Over the weekend, we went to see Uncle I, Aunt M, and Cousins S & B for Cousin S’s third birthday party. The boys were surprised to find out that a bounce house was going to be part of the party fun.

At 9am, the bounce house arrived and was set up while the kids played on the swings/slide play area that I & M bought since the last time we were there.

Swinging festivities were cut short, though, as the kids became fascinated by the ever-growing bounce house.

Shoes were kicked off and the bouncing began. JSL was a little hesitant at first, but he soon figured out how much fun a bounce house could be!

There were also games of hug-and-fall.

After the party ended, and the kids had left, B, JSL, Cousin S, NHL and I had some special bounce-time where I tried to get shots of everyone in mid-air.

The photo of me is blurry, but it was tough shooting conditions. (Darker inside than outside, fast moving subject *AND* shooter moving as well.)

B kept teasing me by doing grand flops…. when I wasn’t ready to take a photo of her. This led to many a blurred photo of an airborne angel but I did manage to snag a few good ones.

JSL and NHL were sad to see the bounce house go. I see a visit to a local bounce house play area in our future! Thanks, Uncle I and Aunt M for such a fun time and happy birthday Cousin S!

With all of the Rosh Hashana and blogoversary stuff, I almost forgot another anniversary. The anniversary of B and me. Not of our marriage. That was in June. This anniversary was of the first time we met. Yes, it was 11 years ago last night that B and I first met. I remember it like it was yesterday… or at least like it was a flashback.

*wavy flashback lines*

The date was September 12th, 1999 and I had just come back from Rosh Hashana services. I signed onto my computer, after being offline for 2 days, and decided to browse through the Yahoo! chat rooms for a bit before heading to bed. A few weeks prior, I had edited my profile to include the line “Nice, Jewish Guy Looking For Nice, Jewish Girl.”

Meanwhile, B was online, but had forgotten to close the chat window. She noticed it open, looked at the chat room, noticed me in there and decided to look at my profile. That line I had added a few weeks prior caught her eye and she contacted me. Right from the start, I knew that something was special about this “angel.”

We chatted for hours that night and many nights afterwards. Late night online chats turned into late night phone calls. That turned into meeting in person which turned into a long distance relationship. Before I knew it, I had fallen helplessly in love with my angel and have been stuck there ever since. (No rescue attempts please. I’m happy being stuck here in love with my angel!)

Happy Meeting Anniversary to My Angel Forever!

I still remember the first time I met B. It was just after Yom Kippur ended and I signed into the Yahoo chat rooms. I had planned on simply killing time until going to sleep. I was soon contacted by “The Angel Forever”, though. A message in my profile (one that I only added a few weeks prior), had gotten her attention and we began to talk. The more I talked with her, the more I knew there was something special about her.

We talked well into the night and many nights later. Soon we decided to swap photos of each other. I nervously opened the photo she sent and was greeted by this gorgeous woman.

I didn’t know if I was falling in love with B at that point, but I certainly did want to get to know her better. Over the next few months, we would meet in person and visit each other as often as possible. The more I knew B, the more I fell in love with her. Before long, it became apparent to me that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

I came up to visit B one hot weekend early July. Her parents’ AC had broken and B had passed out on the floor. I snuck away and asked her parents for her hand in marriage. The next day, I had planned to take B out to a nice dinner and then for a walk around her block where I would propose. Unfortunately, the restaurant I wanted to take B to was closed. We searched for an alternative and settled on Friendly’s. Not the romantic dinner I envisioned, but we made it do. Then we went back to her house where she plopped down onto the couch because of the heat.

I told her I wanted to go for a walk with her and she declined. I all but dragged her outside. As we rounded the block, I imagined what I would say to her. I tried to work up the nerve to ask her to marry me. I saw her parents’ house getting closer and knew that I was running out of time. I walked in front of her, started to go down on one knee… and saw a swarm of ants right underneath us! I shifted over a foot or two and then dropped to one knee.

B started to tear up and she realized what I was doing. I told her how I wanted to spend every day of the rest of my life making her as happy as she has made me and asked her to marry me. She couldn’t speak but nodded yes. As we walked in, she said that this didn’t get me off the hook of asking her parents for permission. I told her about my little sneak off the night before and, as we walked in the house, she told her parents they were DEAD! (Apparently, they had already informed the rest of the family of the upcoming proposal. Good thing I didn’t lose my nerve!)

On our wedding day, I was truly greeted by an angel and had the great pleasure to call her my wife for the first time.

It always amazes me how, just when I think I can’t be more in love with B or find her more attractive, I’m proven wrong (in a very good way). Over the years, we have become parents, home owners, parents again. We’ve had high points and low points. Moments of great joy and moments of great sadness. We’ve argued and made up. We’ve had special moments and mundane moments. B is my wife, best friend, lover and mother of our two great kids. She’s also – despite her protests – incredibly sexy. (Yes you are, B!)

B, I love you with all of my heart. Thank you for 9 wonderful years of marriage and here’s to the many, many wonderful years ahead of us.

It’s been nearly a month since the last installment in my Keeping History Alive series. There was a good reason for this, though. I’ve been busy trying out Ancestry.com. The folks over at Ancestry.com were nice enough to give me a month free to review the site and I kind of got lost in it. Not in the “it’s a maze where you can’t find anything” sense. Their website is very well put together. It is both easy to use and feature-rich, a balance that can be hard to strike. Instead, I got lost in the “there’s so much information here I don’t know where to begin” sense.

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Six years ago, we celebrated Mother’s Day for the first time in the TechyDad-TheAngelForever household. We might have celebrated the year before when B was pregnant with NHL, but 2004 was our first real Mother’s Day. Since then, she’s proven time and time again what a great mother she is. There’s nobody I’d rather have by my side when raising our children. She’s an amazing woman and I treasure every moment we’re together. So, B, I hope you have a wonderful Mother’s Day. NHL, JSL and I all love you very much. (Don’t worry, we’re going to tell her in person. Not going to rely on a blog post for that!)

And to all the other mother’s out there, I hope you have a great Mother’s Day too!

JSL’s third birthday is coming up. Family will be gathered and celebrating will be done. So why am I nervous? Well, we’ve never told my family that we blog. This isn’t to say that we’ve been actively keeping our blogging activities from family. It’s just that our blog lives and real lives were separate for the longest time. However, recently, B decided to “come out of her bloggy shell.” As such, our real lives are seeping into our blog lives and vice versa.

Meanwhile, NHL is 6 years old. As we all know, six year olds don’t exactly have the greatest track record for secrets. Add in an up and coming secret-revealer (aka JSL) and it’s only a matter of time before one of them blabs.

My Aloha Friday question for this week is: Is it time to reveal our blogging activities to our family? Should we control this reveal rather than it come as a surprise uttered by a child? If you’ve revealed your blog to family before, how did you do it?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #37

Yesterday, I wrote about my budding interest in genealogy. I’ve begun the process of tracing both my and B’s family trees. One of my mother’s family members traced their ancestry awhile back. (I plan on incorporating this into my tree.) He uncovered quite a few interesting stories including an ancestor of mine who had a ticket to go on the Titanic. Fortunately, he missed the boat (though I’m sure it didn’t seem like a good thing when it happened).

My Aloha Friday question for this week is: Have you traced your family tree? If so, have you come upon any interesting stories about your ancestors?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #34

In Part 1, I explored how I scanned in my family’s old photos. After doing this, my "Preserve Family History" initiative languished for awhile. Then two things happened. First of all, I started watching "Who Do You Think You Are?" For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a wonderful show that takes a celebrity and traces their family’s history. It’s amazing to see Sarah Jessica Parker anguish over the fate of an ancestor charged with being a witch during the Salem Witch Trials. Or marveling with Emmit Smith over the cold calculations that went into the slave trade. While there are parts of the show I could do without (the "coming up next" clips that give away major surprises and the musical segment at the end), overall I really like the show.

The other thing that happened was that B’s grandmother had a fall about a month ago. I realized that her grandmother’s not going to live forever. I’ve already lost a huge family history resource on my side. With my grandmother’s passing last year, all of my grandparents are dead. On B’s side, her grandmother is the last one still living. I wanted to preserve as much family history as possible.

I began looking into programs to help me organize my geneological pursuits. I came upon a nice piece of free (and open source) software called GRAMPS. The interface took a little getting used to. I’ll admit that I came pretty close to deleting the whole deal a few times. Once I worked out how to operate it, though, I was amazed by how much information I could input into it. What really sealed the deal, though, was the portable version. Pop that onto a USB drive and you can tote your entire family tree around and work on it on any computer.

The fun doesn’t stop at inputting data, however. You can add plugins for GRAMPS that allow it to easily output the data to web pages, family trees, etc. Pretty much anything you want to do with your family history, you can do with GRAMPS. This is definitely a tool I’d recommend for people who want to keep a local family history.

Next week, I’ll expand my search beyond your PC to the World Wide Web and the various resources that are available there.

In my post yesterday (Keeping History Alive, Part 1: Family Photos), I described how I scanned my grandmother’s photos to preserve them and share them with all of my family members.

My Aloha Friday question for this week is: What have you done to preserve your old family photos? Have you scanned them? Have you cataloged who is in them?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #33