Our Lovely Neighborhood

I was at home yesterday and started hearing helicopters circling close by around 12pm. I eventually decided to turn on the news to see if they mentioned anything and saw that there was "breaking news" in Gardena. A police officer had been shot at the corner of Rosecrans and Normandie (A), which is only .6 miles from our house (B).

View Larger Map
Ryan and I kept checking the news online to see what was going on (he was at work, but he could see the helicopters in the distance). At one point they thought they had the shooter trapped in a dumpster, so the SWAT team surrounded it but no one was inside. They blocked off a large section of the surrounding neighborhood and hundreds of police searched the area. The last we heard on the news was that the areas blocked off were east of Normandie (we're on the west side). We decided to go to Target around 6:30pm and were surprised to see police at the end of our street. Apparently the search area was widened since they still hadn't found the shooter or the two other suspects. We finally found out this morning that the shooter had been found hiding in someone's hot tub, but the other two haven't been found.


SWAT team in Gardena
Click here for the Daily Breeze article

Oh, that reminds me.

Denise's most recent blog post reminded me that I haven't told anyone about my new calling. I was even on the phone with my mom last night and it completely slipped my mind.

I am now a teacher of 8-11 year old boys in the Primary. (Yes, it's a very small ward when all the 8-11 year old boys are in one class. And theres only about 4 of them that come regularly, I've been told.) I co-teach with another brother in the ward.

This is a new one for me. I've done Executive Secretary, Finance Clerk, Elders Quorum presidency, and young men's presidency. I'm noticing a trend where I'm teaching younger and younger age groups...

What's next, Nursery? :)

The Christmas Manfairy Demands It

The grouchy Christmas Manfairy threw a fit when he saw he didn't make the Christmas blog post. "Christmas magic this, and presents that, nyeah nyeah nyeah. I'm what's happening, baby!"

To appease His Grumpiness the Christmas Manfairy, I present this blog post dedicated soley to him.

Click to see a larger version (and why wouldn't you want to see more of that charming face?)

Our First Anniversary

On December 28, 2006 Katie and I were married. A year later, we're amazed how quickly time has flown and that we're about to have our first child. I heard a lot of things from people about the first year, such as "it's the most difficult year." I guess that opinion isn't universal, because I don't think there was anything hard at all about our first year of married life. I thought it was a lot of fun, and I'm confident Katie would agree with me. The stress of two moves and busy work and school schedules wasn't even that bad in retrospect, especially since we had so many laughs and great memories along the way.

We celebrated our anniversary by taking off work and spending the day together and enjoying some of our Christmas gifts (ie: Wii games! :D) After a year of storage in a freezer our wedding cake was as good as the day it was served at our reception.


Yum yum!

Celebrating with the Bakers

Sorry for being so slow with these posts. Christmas was over a week ago and I'm just now getting it blogged. Thought with my time off from school and work I'd have more free time to do this stuff, but other things pushed this down the priority list.

Anyways, on to the good stuff! Since neither of our parents were here for the holidays, my older sister Denise invited us to stay with her family for Christmas. We drove over to their house after work on Christmas Eve day, and spent the night together with all the Bakers. Although we had a really fun time, we felt bad for them because every member of their family except our youngest nephew Luke got sick with some nuclear monster disease virus. It wasn't pretty, and it lasted days, but I think everyone is fine now.

Christmas Eve started with a walk around the lit neighborhood to experience Christmas Magic. Ahhh... Christmas Magic! It's hard to explain, but I think the pictures turned out well enough that you too can experience the wonder:

Click for larger image of tree as seen with Christmas Magic glasses.


On the left, a normal fireplace. On the right, the same fireplace as seen with Christmas Magic
Christmas Magic glasses let you see the mystical aura of the holiday season that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Sure, anyone can see all the lights and decorations and presents, but only these special glasses let the wearer see the pure magic of it all. I don't know where Denise got them, but they made the night special. And dare I say... magical. :)


Early the next morning, after a couple of the kids woke everyone up with their upchuck visits to the bathroom, we got ourselves ready to go downstairs.


Good morning sleepyheads!


The first thing the kids see when they get downstairs is what Santa brought them...


... a Wii! No way! They were so excited!


Santa also tracked down Katie and I, and brought us our gift: the 4th and 5th Harry Potter movies on DVD, which Katie has never seen. Thanks Santa!


That's a huge pile of presents under that tree. Let the gift opening commence!


Luke and Nate


Emily and Megan


Katie got me Mario Galaxy for the Wii (among other things) and I got her some Gilmore Girls dvd sets (among other things) :)


Time for breakfast! (for those of us who weren't throwing up, anyways...)


We got lots of presents from so many people, and this blog would get boring really fast if we posted pictures of them all, but I did want to post the quilt my sister Lauren made for the baby. Cute! Thanks Sissy!

Hope everyone else had as great a Christmas with their families as we did! We love and miss everyone we couldn't spend the holidays with. Thanks everyone for the gifts, and we hope you liked yours, too. :D All of our Christmas 2007 photos can be seen in a set on Flickr by clicking here.

Celebrating with the Bradleys

Because Katie's parents would be joining two of Katie's siblings and their families in Ohio for the holiday we celebrated Christmas with them early, as well as Katie and her father's birthdays. Although we would miss being with them for Christmas, we all had a fun time exchanging gifts together.

Katie can't wait to get at the presents.


Mommy B has a keen sense of what practical gifts we could use.


Baby clothes from the Popes and Lost from Mom and Dad B!


Mom and Dad B with some of their gifts.


Holiday blocks from Katie's parents. You can spell out 6 different holidays with the blocks. This one covers Katie and Jesus' birthdays :)

And of course, the traditional Bradley family Baskin Robbins' ice cream birthday cake. This is still new to me, but I love it: ice cream rolled up in a cake. So yummy!


Celebrating Katie's 25th and Dad B's 56th. Happy birthday!

Christmas with the Pakulas and Bakers

The annual Pakula-Wood-Baker Christmas party was held today, and Katie and I were pretty excited to be going since we missed last year's. Although the rest of the Woods were missing from the festivities this year, we hope the plethora of photos is some comforting consolation to them.

Merry Christmas from California!



The family hanging out.



Santa Jeff doles out the gifts to the kids.



Emily and Megan opening their gifts.



One of the dogs getting friendly with Katie



The baby gets his first present, a cute outfit and a blanket from Auntie Jill and Uncle Jeff.




Playing pool with the kids, and striking a hot pose for Katie.



Playing with the doggies!

More here! Enjoy!
Hope everyone's holiday season is going well so far. Just over a week till Christmas! yay!

Baby Pictures and Update

I went to my new doctor last week and she said the baby is doing well and weighs 4 lbs. 2 oz. She doesn't know why I've been getting so many contractions and said that it's probably just Braxton Hicks contractions that sometimes get into a regular pattern for some reason. I'm now on modified bed rest, so I've been able to get out of the house and even go to work for a few hours. Yay!

Here are some pictures from the ultrasound they did at my last appointment.

He had his foot up on his forehead...what a silly boy!


Look at his cute face! Ryan thinks I'm crazy (along with everyone else who's seen this picture) because I think you can see his face really well.

I also went in for a fetal MRI last week so they could get a better look at the baby's brain and it was not a pleasant experience for the baby or me. I had to be on my back for at least 20 minutes (that's how long they said it would be, but I think it was actually longer), which isn't comfortable at all. It was noisy but I wasn't bothered by that; the baby didn't seem to like it too much though because he'd start moving around whenever the sound came on. The worse part was that it just kept getting hotter and hotter in that tube. By the time I was finally able to get out I was sweating and feeling pretty gross. Hopefully they got what they needed because the baby and I don't want to do that again!

Say Trees!

It's Christmas time! A couple weeks ago we received an artificial tree from an old family friend and quickly set it up Thanksgiving weekend, complete with lights, garland, and all our childhood ornaments.

Me putting the pieces together and evening out the branches.


Pretty!


We love having a Christmas tree!

Back on Bed Rest

I returned to work last week Monday, but Wednesday afternoon I was having contractions every five minutes and had to go back to the hospital. They gave me a pill to stop the contractions and sent me home on bed rest a few hours later. I saw my doctor on Friday and she told me I needed to stay on bed rest and she transferred me to a new doctor who deals with high risk pregnancies. This is actually the same doctor I saw for my follow up ultrasound, so at least I already know her and like her. I'll be seeing her tomorrow and hopefully she'll have a better idea of why I keep having these contractions. The baby is still doing well; we just hope he stays in there for a while longer!