Anthony's Page

Fructose Malabsorption testing

2012-01-23T18:20:00.000-08:00

Anthony and I visited Seattle Children's Hospital earlier today to have him tested for fructose malabsorption, which I discussed a couple of posts back.

Waiting around, playing Angry Birds on mom's phone.

Thankfully, it's a really simple, non-invasive procedure. How does it work? We arrived at the hospital. We checked in, went down to the lab, and the lab confirmed with us that he'd had a low fiber diet the day before, and fasted for 10 hours before. Yes and yes. Then they had him blow into a bag, as a baseline. He drank a few ounces of a really sweet solution consisting of just fructose and water (the worst part, really, as it led to a tummy ache, but it was nice going down...). Then he blew into a bag every 30 minutes to measure his body's production of hydrogen gas.

All done!

That was it! About an hour into the test, after the third breath sample, the lab technician came out and said, "We're all done. We have a positive result."

Children's then faxed the results to Anthony's pediatrician, who called us later today. She said, "Anthony has fructose malabsorption. The big things to avoid immediately are high fructose fruits, and anything with high fructose corn syrup, which is in everything, I'm afraid."

Our next step is to meet with a gastroenterology specialist, either a doctor or an ARNP, to discuss Anthony's diagnosis in detail. It basically means he can't eat most processed foods (yay!), but it means a lot more work on our part to ensure that he's getting the nutrition he needs. The doctor stressed that "The good news is this isn't something like cancer, diabetes, or celiac disease, it's basically an intolerance." Very true. We're extremely fortunate to have something that means he'll be eating better than 98% of his peers and that is more of an inconvenience than anything else. Still...we want our little guy to feel good.

Of course, now, whenever I see those commercials for the "Corn Sugar Refiners Association" saying, "Corn sugar is just like cane sugar in how it's processed by the body. Sugar is sugar! It's safe!" I yell and scream at the TV. It might be processed similarly by the body, but for a significant portion of the population, it is not the same.

I prefer this spoof from Saturday Night Live over any of those awful commercials.

Snow!

2012-01-16T03:16:00.000-08:00

First, an update. Anthony is doing amazingly off of wheat and fruit. He had no tummy problems at all today. It's pretty miraculous compared to how awful things were the last few weeks. Yay! This is a great thing because, if he'd been sick, he wouldn't have been able to enjoy the snow that fell this weekend!

And here's a funny video. Kipper loves herding us as we sled down our driveway!

So, how is Anthony, anyway?

2012-01-15T02:10:00.000-08:00

Glad you asked. Get out the popcorn, because this is a long blog post.

He enjoys school and hanging out with his friends. He likes going to ride the trolley down in Seattle. He loves hanging out on the beach near our house. The Nick Jr. channel is extraordinarily popular right now. He's addicted to building really neat mechanical masterpieces out of Legos, playing with his dog, and riding his scooter when the weather's nice.

Legos!!!

We started the school year on a good note but, unfortunately, this school year has been rough.

When the first parent-teacher conference rolled around, I was surprised and pleased to find out that our boy is one of the best readers in his class! But he's been a little distracted. And he's distracting some of his peers. As we started to try to discipline Anthony for this, we started noticing he was having awful tummy problems. They didn't happen all of the time, but when they did, they derailed everyone's day. Diarrhea, gas, stomach pain have all been pretty regular for our kiddo. Who isn't distracted when they have stomach issues?

We chalked it up, at first, to him sneaking dairy at school. He had a dairy allergy as a baby, but we thought he was able to tolerate small amounts of dairy in baked goods, or really small amounts of hard cheese. We were wrong, of course. We figured out, a month or two into the school year, they were having goldfish crackers for afternoon snack most days, and that he'd occasionally get something at school that had a lot of cheese on it.

We took care of the dairy, but he was still having problems. In late November, I made the appointment for his 7 year check up. The earliest we could get in to the doctor was December 21. We had the appointment, and she suggested several things. Given Anthony's history of having tummy problems with dairy, and my history of the same with gluten-containing grains, we'd try and rule out celiac disease and start checking for food intolerance with blood work (IgG panel for food intolerance). Celiac is an autoimmune disease where, if the affected person ingests gluten (wheat, rye, barley, oats), their body attacks and destroys the vitamin- and calorie- absorbing lining of the intestine. It causes all of the symptoms Anthony was experiencing. Food intolerance is similar, only there's no destruction of the intestinal wall, but frequent diarrhea causes one to not absorb vitamins and calories. If he had celiac, or if specific foods came up as intolerant, we would do an elimination diet and hopefully, resolve his symptoms.

This is what an IgG panel analysis looks like. You submit some large blood samples, and the lab watches what happens to drops of your blood when various food proteins are dropped on them. Dairy, the main category Anthony reacted to, is in the upper left (sorry for the selective blur...was trying to keep some anonymity here).

The blood work came back and the only obvious food intolerance he has is dairy. On a scale from zero to six (six being the worst), his dairy results were all around 3. Most everything else was 0, with the exception of whole wheat, which was barely a 1. This means that his body reacts to wheat, but is it clinically significant? Based on the blood work, not likely. But if a 3 is what he has for dairy, and most dairy makes him awfully ill, I don't know what it means about wheat. So, as I pondered that, his doctor said, "let's move on to fructose malabsorption...".

Fructose malabsorption is kind of complicated to explain, but it's really straight-forward in what it looks like. There are lots of different types of sugars, and they all end in the suffix "-ose": sucrose (table sugar), glucose (simple sugar), fructose (fruit sugar), maltose (malt sugar), lactose (milk sugar), etc. Sucrose is the stuff we sprinkle in our coffee and is actually a glucose molecule and a fructose molecule put together, so it's 50% glucose and 50% fructose. People who have fructose malabsorption, when they ingest too much fructose (anything in excess of a ratio of 1 part glucose to 1 part fructose), they get gastrointestinal symptoms. This is because the body just can't process it, but the bacteria in our gut break it down, and in the process of eating the fructose, they produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

Everyone produces a little bit of gas when they eat. We all have bacteria in our gut that break the fiber and other things in our diet that we can't break down. This is usually a good thing. People who have fructose malabsorption have bacteria in their guts that overproduce gas, which is really painful.

What does this all mean for our favorite seven year old? Based on the blood work, we still tried a wheat elimination diet (because it was still the highest non-dairy food intolerance, though it was low level). It helped, but not as much as we hoped. Following the discussion of fructose malabsorption with his doctor, we started reading up on all of the foods that might be offenders: Apples, pears, mangoes, watermelon, and wheat. Yup, wheat has a lot of fructose in it, surprisingly.

Wheat didn't bother us so much because, well, I'm gluten free and Anthony didn't have lots of bread until he turned two. But, apple juice is a staple. Mango sorbet is our go-to dessert because ice cream is dairy. Ugh. We had a few days of denial because...dairy, wheat, fruit?! WHAT WILL OUR KID EAT? (Answer: Meat and potatoes.)

But, then we had a really bad couple of weeks. We had some gloriously sunny and mild days in early January. Anthony wouldn't get off of the couch to ride his new scooter because he was so miserable. Then we had several days missed from school because he was so sick. Seeing their kid miserable and not wanting to have fun really makes a parent want to try anything. We finally went almost 24 hours without any fruit, fruit juice, fruit snacks and wheat (which we've been off of for roughly a week). His tummy miraculously improved. "Mom, I feel great!" Then tonight, he had some mango sorbet. I didn't realize mango was one of the worst things he could have. About 30 minutes later...he was really sick again.

We're not entirely certain that this is the problem, but it's pretty shocking how basic it is and how his symptoms seem to follow the fructose trail. We'll be doing some really basic, non-invasive testing in a little over a week that's pretty fool-proof in diagnosing fructose malabsorption. Basically, it measures the hydrogen the that gets produced by the bacteria, through a breath test.

We'll update things here as soon as we have more answers. As you might imagine, it's heartbreaking and extremely frustrating being a parent of a child with awful tummy problems. We're hopeful that this is it and that Anthony will be feeling great soon. Until we have answers, and you want to learn more about this crazy diet, here's an excellent article on the practical ramifications of a low-fructose diet (it's a .pdf file).

Anthony's birthday party

2012-01-05T15:16:00.000-08:00

Our favorite boy turned seven in early December!

The night of Anthony's birthday was pretty low-key. I made a small cake, he decorated it with some sprinkles, and it was just the three of us. Apparently, though, Larry and I are awful "Happy Birthday" singers, because Anthony plugged his ears and giggled!

The following weekend, though, Anthony had a really fun birthday party. Maw maw came up from Houston to visit! It was also the first time, since he was a toddler, that we had the party at our house. We decided that, instead of inviting his guests for him, we'd let him choose who to invite. That made things a little easier.

It was a nice, intimate party. We decorated the house with some balloons and streamers, made some cupcakes, opened presents, and then played that classic game of pin the tail on the donkey. Of course, all of the kids, except for one, figured out how to cheat and look through the gaps in the mask, so it was really silly.

At the end of the day, everyone was full of sugar and happy, especially the birthday boy. :)

SEO Optimization

2011-12-17T20:04:00.000-08:00

I created a website for my personal use over here: missyleone.net

I originally thought I would make it into a photography site that would feature my pictures, but instead, it's turned into a "geology of the Seattle area" blog. I guess I needed an outlet to talk about rocks? Actually, it's because I don't know of any Seattle specific geology blogs and just decided to go with what I know.

Why am I sharing it here? Well, I've had this site for a lot longer than that one, and most of you read this site. And, I started doing some reading on something called SEO, or "Search Engine Optimization". Because I have more readers here, I thought I'd send you there to drum up some hits to "improve" my SEO.

What is it? Basically, it's the bag of tricks websites (and their webmasters) use to get their site higher up on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. The easiest way to get people to your site is to post links elsewhere on the internet, or have other websites post links on their site for you. It's in your best interest to be very popular on the internet so that people post links about you...which moves your site up on the Google search results. Unfortunately, some people do this in not-so-nice ways, like leaving spam comments on your site so that other people will view them and click through to them.

But I'm doing this in a nice way. Come visit my other site if you're at all interested in Seattle geology (and the occasional photo). And to reward you for reading all of this, here's a couple of pictures of our favorite boy!

Anthony and Declan

2011-12-11T22:48:00.000-08:00

These guys have been best friends since they were a few months old. I can't believe it's been almost seven years!

Anthony goes to the Pacific Science Center

2011-12-11T22:43:00.000-08:00

We went back in November with our good friends, Laura, Carl, and Declan. Anthony had a fantastic time!

Notice, for all of you gearheads, the picture of Anthony with the differential. He was really trying to figure out how it worked...

Grandpa Larry and Grandma Janine visit!

2011-10-18T22:45:00.000-07:00

They were here for the weekend, so we mainly just hung out around the house. We did see the great movie, Dolphin Tale, which Anthony really enjoyed!

Here are some pictures. :)

Spring Kindergarten Journal

2011-10-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

One more scanned journal from Kindergarten. This time, it was spring, the last quarter in school before summer.

As you can see, Anthony got a lot better with his letters, and it's obvious how train-obsessed he is. He also told some fibs ("I went to grandma's house").

Kindergarten Journal 2

2011-10-08T00:06:00.000-07:00

Continuing the scanned work from Kindergarten, this was from the second quarter.

Anthony's Kindergarten work

2011-10-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

We bought a new printer/scanner last week. The scanner is really nice and fast. It can scan and process a page in about 12-15 seconds. This sure as heck beats the old process of scanning, even just a few years ago.

I have a bunch of Anthony's art work from Kindergarten and thought I'd share some as I get it scanned.

Up first, Anthony's Kindergarten Journal from the first quarter.

Blue Angels in August

2011-10-05T20:36:00.000-07:00

SeaFair is always fun for us. A few years back, I got to go out on a friend's friend's (a friend of a friend) boat. Last year, we went and met the Blue Angels down at the Museum of Flight and the weather was awful. This year, one of my old friends was in town and we met up at a mutual friend's house. That friend's house was ground zero for Blue Angels viewing!

So, we met at the house, at the top of hill in a neighborhood called Madrona. We walked roughly 300 feet in elevation down the hill (not too bad going down) to the lake. Then we watched the planes do their airshow. It took about 45 minutes, and then we braved the crowds and walked back up the hill. I don't recommend the walk back. We were achy and hot and miserable when it was done. But, overall, the experience was fun!

The view from near the top of the hill.

Same as above.

One of the sets of steps we climbed down and up.

One the water.

Sailboats!

Blue Angel!

Air show!

Anthony's view.

More Blue Angels.

Lone plane.

The finale!

They were so close and loud!

Awesome!

Anthony's end of year Kindergarten concert

2011-10-05T20:16:00.000-07:00

Before the concert.

Kids filing in.

Teachers getting the kids ready.

A little nervous?

Kids start to get antsy and wave to their parents.

Ready to sing!

Ready to sing.

Anthony's solo. :)

A post-concert portrait.

And another.

DONE!!!

Here's some videos of the concert.

Untitled from Missy Leone on Vimeo.

One last one of Grandma Julie and Grandpa George...

2011-10-05T19:59:00.000-07:00

Some nice pictures from Top Pot.

Grandma Julie and Grandpa George visit - part 3

2011-10-05T19:54:00.000-07:00

Watching airplanes land at Paine Field.

Paine Field.

Everett Marina.

Grandma, Anthony, and Grandpa at Marina overlook.

Everett Marina overlook.

Ferry at Mukilteo.

Mukilteo.

Sunset at Mukilteo.

Dreamlifter, a.k.a. the 787 parts airplane, which is a modified 747.

Downtown Everett overlook.

Me and Larry at Mukilteo.

Grandma Julie and Grandpa George visit - part 2

2011-10-05T17:19:00.000-07:00

Oh, man. It's been months since I updated this thing. I blame the fact that I started working again, in mid-July.

Anyway, here are the rest of the photos from Grandma Julie and Grandpa George's visit!

The lighthouse at Fort Casey.

Lighthouse.

Spot where one of the big guns used to sit.

Grandpa explaining artillery to Grandma.

Fort Casey guarded the entrance to Puget Sound back in the day.

Climbing up.

The view on top! Spectacular.

Pretty neat place to explore.

Exploring some more.

The view to the north.

The view to the south.

Climbing up on one of the guns.

Here's Anthony for scale.

Time to run around!

More of the same.

View from inside one of the lookout bunkers.

More views of the place, looking south.

Cruise ship in the distance.

Grandma and Anthony.

Anthony climbing the stairs.

Wildflowers or weeds?

Wildlife.

View to the west. The Olympic mountains are in the background.

Having fun!

More nice views.

Another lookout spot.

Exploring is fun!

Inside one of those lookout spots.

It was pretty neat inside.

And big.

Another view.

Cruise ship!

Ferry boat!

Cruise ship!

Ferry boat!

Coming up soon...one last installment of Grandma and Grandpa's visit. Sorry to drag it out, but there are a lot of pictures!

Independence Day

2011-07-17T02:32:00.000-07:00

We had fun this fourth of July. I'm a woman of many words, but I think these pictures will speak for themselves. (I hope you all like fireworks shots!)

Grandma Julie and Grandpa George visit - part 1

2011-06-17T22:16:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago, back in May, my parents (Julie and George) came to visit.

First thing we did was get some fish!

We fed the seagulls at Ivar's on the waterfront in Seattle.

Step 1: Show them the french fry.

Step 2: Make eye contact.

Step 3: Brace for impact.

Step 4: "Keep CLAM", as Ivar Haglund would have said. Laughing is optional, of course.

After some fish, Anthony rode the carousel.

A few days later, we rode the ferry. The sky was clear and the water was as calm as I've ever seen it.

Checking out the car deck.

More calmness.

Ferries are awesome.

Beautiful.

Nicest day all year.

Fun on the passenger deck.

Pulling in to port. It never gets old, you see?

Our first stop wasn't planned. We went to Meerkerk Rhododendron Gardens. (meerkerkgardens.org)

I have to say, it was pretty, but I was a little underwhelmed. Maybe I'm just not crazy enough about rhodies like these people are. Anthony really enjoyed running around, though.

More rhododendrons.

After riding the ferry and seeing a few minor sights, we set out for Fort Ebey State Park. It was originally built as a coastal defense fort in WWII. It also has miles of shoreline and fantastic bluffs, both of which make it perfect for eagle watching and kite flying!

We saw so many deer!

Beautiful bluff.

Anthony on the bluff.

Kite flying!

Grandpa and Anthony.

Perfect bluff for kite flying!

It takes a lot of concentration to not fly a kite into things. Especially when the string is over fifty feet long!

Grandma Julie and Anthony!

Me and Grandpa George!

Anthony.

Grandma and Anthony.

Grandpa and Anthony in the lookout bunker.

Fantastic view from the bunker.

This must be a favorite spot for teenagers, given all of the graffiti on the walls.

Cute little sea otter we saw.

Going...

And he's gone!

Collecting rocks.

Yes, we saw surfers. That water was probably 50 degrees!

Precariously balanced!

Eagle!

Stay tuned for part 2...

Fun week

2011-06-16T18:10:00.000-07:00

For those of a slightly older generation, or for those who aren't into social media, I decided to take a week off from my usual social networking haunts. In my case, it's Facebook and twitter. I felt I wasn't spending enough time on the things that matter.

(Editor's note: As some of my friends have pointed out via email, these web posts still go to Facebook.)

This has given me plenty of time to focus on a handful of things: Cooking, setting up a professional photography site (though I'm still working on that), reading books and magazines, and hanging out with Anthony!

So far, we haven't done a whole lot, but we are experimenting with some super low-fi technology. What's that you ask? Polaroid!

Yup. I picked up a Polaroid Colorpack II camera from the thrift store a few months ago. The camera itself was only about $3, but the film...let's just say it's not as cheap as digital. It serves as great fun and a teaching tool for Anthony. Sure, he doesn't need to know how light and film processing work, but I do want him to know how old cameras worked before there was digital, especially since most film manufacturers seem to be cutting back on stock. A lot of previously beloved films, including Kodachrome, are becoming memories.

Anyway, the film ain't cheap, but it's still cheaper than going to the movies, and if we only use it every now and then, it's worth it for the memories.

Fun times!

More Anthony without training wheels

2011-05-28T16:51:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of the process. Kipper really, really wanted to chase after Anthony and herd him. Anthony really, really wanted to master riding with no training wheels. It was a fun afternoon!

Anthony is officially off of training wheels!

2011-05-28T15:47:00.000-07:00

The sound levels are really bad on this video, as it's not exactly professional video equipment (camera phone). You might want to turn the volume down a little until you hear my voice.

Still, I think you can see Anthony's excitement in finally getting those training wheels off! We tried it last summer and he did all right at first but was still pretty scared. He's built up enough confidence this time around that once we took them off, he was flying!

One funny thing is that Kipper will try and herd Anthony if we let him. I need to get video of that...

I love being a mom to this awesome kid.

2011-05-08T18:09:00.001-07:00

I love being a mom to this awesome kid., originally uploaded by misspudding.

Happy Mother's Day. :)

2011-05-08T18:08:00.001-07:00

Happy Mother's Day. :), originally uploaded by misspudding.

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival - Big Post

2011-04-29T23:12:00.000-07:00

I must warn you, this is a very, very long blog post. It's mostly pictures, but there are a lot of them. Bear with me...I think it's worth it.

Anthony and I woke up early today, way before school (6am for me, 7am for him), and hit the road to go see the annual tulip festival up north. He only attends school half time, and school starts after lunch, so this was totally doable. The festival takes place basically an hour north of our house, so we had plenty of time to see the flowers, eat lunch and get back before school started.

I think this is the fourth time we've been. So we have some great shots to compare to when Anthony was a very little guy.

I have a bazillion pictures to go through, so I thought instead of posting all of those right now, I'd do a quick recap of previous years.

This was 2006, when Anthony was about 16 months old.

I went back to work in the summer of 2006, and all we had were weekends to go up to the Tulip Fest. Since the weekends at the festival are incredibly crazy (traffic backups to the highway and miles down the interstate), we decided we never wanted to do weekends visits of it ever again...too stressful! In 2007 and 2008, both Larry and I were working way too many hours to even consider taking an afternoon to go up north to spend leisure time with Anthony.

We didn't go again until 2009. But that year was fun because I started really learning about photography. I was using film, but felt rusty with it, so I had some digital backup, just in case. Thus, Anthony became my trusty little assistant.

Do you see him? :)

There were some fighter jets from NAS Whidbey flying over head when this shot was taken.

It's funny because all of those shots in 2009 weren't processed at all in Photoshop or any computer software. They were just developed and scanned at Costco or Kenmore Camera, and then I uploaded them. Most of the shots were taken with the old Minolta XG-M, and the square shots were taken with an old Agfa camera that is older than everyone reading this blog (early 1940s). Yes, it still works! No batteries. No light meter. No lens coating. See below.

It's been a fun journey learning about photography and gradually getting better at it. In 2010, we went back and took more photos. This time around, I had my new, fancy schmancy DSLR camera, but I didn't quite understand how to process the photos digitally like I do now. The pictures still look nice, but I'm still learning. I also brought a film camera, my Nikon N6006.

Film shots (and all below)

My cross-processing slide film mess up (which turned out really interesting).

Finally, we went back this year, and I'll share a few photos before dumping a ton of them on you. We had a lot of fun and really, I just brought the one camera. I'm not done playing with film, but now that I know what I'm doing on the computer, I don't feel like I can do better with film than I can with digital.

My observations from this little exercise:

My little boy has grown! Awwwww...
Someone really, really needs a haircut. Anthony, too.
I've gotten a lot better at photography. Whoa! If I can do it, so can you.
We're having a ridiculously cold spring. I really miss the glowing yellow ball of hot plasma in the sky (a.k.a. the sun).
I still love film but I'm learning I can live without it.

Thanks for sticking with this post. There are a ton more photos from today...I'll get to them soon!

Easter eggs!

2011-04-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

Before I talk about our lives, I just want to say we hope you're all safe and sound. Our families didn't sustain any damage or injuries from the horrible storm that hit the Saint Louis area last night, but we're thinking about some of our friends or their families who weren't so lucky. We wish you all a quick cleanup and recovery!

As for us...

Anthony and I decided that we were going to dye some easter eggs this year. It was Anthony's first time doing it, and the first time I ever remember doing it. It wasn't super messy, as we took precautions and did it all in the kitchen. It was a lot of fun, though!

Waiting to start.

Still waiting, Mom.

Eight hard-boiled eggs. Cooled.

Dye tablet in cups/bowls.

Little egg dipper thingies.

Dye plus vinegar.

Lots of colors!

Add some glitter...

And more glitter...

And MORE glitter...

Designs for inspiration.

Drop 'em in!

Red.

Green.

Dyeing the eggs.

Yellow.

Move them around a little bit.

Stir some more.

And more...

You get the idea.

Finished product!

Aren't these great? Anthony designed a lot of them.

Pretty!

That yellow one has an easter bunny on it, but it's hard to tell.

Done!

Happy Easter, everyone!

The many faces of Anthony

2011-04-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

Here's our favorite boy, messing around on the weekend.

Weee!

2011-03-27T16:14:00.001-07:00

Weee!, originally uploaded by misspudding.

Hello. Welcome to spring time!

Updates

2011-03-22T23:07:00.000-07:00

I decided to update the website a little bit. I wanted to make the main text column wider so you could see bigger pictures. In the process, I moved the archives to the bottom of the page.

I also took one of the pretty flower pictures from this week and made it the background (no, I didn't choose the dandelion). As it's very much spring here in the Northwest, I thought it was appropriate. Maybe for summer, we'll have a beach theme.

If you read this in blog reader, you won't notice these changes.

Spring!

2011-03-22T20:48:00.001-07:00

Walk, originally uploaded by misspudding.

Winter is finally coming to an end. It's nice to finally see the sun!

Because we're getting more sun and less rain, we've been going outside a lot more for walks with our dog, Kipper!

Kipper being silly in the yard.

The flowering plum trees in our neighborhood are so pretty right now!

More pretty flowers.

A not so pretty flower. I guess it's officially yard work season.

My happy kid

2011-02-20T20:41:00.001-08:00

My happy kid, originally uploaded by misspudding.

Anthony and I went to the beach today. It was fun!

We saw some starfish, and enjoyed the rare winter sunshine. It was a very nice day!

One more thing from Weatherfest

2011-01-24T00:13:00.001-08:00

Intern, originally uploaded by misspudding.

Here's Anthony on the green screen! :)

Weatherfest 2011

2011-01-23T22:00:00.000-08:00

The AMS (American Meteorological Society) has an annual meeting once a year, much like the American Geophysical Union (which I attended at the end of 2009 and years prior). We're lucky enough that they are having it in Seattle this year because, they also have something called "Weatherfest".

Weatherfest is a science and engineering festival geared towards the K-12 set. Because it is part of the AMS conference, there are tons of of cool exhibits and neat meteorology industry stuff. Much like geophysics - technically, meteorology is a branch of geophysics - there is so much technology. And much like all things earth science, it impacts us every single day. Our local weather anchors, from all of the channels, were there. There was also a Weather Channel anchor. I counted three "green screens" while we were there.

Here are some pictures from the event.

Kipper!

2011-01-23T21:37:00.000-08:00

Pretty much everyone knows this, but for Christmas this year, our big surprise for Anthony was to get him a dog. If you know Anthony, you know he's been begging for a dog since he's known what a dog is. We finally broke down and brought Kipper into our life, right before the new year.

Kipper's story is this: A man who lives in the Seattle area was down doing business in Chinle, Arizona for a few months. He stayed in a hotel while he was down there and noticed that there were feral dogs roaming the area around the hotel and begging for food. Kipper was in this pack, along with his litter mates (4 puppies, total) and his mom and at least one other older male dog.

At some point, Kipper's pack was attacked by another pack of dogs, killing one of the puppies and injuring one of the adult males. The business man figured that he'd seen enough and decided he'd rescue the dogs, get them medical care, and take them back with him to the Seattle area.

Kipper is presumed to have been born around June 1, 2010. He's no more than eight months old now. We know his mom was a pure bred (or pretty darn close) yellow lab. His dad was most certainly part collie. He has very strong tendencies of retrieving and herding, both of which are fun, interesting, and somewhat challenging. He's a smart dog, but he really wants to herd us around. He will attend obedience school to help bring out the positive attributes of his personality, as well as tone down the stronger breed characteristics that we don't really need (such as nipping to get us to move faster...we're not sheep).

Christmas 2011

2011-01-23T21:04:00.000-08:00

It was another wonderful Christmas for us. Unemployment hasn't stopped our family from trying to make the most of things.

First, Anthony waited, very patiently, to meet Santa for the first time. Talk about EXCITED!

Maybe Santa listened because Anthony totally cleaned up.

Anthony's 6th birthday party

2011-01-23T20:31:00.000-08:00

Anthony had his 6th birthday at home. We then celebrated his party, about a week and half later, with all of his friends!

We had his party at the local Michael's craft store. "What?" you're probably wondering, "Why would you have a birthday party at a craft store?" Well, you can make really cool things and make a big mess, and mom and dad don't have to clean it all up!

The kids got to paint birdhouses! Here are some highlights.

Updates and DSLR drama

2011-01-23T20:13:00.000-08:00

If you have SLR camera experience and know all about exposure, shutter speeds and aperture, when you purchase a DSLR, you find things are "different". When you use a film camera, there is only one chance to get the picture right on the film, and you don't know how it is until you expose and develop your film and make prints. When you use a DSLR, there are white balance settings and various tweaks you can do to your pictures to make them look "good". If you don't set the camera up to do these things when you're out in the field, you'll likely need to do a little handy work on your computer to make them look like they would have if they came off of your film camera back in the day. You can use the built in software with your computer (Windows and Apple both have decent software that comes with their operating systems) to get pretty decent results. Or you can spent a little bit of cash and purchase something that has a little more power.

Back in October, I picked up the software packages Photoshop and Lightroom from a neighbor friend who works at Adobe. Both are prohibitively expensive if you don't work in industry or don't have a friend works at Adobe. Photoshop has been around since the 1990s, and has been used expensively in marketing and design, and by a lot of photographers when digital photography was new. Lightroom came out more recently, and is geared specifically for the photographer. There are learning curves with both software packages, even if you have past experience with Photoshop, like I do.

Long story short, I thought I was going to spend a bunch of time trying to get to know both packages so I could use them super proficiently and have fantastic looking photos for you all to see. Sadly, I took pictures and worried about how I wouldn't be able to figure out the software quickly enough to get the pictures up...so I let them sit in various places on my computer and waited.

There's actually a really good graphic floating around the internet that demonstrates exactly what I'm talking about (click to view large):

It's kind of hard to read and understand this graph if you don't have a fundamental understanding of photography, but I hope you get the idea. Note the "Photoshop" on the middle part of the blue line of "How good you think you are" next to "Flickr".

I finally figured I'd edit the photos to good enough for what I used to do so I could get them up. And really, I think that's good enough for now. I'm sorry for the wait, but there are lots of pictures to follow...

Birthday!!!

2010-12-11T23:45:00.000-08:00

Anthony is officially six years old!

He's like a bona fide BIG KID now.

Some of the fun we've had so far...

Halloween!

2010-11-13T00:44:00.000-08:00

Our pumpkins were very complicated this year!

Anthony went as a hamburger this year.

And boy, did he clean up!!!

Talking about the storm

2010-10-25T22:26:00.001-07:00

Talking about the storm, originally uploaded by misspudding.

Five year old wonder. :)

Sadly, it ends a little abruptly, but these are some of the conversations we have with Anthony.

Fall fun: Pumpkin picking and apple bobbing!

2010-10-17T14:03:00.000-07:00

We are lucky to have many friends around here. Most everyone has a love of getting out into the outdoors and having a good time while the sun is out, because we all know how gray and dark the winter months can be.

We met up with some good friends, Andrew and Amy, and their kids, to go pumpkin picking! We got our three pumpkins that we'll carve into jack-o-lanterns.

Later on that evening, we went to a party that some former work friends of mine were having. They had lots of activities for the kids, but the best part was the bobbing for apples!!

Artist Point

2010-10-17T13:48:00.000-07:00

In hindsight, Grandma Julie and Grandpa George, this is what we should have done while you guys were here! It's a pretty long drive to get there and we didn't know the road would still be open. We checked the DOT website to make sure the road would still be open and we decided to make a trip of it. We're really glad we did!

Here's me being silly on the trip.

The trees are huge!

Beautiful waterfall!

Columnar jointing! Fun for geologists! :)

You can start to see why they call it "Artist Point". Spectacular views in all directions. The photo below is Mt. Shuksan, which is to the north.

Spectacular fall color.

More spectacular views...

Mt. Baker...shrouded by clouds and the sun was overhead, so it wasn't an easy photo.

More rocks!

Lenticular clouds!

Here's a panorama of the view to the south (that volcano is Mt. Baker). Click on the photo to see a large version.

We had fun. The trip was wonderful.

Grandma and Grandpa McLean visit

2010-10-17T13:23:00.000-07:00

They were here a few weeks ago. Sadly, I don't have a lot of digital pictures of their visit, because I was using film that I have to send off and get developed (it's Kodachrome and I have to send it to Kansas for developing).

Here are the pictures I do have...

First, we spent some time on the waterfront at Mukilteo.

Then, we took a harbor tour of Seattle! This was really neat and the weather was perfect.

We went up into the oldest skyscraper in Seattle, the Smith Tower.

Then we went for donuts before taking Grandma and Grandpa back to the airport. :)

I think we all had a really great time. Can't wait to see you guys again, soon!

The Leones visit

2010-09-24T17:45:00.000-07:00

Grandpa Larry and Grandma Janine visited from Kansas City. We had a lot of fun!

At the Space Needle!

On the pig at Pike Place.

A little lower...

Seattle skyline

Happy family!

At Mt. St. Helens

A real rock. It's not as heavy as it looks!

Larry, taunting the volcano.

The rabid chipmunk (maybe).

Blue Angels at the Museum of Flight for SeaFair.

Blue Angels taking off!

I remember doing this very same thing as a kid. :)

First day of Kindergarten

2010-09-24T17:27:00.000-07:00

A picture (or two) tells a thousand words. :)

Random bits

2010-09-24T16:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a fun batch of photos from a little urban adventure we had. I've been developing all of my own black and white film lately, and this roll is my absolute favorite. I used Kodak 125PX here.

Still here

2010-09-24T16:30:00.000-07:00

Looks like it's been a couple months since our last post. Sorry!

I'll try and post some highlights in the next day or two.

In the meantime, there's one of Anthony's favorite pups, Sparky. :)

Trip to Fort Worden State Park

2010-07-18T20:54:00.001-07:00

Fort Worden is essentially in Port Townsend, a cute little late 1800s town along the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Port Townsend is adorable. The buildings look like ones you'd see in San Francisco or, closer to home, in Pioneer Square. Old, big bay windows, unique facades and paint jobs.

Fort Worden State Park is really neat. It's where they filmed the movie "An Officer and a Gentleman". There were plenty of neat old buildings and things you'd expect to find at a military fort anywhere in the U.S.

We thought that was neat and all, but we really came for the beach. Miles of sandy beach, that is. Perfect views of the tankers and boats coming into Admiralty Inlet (the entrance to Puget Sound from the Strait of Juan de Fuca, essentially). We even saw cruise ships, much like the one we took to Alaska for our honeymoon. It was really neat! We actually saw them twice: Once when we rode the ferry boat back between Edmonds and Kingston, and again when we reached our beach destination. Our ferry captain actually made an announcement that we were going to arrive a little late due to the cruise ships blocking our path. We rode over the wakes and it really made the little (ha!) ferry boat rock and roll.

It was perfectly sunny and clear, even if we did have to wear our sweats!

Anthony's new camera

2010-06-19T19:58:00.001-07:00

Lady at Costco was egging him on to take more photos, originally uploaded by misspudding.

It was $2 find at the thrift store. We inherited about 7 rolls of expired film from a friend of ours. I figured there would be no harm letting him shoot his little heart out on it.

This was his first portrait of someone he didn't know. I don't know her name but she works at the Costco photo lab and she offered to pose with his beloved (and well-traveled) dog, Bolero.

We'll update this as he gets better with his photos. :)

Bubbles!!!

2010-06-15T22:45:00.001-07:00

Anthony picked up the most entertaining toy from the little hardware store down the street. It's called a "Bubble Gun", which when you say it, sounds so similar to bubble gum, that I keep messing up and saying that instead.

Anyway, we put some batteries in it and had a blast in the backyard with it today. We've had a very unseasonably cold and wet spring (yes, we know we live in Seattle but even we need a break from the cold and rain some of the time) and had a couple of hours of sunshine and warmth this afternoon.

Swimming lessons

2010-05-05T20:13:00.001-07:00

Anthony just started taking swimming lessons!

I'll let the pictures do the talking on this one.