us soon! We could hardly contain ourselves!

First to arrive at our table was Goofy. He happily signed the first page in Mackinzie's new autograph book and took this picture with our family.

Next came Minnie Mouse. She was very sweet and posed with the ladies of the Rode family

Delaney loves dogs and Pluto was no exception! She was a little hesitant at first, but she quickly became playful with the characters....

... except that she was in no mood to have her picture taken with Donald and the guys.

The "leader of the club that was made for you and me" was the final visitor to our table. Mickey is always fun! He gladly posed with the Rode family.....

... and with Uncle Matt!

Mackinzie's autograph book is off to a good start - we'll hit the Magic Kingdom the next day...

Our Night in Ocracoke

2010-07-27T09:22:00.019-04:00

We said 'Goodbye' to the Lady of the Lake house in Corolla bright and early on Saturday morning (July 17) and headed south along Route 12, cruising the coastline towards Hatteras - where the road ends. There we drove the Highlander onto a ferry, destination: Ocracoke Island. There are no bridges to Ocracoke. The only ways to reach the island are by ferry, boat or plane. It was a really cool experience to be in the car, yet on a boat for the 40 minute ferry ride.We were allowed to get out of the vehicle to walk around the ferry, but because it was such a short ride, there wasn't much to do, other than sight-see and take some pictures.

When we arrived on the island, we headed straight for our hotel, the Ocracoke Harbor Inn, where we were fortunate enough to get into our room early. After settling in for a bit, we headed out to explore the island.
Ocracoke is a really neat place because it is very secluded. There are no Days Inn or Best Westerns, no McDonalds or Applebees, no Exxons or Shell stations. Many of the locals travel by bicycle or golf cart. The speed limit is 20-25 mph throughout the village.
Ocracoke is historically known for pirates - specifically, Blackbeard. (which, as you have probably guessed, was my main intention for wanting to visit there). It was there that Blackbeard lived for a while and eventually died in a battle just off the harbor. After enduring several slashes and stabbings, and multiple gun shots, his head was cut off and hung from the bow of the ship... see Wikipedia for more...
Our first stop in exploring Ocracoke Island was Teach's Hole - a museum and shop dedicated to the notorious pirate.

Surprisingly enough, Mackinzie was very excited to learn more about Blackbeard.

There wasn't a whole lot to the exhibits, just a few models and documents, but it was very cool in my opinion.

Laura described this photo on Facebook as "Bert wishes he was tiny enough to fit on Blackbeards ship" .... very true!

... and this historical marker was proof to Laura that Blackbeard actually existed - although I still can't convince her that there are still pirates around today - in the Somolian-form .
We ate lunch outdoors on the porch at the Jolly Roger, located right on Silver Lake Harbor and enjoyed some shopping at sight-seeing, specifically the Ocracoke Lighthouse - which has been in operation since 1823.

We arrived at the lighthouse just as the storm clouds were gathering.
We woke up early again to catch the 7:00am ferry departing Ocracoke for Cedar Island. This ferry ride would last two and half hours. The time went by pretty quickly, thanks to the laptop computer and the car dvd-player. This ferry was also much larger than the one we rode on the day before. There was a large lounge with tables and chairs and booths - vending machines, restrooms, etc...

Here are all three of my girls enjoying some time "out-of-the-car" on the ferry.
Ocracoke Island was a really cool place. I would definitely like to visit there again and spend more than one night - but we'll probably wait until our girls are a little bit older.

I bought this little antenna flag from the Teach's Hole gift shop. On the morning of July 18, 2010, the Jolly Roger flew again out of Ocracoke Harbor... albeit from our Toyota Highlander on a ferry...

OBX: Wrap up

2010-07-22T17:52:00.010-04:00

It has been almost a week since we left Corolla - Outer Banks, North Carolina. I guess its about time that we wrapped up that portion of our summer on the blog.
Survivor: OBX proved to be a bit of a bust this year. After Josh was voted out on Day 1, the Trymynuts Tribe lost the immunity challenge again. This time, Matt was voted out... ... he looks pretty sad with his bags packed in this picture, but it was his own vote for himself that sealed his fate. This trend continued when the Trymynuts Tribe lost a third consecutive immunity challenge on Day 3. The last three tribe members, Gigi, Mandy, & Emily all voted out Gigi... yes, that means Gigi voted for herself. On Day 4, the Lake Kick-A-Butt Tribe finally lost their first immunity challenge. All five tribal votes were cast for Pop-pop, resulting in another case of ousted player voting for themselves. It was obvious that nobody wanted to hurt any feelings - which is a good thing, but not the best scenario for a no-holds-barred family Survivor battle. Jeff Probst would be disappointed. In hindsight, we should have stipulated from the beginning that you could not vote for yourself, but nonetheless the excitment of Survivor: OBX had been lost and the final days of the trip were filled with more wholesome activities.
On Wednesday, Laura and I took our girls and cousin, Emma, to the North Carolina Aquarium in Manteo - about an hour from our house in Corolla. Because we are annual members at the Maryland Zoo, we get free admission to many other zoos and aquariums throughout the country, this being one of them. It was much smaller and not nearly as great as the National Aquarium in Baltimore, but for free admission, we weren't complaining. It was a great way to spend a rainy day.
Here are Maeby, Emma, & Kinzie posing in front of one of the tanks.

Maeby really enjoyed seeing the fish! She pointed and talked to everything in sight.

There was a nice little park on the aquarium property (right on the water), so we took a few pictures after the clouds parted.

Laura poses with the girls by the fountain.

Our last few days at the Lady of the Lake house in Corolla were relaxing and lot of fun.
Kinzie and Maeby really enjoyed the trip!

And Gigi & Pop-pop spent lots of quality time with each of their granddaughters.

Kinzie helped Gigi work on some of her homemade jewelry...
... and Pop-pop tickled Maeby silly!

Many of you have already heard details from our post-Corolla trip to Ocracoke Island, but for those who haven't, you'll have to wait for the next blog post....

Sroka Survivor: OBX episode 1

2010-07-11T23:18:00.015-04:00

Due to internet difficulties, we are a few days behind.... This is from Sunday....

Sunday was a SPECIAL day because it was Brooke's 3rd birthday! :) So Mandy made a beautiful cake...

and here's the birthday girl...
It was Matt and Emily's night to make dinner. They make yummmmmy shishcabobs!

Once the girls were in bed, it was time to let the games begin! .... We started by making teams. We had papers in a bag with either the number 1 or 2. Whichever number you picked, thats what team you were on. We then took a few minutes to come up with our team names and a little strategy if need be.... Here's what it came to be.... (***note: I cannot be held accountable for the other teams name...***)

After teams were chosen we then started our first individual immunity. If a player wins individual immunity they may give it to another player if they choose. If their team is not up for trbal council, then they may give immunity to someone on the other team....Our Individual Immunity game for tonight was wering a pedometer on your head for thirty seconds and however got the most "steps" won. Here is a little taste of the fun haha....

Bert's turn:

PopPop's turn:

After all was said and done, Emily won with 128 "steps" in 30 seconds (shew!). Here is proud Emily with the immunity tiara.

But don't worry my friends, the night is still young. We still have tribe immunity up for grabs. To decide which tribe had to go to tribal council, we played a cornhole tournament.

After three tense games, Lake Kick-A-Butt Tribe won! Watch the videos below to see how Tribal Council turns out:

The votes are in:

So after our first day of Survivor, TryMyNuts Tribe choked and kicked off a strong player. See you next time on Sroka Survivor: OBX

OBX Day 1

2010-07-11T09:14:00.004-04:00

So we packed up the car the night before and when our 3am alarm went off, we put the girls in the car and headed to outer banks hoping the girls would sleep most of the way.... They definitely were awake most of the time, but thanks to Sleeping Beauty, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and Little Einsteins, they were quiet and content. We didn't hit any traffic at all and were in our Corrolla destination by 10am. Unfortunately for us, they wouldn't give us the key until 4pm. So for the next 6 hours we went to some fun shops, had subway, drove around, and went to the wildlife preserve museam/big grassy area to run around. Around 2 we were joined by pop-pop, gigi, sissy and chris (Chrissy??) ....went grocery shopping then GOT THE KEY!!! yayyyyy!!!

We start off with a lovely game of Chutes and Ladders (PopPop made Kinzie cry because he didn't let her win!)

Then PopPop almost burned down the Lady of the Lake.....

I love this pic of Kinzie and Bert swimming....

Matt and Emily finally got here around 8ish and we played a crazy game of spoons...

Josh, Mandy, Emma, and Brooke got in around 10 but by then everyone was beat from a long day of driving...

Stay tuned for the Survivor intro later today! :)

Red, White, & Blue

2010-07-06T09:51:00.005-04:00

We had a really great Fourth of July weekend! My parents held a cookout on the waterfront for family and friends. The weather was nice, the food was good and the fireworks were excellent!

For the occasion, Laura broke out her red, white and blue dress... ... baby Mackinzie wore the outfit back in July of 2006 when she was just a chubby little nine-month old. Now, in 2010, Delaney is wearing the same outfit at almost 15 months old - not quite the "fat-baby" that her big sister was. ("fat-baby" being Kinzie's term for her younger self :)
My wonderful wife, although having shorter hair - still just as beautiful four years later!
Speaking of which, Laura and I also celebrated our second wedding anniversary this weekend on July 5th. Loyal blog readers will remember that we actually started this blog as a countdown to the wedding back in 2008 - since that time I have experienced the most amazing two years of my life and I look forward to each day, week, month and year I get to spend with this wonderful woman and the two beautiful girls she gave us!

(photo courtesy of Mandy Sroka Photography)

"Workin' at the Car Wash, Girl"

2010-06-28T08:22:00.004-04:00

This past Saturday we volunteered to help raise some funds for a good cause. A car wash was held at Broadneck Evangelical Presbyterian Church to support Matt & Emily Sroka's upcoming trip to Tanzania. They will be working for Village School International, teaching English and sharing the gospel.
While I worked the drying and window washing station, and Laura scrubbed and rinsed, Mackinzie split her time between hosing off cars and bringing in the business with her cousin, Emma.
(photo provided by Gale Peck c/o Emily Sroka)
We had a fun afternoon altogether.
Matt and Emily have set up their own blog and we encourage you to follow them and keep them in your prayers. They depart in September and will be in Africa for almost an entire year!

Two Weeks From Tomorrow

2010-06-25T11:17:00.003-04:00

Long time, no blog...
Summer 2010 is upon us and along with it, we hope to do lots of blogging.
Two weeks from tomorrow we depart for our summer vacation. We will be spending an entire week in the Outer Banks, North Carolina (Corolla) in a big beach house with the entire Sroka family. You might remember we made the same trip two years ago.
After that, we will continue to head south to Orlando, Florida (technically, Leesburg, FL) where we will spend the remaining three and a half weeks enjoying some relaxation and Disney magic. (I will be trying to squeeze somewhat of a regular working schedule in there too)
This trip will require lots of driving, so hopefully Laura and I will enjoy lots of this:
..... and this:
Be sure to check back regularly to see what we have been up to. We'll be sure to include lots of photos!
Also, check out the new Twitter feed on the right-hand potion of the blog where you can receive live real-time updates of what is going on with me and Laura.

Playoff Recap

2010-01-29T00:01:00.000-05:00

Laura and I watched "Julie & Julia" last night (because apparently Netflix thinks its funny to send you a movie that is actually 15th in your queue). Anyway, it got us talking about blogs and we realized that while Laura usually does the summer blogging, I've been dropping the ball lately. So here is a little recap of the last few weeks. (... I hope Erin doesn't mind me "stealing" her photos. She is the memory-keeper, after all)We hosted a "front-yard" tailgate for the Ravens/Colts AFC divisional playoff game on Saturday, January 16th. While the result of the game sent everyone home unhappy, the pre-game festivities were very fun! Will and Brittany brought the fire pit to keep us all warm.

We had lots of food - everything from pizza to steamed shrimp to taco dip to buffalo wings to taquitos...

Everyone brought their kids. Here is Dustin posing with Ian and our own Maeby.

Justin & Sam brought Jackson dressed in his Ravens gear!

Brothers rocking our goofy Ravens hats.

The Taylor family stayed warm in the front yard.

I'm pretty sure that Mike had a purple shirt on somewhere under all those layers.

.... meanwhile, Mackinzie and her cousin Emma supported the Ravens by wearing matching Cinderella dresses.

So obviously, like I said, the Ravens disappointed everyone in the end, but we did it up right that night.
Laura and I just arrived home from a long weekend in Tampa, Florida. We celebrated her birthday on Friday, January 22 and my birthday on Monday, January 25. (My 30th) My cousin, Beth took lots of pictures, so I'm hoping to get my hands on some copies soon and maybe I'll post a new blog again soon.

BJ's Wholesale Cuteness

2009-12-22T15:51:00.003-05:00

Who knew that a simple trip to BJ's could produce such a sweet photo-op This was Maeby's first ride in a shopping cart. I think she enjoyed herself and Kinzie really liked sharing the large BJ's cart-riding-space with her sister.

One More Look

2009-12-01T08:15:00.000-05:00

Mackinzie has been a big fan of Mamma Mia! ever since she first saw the movie with her Grand-pop. Since that time she has come to know each character and every song. When we heard that the stage performance was coming to Baltimore, we knew we had to get tickets. This past Saturday Laura and I took Mackinzie, along with both of our parents - Gigi & Pop-pop, and Mimi & Grand-pop - to the Hippdrome to see Sophie, Donna, Harry, Bill, Sam, and the gang live on stage. Needless to say, Kinzie was extremely excited!
The show was excellent, the music was really good and a great time was had by all.
At the end of the show, for a monetary donation, the audience was offered the opportunity to get their picture taken with the actors portraying Sophie and Sky. This was the icing on the cake for Kinzie. Here is the Polaroid we got to take home.

More Chuck For Your Cheese

2009-11-18T13:34:00.003-05:00

When one visit to Chuck E. Cheese's isn't enough, you can count to Gigi to make a second visit happen!
This visit was special because Kinzie's and Maeby's cousins, Emma & Brooke, had just returned from a long visit to Walt Disney World and they were eager to reunite....
... and where better to do it than where "a kid can be a kid".

Kinzie and Maeby both took a ride with Chuck himself...
.... these photos were captured by one of those new speeding cameras you're seeing now on the busy roads. I keep telling those girls to slow down!
(it looks to me like Chuck needed a designated driver - too much pizza and skee-ball will do that to a mouse)

Where A Kid Can Be A Kid

2009-11-10T10:53:00.007-05:00

On Friday night our family was invited to Chuck E. Cheese's in Bel Air for Tasha's birthday party. Tasha is Kinzie's friend from school. Here is a picture of Kinzie and Tasha at Kinzie's birthday party, back in October. We had a great time at the party!
And of course, what is a trip to Chuck E. Cheese's without a stop at the photo booth... it only costs one token.

... a small price to pay for an original piece of artwork drawn by Mr. Chuck E. Cheese himself!
We last visited Chuck E. Cheese's and his photo booth back in December of 2007.

Kinzie was just two years old and we were still seven months away from getting married... (not even engaged yet!)
Here are a couple more shots from the photo booth:

Our big girl!

Kinzie and mommy!

I Heard I Was In Town

2009-11-06T10:22:00.007-05:00

Laura and I made a "long-weekend" trip to Nashville, Tennessee a couple of weeks ago (sans kids) to visit some old friends from college. I attended Belmont University from the Fall of 1998 through the Spring of 2001 and continued to live in Nashville until early 2004. Over five years later, I still have a lot of good friends down there - mostly Phi Delta Theta fraternity brothers. As soon as we got off the airplane and got our rental car, we headed over to my friend, Garth's, house. He and his wife, Laura, would be our hosts for the weekend - for which we were very grateful! After briefly settling in, we hit the town to meet up with friends.

On Friday night, we had a great time at the Varsity Grille and the Red Door Saloon. It was quite a switch for us to be out till almost 4:30am!
After some Saturday afternoon recovery time, we hit up the Embassy Suites hotel bar (where Blair was staying), Pie In The Sky for dinner, followed by a visit to the Riverfront Tavern... capped off with a final stop to the "World Famous" Lonnie's Western Room in Printer's Alley. It was great to share with Laura some of my old stomping grounds from my college days.... and another post-4:00am night!

Here I am with Garth, who has been one of my closest friends in Nashville since we were both Freshman at Belmont back in 1998.

It was great to have Blair in town to hang out with us too! He is a big fan of Laura's. "You look just like Sara Evans!", he always says.
Sunday morning included a trip to Sam's Sports Bar & Grill to watch the Ravens lose to the Vikings (I used to watch every Ravens game at Sam's), a trip to Sonic!, and some relaxation at Garth & Laura's house after two straight long nights out.
I'd just like to, once again, thank Garth and Laura Click for opening their home to us while we were in town.... also, to Laura, thanks for taking some great pictures and sharing them with us!
Check out their blog too!

-Bert

Kinzie's 4th Birthday!

2009-11-04T09:40:00.019-05:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah.... So the blog has been on hiatus for a while now. Even today's post is about an event that took place over a month ago! Better late than never.
For those of you who were unable to join us for Mackinzie's 4th birthday party, these photos are for you!
Each year, Laura strives to make Kinzie as cute as humanly possible on her birthday. Many people still talk about the shiny, sparkly silver dress from her 2nd birthday. This year, Laura really outdid herself and made this puffy, colorful tutu all by herself. It was pretty awesome!
We celebrated Kinzie's birthday at the Bounce Party N' Play in White Marsh.
Kinzie had previously attended her friend, Ava's, birthday party there back in January - in fact we blogged about it way back then.
This was the first year that Kinzie was able to invite some of her friends from school and we were very happy to have them join us.

Of course, the usual family members were in attendance... including Uncle Play-Doh!

The Bounce Party N' Play is a really fun place. Its basically a small warehouse painted in bright colors and housing some of the largest moon-bounces you've ever seen!

Most of them require a lot of climbing, crawling and maneuvering to get through them.

The kids really enjoy it... almost as much as the adults, who are also welcome to join in the jumping fun!

Baby Maeby was such a good baby all day! We were at no shortage of people willing to hold her throughout the party so that me and Laura could participate in the jumping fun.
Here our friend Tana is taking her turn with Maeby.

Kinzie's friend, Tristan, from church, had a great time!

This was probably my favorite moon-bounce there: the giant slide!

.... at the top of the large staircase was two huge slides... as Kinzie demonstrates in these photos.

For the bigger kids, there was an over-sized boxing ring. Me and Will duked it out like we did when we were kids.

Grandpop had a great time too, although he may have wore himself out a bit!

After almost 2 hours of jumping fun, we were treated to some snacks and cake.

... it was a pretty packed little room, but all the kids were hungry and thirsty after all of that excitement.

After eating, Kinzie opened her gifts.

Here are Kinzie and her cousin, Emma.

It was a really great party! I think that everyone had a great time and we brought Kinzie into her fourth year with style.
-Bert

Maeby's First Ravens Game

2009-08-14T08:53:00.002-04:00

Our little baby Maeby turned four months old yesterday (August 13th). Her big sister, Kinzie, was in Virginia for the week, so she got a special treat....
... a trip to M&T Bank Stadium to watch the Ravens first preseason game of the year! The official Ravens photographer came through our section and snapped this picture. Its then made available online for purchase with a Ravens frame to put on a shirt, or mug, or whatever. I chose to rip the picture from the website - gotta love the 'print-screen' option! - and post it here on our blog for free!
Maeby was a good baby all evening. She was really interested in the game and all the excitement for the first hour or so, but then she eventually got a little tired and cranky. She slept for about 30 minutes and by the time the 3rd and 4th string players were scrubbing it up in the fourth quarter we were all about ready to head home.
Great win - by the way. Any time, preseason or not, when we get to stick it to the Redskins is a good time. Hopefully the 23-0 win will precede another great season for the Ravens.
I love being able to take my girls to Ravens games - but it is strictly a pre-season thing. The regular season games are a little too intense for my little girls.
Laura took a lot more pictures, so maybe she'll post them later.
We leave this evening to pick up Kinzie. We're very excited to have our big girl back soon!

The last Disney Park & the last Character breakfast

2009-07-27T10:19:00.007-04:00

We picked MiMi up from the airport on Wednesday evening. (yayy!) Then Thursday for dinner we headed back to (you guessed it....) Margaritaville! We aren't sure who got more of our money during this trip Disney or Buffett haha...
Here's daddy and his two girls waiting outside...

daddy in his glory...and the brainfreeze that came with it haha...

And here's daddy with his youngest in front of Jimmy's plane...

Then Friday we did our last day at the Disney parks! We started off at Holleywood Studios where Bert auditioned for Aerican idol.....

He didn't make it, but thats because the lady was a crazy woman (enough said ;)) ....

We went to playhouse disney and as you can see Kinzie liked this alot!

It was a really cute show and Kinzie had a front row seat

We got to meet Buzz LightYear and Woody... in the line to wait there were many photo-ops!

Oh no, Kinzie! Look out!!

Of course daddy thought he could do it better than kinzie... haha

She was not very excited about being attached to a rocket and flying all over the neighborhood

then we met Woody!

and Buzz...

heres the whole gang

outside was a green army man (geez, he had to be hot!)

Then we took a long hot boatride over to epcot... we walked around the world and met a few lovely friends... such as belle in france :)

Mackinzie LOVED her! "She is soooo beautiful"

In Germany we had to make Grandpop jealous by stopping for the best soft pretzels EVER!

The whole walk around the world, Kinzie kept saying "when are we gonna get to China" because she reaaaalllly wanted to meet Mulan. When we got there...there was no Mulan, but we bought a beautiful umbrella to match Kinzies fan (see previous charleston posts). The ladies working there told us Mulan would be out shortly. Here is the umbrella and they write her name in chinese on it....well.... at least we hope it says her name haha...

Then Mulan came out!

Mulan was fun :) She was showing Kinzie how to peek out of it like they do in the movie

After a few rides, we wanted to head back to Morocco to try to meet Aladdin...on the way in Germany we got to meet Snow White!

When we got to Morocco we waited 20 minutes for Aladdin and jasmine to come out and then the photographer told us they actually wouldn't be coming out for another 45 minutes (forget that!)

So Bert and I did a spaceship ride where it feels like you are actually in a spaceship going to outerspace. It was crazy! I was a nervous wreck in line for this! Then as we are standing on our spots about to get on.. this lady in front of me asks her husband "Isn't this the ride a man died on" (WHAT!??).... then as I sit in my seat, the 10 year old boy next to me kindly shows me where the barf bag is but asks me nicely to turn my head the opposite way if I do need to... you know... haha... so my job in this ride is pilot (nice, right?) so during the ride it tells me to push some button or something or another and since I was spending my time freaking out instead of listening i had no idea what to do... so the little 10 year old boy pushes my button for me and sarcastically says "This is why woman should not be allowed to drive!" hahhahah.... what a funny little kid!! :) Anyway... I survived! And it was pretty fun!

Then we took the hot boat ride back to hollywood studios....Kinzie was sleeping so Mimi sat outside with her while Bert and I road the Aerosmith RocknRollercoaster twice and then we got on the tower of terror twice (we used fast passes from the previous visit a week ago and no one noticed.... Bert felt like the man!.... and as he said.... we were..... "stickin it to the mouse!"

So then the next morning we got up and headed to the Contemporary Resort to have breakfast at Chef Mickey's.

We got to meet Mickey.... goofy...

Minnie....

Pluto...

and Donald Duck!
This was the closest we could come to Minnie holding Delaney. You can see how thrilled Maeby is haha...

heres daddy, donald, and the girls

And MiMi and Maeby

And Mimi and both her girls

We decided to head to downtown disney one last time after breakfast to give us our Disney experience closure .... heres daddy and his girls with the pirate

And Beautiful Mackinzie with her Minnie Mouse ears :) I love this picture :)

So we are done with our 3 character meals, and our 3 hopper days at Disney. We are spending just a couple relaxing (and for bert - working) days before we head back to Maryland on Wednesday! It was a WONDERFUL vacation in which we fully spoiled ourselves and our girls! But we do look forward to being home and spending time with our friends and families! We miss you! See you soon!!

Swimming in Hudson & More Disney!

2009-07-20T11:18:00.007-04:00

Our family enjoyed yet another busy, fun-filled weekend. After having Laura's side of the family in town last weekend, it was time to hang out with some of my side of the family - cousins, primarily.
My cousin Casey recently bought a house in Hudson, Florida with her boyfriend, Brian, and this was our first opportunity to visit their new home and spend time with them. We spent most of our time in their pool!

Kinzie was a wonderful swimmer, as she always is, and Maeby really enjoyed her second time ever in a pool!

More pool fun...

... Laura took a lot of pictures of the pool fun!

Kinzie was the Queen of the Nile on this poool raft.

... and a mermaid with her noodles.

Maeby practiced jumping in the pool, with my help.

... and not to be out-done, Nala displayed her pool-jumping abilities.

And Mackinzie finally convinced her mommy to join in on the swimming fun.

Casey was happy to finally have another 'Rode' girl in the family.

.... and Nala wanted a 'taste' of the action.

We ended our Friday night with an exciting game of 'Motor Mouth' - a board game from 1990 based on the speed-talking guy from those old 'Micro-Machines' commercials.
We had a great day on Saturday comprised of more swimming and lots of grilling out. There were also lots of games like darts, shuffle board, and Wii Bowling. It was definitely a relaxing weekend in Hudson and it was great to catch up with Casey & Brian.
On Sunday morning, Laura and I got the girls up at 5am and we hit the road back to Leesburg. We dropped Maeby off with Aunt Pat and swapped her out for my coustin, Artie, for the day. Laura, Kinzie, Artie and I headed off the Disney's Animal Kingdom to start off a day at the theme parks.

As soon as we entered the park, we stumbled across Stitch! He liked playing with Kinzie's pig-tails while we took their picture. Our first stop at the park was the Kilimanjaro Safari. We saw lots of wild animals, including a white rhino standing and eating no further than 4 feet from our vehicle. It was awesome!
While at the Animal Kingdom, we also enjoyed the Festival of the Lion King show and the Finding Nemo Musical.

While strolling through the "jungle" we came across Baloo from "The Jungle Book" and took the opportunity to add his autograph to Kinzie's "sign book", as she calls it.

Baloo even taught Artie the proper way to scratch your back up against a tree.

After a rather huge fiasco, Kinzie opted not to participate with the Dinosaur ride and it was probably for the best because it was a pretty scary ride. Instead she mustered up the courage to have her picture taken in front of the T-Rex skull.

Kinzie's bravery only took her so far... she made it inside the theater to see "Its Tough to Be A Bug!" - starring the characters from "A Bug's Life".

We all had a laugh taking pictures in our funny bug-3D glasses...
... but after about 5 minutes of stink bugs, bee stingers, giant grasshoppers, and smokey-fake bug spray, Mackinzie had had enough and she wanted out - immediately!
I guess our next showtime there will have to wait until she's a little older.

Our next stop of the day was Disney's Hollywood Studios where we met "Sully" from "Monster's Inc.".

Unfortunately, Sully's hands were too big to autograph Kinzie's "sign book", so we settled for a picture.
It was also unfortunate that the park closed at 7:00pm. We definitely would have liked to enjoy more of the rides and shows yesterday, but time just ran out too quickly - although we were able to do and see a lot, including the Aerosmith Rock N' Roller Coaster, the Tower of Terror, the Beauty & the Beast show, the Voyage of the Little Mermaid show, the Great Movie Ride and the Backlot Tour. We were also able to catch the new American Idol Experience finale and see some guy named Kevin Dees sing "Go The Distance" and win a "dream ticket" to the front of the line at any real American Idol audition. It was a very cool show altogether and very much like watching American Idol on television. Hopefully we'll make it back to Disney Hollywood Studios one more time before we leave Florida so that I can take the opportunity to audition myself!

I'll close out this blog post with one final picture of Mackinzie, rockin' the pink camo stroller and having another great day at Disney!
-Bert

a little chit chat from Maeby

2009-07-15T13:45:00.002-04:00

longest blog of my life haha...

2009-07-14T12:01:00.020-04:00

So Wednesday night we drove to the airport and picked up our friend Tana. She was a good sport playing with Kinzie :)
The next night (Thursday) we went back to the airport and picked up PopPop, GiGi, and Sissy. Then Friday we all got up crazy early and poppop GiGi and Sissy stayed home with the baby while Bert, Tana, Kinzie, and I went to the Magic Kingdom! Finally!

It turned out to be a really great day! :) When we got there, Kinzie wanted to go on the snow white ride first... there was a 0 minutes wait... .and then most of the rides after that we just walked right on! It was pretty unbelievable!

Here is Kinzie and Bert on the Peter Pan ride which had no wait but later we saw was up to a 50 minute wait! (yikes!)

Here we are on Mary Poppins Carousel

We spotted the Sword in the Stone.... Kinzie couldn't get it out....

....but boy was Bert determined haha...

And it still did not budge (but man did it push down Berts ego ;) haha)

Next was the Dumbo ride! This is Berts attempt to get a picture of us with the castle in the background... do you see the castle????? (don't look too hard - its not there haha)

Here is Tana and Kinzie on the Winnie the Pooh ride.... which turned out to be her favorite all day

Here's something new we didn't do last year... we met Ariel!!! :) She was a very nice mermaid :)
Then we did the 3D Mickey mouse something or another (I forget the actual name). This turned out to be favorite among the adults (I am including Bert in this count ...this time haha)

Then we played in Pooh's playground

Here is Kinzie with Alice and the White Rabbit

then here is the first time my heart was racing for my daughter.... we got on goofys rollercoaster... but it was a pretty intense roller coaster for a 3 year old.... but bert assured me she could do it... look at the people in the picture to show just how huge ths rollercoaster is....

So I held my breath... and it turns out that she liked it!!!!

Good for her... but bad for me... because this just opened up a world of possibilities (in Berts mind) of all the great rides Kinzie could now attempt to conquer.... (ugh!)

Here is Daddy, K inzie, and Rafiki (We know you are jealous uncle Bear!!!.... I'm sure you'd much rather be meeting rafiki than being in hawaii!)

When we finally made it over to the pirate ride.... Kinzie was so tired that she was actually drooling on Bert within 2 minutes haha...

So she slept through the pirates ride.... but no worries... we are with Bert... of course we are going to go on it again before we leave ;)

Then it started POURINGGGGGG!!!!!

It poured for about an hour.... we just stood in a store.....

Then the sun came back out and we met Peter and Wendy!

Now here is the next time my heart skipped a few beats for my little girl.... Bert wanted her to get on Splash Mountain!!!! He even decided to prove to me that she is tall enough.... and I mean JUST tall enough....

Here is a picture of the mountain....

I can't believe I allowed this (insert nervous laugh).... but she did it.... there wasn't even a lap bar! i was so scared... and was yelling at Bert the entire ride to hold her down .... Here she is when its over... she said that she liked it (which was a total front because she didn't want to dissapoint daddy) and when I asked if she wanted to do it again she quickly said no because the fox is too scary (note that the fox is NOT scary at all haha)... so I guess only time will tell if this tramatized her for life....

bert then wanted to take her to go on Big Thunder Railroad... which I pleasantly said absolutely not haha.... so we did a few more rides and then saw some of the parade and of course had to fit in the pirate ride one more time before we headed home... this time Kinzie was awake!

Here is Bert trying to Twitter during the ride...

Okay.... moving on to the next day.....

Pool time!!!!! Tana and I stayed just for a minute to grab a few pictures and then headed back because it was too hot for the baby .... and sneakily to make sure we got hat showers before everyone got back haha... sneaky sneaky sneaky....

Here's our crazy family in the van.... Bert and I had to yell at the kids in the back to settle down and stop hitting each other quite a few times....

We had a nice dinner at Kobe's

After dinner we headed to downtown disney...

This picture is for Uncle Play-Doh!

Pretty Girls

The best picture I could get of Sissy and Kinzie playing in the fountains

And of course the infamous shots....once again.... (can you find the hidden PopPop?!)

haha... and we gotta switch up the routine of this a little bit..... Minnie Mouse is now on my hit list ;)

PopPop enjoying his dessert... mmm!

And Kinzie finally got what she wanted... as much as I wanted her to get the Pocohantas Dress.... she got her Alice in Wonderland dress....

She watched the movie and did everything Alice did.... here she is laying in the flowers....

Now we are caught up to last night.... Prince charming and Cinderella's Happily Ever After Dinner!!!! Here Kinzie caught herself a good one! ;)

And here is her twin

And PopPop's dreams finally came true! ( He had been talking about this moment for awhile now haha)

The Fairy Godmother

Anastasia was so funny

and Drizella was nicer than we expected... Mackinzie made sure to tell her to be nice to Cinderella!

Bert was sooooo excited that they had the strawberry soup again (which I think is supposed to go on fruit??)

After dinner, we took a monorail ride , shopped in some stores, and Kinzie danced on the "stage"

Prince charming found her lost shoe.... and it fit! :)

Back at home we played games where Bert and I dominated PopPop and GiGi in Sequence and the Bert won in phase 10 ...
And Kinzie and Sissy took a nice "relaxing" (yeah right haha sorry sissy) bubble bath together! ;)... (ps. Sissy had a bathingsuit on)

So today they went to the pool for a little bit before it started raining and now we are relaxing and i'm about to bring up a rematch of phase 10... We take the Sroka's back to the airport tonight... but what a wonderful visit!

Fun with the Kents! :)

2009-07-08T08:54:00.012-04:00

Yesterday was such a fun day! And what a lovely change of pace for Kinzie to have a friend her age to play with! :) We went and met the Kents at their hotel for some swimming and then to downtown disney for lunch....and then for a most excellent car ride to find the disney outlet haha...

so while the daddy's took the girls in the pool for a swim, I made friends with this lovely bird... it got freakishly close... i was not too excited about that, but thought I would capture the moment anyways haha...

Here are the 3 beauties! :) Kinzie, Catherine, and Eleanor in the hottub:

It ended up having a few downpours throughout the day. Here daddy thought it would be a bright idea to go stand in the pouring rain. (Hey, they were wet anyways right?! Who cares about a little thunder haha)

I'm not sure who was more excited about going through the awesome waterfall... Kinzie or Bert? I will let you decide ;)

Yayyy for friends! :) I think this picture was taking right before the hug took both girls down for a fall haha... such big brains.... little balance ;)

Here they are waiting for the parents to get ready... It was a difficult task to get all the girls looking and smiling at the same time so we get what we get ;)

After we left the pool, we went to downtown disney and had a nice lunch at the Rainforest Cafe.
Then of course, the girls LOVE taking their picture with the fake disney characters haha... who are we to take away from their fun?! ;)

We had a GREAT time with our friends! :) We look forward to getting together more often when we get back to MD. It's nice to have some grownup conversation while the kids get to play too! Catherine and Mackinzie are so alike, so it is a wonderful blessing to have a friend in her! Thanks for a great visit Kent family!

My days are all mixed up.... Hoop-Dee-Doo!!

2009-07-04T22:19:00.026-04:00

Happy 4th of July! We started off the festivities by watching a golf cart parade here at Del Boca Vista... more commonly known as Royal Highlands ;) Here is Bert and his little ladies as we are getting ready to head out the door for more fun!

and me and my big girl!

First stop was to the rec center building to get Kinzies face painted :)

yayyy for pretty little stars!

Then we got in the car and headed to Fort Wilderness... and when I say "headed" ....apparently I mean "Sped" because Bert got pulled over! (ouch!)... but thankfully the Kinzie smiled at the cop and he only gave Bert a warning... (coming very close to having our last frustrating words in the first year of our marraige haha)
Then we got to Fort Wilderness. We park the car, and get on the bus that will take us to the area we are having dinner. As we are on the bus we realize that (UGH!) we left the diaperbag in the car! So here are the girls patiently waiting in crazy heat as daddy rides the bus back to get the diaper bag....

And at last we make it into the nicely air conditioned Pioneer Hall! :) And look at the seats MiMi got for us!!! Front and Center! :)

Now Bert had been telling me about this place for weeks and he kept mentioning how you get to twirl your napkin over your head... well here is what he meant (so happy haha)...

Kinzie LOVED the show! and as we were in the very front, the actors and actresses paid a lot of attention to her which she also loved! :)

At the end of the show we got to play along! :) This might just be Berts favorite part haha... look how excited he is!

The food was yummmmmmy! We had salad, cornbread, fried chicken, ribs, mashed potatoes, beans, beer (or chocolate milk for Kinz), and strawberry shortcake!! mmmmmm!!! here's Kinz when the show was over...

After the show we had a little time to pass until we headed over to the campfire, so we let Kinzie play on the playground

Then we headed over to see Chip and Dale at the campfire.... Yay another family picture!

Many props to Maeby today! She was such a great baby!! At the dinner show she just sat on my lap and watched the singing and dancing.. and even when everything got really loud and crazy, she still stayed calm either watching or sleeping :) Maeby really enjoyed chip and dale too! Look how cute:

And here's what she was watching:

Then Dale came over to visit with us and sign Kinzie autograph book :)

And to my surprise, when Cowboy Anthony asked people to come up and do the hokey pokey, Kinzie went right on up by herself! (although I snuck up on the other side to keep and eye on her)... She did so good! :)

After a few more songs and dance, it was time to go home! :) We decided to not stay for fireworks as the girls were already so tired and the place was PACKED! but not only did we skip the traffic, on the ride home we saw fireworks going off in 7 different locations :) Maybe not as close, but definitely really nice to see in our air conditioned car :) Kinzie saw a bunch of the fireworks and got excited.... and then 10 minutes later......

So it was another great day in Florida! :) I love that we have 30 days to spread all the fun out! Maybe I'm getting old, but I am exhausted after one day of fun and could not imagine trying to go to another park all day tomorrow.... so its really really nice to know we have time to have fun, but also time to relax with the family in between :)....

Tomorrow we check out the church down the road and then head to the pool :)

Hope everyone is having/had a wonderful and safe 4th! :)

oh yeah.... and tomorrow Bert and I will have been married for a whole year!!!! Happy Anniversary Bubby!!!!! :)

Day 8 - Swimming and Shopping

2009-07-04T09:10:00.018-04:00

Last night both the girls fell alseep when we got home from downtown disney, so I chose to spend the evening with my hubby and blog today :)
Yesterday we started off by going to the pool. Bert and Kinzie swam while I sat with Maeby and finished my first S- series book! (so good!). When we got there I realized I forgot my camera (booo!)....so I took a couple pics when we got back...

And the bee towel! buzz buzz!

After swimming, we hung around the house for a little bit as to not take Delaney out in the crazy heat (when does that end in FL!? haha)... So we left around 5 and enjoyed time in the World of Disney store and then just walking around. She REALLY wanted an Alice in Wonderland costume, but they didn't have any close to her her size so we had a little break down... I was pushing the Pocohantas costume because it was so cute and unlike any of the other princess costumes she has... but no... she would rather have a book! (who raised this child?! haha) So we left with a HUGE book of princess stories (yay for family bedtime storytime!) and some minnie mouse flip flops (which will go great with her fourth of July outfit for tonight!). It actually turned out to be great for kinzie because we haven't gotten to go to a disney park yet (who brings a 3 year old to florida with promises of disney world and doesn't take her for 2 weeks?! haha...) but downtown disney could have been a theme park to her! She loved all the photo-ops with the characters....

Now here's where Bert and I got a little giggly haha... because looking at this scene of winnie the pooh, all I could think about was the mustard fiasco the other day haha... so here's what came of this...

haha... we got a few laughs from strangers as we took this picture.... yea, we are THOSE people haha.. :) We stopped and got our tickets for Disney World while we were here... we got 3 day park hoppers for each of us and we can add on a fourth later if we would like... pretty sweet deal. Then we continued our walk and Kinzie was just not done being photographed, "Mom, hey, take a picture of me on this wall" haha... suuuuure....I made sure to put her in view of that cool tree cause it looks like a pineapple and i think its adorable... my kid too ;)

Then Kinz took a picture of me and Bert....and the tree ;)

This next picture is sweet because its an exact replica of the picture we took last year so I can see how much Bert and Kinzie have grown... Bert grew a diaper bag, and Kinzie grew some legs!

This next picture is for Mimi.... Kinzie picked out a little something for you to put in your Florida house. (Thanks so much for letting us stay here!!!) It's a secret til you get here though ;)

Then of couuuuurse we had to pose with the princessess :)

We left around 8:30 to come home and the girls zonked out quickly. Today (the 4th) we are going to the Hoop-Dee-Doo musical Revue at Fort Wilderness!!! We are so excited about this and I have my camera charging so we will have plenty of pictures to share with you either tonight or tomorrow...we plan on going early afternoon to hang out before dinner, and then after dinner stay for the Chip and Dale Sing along at the campfire... pretty sure Kinzie will LOVE this! I know Bert will haha! So I will end this blog with the sign we saw leaving downtown disney because its so true....

Day 7 - Supercalifragalistic Breakfast!

2009-07-01T15:53:00.015-04:00

what an early morning (yawn!)... we were up, ready, and out the door at 7:30 am... this is quite an accomplishment for me and the girls haha... so here are the girls before we leave ... you can tell how excited Kinzie is :) Thanks for the cute matching dresses GiGi!! :)

and here they are ready to go into the car....

So we load 'em up into the car and head out to what should only be a 45 minute drive at most.... sadly to say we left at 7:30 and did not pull up to the Grand Floridian until 8:45! The only person to blame is Mandy.... Mandy from TomTom land :( .... she definitely took us a route where there were no real roads and we ended up in no-mans land sheesh! So we had o turn around and backtrack til we saw disneyworld signs.... thank goodness we made it in time! :)

So we got in and started up at the buffett..the food was YUMMY!!! Mackinzie had Mickey waffles, and Bert was OBSESSED with this "strawberry soup"... we still aren't sure what exactly you are supposed to eat it with haha.. he started out eating it like soup but then moved to dipping a bagel in it... then another....then another... and yes, another haha... (I didn't have to make lunch today because everyone was so full!)

After we got our food, the first friend out was...... TIGGER!.... he didn't talk, but boy was he bouncy! And when Mackinzie asked him where piglet was he was very funny with his charades :)

Heres a pic of Kinzies Mickey Mouse Waffles... mmmm! :)

Nexy was Pooh bear! :) According to Kinzie he was sooooo furry :)

now, if you know me well, you know I'm not a big fan of mascots, or people wearing things to cover their faces, but I took one for the team haha... And I must say that being around Maeby and this kind of Pooh was much more pleasant than the other kind ;) (corny - I know ;))

Here is a picture of Kinzie showing how much fun she was having - which makes all the money spent well worth it --- right daddy?! :)

And in this next picture you can tell how much fun Bert is having hahaha... one of his favorites, Mary Poppins ---- should I be worried that she's taking my spot in the family picture? haha...

Next came pretty Alice in Wonderland...

And then the craziest of them all.... the MadHatter!!! He was soooo silly ... and LOUD! ... Mackinzie was so cute because she said "MadHatter, can y ou be quiet because my baby doesn't like loud noises!"... he replied with "I don't like Mary Poppins either!" which made Bert laugh harder than I've seen in awhile haha... silly silly silly :)

So that was the end of the characters... it really was a nice Breakfast and all three of my kids (not a typo haha) had a GREAT time! :)
While daddy went to get the car, Kinzie got to sit in this beautiful "cinderella Carraige" which she enjoyed :)

Now we are back at the house... daddy got to work, Kinzie watched a movie, and Maeby and I took a nice nap together...

Now here is a picture I took about 5 minutes ago which shows the nap didn't help someone so much haha....

Anyways.... we are having a great time.. lots of family time, which is what our goal for the trip was :)Our next event is Saturday we are going to the Hoop-Dee-Doo show at Fort Wilderness :) We are very excited about this because Bert has great memories of this from when he was a kid! :)....okay, back to my little ladies...

Day 6 - Rain Rain go away....

2009-06-30T21:14:00.008-04:00

So we had every intention of going swimming today... but it rained all morning, afternoon, and into the early evening... Here is a picture out the front door... it was actually POURING at this point, but you can't really tell in the pic...
After Bert and I did our Wii Active this morning, I got Delaney out and we were watching tv... I was just being silly and thought I would take a pcture of us and it turned out so cute because I didn't even realize she was smiling... must've been something pretty funny on the tv haha... look at her cute smile!

This is Daddy and Kinzie going out in the golfcart to get the mail... after dinner we actually took a long leisurely golfcart ride around the HUGE neighborhood to pick out our future house ;) haha... After our drive, we got the stroller out and walked the other direction so that Kinzie could practice riding her new big wheels (she has trouble turning still)... we did have one couple pull over in their golf cart and joke with us about how we stick out like a sore thumb in this neighborhood haha...

Here is a silly little tidbit of our day... I was planning on making meatloaf for dinner until I saw that the mustard I was planning on using expired in march.... so I decided against using it... Bert, however, was completely confident that expiration dates are not real and its just a way to get things off the shelf in grocery stores. He even googled it to challenge me (idiot haha).. he came back noting that he is correct (according to some BLOG! haha)... anyways... so long stort he decided he would squirt a lot in his mouth and if he didn't get sick in a few hours I could use it haha... (yea, we are THAT smart haha).... so here are the picks of the expiration and....

a picture of him doing what I would think as the grossly unthinkable (but mustard makes me gag all by itself ... yuck!)

turns out no one got sick so maybe Berts theory on expiration dates has some credibility... I told him wait a month and then try the milk ;)
On another note, Kinz let go of the fan for the day and found a new and exciting toy.. her old camera... all i heard all day is "Mommy smile" Mommy say cheese" "Mom look at me" "Oh this is a good one Mom" "Beautiful, jjuuuust beautiful" haha... silly silly...

And last but not least, this brought tears to my eyes (note as you read more of my blogs it does not take much to bring tears to my eyes haha...) My little girl, who just yesterday was a newborn, singing a song :) Bert can pride himself how Maeby got all his genes, but this little Kinzie got my personality ;) .... Bert will just have to give her some lessons on pitch ;) haha...enjoy!

Tomorrow morning we get up to go to a "Supercalifragilistic Breakfast!" so you will see many pictures of mary popping, alice in wonderland, and winnie the pooh!! :) Yayyy!!!

Days 4&5 - settling in and relaxing

2009-06-30T08:05:00.010-04:00

Boring as it may seem, after Charleston ( and knowing we will be here all month) we were very happy to have these days just to settle in, unpack, do some shopping, and RELAX! thats what florida is about anyways, right?! :) So here is what our mornings have looked like....

the girls get to snuggle-buggle and watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

while good ole daddy gets to work....(yes, he is actually working! :))

at daddy's lunch break we went to BJ's and got a coffeemaker for the house (can you imagine the morning for me without coffee.... not pretty.... poor Bert haha). So Grandpop and Mimi - here is your lovely new addition ;)

Then Kinzie took a nice long bubble bath in the jacuzzi tub :) This pic reminds me of one we took last year... she loves that it makes sooooo many bubbles :)

And what would a blog be if it didn't have pics of our cutie-pa-tootie litte girl in her way cute outfits?! :)

And here she is enjoying some quiet time in her soothing center :)

And with that picture, I have to give many PROPS to Bert... how he fit all of this stuff in my car is crazy to me! haha... if you have seen our stroller you know it is a monster! So to pack all of our stuff for a month AND the stroller AND the swing.... way to go Bubby!!! :)

So while Maeby was relaxing in the swing, mommy and daddy were watching some movie about the Jackson family, and Kinzie was playing princess games on the computer.... I had to draw a shirt on her because our little girl LOVES to run around naked haha... poor Aunt Pat came over yesterday and to her surprise it was when Kinz was being so silly and completely naked haha... (sorry bout that!!!)

We ended our day last night with a dance party to some songs off the Thriller Cd... I shoulda took some pictures cause daddy was so cute trying gto pull off his Jackson spins and moves while holding the baby haha... but I was too busy dancing with my big girl... and some things are more worth living in the moment than capturing it on photo... and it was a precious moment :)

So other than that we visited with Uncle Art and Aunt Pat and (as always) it was great to see them and catch up a little bit... we look forward to spending a lot more time with them this vacation :)

Bert and I both got up at 7am this morning to do some Wii Active before he had to get to work.... if you want a really great workout (so great that you want to throw things at it and cry at the same time haha) then you have got to check out Wii Active! :) But it is a great start to the morning and it gives me time to Blog to you lovely people and now I'm going to get some reading in before the girls wake up :) ... this could turn into a lovely routine of some me time :) I like it!

.... and ironically as I was about to push the Publish the Post button... the baby cries haha... Maybe I'll get some reading in later :)

Today we plan on going swimming and later when the sun starts to set we will take the girls on a long walk so Kinz can ride her new bike more than just to Aunt Pats house or in the driveway :)

....okay maeby... mommys coming...

Day 3 - On the Road again... just can't wait to get on the road again...

2009-06-27T22:30:00.006-04:00

So here's a boring look at our day:

wake up around 9 - pack up the room

the lovely Christy Shockley comes by for a quick hello :) (It was so great to see you!!

11am we are back on the road.... for about 12 minutes to the closest ...da da da daaaaa!...SONIC!!! :) Here is Bert overwhelmed with delight to finally have his slushi ice drink and yummy Sonic food...

After Sonic, we were officially on another 7 hour trip to get to Grandpop and Mimi's Florida house :) We hit a little traffic, but the biggest set back was that silly little girl with red braids and freckles... yep, Wendi... we were in Wendy's for like an HOUR! it was pretty ridiculous, but a nice break to stretch and relax.... then.... on the road again....
Here is when Bert had finished a redbull and was going crazy haha... we drove by Jacksonville and he wanted the world to hear, "BOOOOOO JAGUARSSSS!!!!"

Then in the blink of an eye (yea right! haha) we were finally to the beautiful Rode home (pics to come tomorrow)... As soon as we got there Kinzie ran to her room because Grandpop and MiMi told her they left a present on her bed. Sure enough it was a pink and purple fairy big wheels!!! :) Kinzie is soooo excited!! So Bert went to the grocery store for a quick essentials visit while I took the girls outside because there was no way Kinzie was going to bed without trying out this awesome new bike! :) Here's the happy girl in her glory:
Anyways... so now me and my handsome, loving husband have settled down the girls and we are finally getting some quality time (baby in between) watching "The Guardian" --- and yes, the first time I saw it I cried my eyes out.... so we'll see what happens now ;) .... G'night friends and family! Thank you for your prayers for safe travel... We made it! :)

here I come Hubby :)

Day 2 - Walking aroun' Touring the Town

2009-06-26T21:05:00.018-04:00

The best feeling about this vacation is that technically this is just a short stop on the way to our vacation!! :) And let me be the first to say (although many have said it before so I don't really know what that means!?) this place is BEAUTIFUL! We stared off our day at 9:30am on a carraige ride to tour the downtown area. Here is Kinzie in front of our enormous horse "Sampson"... but Kinzie will fight you that his name is "SamSam" haha...

After a lovely hour tour of beautiful 7 million dollar houses with fake doors, crazy gates, and amazing stories.... we headed to the aquarium....

and when I say "headed" to the aquarium, I mean we walked 198 blocks to get there.... and when I say "198 Blocks", I mean a really long walk in crazy sticky humidity... so it was actually about 10 blocks.... ;)

Anyways... so this aquarium is nowhere near as awesome as Baltimores, but it was still a lovely time spent with our beautiful girls in a nicely air conditioned atmosphere... oh yea, with some sea animals too ;).... The first thing we did at the aquarium was play in the kids area.... heres Bert and Kinzie in a shark cage ( ahhhh shark!!!)....

(yes... that was Kinzie's scared face hahaha)....

This next picture is Kinzie showing us how the fishies swim....

They didn't have any dolphins, but they did have a HUGE tank with lots of HUGE fish and sharks... pretty cool...

Now if you know Kinzie, you know she loves puzzles... so this was my nerdy little girls favorite part of the whole aquarium.... and it wasn't even actually a puzzle it was just some velcro pieces where you were supposed to make it look like a next where the penguins could lay its eggs... but to my smarty pants, it was a very challenging puzzle...probably because it was only 4 peices that didn't fit each other haha...

After the aquarium we did the 198 block walk back to the hotel to feed the baby... and ... well... you see what happened...

Oh and I almost forgot a VERY IMPORTANT part of our day... on the 198 block walk to the aquarium pretty little Mackinzie gave daddy "the look" and asked for a beautiful proncess fan... and of course he gave in :).... and it was worth EVERY PENNY!!!! she has not let this fan out of her hands all day!!! She just thinks she is the most beautiful princess with this priceless fan :) Its actually pretty cute! She has to show everyone along the walk ( did I mention is was about 198 blocks?!) , and everywhere we go! So here is one of MANY photos with the fan....

After our nap we were getting ready to go shopping and out to dinner... I guess I was doing everything in my power to delay another walk haha... so here are some silly pics we took... Here is me and my little mini-me:

And as everyone knows, Maeby decided to leave my genes behind and soak up all of daddys (is that wierd to say!? haha.... ) anyways... so heres daddy and his little look alike:

ps. HOW CUTE IS THAT PIC!!!!??? :)

okay, okay, so I had stalled as much as possible because Bert was getting that Margaritaville itch again :) .... So we started our walk... here some nice ladies took our picture so we actually have our first vacation family photo :)

Then we continued our stroll to (Drum roll please!) Jimmy Buffetts store :) Heres a cool shot of daddy and his parakeets in front of a painting of buffett ( notice the lovely fan... again...):

Here's another way cute picture of our little model - I think this one is getting framed for daddys office :

Then, fan in one hand, buffett bag in another we head off to dinner

to none other than.... BUBBA GUMPS!!!.... now all was low-key until the waitress asked us how long it had been since we had seen Forrest Gump. Bert of course answered "I've seen it at least 100 times"... (okay friends, look at that question again... now look at Berts answer.... silly silly haha... ) So of course the waitress says "Oh you must be an expert!" (ooo -la-la) and then begins to quiz Bert (challenge accepted and conquered!) haha... so after the waitress leaves, the rest of our dinner is filled with funfilled facts and quotes by Bert to continue proving to me (like I didn't already know) how deeply intellectual he is (ie: "I knew Mackinzie's kids meal boat would say Jenny on it because if it was a real bubba gump boat of course it would have to say Jenny")... and this is the picture that came with that... and at this point you can see how hyped up on his awesome-ness he is because he actually went into adding detail to this lovely photo-op (Can you find the hidden shrimp tail!?)

So... well... Mama always said Stupid is as stupid does... ;) haha...

Here is how entertained Maeby was during daddy's show...

So after dinner we came back to the hotel to get ready for bed... and if I could add loud, vibrant sound effects of angels singing I would ... because ... Ohhhh (insert angelic noises).... daddy fed the baby!!! :) ... he did however try to weazel his way out of it... and then when caught, tried to distract me by focusing on the fact that I called him a weazel haha... but he did it and thats all that matters... so of course I had to take a picture of this MOMENTOUS occasion!...

Alright, so my crazy long blog comes to its end right here... tomorrow should be a much shorter blog as it will just be another day on the road.... FLORIDA HERE WE COME!!!!!

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter... we tend to "tweet" alot while board in the car :)...

www.twitter.com/bertrode

www.twitter.com/laurajoyrode

Yayy for fun days, well behaved girls, and for now, comfy beds! :)

Vacation - Day 1 .... Charleston here we come!

2009-06-25T22:05:00.010-04:00

It was a very early morning for the Rode family today. We all dragged our excited little selves out of bed at 2:45am and we were on the rode by 3! What a GREAT start! I know when I was a kid and my parents said we were gonna leave at 5am, we never were actually on the road until 9 haha... so I was very impressed with our start time! Kinzie decided she wanted to stay awake and watch her movies --- with a few " We're going to Florida! We're going to Florida" songs in between! --- The girls were EXCELLENT (much to my surprise I hate to say!) We didn't hear a peep out of either of them! We decided to take a break and get some breakfast and feed the baby around 7:30 -- can you believe 4 and 1/2 hours without hearing the girls?! Anyways so we stopped at waffle house and here is our first pic of our trip.... can you guys why he took it?! ---- you are so smart! ;)
After our bellies were nice and full, we headed back on the road again... at this point Kinzie did end up falling asleep but only for a half an hour... the rest of the trip she just watched her movies and played with her new magna doodle pro. Here is a pic of her catnap where you can tell how exhausted she is:

So the trip goes on and after 2,448,984,980 billboards for the oh so amazing (said with lots of sarcasm) south of the border, we finally passed it. I owe many memories of my parents putting us to bed and putting a chair under the door handle (real safe right?!) haha...

So we are getting a little closer to ending our 10 hour trip.... can you guess who we had to stop for the most?? was it the 3 year old??? nope! was it the newborn baby??? nope! the grown woman??? nope! Bert was all caffiened up on a few coffes, redbull, and sodas... this is a still shot of him doing the peepee dance while anciously looking for another exit that has a bathroom haha...

And FINALLY we are getting off 95 and only 50 miles left til Charleston! --- there is a light at the end of this tunnel!!!!!

And of course as soon as we get there we unpack our stuff into the hotel and relax for a bit... then after a phone call from my friend Christy, we realize that Margaritaville is only open for 25 more minutes!!! (Can you imagine berts reaction?!)... so bert is out the door to do a quick look until tomorrow....

hes back in 30 minutes.... with a new margaritaville t-shirt...and if you know my husband, you know that is exactly what he is lacking in his wardrobe (man, I am on a role with my sarcasm tonight!)....

DINNER TIME! we took a stroll to Vickeries bar and grill for some cajun food (mmm!!!) It was very delicious and I look forward to our spicy re-cooked breakfast in the morning!

Here is Kinzie being a super model as we wait for our food...

Here's Daddy with his mini-me and his yummy plate of food!

And me and Kinz pose for one more shot at the restaurant:

After dinner, we took a long walk all around King Street to see what trouble we can get ourselves into tomorrow....

Within 5 minutes after getting back from our walk, Kinzie was in bed asking Maeby to be quiet because she is really really sleepy.... one minute later Kinzie was passed out! haha... so a bath and a bottle for Delaney, and we are set for the night!!! :) It was a wonderful day and we couldn't have asked for the girls to be any better!!! :) What a blessing!

Tomorrow we are waking up early for a carraige ride/tour and then off to the aquarium! .... STAY TUNED!!! :)

We've Been Twitter-fied!

2009-06-25T16:08:00.002-04:00

In case you haven't heard, Laura and I have succombed to the power of Twitter.
Follow our tweets!

Bert's Twitter
Laura's Twitter

We're posting a lot of cell phone pictures from our trip.
We're currently in Charleston, South Carolina.
-Bert

Last Weekend in Baltimore

2009-06-22T16:48:00.008-04:00

Our family will depart for sunny Florida early (well before sunrise) this Thursday morning. Our long drive will include a two-night stop in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina. Neither Laura or myself have ever been to Charleston before, but we have heard nothing but great things about it, so we are very excited about going for the first time. I'm most excited to visit the Margaritaville store in Charleston, but thats just me.
Speaking of me, check out the father-daughter resemblance in this picture taken this morning:
... just add a little milk dribble on the side of my mouth.
Yesterday, we visited family for Father's Day. Here is our latest family photo - wearing matching outfits, of course!

All of the Rode fathers enjoyed a relaxing Sunday afternoon.

Kinzie loves spending time at Grandpop and Mimi's house!

The day before Father's Day was spent in the parking lot outside the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden, New Jersery for Jimmy Buffett!

This was my fifth Buffett concert and the third for me and Laura together. It rained for most of the drive up there and for a little while during our tailgate, but we were all able to make the best of it.
Notice the large puddles in the parking lot:

It was a great day and Jimmy was great as always!
Finally, last Thursday evening, Laura and I stumbled upon this great photo-op:

Mackinzie was so worn out from her field trip (and long day spent with mommy and Gigi) that she fell asleep at my desk playing on the computer....

.... all tuckered out!
We should be in Charleston at this time in three days. Laura and I are going to try to blog and post of Facebook as much as possible while we're away, so keep checking back!
-Bert

Maeby Growing

2009-06-16T12:31:00.000-04:00

Delaney Mae was born back on Monday, April 13. As most of you will recall, she spent a week in the NICU at GBMC. We brought her home on Sunday, April 19. On that day, at almost an entire week old, we took this picture of her in her swing with "big" Tigger.... ... and now, a full 8 weeks since that photo and 9 weeks since her birth, here is Maeby back in her swing.
She is just about the same size as "big" Tigger now and growing more and more by the day!

Baby Smiles

2009-06-15T11:23:00.003-04:00

For weeks we've been waiting for Maeby to start smiling. Her cute little face was so adorable, yet expression-less.....

..... until now! It takes a little coaxing, and I might be making myself look ridiculous in the process, but the results are well worth it!

Delaney Mae Rode - the smiling baby! At nine weeks old today.

More Recent Photos...

2009-06-10T16:49:00.005-04:00

Most of these recent photos have been posted on Facebook over the past few weeks, so if you are Facebook-Friends with Laura or myself, you've probably seen these already.
If you're strictly an blog-only follower, we hope you'll enjoy this look back!

We visited the Boordy Vineyards back on May 30th for Parrothead Weekend. Here, Maeby and I are posing with Rob Taylor and his son, Lucas.

My cousin, Casey, visited from Florida over Memorial Day weekend. We enjoyed a Friday afternoon happy hour at The Barn with her and Beth, along with Will and Brittany.

Another shot from Boordy Vineyards - picnicing on the lawn.

On May 29th, we celebrated, as a family, the coming of the "savior of the Orioles", Matt Wieters.

My spring 2009 BSSC kickball team, "Drunk Again & Lookin' to Score" celebrated a successful season, where we finished in the final four before losing in the semi-final playoffs.

We got together with our immediate family to congratulate my cousin, Rich's, graduation from the Marines.

This past Sunday, our girls wore their matching dresses to church.

Maeby recently got personalized diaper covers.

Good friends! Mackinzie, Ian and Sophia at Lucas' post-baptism cookout.

Me and my matching girls!

Kinzie and Maeby, matching yet again, for swimming and crabs at Mike's parents' house. Maeby wasn't crazy about the pool itself, but loved the hot tub!

Thanks to Casey and Sharon for some of those photos.

Getting Caught Up....

2009-05-16T09:14:00.005-04:00

So I've been catching some grief for the lack up updates on the blog lately, so I figured I'd keep this one short and sweet and give the people what they really want:
Pictures of our beautiful girls!

Maeby enjoying a day at the Maryland Zoo in her Peg Perego Skate.
Sisters cuddling on a Saturday morning...

.... watching TV in mommy & daddy's bed.
Mackinzie riding the Zebra on the carousel at the Zoo.
Maeby, hamming it up as a box turtle.

Mackinzie, hamming it up at Gigi's on Mother's Day.

Maeby laying comfortably in her pink camo Boppy.

The girls at Mackinzie's Monday night gymnastics class.

Maeby, chilling on an Mimi's ottoman.

Sister kisses!
That's it for now. Hopefully this will tide you all over till the next big post!

-Bert

The Hardest Part...

2009-04-23T08:51:00.002-04:00

The hardest part about getting up for work this morning.... .... is leaving these two behind.
I'm off to take Kinzie to school and then go to a client for day three of an audit. After that, I'll be going to my three hour Tax Accounting class at Towson University from 6pm to 9pm.
It's gonna be a long day....

Home Sweet Home

2009-04-20T12:50:00.001-04:00

I haven't blogged since this past Wednesday night, but I think the word has spread through the grapevine (and Facebook) that Maeby finally came home from the hospital yesterday morning. Laura and I arrived at GBMC's NICU on Sunday morning at about 10am. After a short visit and a brief examination by the nurse practitioner, Maeby was given the okay to come home with us.

It was wonderful to finally be able to hold our little girl without her being wired up to machines.
I proudly wore a new pink polo shirt - the daddy of a tiny baby girl.
She fit perfectly into the Peg Perego car seat.
It was great to finally get some use out of it. It had been sitting in our living room few several weeks now. Maeby stayed wide awake throughout most of the drive home. Her new surroundings were much more interesting than the dark corners of the NICU.
Finally home!
We had a great afternoon, chock-full of visitors! We were all pretty worn out by the time we were left home alone.

Our whole family is doing great!
Thank you to everyone for your prayers and support. We are truly blessed to have such a wonderful circle of family and friends. You are all truly appreciated and we hope you get the chance to meet our newest addition in person soon!
-Bert

Final Night at GBMC

2009-04-15T20:16:00.002-04:00

The hours are quickly passing until Laura and I will be forced to check out of our postpartum suite at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. We have the lights dimmed, the Orioles game on TV with the volume low.... .... I am wrapping up some last minute April 15th Tax work.... (ie: posting this blog)

... and Laura is getting some much needed rest.

Unfortunately, Delaney Mae won't be coming home with us tonight. She is doing so well, but the doctors need to make sure she is completely healthy before we can take her home. I have changed two diapers today (including a big fun poopy fiasco while Uncle Will stopped by for a visit) and during our latest visit, Laura was able to feed Maeby from a bottle - and boy, did she suck that thing down quickly! It was pretty impressive!
So our plan now is for me to pack up while Laura continues to rest. We'll go upstairs for one final visit with Maeby before we leave her for the night. Its probably going to be tough leaving the hospital without her... we're already anticipating that, but we're going to stay strong with the thoughts that this is all for the best and her time to come home will come soon enough.
I guess the hardest part is knowing that she won't just be a few floors away for the next few days. Over the past two nights, we have made several late night visits with her. On Monday night, I was up there with her till 4:30am and last night I held her in the rocker well past midnight. She was wide awake while I was talking to her and it was almost like she was communicating back to me with her eyes. It was so fun and I am looking forward to spending many nights like that with her at home in her nursery. I know we'll be spending a lot of time visiting her at GBMC over the next few days and I will be sure to keep everyone updated on her status and with new pictures.

Thank you all for your well wishes and prayers. She is improving with every visit we make!

Newest Big Sister

2009-04-14T21:09:00.006-04:00

Little Miss Mackinzie Joy Sroka officially became a big sister last night at 7:53pm. Unfortunately because of the sudden drama regarding baby Maeby's health, Kinzie had to wait until today to actually meet her little sister.
She was such a trooper yesterday. She arrived at GBMC shortly after mommy and daddy (around 11:00am) and stayed all day long and through into the night until Gigi and Pop-pop took her home with them (around 10:00pm). She enjoyed every minute of her hospital visit and even made a friend in the main lobby.
Although she was disappointed by not being able to see Maeby yesterday, she showed up this morning - ready for the big occasion!
.... and still in the same clothes as yesterday, but if you had super-cute "Big Sister" scrubs to show off to all the doctors and nurses, you'd wear the same outfit two days in a row.
So here they are: Sisters!

Our two little girls, photographed for the first time together. Mackinzie was so excited to meet Maeby. The very first thing she did was sing a song for her:
"Mackinzie loves Delaney, Delaney, Delaney; Mackinzie loves Delaney, Yes she Does!"
She was a little disturbed by all the wires coming from Maeby, and a few tears of sadness were shed, but she was able to swallow that up quickly and make the most of her first short visit.

There is still no major news on Maeby's health. We are going up to the NICU to visit her about every two hours. She appears to be improving with every visit. This is the latest photo, taken just a little more than an hour ago. She is breathing well and she has begun to make a 'sucking' motion with her mouth. She's probably very hungry because she has yet to have eaten anything since being born last night. The doctors have told us that getting her to breath properly is the top priority. Eating will come soon enough.
Please continue to pray for us. All signs are looking positive, so we are very hopeful!

Maeby Update

2009-04-14T14:58:00.003-04:00

Laura and I slept about 3 hours last night in our post-partum suite. We left Maeby's bedside in the NICU at about 4:30am. She was at about 23% oxygen then. We went back to see her around 10:30am and she was off the oxygen mask (slash: spaceman helmet).
Here is our first family photo (minus Mackinzie).

Laura and I were thrilled to be able to hold Maeby! She looks so great, but she's still have a little bit of a hard time breathing. As of 2pm, she was going to get some spinal fluid tested for pneumonia. Her Xrays showed some grey cloudiness in her lungs and they couldn't tell if it was pneumonia or just some excess fluid in her lungs. We should be getting the results shortly. In the meantime, please enjoy these new pictures from this morning and I will post more information as it becomes available. (now that I have a better internet connection)
Mommy and Maeby
Me and my new little girl.

She's heeeere!

2009-04-13T20:41:00.002-04:00

Just before 8pm, Laura gave birth to Delaney Mae Rode. She came out with difficuly breathing. They took her up to the NICU almost right away. We don't know her size and weight yet, but she seemed pretty big to me. She gripped my finger really good before they took her upstairs. I should be able to go see her shortly.
Please keep her and Laura and me, and Mackinzie in your prayers. Laura is doing excellent!! She did amazing! I am so proudof her.
I will fill in more details as soon as they're available.
-Bert

Playing the Waiting Game...

2009-04-13T18:53:00.004-04:00

No baby photos yet, so don't get too excited...
Our reglar OB, Dr. Zargarian, had to leave for the evening, so we just had the doctor on call come in. We're at 7 centimeters - YES! We're optimistic that baby Maeby should be here soon.

In the meantime, I'll keep keeping on....

Gigi, mommy and Sissy are all here for support!
Keep checking back... it could be very soon.

UPDATE AGAIN: Still Waiting...

2009-04-13T18:22:00.002-04:00

It is almost 6:30pm. We arrived this morning at 10:30am. At last check, Laura was still just about 4 centimeters. Her epidural is in full swing, so she is feeling good, but just a little tired. Its probably going to be another few hours before any big news, but keep checking back.

UPDATE: The baby is coming today!!

2009-04-13T15:07:00.002-04:00

I don't have any pictures to share yet, but stay tuned!
Shortly after I posted this morning's "3 DAYS" blog, Laura informed me that her water broke and we headed down to GBMC to delivery Delaney Mae.
As of right now, we're dealing with regular contractions, but Laura is feeling good.
I will update later today, so keep checking back!
-Bert

Work Day Passes... 3 DAYS!

2009-04-13T06:07:00.001-04:00

Its bright and early on Monday morning. We're just three days away from baby Maeby's arrival! (if Laura can continue to hold on that long....)I was up before 5am to perform my weekly office duty of installing the latest updates to our servers (and that is about as general of a description that I can give).

The good thing about being the only one in the office building that early is that I don't have to get dressed for work. Monday mornings, I'm a hoodie and 'jammie pants kind of guy. Thank God for the benefit of working from home for the rest of the day!

-Bert

One-Hundredth Post: 4 DAYS!

2009-04-12T06:30:00.001-04:00

Welcome to the 100th blog post at The Rode Family Blog. We started this thing last summer as a countdown to our wedding and here we are now, just four days away from our baby's arrival. The nursery is complete! Yesterday, Laura and I put the finishing touches on every small detail of the room. The letters are hung, the video monitor is installed, the clothes are all washed and put away, the cable TV is hooked up, and the curtains are hung. We even installed a remote controlled light switch!
We planned on taking a few pictures to post, but by the time we were all finished, it was dark outside and none of the shots we were taking turned out very good. So for now, we'll leave you with this single photo and the promise of some nursery pictures TBP (to be posted).

Happy Easter everyone! The Lord has risen indeed!
Our family will be celebrating Sunday morning with Laura's family at their church followed by lunch and an Easter Egg hunt for Mackinzie and her cousins. We'll be ending our day with my side of the family for dinner.
-Bert

Live in 5 DAYS!

2009-04-11T10:01:00.002-04:00

We have a bush in front of our house (I have no idea what kind it is) but it blooms every year around early April. The pretty purple flowers only stay around for about a week and then they're gone. I always have meant to take a picture of it and I forget to do it every year .

Not this year! It was a beautiful day yesterday so Laura and Mackinzie posed for our fifth day countdown picture in front of our house.
Check back tomorrow as the countdown continues...

Less Than a Week: 6 DAYS!

2009-04-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

This time next week, little Maeby will have spent her first night outside of mommy's body and in the real world. Its crazy to think about and we all can't wait to meet her!
Mackinzie was so excited that she had a hard time sleeping last night, so I had her hold up the 6 Days sign and take a picture for this morning's blog. It has been a long week and we have a busy weekend ahead of us in preparation of the nursery and house as a whole. Hopefully next week will go by quickly!

A New Countdown: 7 DAYS!

2009-04-09T07:32:00.004-04:00

Ladies and gentlemen, today we begin a new countdown at the Rode Family Blog.
Laura's doctor has scheduled to induce labor exactly one week from today. If everything goes according to plan, Delaney Mae Rode will be born on April 16, 2009. Her original due date was April 25th, but based on our last three weekly doctor visits, the doctor is extremely confident that Laura is ready to deliver.
These are the letters we have been working on for baby Maeby's room. It has been quite a challenge to cut out all the paper and shapes and Mod-Podge it all together on the large letters, but I think it has turned out pretty good. It ensures that Maeby's letters will be different from every other babys' nursery letter in the neighborhood.
I will be posting a new blog each day counting down to the big day. Please check back often and keep us in your prayers as we prepare for Maeby's arrival.

A Day at the Zoo

2009-03-24T12:03:00.004-04:00

... more like a few short hours at the zoo, but nonetheless...
Sunday afternoon was so beautiful that we decided to make the first use of our annual zoo membership at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. I think that anyone we've ever known who's ever been to the Baltimore Zoo has had their picture taken on this lion statue.... everyone that is, except for Mackinzie - who refused to sit on the famous photo-spot. Instead she opted to have mommy hold her and stand next to it.

She did really like the little monkey statues though and relished the chance to have her picture taken hugging it.
It might be a little hard to see in the photo, but we were able to get right up close to the crocodile. A little too close for Kinzie.

The rhino in the background had just finished taking a tremendous pee before we took this picture. Its amazing, the things you can see at the zoo!

Mommy joined Mackinzie for another picture at the Monkey statue.
This was probably our favorite photo from the day. We were able to get really close to this giraffe - almost close enough to touch. Kinzie and I turned around to get our picture taken and this guy popped his head over Kinzie's shoulder to get in the shot too!
All in all, our short zoo visit was very cool. If my memory suits me well, the zoo isn't nearly as great as it was when I was a kid, but its still worth a visit now and then and I'm sure we'll be taking full advantage of our annual membership this year. Kinzie and Laura are already going back on Saturday with some of Kinzie's friends!

Two Down, One to Go....

2009-03-13T13:46:00.003-04:00

Just like that: the next baby has arrived! Less than a week apart from Anna Bibo. Lucas Ryan Taylor was born yesterday to our good friends, Sharon & Rob Taylor, at GBMC.(I borrowed these pictures from Erin Robinson'sand Mrs Robin Pauley's Facebook albums)
Here is Rob pushing Lucas around like he's in a shopping cart.
.... and mother and son.
While I was in class at Towson University last night, Laura went to visit the new family.
I just returned to work from visiting Lucas myself while on my lunchbreak. It was very cool to hold a baby who was less than a whole day old! I think that is probably the youngest baby I've ever held... that I can think of.
Hopefully the next few weeks will fly by quickly for Laura and me and Mackinzie. We are getting very excited and very anxious to have our little Maeby here with us!

One Down, ... Two to Go!

2009-03-11T08:12:00.001-04:00

The 2009 Abbott Church baby-boom welcomed its first member over the weekend.
Here are Kristen Bibo, Sharon Taylor, and our own Laura Rode back in November of 2008.
Here they are just over a week ago...

... and here are Kristen and Tim welcoming little Anna Bibo into the world on Saturday, March 7th.

She looks beautiful and we're very excited to meet her in person soon!
Congratulations to Tim & Kristen - especially Kristen, who endured 21 hours of natural labor! Very impressive!
With the birth of Anna, it leaves Sharon and Laura next in line. Sharon is due at the end of March with a little boy, and our Maeby is due to arrive on April 25th.

Also, not pictured, but worth mentioning is the addition of two more expecting mothers in our congregation: Vicky Roland (expecting a girl) and Samantha Smith (expecting a boy, Jackson).

2009 is definitely looking to be an exciting year at Abbott!

Fantasy Football Banquet

2009-03-10T19:22:00.006-04:00

OK, so we're going to go a little backwards in time - before the Peg Perego Skate was purchased and review our 2008 Beltway Fantasy Football Championship Banquet.

Each year, the league owners gather for a luncheon to celebrate a successful season and award our champion.
This year, Michael Motorcycle won their second consecutive (and third overall) championship. Owner, Mike McNeive was awarded the newly-engraved league trophy, newly embroidered gold league blazer and $400 cash.
Along with the regular season champion awards, several other owners went home with BFF Pro-Bowler recognitions....
My team, the Camo Pirates, had two pro-bowlers in our conference.
Will's team, Will Power, had their quarterback, Drew Brees, representing the conference.
The Estonian Rebels and owner, Mike Maiste had their first ever pro-bowl selection with running back, Michael Turner.
Despite a disappointing 2008 season, the Berrywood Bombers and owner, Dustin Pfeifer, had a great wide receiver in Anquan Boldin.
Chris Walbert and The Squeakers were the surprise team of 2008 and had the most players resepented from a team.
Justin Smith and the Fleetwood Macks came to the banquet not expecting any awards, but were happy to have two selections.
Everyone had a good time and a great lunch at By The Docks that Sunday afternoon (although one or two of our guests experienced some awful food poisoning symptoms the next day). We had to owners go home without any awards:
Jared Pfeifer and the Glenoak Block Party rounded out a disappointing 2008 with no awards.
Greg Armstrong was all smiles, despite having none of his Strong Arm players selected to the BFF Pro-Bowl. His team has yet to have any Pro-Bowl players in the history of the league.
Next on the BFF agenda is the 2009 Winter Owners Meeting which will lead into the 2009 Draft/Auction to be held in September of this year.

Maeby's Stroller

2009-03-02T19:54:00.009-05:00

Last weekend, our family trekked to Gaithersburg, Maryland to the Great Beginnings store. It was the closest store we could find that carried the Peg Perego Skate stroller. This was Laura's "dream" stroller and it was worth the drive. When we got home, we opened the box and began the assembly.It looked complicated at first, but it really wasn't that bad. The next part was learning all the different positions the stroller can be put in and taking picturs of them.
.... the carriage....

... the standard stroller...
... another carriage position - outdoors....
... notice the handy cup holder....
... standard stroller - outdoors...
... stroller featuring the boot...
.... from another angle...
The stroller easily detaches so if the baby falls asleep in the bassinet, you carry her in without waking her up. Genious!!
If there is any downside to the Skate its that this (above) is how small it collapses. Considering that Laura and I both has pretty large vehicles, it isn't a big deal - but if Laura still drove her old Hyundai Tiburon and I still was a Neon man, then this stroller probably wouldn't have been for us.
.... this is me carrying it.

So that's Maeby's stroller. She's gonna be a Skate-Girl!

The Rescuers

2009-02-11T09:42:00.003-05:00

We recently joined the Disney Movie Club to help build Mackinzie's (and soon Maeby's) ever-growing collection of Disney movies on dvd. One of the first movies we received was 1977's "The Rescuers" - featuring the voices of Bob Newhart and Ava Gabor. I put it on for Kinzie this morning....

... and considering that she hasn't moved from this position for almost 30 minutes, I'd say she likes it.
I just thought this would make a funny picture to share.

.... back to work!!
-Bert

Bounce Party

2009-01-28T12:15:00.003-05:00

About a week ago, Mackinzie went to a birthday party for her friend, Ava, from ballet and gymnastics. Ava was turning 4 years old and her party was held at Bounce Party N' Play in White Marsh.
Here are Kinzie and Ava sitting together in the giant inflatable birthday throne.
The place was pretty incredible! It was basically a large warehouse, painted in bright colors and filled with all different kinds of inflatable moon-bounces.

The best part was that the parents were allowed to join in on the fun!

My favorite was the giant slide! It was so big that Kinzie and I were able to go down together.

Also for the adults (mostly) was a large boxing ring with oversized boxing gloves. Our good friend, Tom challenged me to a match.

It turned out to be a draw with each of us being knocked down once.... although I think I could have beaten him fair and square if he hadn't been giggling so much the entire time. (Tom and Laura's daughter, Sophia is good friends with Kinzie and Ava).

I know, it looks like I had more fun at this four year old birthday party than Kinzie...

The girls all had a blast and ended the evening with chicken nuggets and some Ariel cake. Here are Kinzie and Sophia posing for the camera before we headed home.
All in all it was a great time and it was really fun to spend that time climbing, jumping and bouncing with my daughter.

Poor Laura... Baby Maeby wouldn't let her enjoy the jumping and bouncing so much. She tried getting into one moon-bounce when we first arrived, but the motion made her pregnant belly upset.
And the party was held on the 22nd... her 27th birthday, of all days! At least she got her picture taken in the big birthday throne! :)
-Bert

White Martin Luther King Jr. Day

2009-01-21T14:10:00.016-05:00

It didn't snow on December 25th, so we didn't have a "White Christmas". But it did snow on January 19th, so we had a "White Martin Luther King Jr. Day". (I just wanted to explain the blog title so as to avoid any racial confusion.)
Laura had the day off school for the holiday, so it was almost like a wasted snow day, but we all had fun anyway. I had to work all day, but around 4:30pm we went outside to take some pictures and have a little snow ball fight.

(.... I might have gotten into the snowball fight a little too much...)

Kinzie loved the snow!

After playing for a little while, we drove down to Pop-pop and Gigi's for dinner in Anne Arundel County... shocked to find that they didn't see a single snow flake all day!

Tuesday evening Kinzie had her weekly gymnastics class and this week the parents were invited to watch.

They started with some stretches.

They also did a few other mild exercises on the mats.

Then came the trampoline...

It is a long, rectangular trampoline that the girls jump on from one side to the other.

Then they moved over the balance beam, but it was hard to get photos because the instructor was guiding the girls away from the line and towards to the wall.

Mackinzie ended the evening by doing tumbles along the long floor mat.

.... I spent some time yesterday afternoon at Continental Arms unleashing hell on this target with my good friend Justin and his 40 caliber Glock 22.

... See, daddy can have fun too!

Festivus Maximus!

2009-01-12T09:27:00.007-05:00

The Ravens came out victorious over the hated Tennessee Titans on Saturday. Now only the even more hated Pittsburgh Squealers stand in the way of the SuperBowl.Laura, Mackinzie, and I hosted 14 of our closest friends and family to watch the game. It was an "edge-of-your-seat, nail-biter" and there was much celebration when the clock hit 0:00.

It was great to get phone calls and text messages from our family and friends who made the trek to Nashville to go to the game. My dad sent picture messages of the Ravens fans swarming 2nd Avenue in downtown Nashville. My brother called after the game when only Ravens fans were left in the stands of an empty LP Field. What a wonderful feeling to repeat 2001!

I'd like to take a second to point something out here:
Back in October, when the Ravens first played the Titans here in Baltimore, my good friends (and Fraternity brothers) James and Ben, came to visit and go to that game with us. They noticed the Ravens schedule I had taped on my desk and remarked "You can already put an 'L' next to tomorrow's game". They were right that day. The Titans beat the Ravens 13-10.

I've kept that schedule going all season....
How does it look now guys?

Purple Friday

2009-01-09T12:24:00.003-05:00

Just a quick post to acknowledge Purple Friday. Laura wore my personalized "RODE III" jersey to school this morning and I took this picture of Kinzie and me before I took her to school and went in the office. Tomorrow's the big day! Hopefully the Titans will be going down!
GO RAVENS!!!

Go Ravens!!

2009-01-05T11:40:00.006-05:00

Its a playoff frenzy in the Rode home. We debuted our new 52" high-def flat-screen for the Ravens/Dolphins game yesterday. Mackinzie's musical instruments made great noise-makers for all the touchdowns and turnovers.

And Laura made all kinds of funny scribble drawing on her new Coolpix camera (ala: Ashton Kutcher)

Mike as Joe Flacco (uni-brow included...)

Will as head coach, John Harbaugh
.... and then as a Ravens cheerleader...

myself as... ? ... a white Ray Lewis??
It is off to Tennessee now to face the rival Titans on Saturday. Go Ravens!

After the game, Laura and I drove to Virginia to pick up Mackinzie. She had a good weekend, but was very happy to be coming home, as were Laura and I.

We were blessed with a safe ride home and we're looking forward to a great week.
-Bert

Santa Claus Came to Town

2008-12-30T12:15:00.001-05:00

Its almost 2009 and time to wrap up the holiday season on the Rode Family Blog. On the Saturday before Christmas, we got together with some of our good friends for a fancy Christmas dinner at the Oregon Grille.

We had 15 people altogether with a long table in the most upstairs room. The food was excellent! Laura and I took advantage of the husband/wife system of ordering steak and crab cakes and then sharing. Surf and turf, baby! We got to do that two nights in a row, considering we had my office Christmas party at the Harryman House on the night before.

Then came Christmas eve. After Kinzie went to sleep, Laura and I opened our gifts to each other. I gave Laura the Nikon Coolpix 560, with the touch-screen that Ashton Kutcher advertises. She loved it and many of her photos will appear later in this blog post.

Laura got me the Ravens helmet hoodie that I wanted so bad, plus a canopy tent and portable grill/cooler for tailgating. They were all great gifts and I can't wait till Jimmy Buffett announces his 2009 tour dates so I can start preparing!

Here is how the Christmas tree looked with all of Kinzie's presents wrapped underneath.

We left Santa Claus a glass of milk and some peanut butter cookies... (he really enjoyed them!)

After Santa left, we woke our little girl up....

She was so adorable in her Christmas 'jammies.

One of her most favorite gifts was the white-sparkle Tinkerbell dress.

She enjoyed walking down the steps to show it off to us. Here is the whole family in the pile of presents. ... lots of Disney dvds!

Our first stop of the day was the Sroka family. Here is Mackinzie with her cousins, Brooke and Emma.

Laura got to try out one of the cool features of her Coolpix camera... the touch-screen drawing.
Laura's brother, Josh, got a Shock Ball for me. Its like a hot potato, only it gives off a pretty powerful electric shock at random intervals. Its pretty awesome and rivals the Ravens helmet hoodie as my favorite Christmas gift of the year.
Here I am with Josh. I was able to find a dvd copy of the 1989 Orioles "Why Not" video for Josh.

Here is Mackinzie with Pop-pop and Gigi.

After lunch and exchanging gifts with the Sroka family, it was off to my parents' house for the Rode portion of Christmas.

Nannie got big hugs from Kinzie for bringing more gifts from Santa.

... and Laura got to try out more of her touch-screen drawing on Will...
... and Brittany.
Kinzie loves playing with Uncle Playdoh!

... and her older cousin, Audrey. They shared Grandpop's massage chair and watched "Sleeping Beauty" together.

When it was all said and done, we had lots of trash to throw out. Trash day finally comes tomorrow, so our living room has pretty much looked just like this for almost a week now.

So that is Christmas 2008 all wrapped up into one blog post. 2009 is just around the corner and baby Maeby will be here before you know it!
-Bert

To Hold You Over Till Christmas...

2008-12-24T07:58:00.001-05:00

It's been over twenty days since our last post. We have had a lot going on lately, but not many pictures have been taken. I usually only like to post "picture" blogs because I think they're more visually interesting. I still don't have much to post now, but I figured this short blog post will hold our readers over until after Christmas... when I'm sure there will be lots of pictures to share. Here is the Christmas card we sent out this year. We sent out as many as we could, but if we missed you, consider this our holiday greeting to you!
Last Thursday, Mackinzie participated in her school Christmas play. It was really cute, but also in a really dark room, so our pictures didn't turn out so great. I video taped the whole thing (but on an old analog video camera, so I have no clue how to transfer it to the computer)

Here, Kinzie's class is displaying the nativity scene. She was an angel.

After the play, we went back to her classroom for some candy before going home.

Santa Claus is coming tonight and we're all so excited! You can ask Mackinzie what Christmas is all about, and she'll say "it's Jesus' birthday"..... and what is more important Santa or Jesus? "Jesus!"

Merry Christmas!

-Bert

The (Thanksgiving) Weekend That Was

2008-12-03T07:35:00.001-05:00

Our family had a great Thanksgiving! I started the day off bright and early for game of tackle football with my friends. We played on a full 100-yard field and included kick-offs and field goals. We had about 16 people playing and everyone had a great time without anyone getting hurt... although my body has been quite sore ever since. I played a pretty good game myself - recording a few tackles, an extra point, and a special teams touchdown off of a botched onside kick. After the game we drove down to Arnold, MD to celebrate Thanksgiving with Laura's family. After an amazing meal, we spent some quality time with the family before driving back to Baltimore to celebrate Thanksgiving: Part Two with my side of the family. It was a really great day all-around, considering that we got to spend time with pretty all the people we love and care so much about.
The next evening we drove up to Bel Air for dinner at the Armstrong's house with some friends. Mackinzie made a new friend in Erin & Ryan's elderly grandmother. She provided Kinzie with many different teddy bears to play with.

We all had a very fun time playing games and hanging out with old friends.

The next morning we decorated the house for Christmas. This is one of Laura's favorite days of the year. I had been holding out on the Christmas music and cheer until after Thanksgiving was over, so it was fun to finally be able dig out the tree and all the other Christmas decorations from the basement closets.

Once the lights were strung and the ornaments were hung, I helped Kinzie put the star on top fo the tree.
Each year we buy a new Christmas ornament for each of us that represents that year for us.

This was a pretty obvious choice for me in 2008.

This is Laura's ornament for the year. It is pretty funny... and pretty true.

This is Mackinzie's ornament. In 2008 she discovered the magic of the Disney princesses and even made her first visit to Walt Disney World, so it was only fitting that Tinkerbell be her ornament for the year. She even has a switch on her that makes her wings light up and change color.

It's a dark picture, but here is the finished product. Now we can't help but get in the Christmas spirit every time we walk through our living room.
The next day, Sunday, after church, we went back to my parents house to watch the Ravens beat the Bengals on television.

Mackinzie and I played a little "offensive/defensive line" game. We got down in our three-point-stances and tried to tackle each other.

She took me out every time!

Then Grandpop wanted to get in on the fun....

... and she took him out too!

We should probably get her a Terrell Suggs jersey, rather than a Steve McNair.

The Pauley and Pittas families joined us later for some dinner and "Storytime with Mr. Roy".
... we couldn't miss this photo-op.

In baby news, Laura is doing great! Our fourth (out of five) Fifth-disease-related sonograms went well. The baby is definitely a girl - as they were to confirm from the previous sonogram and she is healthy and growing normally. Our final sonogram is scheduled for next Friday, December 12th. If all is still well at that point, then we can put the whole Fifth-fiasco behind us.

Please keep Laura and baby Maeby in your prayers as we continue through the coming days and weeks.
-Bert

A School Day In The Life

2008-11-25T12:21:00.000-05:00

Today I thought I'd document a typical school day for Mackinzie.
Kinzie attends "A Family Affair" day care on Tuesdays and Fridays. I usually try to wake her up by 8:30am to give her enough time to eat, watch a little TV, and prepare for the school day. I try to have a cup of chocolate milk, some Teddy Graham crackers and a Flintstone vitamin ready before I wake her up.
Then I go to her bedroom to wake up the sleepy-head. This YouTube clip captured the moment.

After a short visit to the potty, it's time to get dressed. Today I picked out her "Pirate Princess" shirt to wear to school.

After getting dressed, Kinzie has her breakfast in mommy & daddy's bedroom and watches a little bit of "Yo Gabba Gabba" on the dvr.

I prepare a little soft bed on the floor for her, made up of a throw pillow and blanket.

Its a pretty good morning routine that works really well for both of us.

Here you can see D.J. Lance Rock for yourself on the television. I'll usually sit and watch 10 minutes or so with Kinzie.

Now it's time to go to school! .....Hop in daddy's truck.....

... and listen to Disney princess music! Check out the YouTube clip...

Mackinzie has been attending A Family Affair for a couple of months now. She really enjoys it!
When we first get to school, we stop by the kitchen to put her lunch box in the fridge.

Then its off to play and learn! (I didn't take any pictures inside the classroom today)

After school today, Mackinzie and I get to go to the airport to pick up my parents (Mimi & Grandpop) who have been in Florida. We're looking forward to a great Thanksgiving weekend!
-Bert

Prima Ballerina

2008-11-24T08:00:00.001-05:00

This Saturday families were invited to sit in on the Saturday morning ballet class. We headed over to Patapsco High School in Dundalk at 9am, like we've been doing every Saturday morning for the past few months.

Mackinzie really enjoys her class. She joined with her friend Sophia from church and she has also made a few new friends through the class.
Lots of parents and grandparents came to watch the rehearsal.
Kinzie loves her pink camo skirt... its also daddy's favorite!

The girls did so well! We were all really impressed!
It was really cool to find out that the performance will be to "Here Comes The Sun" by the Beatles.
I uploaded this short YouTube clip of their practice.

... you can tell how much she loves her skirt!
Laura and I braved the cold weather and enjoyed a big Ravens victory at M&T Bank stadium yesterday. It was an especially sweet win, considering that my Aunt and Uncle (big Eagles fans) sat right next to us! Tack on a big Camo Pirates win in the Beltway Fantasy Football league and you've got a great start to the week!
We have our fourth (out of five) Fifth-related sonogram on Wednesday. Please keep Maeby and us in your prayers. Everything has been so far so good and hopefully that prognosis will continue in these final few weeks.
-Bert

Cutie and the Hobo

2008-11-19T12:34:00.004-05:00

Laura and I made a short visit to Babies 'R' Us last Friday just after finding out that we were gonna have another little girl. We didn't buy anything for Maeby yet, but I did pick up this sweet shirt for Mackinzie. In the little girls department, on the sale rack, and in daddy's favorite color!
(.... yes, camo counts as a color!)

We had our own little lunchtime photo-shoot before naptime today.

I wore my sweet camo snow cap so that we would match.

Now its off to nap time for Kinzie and back to work for me.
-Bert

Definitely Maeby

2008-11-18T08:45:00.007-05:00

On Friday, Laura and I went to GBMC for our third sonogram (out of five) to keep an eye on the baby for Hydrops and other Fifth disease-related problems. Great news! Everything is still looking good! The baby is still healthy and developing normally. The next sonogram is scheduled for a week from tomorrow (the Wednesday before Thanksgiving).

Here is how the baby looked on Friday. Its not the most detailed picture we've gotten, but she looks beautiful!
.... that's right, I said "SHE". We're having another girl! It is great news! Laura and I are very excited! We have decided already that she will be named "Delaney Mae Rode". I'm planning on calling her "Maeby" and hoping the nickname catches on with everyone else. Kinzie is so excited to have a little sister!
Please continue to keep me, Laura, Mackinzie, and now Maeby in your prayers. We still have two more sonogram checkups before the whole Fifth's fiasco is over.

In other news, the Camo Pirates losing streak is finally over! We beat Jared Pfeifer's team, the "Glenoak Block Party" 85-54. My fantasy team now has a 6-5 record and we're tied for first place in our conference with Mike Maiste's "Estonian Rebels".
-Bert

Big Sonogram Today

2008-11-14T08:45:00.001-05:00

Will it be a boy? Will it be a girl? We will find out today! As long as the baby cooperates and positions himself/herself in a way that allows the sonogram technician to see it's business.
This will be the first Rode baby since my cousin Ryan over 21 years ago! On the Sroka side, Laura's parents John and Bonnie will either be getting their first grandson, or their fourth granddaughter!
Be sure to check out the blog later tonight or tomorrow for an update! Laura and I are very excited!
(... on a side note, this is still just our third sonogram - out of five - to test for Hydrops and other Fifth disease symptoms. We have been blessed to have nothing but positive results so far and we pray that that continues.)
-Bert

Halloween & Other Things...

2008-11-10T11:30:00.012-05:00

Halloween has come and gone, but I finally got our camera out of Laura's purse to post some of our recent pictures.
On Halloween night, we went to our friend Mike Maiste's neighborhood because they do Halloween right! Almost all the neighbors decorate their homes and stand outside to give out candy. Mike invited a lot of our friends over for what has become somewhat of a tradition of giving out candy and then watching a scary movie together. This year Mackinzie was joined by Ian, the baby dragon, and Addy, (Barney) the dinosaur. Ian belongs to our good friends, Dustin & Stacey and Addy is Dave & Cindy's niece. Kinzie dressed in her Yoda costume again and I got to dress as Han Solo... again!

We had some fun with other kids dressed as Storm Troopers and Boba Fetts. Another part of this Halloween tradition is giving out odd foods to kids who might be just a little too old to be trick-or-treating. This year some of those kids got slices of cheese, thawed hot dogs, and unfrozen freezy-pops. We ended the night with a viewing of "The Strangers".

A couple days later, the weather turned unusually warm, so we had an afternoon of wiffle ball in the front yard.

My softball season(s) have long since ended, so it was nice to get a little mid-autumn practice in.

She can even hit with her eyes closed!

Here is a little YouTube clip I uploaded of our fun that day.
On this past Saturday, Mackinzie had her weekly ballet class. It was a dreary, rainy morning, so it was looking like our photo appointment with Aunt Mandy might be cancelled, but the clouds opened up and the sun came out and we made our way to Canton.
These are just two samples of Mandy's work. A few more can be seen at Mandy Sroka Photography. Click on the "blog" section of her site.

Mandy does such a great job! These pictures were taken for Mackinzie's third birthday.

We highly recommend her for your photography needs!
Here is one of Mackinzie's 2 year old pictures that Mandy did for us last year.

One more picture...
Kinzie's outfit for church yesterday demanded a photo be taken. She was a little grumpy, but the face kind of fit her "Next Top Model" look for the day.

We have our third Fifth-related sonogram this Friday (3rd out of 5). Please keep us in your prayers! If we're lucky, we'll get to find out if we're having a boy or girl on that day!
We also have a big family-related day coming up a week from today (next Monday). I will likely be able to post some details on that next week, but in the meantime some prayer for our family would be greatly appreciated.
-Bert

Paper Dolls

2008-11-06T09:48:00.012-05:00

It's no secret that our family is a little bit on the nerdy-side when it comes to Star Wars. (... at least Mackinzie and I are...) I recently got my hands on an old paper dolls book from "Star Wars: Episode I 'The Phantom Menace'" . It included little paper copies of all of Queen Amidala's outrageous outfits.Since Laura STILL has our camera with her at school, (*hint, hint*cough, cough* bring it home *cough*), so we used Mackinze's pink VTech Kidzoom camera to capture some of the fun.

First I punched out each of the pieces from the book. (since Kinzie was the photographer here, I had to use my sweet Microsoft Paint skillz to piece that picture together.)

And then Mackinzie would dress the paper doll. (... while she herself was dressed as "Belle")

There were seven different outfits in the set, including one that dressed the Queen as her alter-ego, Padme.

The jacket of the book even opened up to become a backdrop set to use with the dolls.

I can't remember the last time I've had this much fun playing with paper dolls.....
-Bert

Quickie Post

2008-11-05T15:38:00.003-05:00

My grandmother has been bugging me for a new blog post lately. I've been crazy busy, but I'm gonna try to squeeze this one in real quick before I leave to teach guitar lessons this evening.

This one's for you Nannie... enjoy!

We had our second Fifth-disease-related sonogram (third sonogram overall) last Friday, on Halloween. It was a very short visit and we were thrilled to get good news that the baby looked totally fine. We still have 3 more sonogram appointments to go before we're completely in the clear, but we are very optimistic! Please continue to keep us in your prayers.

Baby Rode has grown three centimeters since our last sonogram (two weeks prior) and he/she is up to just over 9 cm. Our next sonogram appointment is set for a week from this Friday (Nov. 14). We're hoping that if the baby is positioned just right, we'll be able to determine the sex that day!

In other news, Mackinzie had her very first school pictures taken a few weeks ago. Unfortunately picture came smack-dab in the middle of the whole Fifth-fiasco! She looks adorable in these shots, but we probably won't be purchasing any of them, due to the slap-face, rosey cheeks... the most common symptom of Fifth disease in small children.
These photos are technically the property of Lifetouch Portraits... so no printing them out or anything!
I shrunk these photos down, so the pink cheeks aren't all-that noticable, but it is pretty bad in the larger prints.
Laura and I were so happy that Kinzie's teachers were able to get her to smile so well for these pictures....

... she's not quite as smiley in her class photo...

I haven't given a Camo Pirates fantasy football update lately, but that's mostly because we haven't won a game in three weeks! Hopefully that trend will change this week when I go up against Justin Smith's Fleetwood Macks team.

Now I gotta run...
-Bert

Baby's Hungry and the Money's All Gone

2008-10-22T12:15:00.000-04:00

Mackinzie and I went out to dinner yesterday evening at El Salto Mexican restaurant after I picked her up from school. Although she didn't really indulge in the Mexican cuisine (she ordered chicken tenders and fries), she did like the chips and salsa.

... and the limes!
Also yesterday, I started experiencing some of the symptoms of Fifth disease; most specifically the rash-y arms and legs. The rashes have actually gotten worse today. They don't itch, but it does feel like a really bad sun burn.

I tried to take some pictures of it, but they don't really do it justice. It really sucks, but I guess since my wife and daughter came down with Fifth, it was only a matter of time before I got it myself.
Today, while I was working in my new basement office, I got a surprise visit from a neighborhood squirrel. He didn't mind coming right up to the sliding glass door to see what was going on.

He was really curious.

... and then he proceeded to climb all around the screen door. He hung around for quite a while, so now I'm wondering if I leave the blinds up everyday, will he be coming back for repeat visits?

In other news, the Camo Pirates suffered their second loss of the season to Chris Walbert's Squeakers team. I scored 111 points, but The Squeakers scored an astounding 141 points! Congrats to them, but now I'm preparing for a duel with my brother's team, Will Power next week.
-Bert

Lots of Family News!

2008-10-20T08:00:00.011-04:00

There has been a lot going on with our family lately.
About two weeks ago, Mackinzie started having this pink-ish rash on her face and arms and legs. She cheeks were so rosey that it looked like she had been slapped in the face. Sure enough, it turned out to be Fifth disease. The illness sounds a lot worse than it really is. Mackinzie never felt sick or had any other problems, other than the rashes, which also didn't seem to bother her. The biggest problem with Fifth disease, is it can be extremely harmful to unborn babies under twelve weeks along, which is just about where Laura is with our current pregnancy. It can cause a condition called Hydrops with the fetus and potential miscarriage. Needless to say, we were initially frightened and expected the worst when Laura tested positive for Fifth disease. We met with a genetics counselor at GBMC on Friday to discuss the issues. The counselor was able to ease many of our fears by telling about the percentages and such. That same day we had another sonogram and as you can see, the baby was a-okay! It looked like it was waving to us as if to say, "I'm doing okay in here". Our next steps are to have bi-weekly sonograms for the next 10 weeks to keep and eye on the baby to make sure that none of the symptoms of Fifth or Hydrops take effect.

We have greatly appreciated the many prayers and thoughts that have come our way over the past few days. We would just like to ask for continued prayer for the baby and our family as we go through the next few weeks. Friday's sonogram greatly improved our feelings on the whole ordeal, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're out of the dark just yet.

In lighter news, our family got into the Halloween spirit for my brother's annual costume party. Mackinzie had been wanting to dress like Yoda (from Star Wars) for a long time now, so she finally got her chance on Saturday night. Of course, Daddy and Mommy had to join in on the fun! I dressed as Han Solo and Laura as Princess Leia.

We had a great time hanging out in Will's spooky basement. It was decorated with lots of colored lights and pumpkins, skeletons, witches, and other Halloween standards.

Kinzie enjoyed dancing to the loud music!

Here is Laura/Princess Leia with my brother, dressed as Ravens head coach, John Harbaugh.

Our friend Justin is a big Halloween freak! He loves all kinds of horror movies and everything that goes along with it. He and his wife, Sam, co-hosted the party at Will's house. In fact, pretty much all of the Halloween decorations belonged to Justin.

Kinzie got the point later in the night where she wanted to take her Yoda costume off. So she changed into her pajamas and played Starfall on Brittany's computer for the rest of the night. She impressed many of the guests with her keyboard and mouse skillz.

So that was our weekend. We are all doing great and we're staying very positive about the baby situation. We know that our prayers and yours are being heard and we're putting it all in God's hands.
Thank you all again!

-Bert

Daddy the Plumber

2008-10-14T17:16:00.008-04:00

My very first job out of high school was working as a plumber's assistant for a large local contracting company. It was the summer of 1998 and I didn't really do that much hands on work. It was mostly a lot of "hand me this", "hand me that", "get out of the way and just let me do it." So here we are, 10 years later and the drain stopper... handle... switch.... thingie on our bathtub broke last night. It was ugly....

The metal piece had corroded away so much that it broke it two. I removed the metal plate and thought to myself, "I'm gonna have to hire a plumber for this job!"

... Like I said, it was ugly. I decided to call a plumber in the morning, but the answer came to me in a dream. I can fix this myself!
This morning, I took the broken pieces to Home Depot. I found the replacement parts without having to ask anybody for help. I came home and here is the end result...

The drain stopper-switch-thingie is good as new! I admit, I'm not the best with plumber's putty, so it might look a little amateur around there, but it works like a charm. I am far from the handyman around the house, so as you can tell, I'm quite proud of my little accomplishment. I probably saved $100 by not calling a plumber and spending $10 at Home Depot for the parts on my own.

In other big news, my Camo Pirates are continuing their winning streak. Four straight wins gives us a 5-1 record to start the season. We're still in first place in our division and 2 games ahead of the Estonian Rebels. Our win this week came against Zac Fisher's Zac's Fishers. The score was 100-92, a close one. Our only loss this season came against the Fishers back in week two, so it was great to get a little revenge.

Now we just need Tony Romo's broken pinky finger to heal quickly!

-Bert

Mini-Paparazzi

2008-10-07T18:00:00.004-04:00

One of Kinzie's favorite birthday presents came from Aunt Teri. The Vtech Kidizoom Camera. It is a great little digital camera for kids. It's look reminds me of the old "ViewMaster" 3D thingies that I had when I was a kid. It has a lot of cool features like superimposing images like pig noses or pirate hats or stage curtains, etc. to add some creativity to the shots. Our house has felt like a red carpet movie premiere lately with all the camera flashes going off. I just downloaded all 153 pictures from Kinzie's camera and she helped me post her ten best shots here on the blog.

10. Grandpop's pig nose is only missing the lipstick.
9. Mackinzie Sroka: LIVE! On Stage!
8. James Eastman visiting from Nashville for the Ravens/Titans game.
7. The DVD menu for Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
6. An artistic shot of Cinderella glass slippers, a Munchkins box, and a basket full of Cheetos.

5. Mommy's beautiful smile.
4. Uncle Playdoh being goofy.
3. "Chocolate Lips" Audrey 2. Daddy the pirate. "Arrrgh!"
1. Uncle Playdoh (Will) being himself.

.... just imagine looking at 143 more shots like this! As soon as I cleared these pictures off the camera and saved them to the hard drive, Mackinzie was back to taking more photos of random stuff like the refrigerator, the carpet, door knobs, and railings.
In other news, my fantasy football team, the Camo Pirates, won again this weekend. It was a 112-58 victory over Greg's Strong Arms (Greg Armstrong). My team is now 4-1 and in first place in our conference. Next week, we're playing Zac's Fishers again... the only team to beat us so far this season.

-Bert

Fun-Packed Weekend

2008-10-06T07:19:00.000-04:00

This past Friday (October 3rd), our little girl turned 3 years old! Mackinzie started her big day with a morning trip to Dunkin Donuts before going to school. We bought a big box of Munchkins to share with her class for the birthday celebration. After school for Mackinzie (and work for Laura and me), we spent the afternoon preparing for Saturday's birthday party.
We started Saturday morning with another trip to Dunkin Donuts (... I feel like we should get some kind of advertising royalties here on this blog.... ). Mackinzie had her second ballet class of the fall season. After class, she shared more Munchkins with her friends. Here she is with her new friend, Ava, on the left, and Sophia on the right.Me and Laura spent the afternoon cleaning the house and preparing the food for Mackinzie's party. It was the first time we had a lot of people in our house at once. Despite it being a little crowded upstairs, the party was a huge success! Mackinzie got a lot of great presents from her friends and family, which included Sophia, Catherine, Emma, Brooke, Audrey, and Ian.

We sang happy birthday once....

... but Sophia was in the basement and missed it, so we got to sing it twice!
Here is Mackinzie opening some of her presents with Catherine, Ian, and Emma looking on.

After everyone left, Tom and Laura (and Sophia) stayed back to play some Rock Band with us before my friends from Nashville (Ben & James) came over, along with Mike Maiste, to go out for the night. We met up with our friend Courtney and hit up a few place on the Avenue in White Marsh before calling it a night so we could get ready for the big Ravens/Titans game the next day.

We had a great tailgate Sunday morning with James and Ben, Will and Brittany, and Laura and myself. Despite the Ravens loss, we all had a great time and it was one of the better tailgates I can remember having... I don't have any pictures to share, but it was a great tailgate, I promise!
At least the Camo Pirates are going to win. More on that tomorrow...

-Bert

Congratulations Mike & Rachel

2008-09-29T07:28:00.003-04:00

Our good friends Mike McNeive and Rachel Pfeifer got engaged last week. Mike (of 365 Shirts fame) went to high school with me at Baltimore Lutheran, but was in a grade below with my brother and our good friend, Dustin. Rachel is Dustin's younger sister. We have all been good friends our entire lives.Laura and I are very happy for both of you! Congratulations!
-Bert

Introducing....

2008-09-25T17:51:00.003-04:00

We have our first picture! The whole sonogram experience was very exciting! Our little peanut is about 2.65cm long right now. We got to watch it move around quite a bit inside of Laura's belly. It was being really active for a little while there! We got to hear it's heartbeat, which at 189 beats per minute, sounded like an angry neighbor pounding on a door. The due date is set between April 22-25, 2009... just after tax season!

Here is Kinzie, posing for her very first picture with her new baby brother/sister.
She and Nanny even got to come into the examination room with us to see the baby move on the screen and hear it's heartbeat. It was a great day all around, rounded out by Kinzie getting her blood taken for the state-required lead paint test and she didn't even cry! She was very brave!

We would especially like to thank Nanny for sitting with Mackinzie in the waiting room while Laura and I were in examination room. We hope that getting to be the first to see the baby and getting to hear it's heartbeat made the trip worth-while. Thanks Nanny!
-Bert

Kinzie Being Cute

2008-09-24T07:38:00.000-04:00

The next few days and weeks ahead are big ones for our little girl. She starts attending her new school on Friday. Then Mackinzie begins her very first ballet class on Saturday morning. She is taking the class with her friend, Sophia, from church. Last night, she tried on her dance body suit and tights. She's not crazy about having to have her hair pulled back for class, but I think she'll be able to handle it.

A week after ballet begins, Mackinzie will be turning 3 years old! She's having a litte princess birthday party on October 4th with a few friends and relatives.

I took this picture of Mackinzie napping the other day. It was funny to see her leg hanging over the side of her little bed.

The biggest news of all for Mackinzie is the excitement of becoming a big sister! We go for our first sonogram tomorrow. She is very excited to see a picture of her new baby brother or sister for the first time!

Potty-training has been going exceptionally well and she wears real underwear all the time except for when she's sleeping! She even has a new favor book to read while she sits on the potty. ... just like daddy!

Our sonogram appointment is tomorrow at 4pm. I'm sure one of the first things we'll do when we get home is scan the picture and start posting it on Facebook, MySpace, etc... Please check back at the blog soon to see it!

-Bert

YouTube Fun

2008-09-23T11:28:00.003-04:00

Its a quiet Tuesday afternoon in the Rode house. I'm working, as usual, and Mackinzie is playing, also as usual. I took a short break to add some creativity to our morning and here are some of the results:

Mackinzie loves to play the games on NickJr.com. For a little girl who isn't even three years old yet, she's quite to computer whizz!

She's also a little Star Wars geek. (daddy's little girl :) In this short clip, she demonstates who to active a light saber.

In Beltway Fantasy Football news, my team, the Camo Pirates improved to a 2-1 record with an 87-68 victory over 2007 BFF Champions, Michael Motorcycle. It was a rematch of last years BFF Championship Bowl, only this time I won!

-Bert

An Apple A Day...

2008-09-22T12:49:00.000-04:00

Mackinzie visited her new pediatrician today for her 3 year old check-up and to have the doctor fill out her paperwork for Day Care. She won't turn three until a week from this Friday, but she passed with flying colors. She currently weighs 30 lbs and is 37 inches tall. The best part about the whole visit was that she didn't have to get any shots! Although, because we live in the 21234 zip code, she'll need to be tested for lead paint. Its pretty ridiculous, in my opinion, since she just moved here a few months ago, but apparently its a state law. She'll have her first day at A Family Affair Day Care this Friday.
In other news, Laura and I went to the Ravens game yesterday. It was great to see the defense blow the Browns out of the water in the second half! It was very hot in the upper deck though and my poor pregnant wife practically baked in the hot sun! I think that will be the last time we sit in Will & Brittany's seats.
It also looks like the Camo Pirates have beaten Michael Motorcycle in fantasy football, but I'll wait till tomorrow to post more on that... when it becomes official.
-Bert

An Evening In Federal Hill

2008-09-18T17:30:00.000-04:00

Last night our church's Young Adults Group held it's monthly get-together at Mark Weaver's house in Federal Hill. Mark's front porch made for a great location for a Mexican-style cookout.
We had one of the bigger crowds that I've been a part of.

Mackinzie entertained everyone with her stories.

... and when Isaac wasn't busy running around trying out his newly-abled walking legs, he and Kinzie were playing together.

Even Ian got in on the playtime fun!

Apparently Mark likes to play with block too? Or did somebody bring those to his house?

Our little girl had so much fun with everyone, as did we.

It was a lot of fun together with everyone. Thanks to Mark for opening his home to our group.

In other news, the pregnancy continues to go well. Laura feels great on some days, while not-so-great on others. Please keep her and our family in your prayers. We are counting down the days until our sonogram appointment next Thursday!

-Bert