Baby Belly

Here are weeks 20 and 21! I also included some pictures of our first baby clothes purchases - soooo cute!
The baby has been moving around a lot the last couple of days - I LOVE IT!! It is the coolest thing. And Mike got to feel him kick for the first time a couple days ago.

20 weeks

21 weeks

HDR Photography

I have been playing around with my new camera and reading about high dynamic range photography on a few sites. If done right you can get very surreal looking photos or just extend the range you are able to display in a more normal looking photo (imagine showing the inside of a cave and the bright outside of the cave both exposed well). So I decided to give it a try. Basically you take a couple of bracketed exposures (changing the exposure compensation 1-2 steps above and below the "right" exposure) and then combine them in Photoshop or other programs (I am thinking about getting Photomatix as it does a great job), then tweak the "curves" to make it look more artistic or normal and voila!... HDR pictures.

Here is a example: (remember this is my first attempt and I am admitdly not that skilled at the "curve adjustment part of things")Here is Lianne taking a nap in HDR...


It has been fun exploring new photography techniques and I will have to try some more soon but I guess I should study for the BCPS exam as it is looming (Oct. 3rd!).

We're having a baby _______!

Today was the big day! We are 20 weeks pregnant and ready to find out if we will be welcoming baby boy Farley or baby girl Farley in January.
And the baby is ...

















A BOY!!!
And he's quite the, um, exhibitionist. (Mike just said "he's not an exhibitionist, he's naked." Very true, very true.)
We're excited about playing basketball with the little guy, raising him as a proper Hawkeye, and Mike is rejoicing that we won't be paying for a wedding (yet).

So ... we're going out to dinner to celebrate and then we're going to do some baby shopping!! Yay!!

Sandwich of Destiny (or Mike wasn't crazy)

Recently Lianne and I were sitting the living room when I thought of the perfect late summer evening snack... a tomato sandwich. I had read about such a sandwich on a recent trip the the doctor, or more precisely the in the doctor's waiting room. Being from Iowa I do not make it a practice to peruse "Southern Living" but if you sit in the waiting long enough and even Martha Stewart Living starts to look good. Anyhow, when I was looking through the magazine found a recipe for a southern tomato sandwich and showed it to Lianne... sounded good, but our name was called and I set down the magazine and let my sandwich recipe go.

Fast forward a week and I was cleaning the office. To my surprise I found a copy of the same magazine, a magazine that nor my wife or I subscribe to. I though it odd so I flipped it over to see whose magazine this was: "Gensis Day Spa"- Weird. I had not pegged my wife for a magazine clepto... but there is a first time for everything. This magazine just keeps popping into my life I thought, but I was busy and put the magazine away and went about my cleaning.

A few days after the second chance meeting with the magazine and I have a serious hankering for a tomato sandwich. Plus we had just bought some heirloom tomatoes at the farmers market; conditions were perfect. So I asked Lianne where the magazine was, the one she had (accidentally) taken from the day spa.

"WHAT?" (Look from Lianne indicating I am slightly or very insane.)

I reminded her of the doctors office (which she remembers) but she denies having seen the magazine since.

"I am sure I have seen it around the house, I though you might have accidentally taken it when you got a pedicure or something." I said.

(Look from Lianne indicating I am now definitely insane.)

"I know I have seen that magazine in this house."

"Maybe it was a dream?" Lianne offered.

"That sandwich did look dreamy, but a dream it was not"

I proceeded to look for the magazine for the better part of 30 minutes and when all hope was nearly lost... in the last spot I could think to look, it APPEARED AT LAST... Much celebration ensued... part endzone dance part prodigal son reuion- all good.

Lianne could hardly believe it, I guess the magazine was miss-delivered, the address was similar to ours.

At any rate it was the best tomato sandwich I have ever had...a sandwich of destiny.

Lovely, Lovely Laminate

Mike and I decided to replace our crappy carpet with some beautiful laminate flooring ... how hard could it be, right?

Before ... crappy carpet

Pulling up crappy carpet

Scraping off crappy carpet padding

Oh, carpet tacking ... how I hate thee ...

We discovered that carpet covers a multitude of sins ... like poorly leveled concrete patching. Mike spent HOURS chiseling away at this particular piece of concrete to try to make it level. Not fun.

Laminate being laid over the vapor barrier (Mike did this whole part himself - he rocks!)

Yay for pretty floor! It's close to being done!