Ugh! Where was the last 6 weeks gone? Sorry for the blog silence but things got busy per usual about this time of year. Here’s some quick bullet points since I last checked in:

• Our TV “bricked”. 1 month after the warranty expired, the power supply died on us. Up to this point we had been enamored with our Olevia 537H, but this was a major sucker punch. To their credit, Olevia agreed to honor the warranty despite its expiration, but since they don’t have any certified repair centers near Portland, I had to ship the damaged set back to their California headquarters at my expense. That I can deal with, but to be without it for all of the season finales after the brutally long writers strike was harsh. (What can I say, I love my programs).
• We have new trees. Our 6 birch trees were diseased to the point that I was getting nervous during any moderate wind storms, so I finally got up the nerve to call some arborists to get quotes. We also had two large poplars removed because they were planted WAY too close to our house and I was concerned that they might impact our foundation. We replaced them with 3 maple trees in the front parking strip and 4 eastern redbuds in the side parking strip. I’ll try to get some pictures of them soon.
• I sold my old Acura. I’m sure my neighbors are privately rejoicing now that my old reliable Acura isn’t uglifying our driveway. I really wasn’t that sentimental about it, so I’m not sure what took me so long. I guess it was just out-of-site and out-of-mind. Anyway, I can park in my driveway and I’ve got a little extra gas money.

Ariah is doing well. It seems like she has really grown in length over the past few months. For the first time in her life, she received a few “she looks tall for her age” comments at the park. Those were kinda humorous and kinda redeeming after seeing her numbers dip into the single-digit percentiles. Her language skills are unbelievable. She is very motivated to point out letters in words and then try to figure out what the word is. She also “reads” her favorite books. I think its mostly from memory, but she does a pretty good job of sounding through the words. Our goal now is to get her more motivated in the potty chair.

Before I get to the pictures of Ariah, I feel like I should add a note about the sudden passing of NBC’s Tim Russert. Its funny because we’re usually not effected by celebrity news, but as I’ve mentioned before, Meet the Press has become a mainstay of our Sunday evenings (thanks to our DVR). We were both taken aback to hear about his passing because of his young age and more importantly because we need him now more than ever. As a political reporter, he was relentless, fair and thorough. It was always fun to watch him corner someone up when he knew they were shading the truth. There just wasn’t any point in lying to Russert because you knew he was going to follow up your answer with video clips and newspaper clippings that would destroy your facade. Good times. He will be missed.

Now, onto the pics…

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