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.