Kevin Minnis

This year was pretty fun for Halloween. Jayden got to wear his racing costume and rode his “bike” around to get his treats. His favorite part was getting back home and eating his cheetos (Thanks Nehru and Karisa). He also is a big fan of twizzlers. Another food item that he all of a sudden started eating is bananas. The last time we shopping for food we decided to pick him up some bananas, but we should have picked them up at the end, because he thought he wanted to eat one in the store. It took a while to get him to forget they were in the shopping cart.

This weekend was a fun time of playing out on the farm in search of the great pumpkin. We managed to find the pumkin patch we were looking for near Cumming, IA at the Howell’s Farm. Jayden found the perfect pumpkin for himself and picked one out for us too. I think it will become a tradition to go and visit Howell’s each year. They offer a lot of cool things for kids to do.

Our garbage disposal took a dump on us, no pun intended, this weekend. So, Jayden helped me out in getting the new one ready to go.

You may also have noticed that the above picture links are all pointing to flickr.com. I decided to go the faster route in getting a better gallery going by utilizing flickr. They really do have a cool thing going and it’s easy to manage all our photos. So, check out all of our pictures at flickr.com.

Well, you saw it here first. Kim decided that she ain’t a “Minivan Girl” so we decided to trade off the minivan and got a Pontiac Vibe. It’s a pretty fun car to drive and is cheaper to drive than the van ever was (hopefully 35 mpg). We purchased it from Bob Brown GMC in Ankeny (Jamie Widen was our sales person). We were very happy with the way they treated us. Unlike Ramsey, they actually wanted our business.

Jayden’s been learning like mad. He’s now pulling his phone around by the cord like it was his once lost puppy. He’s pushed through 2 more teeth this last weekend. He’s cruising furniture now. He loves popcorn, but won’t eat very many food groups. He can clap, do the “so big” move, dance a little (sitting of course) and has just started noticing his hair. We went for his physical therapy session yesterday, but the therapist called in sick and they forgot to call us. So, we’ll continue to have Jayden kneel on and push his little cart. He also enjoys bouncing on the yoga ball we got to help him do his exercises.

Well, I decided to try this whole tag thing out for managing bookmarks/favorites. I got my account going at del.icio.us/kminnis and managed to get my favorites exported from Sitebar and imported into del.icio.us using a cool little .Net application called Bunny Hug Updater. I think one of the main reasons I chose to do it was to share some of the links that I’ve accumulated over the years and it’s something different to try out. I think I’ll still keep my links in sitebar for a time to see how it goes. But I think it’s kind of cool to be able to share the same link between multiple key words/tags.

On to other news…this last weekend Kim, Jayden, Kim’s Mom and Niece and I traveled to the Omaha Zoo. We had a good time and Jayden also enjoyed it a lot too. He loved to watch the fish and sharks go overhead at the aquarium, but, he had to be close to Grandma’s side.

Jayden’s been showing some more signs of his increased knowledge of what’s going on around him. He’s started to give waves to people. If he’s done eating or doesn’t like something he’s started to conveniently drop his food on the floor. :/ He’s also starting to like water more as Kim’s been up with him this week in Ames at Camp. Today he didn’t mind at all being in the pool. This next week he’ll be helping Kim get ready for his big one year birthday party on Saturday so that’ll keep things hop’n next week.

Check out his pictures in his 11 month gallery.

Last week I took PTO from work. It was nice to be able to stay home and get some stuff done around the house. Kim and I painted our bedroom and bathroom on Monday. It looks pretty cool now. At least the bathroom isn’t yellow. I cleaned the deck on Tuesday and then on Wednesday treated it. Now, the water beads up like it’s supposed to. Thursday Jerilyon baby sat Jayden while Kim and I went on our hot date during the day. We went to Walmart and got our photograph taken. haha Then Friday we departed for Twin Lakes to go camping with Kim’s family. We had a good time and Jayden actually slept pretty well. He only woke up once during the night on Friday night, but went right back to sleep after we gave him some juice.

Jayden’s been doing pretty good. We think he’s working on some more teeth as he’s been biting everything in site, as well as, drooling all the time. I added some more pictures to his nine-month gallery, some of which were us camping and him not liking to swim. He’s started this new thing where if he doesn’t want to eat something he’ll make two fists and lift his arms while squeezing the food out of his mouth. It’s really quite comical to see, but frustrating at the same time. Lately, he’s been so fussy that he’ll only eat cereal, bread with jam on it, his dried fruit bits, juice and milk. Oh well, we’ll keep trying.

Oh, and today I turned a year younger. hehe