Maui Vacation

Andrea and I just got back from our vacation to Maui celebrating our 5th year anniversary.

The picture to the left is only a small fraction of the beauty that we saw while we were there. If you are interested to see some additional photos, visit my Maui Vacation Yahoo! Photo Album.

While we were in Maui we went to a Lu'au, whale watching tour, snorkeling, swimming, took a winding trek around the Maui coast, etc...

In addition, we did a lot of relaxing... ahh that was nice.

Our Baby's Gender

Andrea and I are going to be the proud parents of a little baby girl! We just got back from our ultrasound appointment. The technician was very nice and explained exactly what we were seeing on the computer screen. We brought a VHS tape and got much of the ultrasound recorded. The picture above was taken using the ultrasound machine during our visit.

The technician said that our baby appears to be healthy. It was quite amazing seeing all the different body parts and to see our baby move around.

Thank you for all your prayers and concerns. This is obviously a very exciting time for us.

Are you unsure exactly what you are looking at in the ultrasound image? If so and you are curious, click the picture and find out.

Bandit's Adoption

Today was a sad day at the Manor house. In stark contrast to the excitement of bringing Bandit to our home, today we solemnly gave Bandit up for adoption.

Bandit has been a good puppy, but with our upcoming baby we have been having numerous doubts about caring for our first baby and caring for a dog. We are convinced that finding another home for Bandit is the best thing for our family, our baby, and for Bandit.

The day we put word out that we had a puppy to give 3 people were immediately interested. Apparently, Shih Tzus are in high demand. We went and visited each family before making our decision.

We decided upon a very friendly older woman, Yvonne Peterson ( seen in the above picture ), whose dog recently passed away from old age. She lives alone and in her words, she is "...looking for a companion, not a pet". Bandit will get lots of love, attention, and exercise ( she takes daily morning walks ).

We feel really good about Yvonne as Bandit's new caretaker. We will miss Bandit, however, she said we are welcome to come and visit and even mentioned that we could dog-sit him when she is out of town.

For more pictures visit my Bandit's Adoption Yahoo! Photo Album

Hall Family Scrapbook: Page 1

My wife, Andrea, has been working on a collosal Hall Family scrapbook project. She has been hard at work gathering hundreds of pictures and writing down historical tidbits since last summer. Now the hard work begins: planning, organizing, printing, cutting, etc...

The above image is a scanned picture of Andrea's first scrapbook page. The page was so large that I had to scan the page 4 times and piece them together. If you look closely, you might see an artificial seam where I merged the parts.

Andrea is a very talented card and scrapbook maker. I think the above image is proof enough of her great talents. I am very proud of her hard work and her dedication on this project. I look forward to seeing the rest of the scrapbook.

Yahoo! 360 Account

Well, Yahoo! just came out with their answer to blogging... its called Yahoo! 360. It is a combination of blogging, pictures, reviews, biographical information, a network of friends, etc...

The system is current still in beta and it is invitation only ( much like Google's Gmail when it was announced ). If you are family or a friend and you are interested in an invitation, then please leave a comment on this blog entry with your e-mail address.

I have been playing around with My Yahoo! 360 Account for the past two days. Feel free to browse around... maybe you'd like an invitation?

For the meantime, I intend to keep using this blog. If I migrate to Yahoo! 360, then I'll let you all know.