Kevin Minnis

Yesterday I finally got to move to the Shull building where was located on my first day of work at Pioneer. Talk about déjà vu. I’m one cube east of where I was. I and 4 other co-workers were separated from the rest of our group for about a month. Weird. I wonder if they have a Moving 101 class that the Corporate Services could go to. At any rate, there are some things that suck about the Shull building. The fridge is smaller than the one in Emerson. The network keeps disconnecting everything and seems slower. Shull has NO WINDOWS as seen from my view from my desk. (Kind of looks like a prison cell). Here’s where I used to be with a window view. The bathrooms are smaller and kind of smell like those in Merle Hay Mall. There are good thing about moving to shull. We’re somewhat closer to the rest of our group. I have high cube walls, so it’s kind of like a “mini-manager’s” office. haha And, I no longer have to listen to this really loud lady that is still up on Emerson. Oh yeah, and probably the most important good thing, I still have my job that I love.

On to other news…well…not a lot has happened, other than Jayden getting bigger and learining how to do things more. He’s now learned how to scoot on his butt to get around. He’s given up on crawling, as we too have done. He loves to grab our fingers and walk around. We went up north to vist the Farm and my side of the family last weekend. That was pretty fun. Jayden loves the baby calves and kittens. And likes to sit on the tractor with Dad and Grandpa. Jayden’s still as picky as ever on what he eats. He hates to eat “wet things” and seems to only eat certain kinds of food…bread with jelly, his dried fruit, cereal, chicken sticks, a couple of kinds of pudding and his most loved food, Milk.

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

Well, this weekend turned out pretty well. Kim and I went with some of her family to eat at Leaning Tower of Pizza on Friday night and then on Saturday went to a a bunch of garage sales. Urbandale had a lot of block garage sales so we got to cover a lot of them just by walking. We found some stuff, but not as much as we thought we would.

After our garage sale tour we decided to try out the new 50s style restaurant in Johnston named 5 and Dine. It was decent food, but over priced. We had fun with Jayden though. You can view all the pictures in his 8 month gallery. As you can see from the pictures he has graduated to the sippy cup, but still doesn’t like to hold it by himself. He now has 3 teeth and is probably going to have his 4th come in next week. Still doesn’t remotely like the opportunity to lay on his stomach, but is getting better at it. He’s trying to move his legs to crawl, but can’t quite figure it out. He does like to stand if you help him balanced so at least he’s getting a few motor skills. He has also started giving wet slobbery kisses too.

“Man, it’s been busy both at work and at home. Last weekend Jayden was baptized. We had Kim and my parents over along with my Grandparents and Kim’s sister and brother’s family. It was fun having everyone together. Saturday night we met them all in Ames for some Hickory Park. Yum. Can’t seem to ever get enough of good old Hickory Park.

Jayden’s growing all the time. One of these days I’ll get some video of him on the site so you can watch him cooing and laughing. It’s fun to see him finally interacting with us more. He’s even started to go to bed on his own…yes, we still have to put him in the crib…he’s not walking just yet. ”

“Yesterday we took Jayden in for his 2 week checkup and everything looks okay. He gained his birth weight back and then some as he now weighs in at 8 lbs. He also grew an inch so he now is 20 1/2 inches long. We’ve been fortunate as he’s been waking up 2 times a night (around 1:30 AM and again around 4-5) for his snack time. We’ve also found out his whiny time is between 8:00 and 9:30, give or take a an hour.

Sunday we had a Baby Shower for him with a lot of Kim’s family there and some of her friends. Jayden like all his presents and can’t wait to start playing with everything. He was pretty tired after it after being “”groped”" by all the ladies. LOL We took some more pictures and they can be found in the Week 2 gallery. One of the pictures that I took was his hand around my finger. Amazing is all I can say.

Saturday, Jayden was all dressed up in his Cyclone uniform so he could help support ISU as they attempted another success over Iowa. Unfortunately, his cheering didn’t help with a win.”