Karate & Pizza!

On Saturday Sarah had her 4th birthday party at her Karate school, the Full Circle DoJang. The owner and instructor, Mr. Jackson, kept Sarah and her little friends very busy from practicing blocks & punches, playing freeze tag and even working on some self control. After he was done with the kids boy were they ready for some food and rest after all their hard work! Luckily Nick’s Pizza is right next door! Pizza, juice, pretzels and cake made all of the children look a little sleepy after all was said and done. It was probably a very quiet night for most of them.

Sarah had such a great time and it seemed her friends enjoyed themselves as well, it was the 1st Karate party for all of them!

You can look at the the August 2008 Photogallery to see a bunch of photos from the party!

Happy 4th Birthday, Sarah!


Today was Sarah’s 4th birthday, can’t believe it’s been 4 years already! People say time flies when you have a baby/toddler/kid and I can’t argue one bit. It doesn’t quite see like yesterday we were coming home from the hospital with a new bundle of joy but events like her 1st tooth, standing, walking, dressing herself and writing her name seem like they happened just days or weeks ago. I remember saying she was 4 weeks old or 3 months old, now we’re up to 48 months. (Makes you feel just a little older as well. Anyway, Sarah had a wonderful day for her birthday. She played with her presents and stayed in her PJ’s most of the day, as was her wish. We went out to Charlie Brown’s for dinner with Gramma and Papa. Sarah told us she likes the salad bar, it has 4 different kinds of bread and butter as well! Saturday is her Karate party at Full Circle DoJang! Here are some pictures from Sarah over her birthdays, it let’s you see how much she has grown and changed!

Has it really been 2 years already?

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"Do you like cars? I like cars."

Uncle Dave & Aunt Jen flew all the way from California to New Jersey just so Sarah could see Liam for his 2nd birthday!! OK, maybe that’s not exactly the way it happened but it works for Sarah. After all, why else would they come home? This picture has a, “Yeah, that was fun, where’s the video games?” look to it. It’s the only picture from the day where Liam and Sarah are looking at each other. I took over 100 pics and a good deal of them were 2 fuzzy faces blurred beyond recognition. Little kids don’t sit still for long unless they are eating, especially when you put them together. It was a great day, somehow Sarah wiggled her way right next to Liam while he was opening his presents and even coerced him into taking some of his new toys out to play. She can be very persuasive!! The pics from Liam’s birthday can be found here or on the July 2007 page.

Mommy’s Birthday!!

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Mmmmmm, Mac & Cheese!

“Happy Birthday Mommy!!” exclaimed Sarah over and over again. We both were very excited for Mommy’s birthday, Sarah picked out a little heart pendant for Mommy all by herself at the store. (Sarah was positive that Mommy wanted a new doll or box of cookies but settled on the charm) Where did we go to celebrate? Outback of course. A good Mommy knows that a happy family is a full family and she knows the best place for that. Sarah enjoyed a bowl of Mac & Cheese big enough for a bus full of two year old kids and she found dessert to her liking as well. Here she is doing her best, “Can I have some more, please?” impersonation. Follow the link for pictures of Mommy’s birthday and much more on the July 2007 page. There are some fun pics from trips to the boardwalk on July 10th & July 17th among other things.

Webmaster note: Here we have yet another entry written but not published for a few weeks. Might help if I checked my own website for updates.

Look Who’s 40!

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40 never looked so good

Sarah’s Great Aunt Julie and Great Uncle John (Uncle John the Great) hit the big number recently so we took Sarah up to the mountains for a party. We took Sarah swimming and she just sort of yelled and hollered the whole time. She was half having fun and half terrified.

She really enjoyed laying on the skateboard (boogie board to the rest of us) and got to see some booms (fireworks) that didn’t totally frighten her. She wanted to spend most of the time playing inside with dolls and stuff. She had a great time and can’t wait for her own birthday now!!

Check out the pics in the July Gallery or go directly to the page.

Webmaster note: This was an entry written on July 11th, but never marked published. Think of it as a lost entry, wouldn’t be the 1st time I did this…

“I Want To Go See Annie’s House”

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"They didn't go to school in Annie!"

New pictures are up for all to see. We have been taking advantage of the beautiful weather of late to go on bike rides all over the place. Since going on the same trip every time is boring we try to take a different route each time and stop at a different park of playground for Sarah to have a “play break” and Mommy and Daddy get a needed rest break before continuing on our ride.

Since Sarah has this infatuation with the Annie movie we took her for a ride to Annie’s house. That would be in the historic Wilson Hall at Monmouth University to everyone else. She wasn’t too thrilled but she had fun. Take a look for yourself at the July 2007 pictures.

We also headed to Long Branch’s Ocean Fest for the 4th of July. It was overcrowded and lame. How many company mailing list and credit card offers for free gifts can people sign up for? What a waste, but we did take some pictures of the sand sculptures. It rained to boot. Pictures of that are also on the July 2007 page as well.

76 days and counting…

“School’s out for summer. School’s out forever. School’s been blown to pieces
No more pencils. No more books. No more teacher’s dirty looks”
~ Alice Cooper – School’s Out

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Sarah, Papa and the Shark!

OK, give me some slack here. The first few days after school finishes up are very euphoric. Now that the summer season is in full swing and I am officially on holiday until Labor Day there will be more updates to the site.

Currently there are new pictures from May 2007 from an airshow at McGuire Air Force Base as well as new pictures from Mother’s Day. Have a look. I have more recent pictures to put up from June, most recently from Father’s Day, look for those in the coming days. (Can’t rush in all at once!)

Please look around and enjoy the pictures of Sarah. If we don’t talk to you soon, have a great summer!!

Comments – Repaired and Working!!

“I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.” ~ Mark Twain

One of the main advantages to having a blog is that it allows people to leave comments/feedback. It offers a degree of interactivity for your visitors that a static website doesn’t. Too bad I had to turn off the comments feature after receiving 800+ automated ‘bot comments advertising everything from little blue pills to free video games.

This version of Six Apart’s Movable Type (3.2) is supposed to be much more resistant to automated attacks like that but it didn’t take long for them to find this site.

I recenty found a plug-in for Movable Type that asks you to enter a word into a text input box when you post your comments. This is supposed to fool the autmated programs out there that gum up with works. I hope so.

So, go ahead, comment away. (Either click on the yellow Timestamp or Comments link at the bottom of this post and every post, it’s fun and it won’t hurt)

We’re Back…

After a very prolonged hiatus we are back! The main reason for the lengthy down time was from not being able to organize the sheer amount of pictures in this website correctly. Things were just sort of tossed here and there making for a huge mess. Man, do I hate it when things are messy and out of order.

Way back in November, ancient history in internet terms, I uploaded and setup a new photogallery script to try and help manage this mess. It meant a whole new thing to learn in my leisure time during the busiest part of the school year. Needless to say little got done after the original install.

It took all this time to get it looking & working right and to get all of the pictures imported into the software. The end result for us is extreme flexibility in the organization and management of it all.

I am sure no one really cares about all that, just that it works and there are new and newer pictures of Sarah. There are. Without any further waste of time I invite you to take a look at the photogallery where you will find:

1912 pictures for you to look at with 197 from May alone!!

Click either of those links or the link from the top banner to get there and enjoy!!

AVG Antivirus – Important Update

I have recommended AVG Antivirus to many people. It is a “free for personal use” antivirus program that is very effective and runs with a much lighter footprint than other antivirus programs that charge for updates. Grisoft, the company that makes AVG, is stopping support for all older versions of AVG soon. Their current version is 7.5 all older versions (7.1 and down) will stop being supported and updated. This is from their News page:

GRISOFT is announcing a new version of the AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition. This new 7.5 version with improved performance and full compatibility with the latest Windows Vista version is available. Users that are using AVG Free 7.1 will be provided with a specific dialog, within the next few weeks, with the opportunity to choose the right option fulfilling their needs. AVG Free 7.1 version will be discontinued on 15th of Jan 2007.

That means you need to update your version of AVG antivirus. You can go and download the new version here. Scroll down the page and look for the link listed under AVG Free for Windows installation files.

I would also suggest downloading and installing EWIDO Antispyware, also from Grisoft. Another free product that works very well at finding and removing the gunk that can slow your PC down.