This is one of the most exciting posts that I have had in a while. We went in today for our first (and only) ultrasound. We were eager to see pictures of our little baby and find out if everything was alright so far.

The first pictures that we saw were of random legs or arms, then the technician pointed out the beating heart. From that moment the whole baby seemed to come alive. We could see it moving, squirming, kicking, trying to suck a thumb. We were enthralled, I was enthralled.

The good news is that our baby is healthy. There are a couple of medical histories on Mia's side of the family that had us worried, but everything is fine. the baby is developing normally and from the measurements, our due date was put at 2 days after what we already had calculated. A very good sign!

The only downside is that we were hoping to find out the of the baby. The couple of shots we got, the baby was kicking the whole time, were inconclusive. However, the best guess at the time, and our own feelings on the matter, lean towards having a female baby.

Having a -baby (or boy) will be the best thing that has ever happened to us. We are so thrilled that we can barely wait until the end of November to greet our little newborn.

I will be sure to keep posting her progress.

First, I have to put in the plug that I finally updated the pictures of our pregnancy. We don't have many, but there are some pictures of the growing belly that my wife is carrying around. I think that she is looking cuter and cuter each day, but she doesn't believe me. I guess I will have to keep telling her until she does!

But now, what I was going to write about tonight is how bad I feel because I missed Father's Day. We went out to spend the weekend with my wife's parents, we got so caught up in the affairs of their lives that I forgot to call or write my own father. Now this might not be such a bad thing, if I wrote to my parents regularly, but I don't. So now I have the guilt of not writing often enough, combined with missing the day that I should have been especially focused on my father.

I think that it would be doubly shameful of me if I did not take this chance to write why I feel so badly about this. For everyone that knows Arthur, they know that I have been raised with one of the best role-models for a father that a boy could have. He was always calm but funny, always loving both to us and our mother. He was stern and unyeilding on the principles that were important to him (and are now important to me).

I know that my father has doubted that he was around often enough for us to appreciate him, but some of my best memories are fishing, skiing or playing Master of Monsters with my Dad. He is ready with profound advice whenever I ask and has shared his testimony of the gospel with me throughout this life, in his teachings and example.

Thanks.
I love you Dad.

I am getting closer and closer. I finally updated the main picturing page of my Web site. You can now check out all the slideshows in a much more presentable way. I am going to put some s in for all the main links, but not today.

The weather in Boston has been very fickle recently. In the course of just one week we went from about 50 degrees up to 90 degrees then into thunderstorms. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, but at least the rain has stayed away from the weekend recently.

One of the best parts about summer on the East coast are the trees that grow on the sides of the roads. So many of the streets here have a canopy of tree branches hanging over them, providing shade and making the drive feel like you are in a rural part of the country rather than a busy metropolis. We are both very fond of the greener, plantier landscape here compared to the West, from Utah down to Southern California.

Today we were out looking at baby strollers and car seats. They have gotten quite fancy in recent years. We were looking at some which the carseat fits into the stroller, and the stroller can be foleded down with one hand.
We also looked at some of the baby furniture, most of which cost more than our furniture. Changing tables and cribs and toddler beds and little dressers, it was incredible. We think that we will convert a couple of things around the house, but there are somethings that you can't avoid. We will be making a list soon, I think it is going to be a bit overwhelming when we first write it.

But on the positive side of baby news, we are going in for the ultrasound in two weeks. I am very excited because we are going to find out the of the baby. I hope that we get a good view so we can know for sure. We keep trying to say 'he' or 'she' now, but catch ourselves because we don't want to get too attached to one gender before we know. Although, I am hoping that we have a little boy. I think most fathers want to know they are going to have a boy to carry on the family name.

We will let everyone know when we find out what we are having.

A couple in our ward, who are friends of ours, might move into one of the apartments in our house. There are four aparmtnents in the house we live in, two on the first level and two on the second level. We live in the bottom right (if you are facing the house) and they will live in the upper left.
This is all part of the plan to get the whole house filled by people in our ward says my wife, but we don't expect the other people living near us to move out any time soon.
However, we are very excited and look forward to having people close-by that we can hang out with. The trick will be not to do too much together so we don't get sick of each other.
Our landlord really wanted them to be the ones to move in too. He lowered the initial rent price and offered to pay the realtor fee. That is quite a shock in the sky-high priced city of Boston. They are pretty lucky, indeed.

I like to listen to NPR as I drive to work, recently I have noticed a burgeoning trend towards short, personal essays. A kind of creative non-fiction that I think I would like. If I can get up the courage to do it, I am going to try writing a few pieces. I will post them in the writing section, but first I am going to need to come up with topics. I know they are all around me, but finding one and fleshing it out could prove more challenging than it seems right now.

But, I need to write more, and this is a good exercise in writing, so I will do it.

So, I feel bad that I haven't said more about the baby on my blog. I could write something everyday about our little baby, and I should.

Actually, we aren't seeing much change yet in Mia, so we mostly just read about what our baby is doing. One of the visible things however is the persistent morning sickness. She hasn't been able to wake up and just get going with her day. That is frusterating. We are both trying to come up with ways to help her, but so far nothing seems to work. We hope that it will pass soon. I don't know what either of us would do if Mia was sick all nine months. In fact, let's not think about it.

Mia is under the impression that her stomach is getting bigger, but I don't see much difference. We can tell that the baby has shifted up into the location it will be for the rest of the pregnancy. And in a couple of weeks we get to go in for an ultrasound to determine the . I hope that we can find out on our first visit.

Overall we are still very excited about having a baby. I have been telling people at work, and almost everyone at church knows now, so we are really in full-swing here.

Today is Memorial Day. I want to write down my feelings about today, because I have a long family history of military service.

My father and both my grandfathers served in the military. I lived on and near many military bases. While I have not served myself, I am grateful for the men and women who defend this country. I know that there are many reasons that people enlist but there is always a realization that they must be willing to be deployed to defend the freedom that is so precious to us. I admire that.

With so many opportunities open to Americans, I am proud that our country still has men and women who are willing to join the Armed Forces. I am humbled that so many men and women are willing to put our society above themselves because they believe so strongly in the ideals that America espouses.

I would like to salute my family members who have served. Please let me know if I have forgotten anyone.

Lyle J
John H
Arthur J
Kim J
Sheila J
Ken W
David G

Did I say that I had figured everything out in my last post. I did have figured out that the instance of the movie clip that was designated to load my pictures did not have the proper area behind it set up to receive the pictures. But I had handled that when last I wrote.

Afterwards I discovered that my pictures were all coming in too large, which was a problem with the size setting of the area that I had to adjust to receive the pictures. I finally figured that out today.
Also today I discovered that Photoshop allows you to change the size an entire batch of photos automatically. That saved me tons of time. Of course I still have to rename all of them and enter the names into my XML documents.
And I had to figure out today why my HTML Template in Dreamweaver that I am going to use for these pages was coming up screwy. It still isn't quite what I want, but I am writing the navigation with a JavaScript file, so that will be easy to fix, meaning I only have to do it once and all my pages will be changed. I love that.

So, I have most of the technical difficulties behind me. Now it is just a matter of doing the work so that each page has it own little slideshow. I think I should be able to get that done this week. So, by next week (or so) I really should have pictures up on my Web site. Finally... have I said that already?

WOW! It wasn't easy, but I finally figured everything out and I am going to start posting my pictures soon. All I have to do now is tweak them a bit, find the right setting and so forth for the best resolution without making the files too large.

I am going to work on making the interface look better, but since I have it working, I don't want to keep it tied down for too long.

All in all, I am glad that I found this. I will definitely want to use it in other ways. For instance, I might use it for my navigation or something. But those are projects for another day, right now, I am just interested in finally posting some pictures to my Web site.