35 posts tagged with "greg"

Greg and Jess got to take a break from the kids and stay a few nights out in the desert at the La Quinta Resort. It was gorgeous and relaxing, but we missed the kids!

Happy Anniversary to us! It’s been five years, and here is what we have to show for it. One curly headed little man, and another little man on the way! Jess is ready for baby to come anytime now, so we tried to get some last minute pictures with Liam. He fits nicely right underneath Mommy’s ginormous belly :)

Brad, Steve, and I all went to Breckenridge, CO for our somewhat annual ski trip.  We had great weather and mostly escaped unharmed, Brad bit it pretty hard on day 1, but the jury is still out if there was any real damage…

Day 1 was at Breckenridge and was nice and calm and for the most part not very crowded.  Day 2 was at Vail and was really crowded but still a lot of fun even after a rough night before.

As you can see, not that many peeps around.

Here we are around 13k feet at the summit of Breckenridge.  Brad and Steve climbed another 100 feet and went down the face.

Hanging out at the bar after some good burritos.  Steve and I were amazed at the scene around 8pm at night…

We had a great time, looking forward to next year with Liam…

Always good to be back in San Diego!

Second part in our Austin trip with Dan and Jimmy.  We tried to hit as many hot spots in Austin as possible.

Another night on the town at world famous Stubbs BBQ with Dan and Jimmy which we followed up with a trip to the Spider House, one of their favorite watering holes.

On our last day in Austin we went to a park in their neighborhood and let Liam play around.  Of course he met a girl and she fell for his charms.

Finally, our last couple nights we spent at a brand new resort, JW Marriot in San Antonio, that had a huge water park with lazy river that Liam loved.  Jess was there for a conference but the dudes got to just relax.  All and all it was fun, and I couldn’t get enough of those Texas skies.

We’re on a long weekend trip to Austin and San Antonio, partly for Jess’s work and partly for fun to hang out in Austin with her brothers.  We flew out Friday morning, March 12th, and went for some good Tex-Mex at Trudy’s near University of Texas.  Saturday morning we took a stroll through downtown and went to the huge state capital building.  We then took a stroll around the river, which was extremely crowded which is because this weekend is the beginning of South By Southwest Music/Film festival which means tons of people, traffic, and good music.

We took Liam to the zoo last weekend and had a good time. Here are a few shots from our trip. Liam loves the playground, and Greg is teaching him how to cross the monkey bars. Our little guy will be 18 months on MONDAY!! I can hardly believe it.

With the olympics almost over I can’t help but remember our trip to Whistler in 2004. They had just started preparing for the 2010 olympics and it seemed sort of a hidden jewel to us. I actually got the chance to go back again in the winter a couple years ago and I have to say that I actually had more fun in the summer. It is probably one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. Here are some pics:

We went on a zip line adventure and it was pretty amazing.

What’s amazing is that it’s 60-70F out but there is tons of snow on the glacier on top of the mountain and plenty of skiing to be had in the middle of the summer.

We stayed in the village at the Fairmount chateau whistler which is the nicest place in the village.

Overall I would give whistler 5 stars and would definitely go back, although I would wait for olympic fever to die down…

It was a very nice day today in San Diego, mid-70’s, but we decided to make a trip up to Julian to do some light hiking and maybe catch a glimpse of snow.

Great panorama shot I put together overlooking Anza Borrego Desert in the distance.

Although most of the snow was gone, it was still a beautiful day and we had a great time walking around downtown Julian grabbing some lunch and of course a delicious apple pie.  Later we let Liam loose in the countryside and he tore it up.

We first stopped by Lake Cuyamaca, but there was no holding Liam back from the water so we had to jet.  He just wants to get right in and start swimming with the ducks.

Ready for the Super Bowl Festivities... Go Colts!!!

Little late on this post, but here are some pictures from our second leg of our Christmas tour.

Liam working the drive-thru, and the traditional xmas opening

These next ones are Liam and Cole at the Dues where we hung out with Steve, Candy, Mike, Monica, Brad and Natalie.

Matt’s dare during one of the many games played

Liam on tour with Jackson, our friend Christy’s son

Our last stop was to see Julia and Rick which meant Liam got to hang out with Aliya.  Liam loved all the Warren girls.

Liam took part in his first Halloween trick or treating as well as his first costume party extravaganza at our friend Pete's house and surrounding neighborhood...

For a detailed look at his historic journey check out his route in spooktacular Point Loma.

View Liam's Halloween Route in a larger map

He was Nemo, from "Finding Nemo", and we were Dr. and Mrs. P. Sherman from 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney. Or for the people who have no idea what I'm talking about, the scuba divers from Sydney that took Nemo away... If you haven't seen the movie then it will really make no sense to you.  So our costumes were really lame, but he looked great thanks to his outfit that my sister Stephanie bought for him, thanks Steph.  Besides being incredibly tired and somewhat blasé about the whole thing, he ended up really enjoying Pete's party and was a hit with the "ladies" (older girls dressed as princesses, you know who you are.).

Last week Jess, Krb, and I went to see Coco (Conan O'Brien) in LA. We had a great time and we actually were caught in a couple audience shots. I was really impressed how they recorded it straight up with no edits, pretty much took an hour exactly. I will say that Conan and Andy are beasts, both at least 6'3-6'5 and Andy could be a lineman. If you've ever seen the new show he always makes fun of how you would never know that he is in the building that he's in, and its definitely true. The only signs are outside Universal on the sidewalk.

Signs outside Universal.

That's his theatre right near the entrance very nice theatre and all, but you wouldn't even know what it was walking by.

We got tix 5 weeks in advance and then had to wait in line the day of.  The studio itself seems pretty big and I'll guess there were at least 200 people in there. Larry King was the guest on the show and his wife was insane.  She was in some yoga outfit recording the whole thing on her iphone.  The crew kept laughing at her because she was slowly creeping around the set filming everything and even got on the ground at one point to get an "artsy" angle.  Anyway, here are some blurry grabs of us on the show:

There is a little clip on hulu, but it's hard to make out.  The actual show it was a little more apparent if you knew where to look.

Cheers

We made the trip back to Indiana to visit family, and a catch a few Phish shows. Liam stayed cool in the heat in his baby pool at Grandma & Pa Roberts, while Mommy and Daddy melted in the lot at the show with Brad and the Dues (it was 95 degrees and humid)! We then headed North to the Lake House where Liam met his Great-Grandma & Pa Brown for the first time, and had lots of laughs with his crazy Uncles. It was a short trip but we all had fun :)

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Liam's new favorite thing to do is stand up under the dining room table, right in the middle where no one can reach him unless you get down there with him!

Just a quick update on our busy bee Liam. He is standing and "cruising" along the couch, and crawling at amazing speeds. He's found a cheesier smile, and likes to make an angry face now too. We went hiking a few weekends ago in Encinitas, and then took a road trip up to Palomar Mountain and visited the big telescope there. Liam loves being attached to daddy :)

Part of my job involves keeping up on the latest technology, which sometimes means going to geek tech conferences, like PDC,  all in an effort to keep my "nerdness" as high as possible. For those of you that are normal and don't follow such things, the PDC or Professional Developers Conference, is a Microsoft only event that is sort of like a Car Show for Microsoft Products.   Although, at this car show you get to meet the people who make the car, have classes about driving them, get to actually take a test drive and are wined and dined throughout the whole week.  So really, it's nothing like a car show except that they are both usually in a enormous convention center.

Some of the highlights for me involved the free dinner that our team got that was sort of a result of the work we had done earlier in the year with our GPS product.  Microsoft also rented out Universal Studios for a night and gave everyone free alcohol and food, which is sort of every kids dream to be in an amusement park with no lines and everything is free.  Here are some pics from that debacle:

Above is the peeps from my team (Sitara, Jamie, me, Kevin) and in the middle is what you get when you give away things for free.

Oh yeah and the park was done up for Halloween which was really sweet.

And yes I did go to the convention...

Finally#

I also made it on to one of the Microsofties blogs,Virtual Earth PDC Team, just another notch in the old nerd totem pole (see below).

+ = ME

Greg and Jess celebrated their 2-year wedding anniversary last week - can't believe it! Daddy has been feeding Liam a bottle every night and giving mommy a break. Jess's friend Erin came to visit this weekend and got to spend some time with Liam. We all went out to dinner for some good seafood and had a good time!

Jess's Aunt and Uncle came to visit Liam this weekend. We all went for a walk down the pier and had a great time holding baby Liam. Liam also went on his first walk in the Bjorn, he didn't mind it an fell asleep :) He's still being a great little baby!

I'm not sure if everyone knows about where I've been working the past year and a half, but I've been at a company called DriveCam.  We build a two-way camera that gets mounted in a vehicle and is always recording video/audio and g-force information. When the driver exhibits risky driving behaviors we capture that data and send the video to our analysts for review and through that process drivers for fleets get graded on how good of a driver they are.  The end output is a web site that our customers use to see how well their fleets are doing and they end up saving tons of money on lower insurance costs and less accidents. wheeww.

Anyways, there is a point to all of this... One of the things that I've been working on is adding GPS to our unit to allow for real time tracking and to give us more detailed reporting data.  I ended up using a beta version of Microsoft's latest database software (SQL Server 2008), and when they got wind of it they got really interested in what we were doing.  Long story short, they made my project sort of a poster-child for their release and they came out and did some filming and sent me out to Seattle for an interview.  The whole thing is now being released and you can see my videos on their site:

• DriveCam Video
• Interview Video
• Sql Launch site

Jess and I only have one car, a Jeep Grand Cherokee, and ever since Liam was born we've been struggling to figure out who gets the car during the day.  Our solution to the problem was to get a cheap scooter from a local bike shop and I would just take that during the day.  A nice side effect is that we will probably end up saving on gas and make up the price for the scooter within the year.  Without further ado, here is my new Tank.

Greg and Pete took on the the task of filling in the loft upstairs in the baby's room. Here are some of the pictures of the project, which left the house in chaos for almost a week. Turned out great! Now we just have to paint and decorate before little Roberts arrives!

Greg turned 30 on June 28th - so we all went out for dinner and beers (and water for Jess), then we headed back to our place for a little Rock Band on the XBox. Stay tuned, more pictures of the expecting parents rocking out!

Our friends Luke and Kathleen rented some GoCars for a birthday stroll through downtown San Diego.  The cars are basically modified scooters with three wheels and go about 35mph.  We had about 8 of them and our gang took over the streets of San Diego.  Watch out Hells Angels...

Jess had her baby shower with family and friends at Greg's Aunt Kathy's house in Noblesville. Uncle Dan and Uncle Jimmy both got to see their prego sister and were pretty fascinated with her growing belly! Baby Roberts got lots of great things. Only a few months left until he arrives!

The 3 of us flew back to Indiana for Jess's good friend Christy's wedding. It was a beautiful day, and a lot of fun! Grandma and Grandpa Gray also joined the festivities and were able to spend time with us at the rehearsal and wedding. Here are some pics of the pregnant bridesmaid!

Jess's parents came out for Memorial weekend to see their pregnant daughter for the first time in person, and to celebrate Jess's birthday. Baby Roberts got some cute little outfits (Go Cubs) and also a little brown onesie that looks just like daddy's work shirt :) We went out for a nice brunch at the 94'th Aero Squadron restaurant so Jess's dad could check out the airplanes. It was a quick visit, but we all had a great time!

Jess and I went to New Orleans last weekend for my sister's graduation from Tulane university.  It's the first time both of us have been there since Katrina and it was interesting to see how much things have progressed.  The graduation was in the Superdome and we stayed in the French Quarter just a few streets off of Bourbon.  The trip was fun, although preggers was on the sidelines and couldn't earn any beads :(

James Carville and his wife were the speakers at the graduation which was very interesting, but slowed down once they started to announce all of the names one by one for several hours.  We used the time to help us think of baby names, but it didn't help too much.  Here are some of our pictures, you can see them all on our flickr page.

Jess got her big ultrasound today and we finally know the gender!  Yes, the Roberts bloodline will live on :)  I'm sure you were all worried.  We had all of the checks done and it looks like he is going to be a healthy baby weighing in around 8.5lbs.

Pete and I went to the Red Bull Air Race at the San Diego Bay today.  This was the second time that we've gone and is always interesting to see how crazy these guys are.  We stood on the downtown side this year and we were able to see most of everything without actually paying to enter the "viewing" area.

Today we went to the Earth Day fair in Balboa Park downtown.  It was like a phish show without phish... I'm sure some of you will understand.  Anyway, lots of drum circles, solar panels, multi-colored trash cans, activists, and stinky hippies :)   Jess's friend Amy was in town for just the weekend and we decided to check the fair out before dropping her off at the airport.

Frozen juggler, with a nice 70's rock mullet

Jess and Amy

Jess and I took a much needed night out last Wednesday (April 16th), and went to the sold out Eddie Vedder (pearl jam) show at Spreckles Theatre downtown.  The show was the last of a small tour that he did to help promote the "Into The Wild" dvd release, of which he did the whole soundtrack.  If he haven't seen the movie or listened to the soundtrack both are worth picking up.

We had our 17 week visit today and all is still good.  The next visit is the big one because we find out the sex and get a lot of time with the ultrasound machine.  Here are some pics of what Jess looks like now...

I think she is beating me now..

Well we are 4 months in and somebody's pants don't fit...

It's time to go shopping.

Jess went solo on this trip, as I was stuck at the gas station with a dead battery (good ole american cars).  All of the tests that we got the results for looked good, no third leg yet.

Yep that's right Jess is pregnant and we've got our first ultrasound to prove it...

Well we broke a record this year with 3 preggers on the ski trip!!! My lack of pictures this year sucks, but I know Mr. Dluzyn has some. I'll work on getting those soon. Click on the images and you can see the full size on our flickr page.

This first map shows where most of these pics were taken. The second is where our place was. Click on each to see the pinpoint.

sasquatch