Pumpkin carving and general fun

This weekend was a ton of fun. Saturday we invited my mom and sister over for some pumpkin carving, we do this every year and we normally do a lunch, dinner, or lupper along with cake and other festive treats followed by the pumpkin carving, and general goofiness.

This has become a great tradition now that we all have kids. Even our neighbor joined in on the fun. I truly enjoy just getting some time to hang out with them and teach the young ones how to carve up a pumpkin.

Sunday we decided to skip church since my mom was willing to watch the kids and allow me and the wife to have a date afternoon. It was a great time. Me and Jess never get to spend time away from the kids and although we love them to peices, having a moment to sit and enjoy a meal with your partner in life is a precious thing. However, you’ll probably laugh, we took our date at Chili’s and then went to Sam’s club to do the weeks grocery shopping

Enjoy the photos.

Digital Snow

Above is another creation from Barbara Hullett her original artwork is on the right with my vectorization on the left.

This drawing was inspired by the recent weather events and modern times. The recent weather events are also known as the biggest let down in weather this century. Several counties around the triad called off school in anticipation of Snowmageddon and nothing showed up until well into the evening. Facebook and Twitter were both on fire with scowls of angry parents telling the school board and the weathermen that they had waisted their precious PTO.

I myself even got caught up in the hype staying home Monday and working remotely.

Hope all you stay warm and enjoy the imagery.
David Bates

A Good Friday

Today was a great Friday. This morning I went to work and had Panera Bagels waiting for me. I love the way Cinnamon Raisin bagels smell, there is always something special about that smell that reminds me of my grandmother. Anyway after that I did some work and before lunch our shipping guy came in and told me that I was not supposed to bring pets into work and that I needed to go pick up my snapping turtle from outside I thought he was just being silly but decided to go and check it out, boy am I glad I did…

Link To Photo Gallery
Check out the tail on that thing it looks like a dragon tail. Anyway I snapped a picture with my iPhone and sent an email out to the whole building to tell them to be careful not to disturb the turtle and to watch out for him as they drove past in the afternoon. Well that got everybody out of their seats and made them come down to see it for themselves. So many people came that facilities thought it best to put him back near the pond. It was a fun break away from work and got everybody talking about it.

Anyway then we headed of to La-Hacienda and had some great Mexican food. I always love to go “Suck Cheese” with my amigos from work. So anyway some more work and then off to the house. I bought Daniel two new Koi fish to put in his tank as his last fish had bit the dust over a week ago. He was super-excited to see me home and even more excited when I told him that today was the start of the weekend. He currently only associates the word weekend with Daddy being home for two days. So I setup the fish and then went outside to grill up some tenderloin as Maw-Maw, Paw-paw, and the girls were coming down to spend the weekend. About half way through the Grilling I notice that we had run out of propane for the grill (go figure). So I packed up Daniel and the propane tank and headed to our local gas station to get it exchanged. Daniel was super grubby from playing in the gravel in my carport but I didn’t think anything about it as we where just heading out for a minute.

On the way to the gas station I got in-behind the very nice looking older car and noticed it was going to the gas station as well. I knew the driver as he lives up the street and thought nothing more of it until I got to town…

As you can see we where very surprised that there was a car show going on… there is always something happening in Madison during the summer. So me and Daniel took a little detour and looked at all the cars. All of the owners were super nice and one even let Daniel drive their car. Take a look at all the great cars they had. If you’d like to see them in person you’ll have to wait until the second Friday of next month.

Link to Photo Gallery

After the show we went back home grilled up the tenderloin and enjoyed the evening with the family.
One more thing I’d like add is that finally the old truck is gone! I sold that thing about 3-4 months ago and the new owner had never picked it up… What a perfect ending to the day.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

A Saturday of Sun, Sand, Strawberries, and Steak

Today was a good Saturday. When I left work on Friday I never imagined I would have a good Saturday as I thought I was going to have work all weekend. We started off the day by sleeping in until 9am and then watching some cartoons with Daniel when we had a suprise visit from my mother and father in law from Floyd, VA! They had just bought them a new car and wanted to test it coming down the mountain. We let Daniel play outside with my sisters for awhile while me and George caught up with things that had been going on.

We then went to get strawberries, a new tank for the grill, and some hamburgers. We all eat and played until about 1pm when the mountain folk had to go. Daniel was very sad afterword… Until we informed him that he would be spending the rest of the afternoon playing with his cousin Zach.

We went to my Mom’s where I had a ton of son duties to perform as Jess, my mom, and sister prepaired the house for her baby shower next weekend. We all had a great time and the boys got super nasty playing in the sand. We had steaks and salad followed by icecream. It was an awesome Saturday.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

Snowpocolipse 2009

The title of my post comes from a twitter saying I started because of all of the news and buzz going around the storm that we received yesterday. Every newscaster was making it seem as though this storm would be the end of the world. So I lovingly dubbed it Snowpocolipse09.

All in all we got about 5-6″ of snow with some ice mixed in. I have a lot of work to do scraping the driveway while my son and wife take an afternoon nap…

Enjoy the pictures below, I hope to take some more this afternoon.