Stuart, What Is Your Profession? Harroh! Harroh! Harroh!

Last Saturday we packed up the family and headed out to East Lansing for the Michigan State-Indiana football game. It was a rare night game in East Lansing and we did some late afternoon tailgating. As you can see Stuart came along.
This was Stuart's second tailgate, his first with his grandparents. As you know, Stuart went to his first tailgate and football game last month. In any event, for this game we made Chili. It wasn't bad but I think it could have been a whole lot spicier than it was. I say nothing.
Stuart was very excited to tailgate on the banks of the Red Cedar but was very disappointed that he couldn't go to the game. State beat down Indiana 52-27, needless to say I was well pleased.
On Sunday Stuart got all dressed up to go to Pribble's OPC Church in Lansing. I enjoyed seeing Pastor Pribble again, it's been a long time since I've seen he and his wife and worshiped at his church. Needless to say, it's no GR ARP. Speaking of the ARP, I understand our church picked a new name. We were exceedingly disappointed that Erskine RP was not a name option to be voted upon. It's sad that our heritage is now lost forever at the hands of the RP takeover.

An Evening At The Compound

Stuart has had an eventful day. This evening he got to play with his dogs. And what little boy wouldn't be excited to play with two lovable Irish Terriers?
As you can see, Janna has gotten down off of her perch to let Stuart play with Seamus and Deirbhile. Seamus seems very interested in licking Stuart's hand and Deirbhile is very interested in what I'm doing.
Sometimes Seamus gets a little to excited around Stuart. Despite the look on his face, he isn't upset at all. He loves Seamus and has been known to get upset if he leaves the room. Seamus unfortunately doesn't understand that he has to be careful with the baby. Thankfully, Deirbhile seems to understand that she can't jump all over him, she's a very motherly little dog.
Aren't they cute when they all behave? As you can see, Stuart is fascinated with what they're doing. And what exactly are they doing? You would think that they're interested in Janna's hand but in reality Seamus is plotting his next move against Janna and Deirbhile is no doubt planning world domination.
And finally we see that Seamus has been successful in his plot against Janna, giving her a big kiss and listening to her scream is great fun for a Seamus. Stuart of course is taking it all in while quiet little Deirbhile continues her plotting. Such is life here at the compound.

Alan Keyes for President

For those of you who haven't noticed, I've eliminated my political blog. I've done this for a number of reasons, not the least of which it was getting boring debating the same morons day after day. With that blog gone, I won't be moving politics over here, at least not much. Janna and I do campaign for certain candidates though and I suppose we will begin our campaign for President here. We are endorsing Alan Keyes for the Republican nomination for President. The election is going to be held on January 15th, so we don't have much time to campaign.

For those of you who don't know, Alan Keyes is a conservative Christian. He's pro-life, pro-family (read: opposes homosexual marriage), favors lower taxes, I would call him a strict constructionist on the Constitution, and he favors fighting and winning the War on Terror. All of these things ought to be in full favor of conservative Christians, reformed or otherwise. Keyes calls him self a declarationist, meaning he looks back to the Declaration of Independence on certain issues, often noting that we are a Christian nation based on the fact that the Declaration of Independence declares that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.

I know some conservatives are looking to Ron Paul as a Presidential candidate. While he is an interesting character, he isn't a conservative and he is unacceptable to conservatives and Christians. Paul is a libertarian and while I'm sympathetic to libertarian viewpoints, the libertarian position on abortion and homosexual marriage is unacceptable to me and it ought to be unacceptable to Christians. Paul is incredibly weak on both of those issues, not to mention his opposition to the War on Terror is absolutely unacceptable. As Christians, we ought to move away from people like this if only because their views on abortion are questionable if not outright unacceptable.

In any event, let campaign season begin. The Birn's will be out in full force for Alan Keyes, a man we hope and pray will be the next President of our once great and in fact still great Christian nation.

Stuart Plays With Deirbhile

Mr. Stuart has decided to begin thinking about crawling around. He hasn't quite figured it out yet but he's well on his way. We're looking forward to him being able to crawl. Not only is it good for babies to crawl around in terms of motor skills but it also gives them an amount of freedom. The less dependent on Janna he is the better.
Stuart just loves the dogs, today he had the opportunity to play with Deirbhile. The dogs just love Stuart, Seamus in particular. Seamus has decided that he's Stuart's grand protector, when Stuart cries he attempts to heard Janna upstairs to deal with him whether Janna is intent on doing so or not.
Stuart meanwhile just loves the dogs. His eyes follow them wherever they go and he's been known to cry when they leave. He's spent more time with Seamus so far, mostly because Deirbhile is outside more and she isn't on eye level with Stuart when he's sitting with us on the couch.
Deirbhile doesn't seem to mind when Stuart grabs her fur and tugs. As you can see he's forcing a hug, or is she forcing a lick of Stuart's hands?
Stuart scratches behind Deirbhile's ears, unintentional perhaps but she seems to enjoy it. Later this afternoon Stuart and I are going to enjoy watching football together. Stuart, what is your profession? Harroh! Harroh! Harroh!

Stuart's First Football Game

Last Saturday we took Stuart to his first MSU football game. Unfortunately, we forgot to take the camera so we have no pictures. Stuart loved the game, he lasted until the 4th quarter at which point he required a diaper change. Janna decided that she would make the sacrifice and take Stuart to be changed. As it turned out, she didn't miss much. MSU beat Bowling Green 28-17. (I'm a nice guy so I won't mention that Michigan lost to Oregon 39-7)

Stuart loved watching the band. He especially enjoyed clapping along to the fight song. I can't wait to take him to his next game, this boy is going to be a football fan. Father is well pleased.

Congrats Are Due

Congrats Nate and Lyd on the birth of Bubba Eshelman today!

Robert Goulet In The Office or Our Camera Is Back

Our camera has been retrieved from my mother, she held it captive for the past week. Janna as you can see is absolutely thrilled to have it back.
Stuart on the other hand doesn't seem much interested in whether or not we have a camera. He's much more content sleeping. He's been sleeping through the night for well over a month now. The hard work put in back in May and June has given us excellent results.
Stuart still loves his bath time. I have no idea what Janna is doing but Stuart is greatly amused. He seems to be amused on a regular basis, though we can never quite figure out what he actually finds funny. What we do know is that he loves the dogs, especially Seamus. He follows Seamus around and doesn't mind at all when Seamus licks him in the face. I'll yell at Seamus to get away and if Seamus goes out of view Stuart starts fussing. He loves his dogs.
Speaking of dogs, young mistress Deirbhile has settled into life at the compound. She hasn't yet learned the invisible fence boundaries so she's stuck on a leash for the time being. In a couple months she'll be old enough to learn the fence, it will help that she'll fit into Seamus' collar.
Deirbhile is a smart little dog. The other night she was in the living room watching Seamus run around out back, when he went out of view near the house she ran towards where she thought he would be. Logically she was spot on, if he had kept running he would have ended up where she thought he would. Reality though is that he's scared to death of the electric fence and wouldn't dare run past it. Deirbhile doesn't know this yet, she'll soon learn.
Mr. Seamus holds court in the kitchen. He's taken to his new sister quite well. He loves romping around with her in the backyard. That said, he's still daddy's little boy and he wants me to carry him up the stairs at night and he wants that he always be in my presence.
Why not post another picture of Stuart? He got to spend some time with Grandma today as she made her way out from Lansing to visit with him for a couple hours. He's a blessed boy, his Grandma drives out from Lansing to visit with him and his Oma begs Janna to let him stop by for a visit. He seems to enjoy them both. But of course, nothing can compare to when his Daddy gets home. Daddy's arrival is always exciting. What a great joy to come home to a wife, baby and dogs, all of whom are happy to see me.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the dinner we had for the Lanning's a couple Sunday's ago. We enjoy having the Lanning's over, I think it's important for us to show them the same hospitality that they show us. In any event, we enjoyed fried chicken, salad with green goddess dressing, fresh made southern biscuits and for desert we had Janna's excellent key lime pie. The Lanning's seemed to enjoy themselves and I can attest that we enjoyed ourselves greatly. Our Pastor and his family are a great blessing to us all.

The Fresh Market

We have just gotten home from the most glorious experience of my life. We shopped at a grocery that makes D&W look like the lowest class of Aldi. We shopped at the Fresh Market on 28th street, it just opened last week. It is truly a glorious store, with the freshest vegetables, highest quality meat available in Grand Rapids, the greatest seafood counter I've seen in Michigan and a desert counter that rivals Astoria Pastry Shop in Detroit. Ok, so it's a little on the expensive side and yeah we won't be shopping there very much but I'm here to tell you for a special occasion or if we're putting together a cheese platter, we'll be shopping at the Fresh Market.

Bush Week For Stuart

It's been an interesting week for Stuart. First, his mother decided to dress him hip and take pictures of him. As you can see, he's a bit nervous of what is clearly his mothers impending insanity.
Ahhh! Stuart has figured out what mom is up to! He decided to behave himself for the following few shots:
This weekend Stuart got to meet his great-grandmother for the first time. As you can see she's checking him out and he looks like he's checking her out to. Thankfully they came to a mutual understanding that they were friends.
This is my grandmother's first great grandchild so she was particularly excited to see him. He had a great time with her and when he didn't she was more than happy to pass him off to someone who would deal with him. When you're pushing 90 and have great grandchildren you're entitled to pass him off, who can blame her?

Deirbhile Arrives!

We have a new family member! Miss Deirbhile Birn arrived via stork (Delta Airlines) this afternoon. And a splendid animal she is!
She's fascinated by the camera and can't quite figure out what's going on with it. Why do these people keep looking at me with that thing she wonders.
She's only 12 weeks old and can fit on the step with plenty of room to spare. So cute she is.
Miss Deirbhile has enjoyed exploring her new world, the cabinets are very interesting apparently.
Her new big brother is very excited to meet her. Seamus has been very good around Deirbhile, so Mommy and Daddy are very pleased. In fact, they both took naps in the same room while we watched Barefoot Contessa. Mommy is especially pleased.
And so we send Deirbhile off to sleep, her first night in her new Michigan home. She's a welcome addition to our home, Seamus has a sister and Stuart has a wonderful new playmate who's actually on eye level. Daddy is thrilled.

Back From Ludington

We just returned home from our week up in Ludington at my folks beach house. We had a nice, relaxing week away from Grand Rapids.
Our 10 days away began with a visit from my folks as well as our fabulous Beach Day party attended by many of our old and new friends. As you can see, Seamus and my folks dog Zoe had a fabulous time.
Stuart was very interested in his new surroundings. He especially enjoyed looking at the lake.
And here we have Janna with her ridiculous baby sling, it was the only was to take Stuart down to the beach. I hate that thing with a passion, interestingly so does he.
We had wonderful weather most of the week and towards the end of the week the sky was consistently blue and beautiful.
Here we have a look at the beach from the steps at my folks house. It's something like 266 steps to the bottom, needless to say we would rather drive a mile up the road to the public beach rather than drag Stuart and his gear all the way down there.
We saw plenty of boaters during our week. My father bought himself a boat and from all accounts nearly killed Mark and Linda on it last Saturday. I'll be staying as far away from it as possible.

In the end, the great part about this beach house is the sunsets and here we have quite a few:
And so we've returned to the compound, rested and relaxed. Thanks to everyone who came to our party, we had a great time and hope you did to.