Opal Luttrell

This post should have been made on February 2nd.

The biggest event that is going on with us these days is my grandmother, Opal Luttrell, passed away in January. I am making this post, not to be a big downer on a Tuesday, but to remember the relationship Natalie had with Opal.

Natalie and Opal loved each other very much, and we were lucky to live in Houston at the same time for the first year or so of Natalie's life. Opal called Natalie her "doll baby" and Natalie loved to entertain Opal.

Our family all met up in Arlington, VA at the beginning of February, as she elected to be laid to rest at the Arlington National Cemetery. One of the more memorable things we did was to take a picture of all the great grandkids surrounding Granddad:



I took a few other pictures during our trip, which can be found here:

Link to all the pictures in Arlington

I searched through all of the other pictures that I had of Opal and the family, and here are my highlights:

Link to pictures of Opal and family

You can download the album, or even add your own pictures to it.

We love you and miss you Grandma!

Video Update

Get your popcorn and enjoy!!

Exploring the wildlife in Pennsylvania

This post actually happened today, 2/28/09.

Today Natalie and I took a trip up into the Pennsylvania mountains to try and see some wildlife. Kristin stayed at home to "nest". Kristin is now 8 months pregnant and we are in the full stages of nesting. As an example, she dusted the chair railing in our dining room this morning...glad we don't have to worry about that project anymore! :)

We drove about an hour northwest of our house, right at the edge of the Pocono Mountains. Without even realizing it, we walked up to an unbelievable scene:



We tried to keep quiet and not to disturb the animals. We slowly walked away, and then we saw a black bear playing with a tree:



I think that the bear was partially watching the animals just up the mountain from him. Luckily, I have quick reflexes and a fast shutter speed on my camera. I caught this mountain goat jumping from one rock to another!



As we were coming down the mountain, we were surrounded by Elk, and since I hadn't put my camera away yet, I took another picture:



Well, thankfully we weren't outside for all these pictures, because it is still rather cold up here. We were actually roughing it in Cabella's!



I wanted to go and get a few camping items and Natalie was my shopping buddy. She was actually more interested in all the animals, and I don't blame her, they were very cool. She got to hang out with some Bison and wolves:



Natalie's favorite thing to do, by far, was watch the fish. You could buy fish food in a candy dispensing machine, but they were all out. She REALLY wanted to feed the fish, but all she could do is just watch them. Which we did for 20 minutes. You can see the fish in this picture:



I will leave you with my favorite picture, with a little bit of homework for you. Which one is Natalie, and which one is the 9 foot brown bear from Alaska??

I feel like I should reintroduce myself...

Well, I think that it has been several MONTHS since I have last posted on the blog. I could tell you that I have been busy with work, or busy getting the house ready for our second child, or busy with Church activities....and they would all be true, but I am just going to just simply say....

I am sorry (English)
Je suis désolé (French)
Es tut mir leid (German)
Mi dispiace (Italian)
申し訳ありませんが (Japanese)
Jeg beklager (Norwegian)
Я прошу прощения (Russian)
Lo siento (Spanish)

Over the next few days I will be catching up on the blog, and will likely reference the date when I "should have" posted to the blog.

Landon

Texas Tech vs aTm

This weekend Kristin, Natalie, and myself flew down to Houston to visit my parents and grandparents. My folks got me tickets to the Texas Tech vs Texas A&M for my birthday, and I wasn't going to miss the game! Kristin was originally going to go with me, and was looking forward to it because she had never "experienced" College Station. Kristin wasn't feel well, so my mom was a happy gameday substitution. She had never "experienced" College Station either.

We had to leave early from Houston because the game was at 11 AM...which I am sure disappointed many college students who where planning on tailgating all day. As a visiting fan, I didn't really care, other than having to sit in the sun for 5 hours...it was HOT.

This first picture is me with my mom as we were coming into the stadium:

 

aTm reserved all the "good" seats for the visitors, and here is a picture from ours:

 

These were actually good seats in my opinion. It was almost like watching a video game because you could see plays develop and see all the spacing. You know you have a good aerial view when birds are flying below you during the game.

This is a picture of opening kick-off:

 

The last picture maybe the most important one...because we needed this win to keep conference championship hopes alive.

 

Overall, I had a great time at the game, and a great time with my mom (everyone together, "aahhh").

Landon

Merrymead Pumpkin Farm

This weekend was the annual Pumpkin/October/Fall festival at Merrymead Farm, where we buy our milk/ice cream/etc. Numerous people from Church were going together, so Natalie had several other kids to run around with. Our good friends, the Garrett's, just had their second child, so we took their first, Joshua, with us.

We all rode on a hay ride together:



Kristin took this picture right before watching the local ER helicopter take off. Don't worry, no one was hurt, they were just making a PR appearance. We took an almost identical picture a year ago, that can be found here.



At the end of the day, all the kids got to pick out a pumpkin to take home. Natalie and Joshua each picked 10+ pounders, and it made for a long walk to the car.



To see the rest of the pictures, click this link.

Please Touch Museum Philadelphia

This past weekend, Kristin and pretty much all the ladies at church went on a Ladies Retreat to a camp that our Church sponsors 30-40 miles west of Philadelphia called Camp Manatawny. It was a good time for the ladies, half of which are pregnant it seems, to get together and spend a few days studying God's word. I am sure there was lots of "talking" and "conversing" and "gabbing" and "some more talking"...which is wonderful.

All of the abandoned husbands decided to have a Man's Night on Friday, and nothing says Man's Night like grilling red meat...oh, and all the kids were there too, but they were too busy destroying the Clark's house and playing the popular game of "who can hold the most toys while trying to take everyone else's." Very popular these days with the 2 year olds. We had to break up a few skirmishes, but nothing serious. I didn't have my camera with me, as it wasn't on my list of things to bring for "Man's Night."

The next day was the grand opening of the new location for the Please Touch Museum of Philadelphia. The museum was previously located in downtown Philadelphia, in part of an old building with no parking. It was difficult to get to, small, and outdated. I guess they stopped putting money into it a few years ago when they started working on the new location. I say "new location" and not "new building" because the building that they moved into is this, Memorial Hall:



Memorial Hall was originally built to be the Art Gallery of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition and first home to the renowned Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Art Museum has since moved towards downtown Philadelphia (think the movie Rocky). Memorial Hall has 38,000 square feet of new exhibits dedicated to kids 7 and under.

I said that it was the Grand Opening, but it was actually the first time that the public was allowed in, and only for members who had RSVPed for the event. Knowing that Kristin was going to be out-of-town, I thought this would be a perfect time to go. Since our membership allowed for 2 kids and 2 adults, I invited Chris and Annie to come with us. Natalie and Annie were in heaven for almost 3 hours. We could have spent all day there...actually, we could have spent all day in only a portion of the museum. The place was HUGE!

Here is a picture of Annie and Natalie walking into the building:



Like any good parent would do, we let them go to the water exhibit first, so that they could be wet for the rest of the trip. It wasn't until they were wet that we realized they have aprons for the kids to wear. None of the other kids were wearing them, so it wasn't just our kids that were wet.



The next section was dedicated to pond animals. Natalie really enjoyed jumping from lilly pad to lilly pad as it made noise with each jump.



She stopped to take a picture with a swan, although she kept insisting that it was a "goose."



One of Natalie's favorite section of the museum was the "Philadelphia Hospital." Natalie quickly grabbed a baby from the nursery, and took it over to the exam table, along with a doctors kit. Well, actually, before she could get a doctors kit, she tried to take a few instruments from another kids bag.



She checked the baby's ears:



She even gave the baby a shot, "gently":



While Natalie was playing in the Alice and Wonderland section, a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer took a picture of Natalie having a tea party with Mr. Rabbit. He took her name down and where we were from. He said that they would be running a special section on the museum in next Sunday's paper (10/12). We do get the paper, and will keep an eye out for the report. If she makes it into the paper, I will post it on the blog, but I am sure that he took numerous pictures, so I am not getting my hopes up.

We finished up our trip with a few rides on the carousel. The second time around I went to go and put her on a donkey/goat/etc. and she looked at me and said, "no daddy, I ride horsey." OOOOkkay then. We found a horse, and all was well with the world again.





Overall, we had a blast, and I would gladly go again. To see the rest of the pictures I took on the trip, please see here:
All pictures

p.s. I had to take my camera to the Best Buy doctor to get fixed, and they won't have it back to me for 2-4 weeks. I broke it on our trip to Iowa in September, but have been making due. Most pictures are too bright, so I think that a sensor is broken. I was hoping that they would just replace it, but I wasn't that lucky. I have a back-up camera, thanks to Kristin's sister Mara.