Baby Cookout and Meeting the Speaker

It's been a busy couple of weeks, and it seems like my blog gets further and further behind the times. I guess it's time to play a little catch-up.

As mentioned in my last blog update, Vivian and I are having a baby! We wanted to wait until after the first trimester before telling anybody, and we wanted the chance to tell at least a handful of our friends in person rather than letting them find out via Facebook. So, we decided to have a cookout at our house as an excuse to give everybody the news. Vivian, Randy and I took turns grilling hamburgers as a brief hailstorm rolled into Bellevue. Golf ball-sized chunks of ice descended from the sky but did fortunately little damage to our roof. (I hope I can say the same for our guests' cars.) We broke the news of our firstborn child to everyone in the midst of announcing our house's new paint colors, will are hopefully going to be applied this week.

We stuck around until "stupid o'clock" playing everyone's favorite new game, Telestrations.

In other news, Newt Gingrich — former Speaker of the House and current presidential candidate — made an appearance at Tish's restaurant to meet and greet voters in Western Iowa. I first tuned into politics when Newt became speaker back in 1994, so I wanted to drop in, say hello, and ask the Speaker to send a message along to my dad. He's been a fan of Newt since the early days of the Contract with America, and since he couldn't be here to meet Newt in person, I wanted to try giving him an early Father's Day present by sending a message via YouTube from the Speaker back to North Carolina.

Our friend Jessica also had a birthday party over at her house. Vivian and I dropped in to eat cheesecake and play an extended game of "throw a badminton birdie at the ceiling fan and see where it goes." Ah, simple pleasures.

Bun in the oven

Vivian and I have been sitting on some big, big news for a while, but we wanted to wait until the right time to share it with you. Well, here it is: we're having a baby! That's right, Vivian is about twelve weeks along with a proverbial bun in the oven. We held a barbecue at our house on Saturday to make the announcement, and although it has been awfully hard to keep a secret this big under wraps for so long, the news was fortunately a surprise to all of our friends.

All signs look good so far — we've had a couple ultrasounds done and our kiddo has a good, strong heartbeat. We're not going to find out if we're having a boy or a girl, so you'll have to wait along with us until the big day, which should be in late November.

Needless to say, we're both quite overwhelmed with what Vivian has correctly described as "a God thing." You see, in early March Vivian and I went in for some tests and were told that we wouldn't be able to have kids naturally. It wasn't easy to hear, and we had to talk about all the alternatives, including adoption. Well, before the month was over, everything had changed. It was nothing short of a miracle!

Thus begins the next, biggest chapter of our lives — as parents. Hold on tight, Vivi, we're in for a bumpy ride.

Ren Fairs, Salsa, and Mother's Day

Vivian and I have been enjoying the Best Weather of the Year here in Bellevue and took advantage of the great outdoors by joining a bunch of our friends (and Vivian's mom) at the Renaissance Fair. Vivian and I attended the fair last year, and enjoyed seeing what was new and improved this time around. We enjoyed a much more elaborate show down a the Jousting Arena this year — instead of knocking over cabbages, we had knights actually hitting each other with lances in engaging in sword-fighting down on the ground. It had all the flair of a pro-wrestling match, and the crowd even started stomping along in time with Queen's "We rill rock you," a la "Knight's Tale."

Of course, we also enjoyed stuffing ourselves with medieval food, including turkey legs, root beer "grog," and some tasty but absolutely horrible-looking pickled eggs and beets. I got to try my hand at archery for the first time, which went about as well as I could expect (no fatalities). We also got to try on some helmets and chain mail and even kick around a chain-mail hackey sack. Strangely enough, we got the most entertainment out of a couple wooden stakes that we each took turns balancing on. I've got to install a couple of those in our backyard.

Vivian made up some tasty enchiladas for our own private Cinco de Mayo dinner, and we celebrated with our friends at GAMe the next day at a Salsa party down at 13th and Jones. Enrique was back to walk us through the basics of salsa and meringue, and I found myself reverting to Charleston several times as I stepped back and forth in my tiny Latin box. There was also plenty of Mexican-style food to go around, including pico de gallo, quesadillas, stuffed jalapeños and sopapillas with honey — that kept us going long enough to smack open a couple of piñatas at the end of the night.

On Sunday, the men of Twin Valley Church decided to put on a huge breakfast for the ladies in honor of Mother's Day. Pastor Drew made up some blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes while Jeff scrambled eggs and Tim sliced up orange. The ladies — both moms and non-moms — got to enjoy everything on behalf of the men of the church, and it was a good way to get full and sleepy right before the church service started. (Needless to say, I went home for a long nap afterward, though that was mostly due to the Worst Cold in the World descending upon me.)