Jenny says: Ilea has a new game at bedtime. I put her down in bed and tell her to put
her legs down so I can put the blanket over her, she laughs and pulls them
straight up in the air. I push them down, but before I can get the blanket
on her she pulls them up again. She just giggles and laughs so loud! I put
my hands on my head and say "Oh NO!" I know it's not a quiet time game, but
she doesn't seem to have any problems going to sleep still. We do this 3 or
4 times and I tell her she wins, and that I give up. She just laughs more.
It's so funny.

Here are a couple of big words that Ilea is saying now (with full pronunciation):

• Elephant
  
• Umbrella
  

One of the best things about coming home from work is when I walk into the house, I can hear Ilea saying "Da Da!", "Da, Da!" and then she comes running around the couch into my arms. Being a father doesn't get any better than that.

Today we went to tour the USS Constellation (Aircraft Carrier). All I can say is BIG SHIP! We got there around 1:00 and it was still a cloudy. This turned out to be a good thing because most of the tour was self-guided on the flight deck and just as we were about to leave, the sun started to come out and it started to get hot on the deck. They took us up and down to the deck using the huge elevators that they bring the planes up on. Very impressive.

Before going to the tour on the Constellation, we stopped by Boeing field to watch the Blue Angles land from their demo. We got there just in time to see them fly over the field and peel (is that the right word) off and come in for the landing. When they went right over our heads, they turned. This was VERY loud and Jenny and I liked it but Ilea was scared for a second until she saw them. After that she started pointing and making her airplane sign and sound. After landing we watched them taxi to thier positions. Just watching them shut down, open the canopies, take off their helmets, step down from the plane all at the same time was really neat.

All in all it was a very "naval" day for us.

Sorry it has been so long since my last note. I've been very busy taking a Java 2 Programming Introduction through the University of Washington Extension program. The whole thing is done on the web and through e-mail. I'm just about half way through. I have an incentive to finish it quickly - my company will reimburse me the cost of the class ($600) once I pass the course.

Well, I just realized that I never mentioned on here that Jenny is now pregnant with our second child, due on February 24th, 2001. The baby is developing fine so far but Jenny has not been having the best time. The morning sickness is back as it was the first time. This time she has some pills that help at times (thank God). We went to the doctor today to see if we could hear the baby's heart beat. It was there this time and guess what, we recorded it and will make it available on the web in the near future (just what you all have been waiting for, right?)

How we made the recording was pretty interesting. Just before I left from work to meet Jenny at the doctors office, I thought it would be neat to record the heart beat so we could put it on the web. I asked around in my office if anyone had a recording device (tape recorder, etc...) but couldn't find anything. I left for the doctor and on the way remembered that one way to record something was to use Jenny's cell phone and call our answering machine. We tried it and it worked great. I'll post a link to it here if we get it up before the next major web update.