Fetal Nebulae

If you look hard enough for something in nature, you'll find it. Whether it's numbers, symbols, shapes, or facsimiles, there is enough randomness about to catch your eye.
This was on Astronomy Picture of The Day for 08/25/08:

It's called NGC 7008, but it's also known as the Fetus Nebula. I thought it was a cool picture given our situation (as well as Allison having ~30 days left!). Of course, the scientific explanation isn't that this is a galaxy being born, it's actually the death throws of an ancient star similar to our sun. Sometimes the reality isn't quite what you'd expect...:)
Here is the caption explaining the photo if you didn't go to the website:
Compact and round, NGC 7008 is recognized as a planetary nebula about 2,800 light-years distant in the nebula rich constellation of Cygnus. This impressive telescopic view shows off NGC 7008's remarkable colors and details by the skillfull combination of broad band and narrow band images from two different telescopes with about 12 hours of total exposure time. The intriguing assortment of features within the nebula's approximately 1 light-year diameter suggest its popular name, the Fetus Nebula, but planetary nebulae are not associated with star birth. Instead, nebulae like NGC 7008 are produced during a brief phase that sun-like stars pass through toward the end of their lives. Ejecting their outer layers, the stars cool to eventually become white dwarf stars, like the star seen near the center of NGC 7008. This colorful image also includes an unrelated but still lovely gold and blue binary star system just below NGC 7008.

Happy (Belated) Birthday, Jen!

Sorry we missed your birthday. Hope you had a wonderful day!
(Shell posted that Jen hadn't changed since her wedding day, so thought we'd post a picture to prove it.)

New Crib

Mara, being the cheap shopper she is, found the crib we had registered for on Craigslist for a 30% discount, and it included a mattress. Apparently it didn't match their kids' new bedroom so they were selling it. Boo Hoo.
After I got back from my trip to Milwaukee (8+ hours in the car) we headed to Shelbina, MO, about 1 hour away. We were expecting a nice house, snobby, interior-designer owners. Instead we found a white trash family that had a crib for sale. We aren't quite sure what part of the kid's room didn't match the crib. Was it the Kool-Aid stains, the trash scattered about, or was it just the cigarette haze that clashed? Either way, we got a cheap bed & decent mattress. And "No", the mattress didn't smell like smoke, and all the crib needed was a few screws tightened. We were glad to have the RAV4. The crib fit on it's side without taking it apart! Never would have happened in the Camry. The dogs had to do a test drive for us, just to make sure it's up to par...:) We also found a cool, non-diaper-bag-looking diaper bag. We were looking at an outdoor shop in Columbia a few weeks ago and found a North Face Yavapai backpack that has a TON of pockets, zippers, and a cool brown color. We'll fit a changing mat and bottle insulator to it and...TADA...a diaper bag! We didn't want one with flowers, storks, or bubbles on it, and that seemed to be all we could find in the backpack type diaper bags at the stores. This one looks pretty cool, and had a chest & waist strap if we need to take the weight off our shoulders, something the other diaper backpacks never had. It will also be nice to use it as a Daypack (it's intended purpose) so we can change the kid right on the hiking trial...:)

Happy Anniversaries!

Happy 38th Anniversary Larry & Deb!

Happy 32nd Anniversary Dan & Holly!

Happy 3rd Anniversary to US!

I hope you all had a wonderful anniversary! Mike & I had a pretty uneventful day, classes for both of us and a night of studying yet to come:) We did have a Dr.'s appointment this afternoon. Babies heart rate was 142-153bpm, so right where it should be.

What?

That was the buzz word from this last weekend. Apparently Michelle got water in her ears when she was swimming and couldn't hear anyone. She kept saying "What?", "Huh?", or just staring off into space because she had no idea anyone was talking to her. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me preface this blog with this video:

Michelle did a great job getting our room bumped up to a nice executive boardroom suite, Room 146. We beat Shell there and told her it was room 147, the held the camera up to the peephole and watched her struggle. We were hoping someone was staying in that room because that would have been the "cherry on top" of that video. Michelle is constant entertainment...:) Sorry for the small video, and "Stalker-Cam" appearance.
After we stopped laughing we headed to Austin's to bring him his 5 year old birthday presents! It's crazy to think he's 5! He really wanted to see Mara, but I promised him I'll bring her next time...:)
We headed to Jean Pierre's Cafe in Shorewood for lunch, then off to Alterra (of course) for post-lunch coffee, then walked a few miles around the lakefront. It was gorgeous outside, and it was nice to hang out with the sisters. We headed to another Alterra and then to Whole Foods and picked up some wine & cheese. We headed back to the hotel to relax, watch the olympics, look through some old photos, and just enjoy the night.
I had a lot of fun, and can't wait to do it again!

Happy 51st Birthday Mom!

We hope you have a fantastic birthday! Enjoy your day and try to find some time to rest and relax. Hopefully you won't have to work to hard on your birthday.
I couldn't find a recent picture that I could crop just Holly so I figured I might as well get her doing her favorite role as grandma:)

It's a...

Just to further dispell any fetal sex predictions based on heartrate, here are a couple of articles that may interest you:

Gender-Related Differences in Fetal Heart Rate during First Trimester D.S. McKenna, G. Ventolini, R. Neiger, C. Downing; Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, USA; Fetal Diagn Ther 2006;21:144-147

This study showed that there was no correlation between heart rate and fetal sex.

Prediction from Human Fetal Measures Jack Bernard; Child Development, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Dec., 1964), pp. 1243-1248

This was a significantly older study that showed the same thing...funny how the old wives tale has survived even with sound evidence that it is incorrect:)

Just for fun, here are a few websites that will predict the babies sex amongst other things: Baby Gender Prediction, Chinese Fortune Calendar, and IntelliGender. I find it quite funny that these websites will charge you for a "prediction" when you could find out accurately with a little patience (ok, it would take a lot of patience to wait until February, we'll see if we have that kind of patience).

The Many Moods & Faces Of Michelle Stokes...

Well, Michelle put together quite a slide show of, self-admitted, the most awkward years a boy could ever ask for... Well she left out the other half of the twin team, my equally awkward turtle-like sister. Sheilded from the outside, she struggles to understand the world around her, but with the help of Chris, had acheived more than anyone could have dreamed for her.
Some of Michelles best work:

Funny/Nerdy Infant Onesies

Mara had some friends at school tell her about some nerdy onsies for kids. I think some of these are VERY applicable...:)

Baby Furniture

We just can't justify spending half our rent on a changing table. My god, they are like $250! Well, thanks to our cheapo ways, we found a pretty good replacement...and old desk salvaged from the Salvation Army for $8. Our friends Tim & Allison refinished an old hutch from a relative and it looks amazing! They posted pictures on their blog. This project was not quite the same. The top on this was badly damaged (water, stains, etc), but it's really sturdy, lots of drawer space, and plenty wide for a changing table wedge. With the $8 price tag we sure as hell weren't going to refinish like Tim & Allison did, so we just slapped $5 worth of contact paper and called it good. They must love their kid more than we do...:)
In the picture there is a pig Sally sent us this week. It's super soft, but the color is something to be desired... Hopefully the dogs don't get a hold of it before the kid sees it!
I also included a picture of our glider we bought off a 3rd year med student who was moving. It costs us $15, and is hideous, but at 3am we aren't going to notice...:) We are still on the lookout for a 4-in-1 crib, but those seem to be more reasonably priced and we may just end up picking one of those up. Of course it will have to be on one of our road trips because the closest Babies 'R Us is 200 miles away!
Not a whole lot else happening with us. Mara is feeling good with classes starting, just taking a nap once a day to recharge for the late night studying. I'm just working in the lab as usual, just waiting to start classes on the 18th of August. The dogs are still idiots, with no signs of slowing down for when the kid comes...

At Home Doppler

Mara found a REALLY good place to rent an at-home, hand-held Doppler so we can hear the kid's heart beat (BabyFM.com). We've been pretty fascinated by it so far, but we've only had it a few days. We got some audio of the kid's heart beat using our camera and set it to some ultrasound pictures just for fun (I have time before my classes start in 2 weeks). From our calculations the heart rate is around 174 beats per minute, which is slightly faster than the 170 beats used by the widget on the left, but who's counting? The kid must have been moving around all over the place because we could never get a heart beat for more than 5 seconds in one spot, but we finally got the kid in one spot and got about 40 good seconds. In lieu of belly pics we'll just post the audio...:)

BBBQ

Well, the old flame broiler finally died on us this afternoon. We've been having problems with the gas knobs not catching the valve and not allowing gas to the burners, thus...no fire...no BBQ. And we even picked up fresh sweet corn at the farmer's market!
If you haven't had the pleasure of Mara cooking for you on the grill, you are missing out! We've taken to cooking pizzas, flat-breads, fruit, and whatever else you can think of, on our grill. We ran ALL OVER town today. It took us 30 minutes to go to ACE Hardware, Home Depot, & Wal-Mart before we FINALLY got our grill...:) It took me about 2 hours to assemble it in our living room (I took advantage of the A/C), but I had the Brewers game to keep my mind occupied. I only had to tear it down and restart once because I didn't put the right angled beam thingy with the right upright support dohicky, but after all that, the girl lit right up and didn't burn our house down.
The old grill will have to be scraped, but it's lasted us 5+ years, 4 moves, and 2 states. Not too bad for a $100 grill, and we've only had to replace the burner once! I think $20/year is pretty good for a grill...:) Here are pictures of the new & old grills. You can tell it was time to put the old one down...


You may also be wondering what the extra B in the title is for (did you even notice?). Well, like most things in life, you can relate this post to a Simpson's Episode. For you viewing pleasure: