April 2006 - What's Going On with Us???

Ok, so we haven't posted much lately, so apparently it's time to do some updating. Keep in mind that this is not necessarily in chronological order, but I think you'll get the idea. Today (April 29th) Jill and I attended the year's first Purdue football game. It was the spring game, to conclude spring practice. We watched as Curtis Painter guided the Black team to victory (we are assuming, having left during the 3rd quarter due to rain). He made some very nice throws, and at halftime former players came onto the field to greet the fans. There were a lot (maybe 5,000) fans at the game, and about 200 former players had returned for the big day. Among them were current NFL players Kyle Orton, Stuart Schweigert, Gilbert Gardner, Landon Johnson, Matt Light, Kelly Butler, Craig Terrill, as well as some older greats such as Leroy Keyes and Mike Phipps (sorry, no Drew Brees or Bob Griese). The picture above is on here because it was just a beautiful thing. What was so beautiful? The parking space. Front spot, across the street from Mackey Arena (Ross-Ade Stadium is behind it), in front of Jimmy John's, etc.
The Monster of the Midway - Kyle "The Grizzly Bear" Orton, of your Chicago Bears...looks like he's thinking of acting as mascot just in case he doesn't get another shot behind center.
This is about as close as fans can get to the field at Ross-Ade. If you look closely you can see the train tracks on the ground where the team runs out onto the field on gamedays.
On Easter weekend we went up to Grand Rapids to see Mike and Roberta, and also to go to Lansing for Easter dinner. While in Lansing, Jill's family threw a baby shower for her and her cousin Maggie, who recently had a baby girl.
The great pink gay cake. Vivian and Susan decided to get a cake at Sam's Club for the girls' baby shower. They told the people in the cake-making department that it should say "Congratulations Maggie and Jill", with some baby decorations. Apparently they got a little carried away, and went ahead to assume that Maggie and Jill were a couple, decorating their cake with a nice, big rainbow. You can understand their mistake, after all it's 2006, and we live in a society accepting of alternative lifestyles. Vivian and Susan were not thrilled with the cake, but you have to admit that it will be hard to forget at least.

Madelyn's 3D Pictures - April 22nd

Today we went over to Castleton 4D Ultrasound on the north side of Indianapolis to get our 3D ultrasound done. We had seen pictures online of this ultrasound method, and we weren't disappointed. The technician confirmed that Maddie still appears to be a good name choice, over Matthew. Check out the pictures below to see what we saw during the ultrasound.
In this picture the baby's body and head are out of the picture (at the bottom), but there is still plenty to see. You can easily make out both hands together and all five fingers on the left one. There on the right going up at an angle is the bottom of her right leg with the right foot going up to the left. I guess for those medically-inclined we can see excellent specimens of the right ulna, right and left carpals and metacarpals, and all five of the left phalanges of the hand. As well, I would concur that we are seeing a right fibula, tarsals, metatarsals, and phalanges of the foot.This is the real beauty. What a stunner. I don't think this picture really requires an explanation, but this is our little girl's beautiful face. We didn't get a straight-on picture, but in this one you can see her cheek, chin, ear, nose, mouth, and eye. It was pretty awesome to be able to see her face for the first time.

April 2nd - Indy Tornado

Last night I drove back home to Indy from South Bend. It was raining a little bit, but I didn't pay much attention to it, got home, and watched some TV for a while when I got home. I noticed that there was a tornado warning for Marion County, so I decided to watch some of the weather broadcast. Channel 12 was having their normal "freak out" session like they do whenever it rains hard, but there were some tornadoes, so it was understandable. As I watched, I heard the weatherman say that a tornado had been reported to have touched down near the corner of Mann and Mills Roads. That's our house (the little house icon on the south side of Indy) and the location of the aforementioned intersection (the yellow cross). That's only 4 miles from our house.

Well, after I heard that, I figured maybe this tornado thing was serious. Turns out that it was. Suddenly the cable went out and the wind turned up. I looked outside the back door by opening it and it was thundering loud wind and just a wall of water going by so fast that it was completely sideways. I heard a cracking sound that sounded like wood breaking, making me wonder how the house was going to hold up. After that, the power went out and it was pitch black. I crawled to the MagLite (thanks Dave) that was in the cupboard and got it and ran to the dining room and shoved the table over to the corner and got under it. The thundering loud wind continued for about a minute, then it died back down to a normal thunderstorm.

After the wind died down I called Jill to tell her what happened, and the power came back on. It actually stopped raining and completely cleared up about 30 minutes later, so I looked outside to see what had happened. Our fence was perpendicular to the wind direction, so it took a pretty hard force and the post nearest the house bent over until it was touching the fireplace vent. I tried to push it back, but it's stuck that way like the concrete shifted in the ground along with the post.
This is hard to see, but it's our neighbor's grill that had somehow "blown" from his backyard, down his yard, and across the street. If it had kept going up our yard it would've been in our living room, so I'm pretty happy that it stopped. I was pretty surprised to see that it made it that far (about 75-100 feet).
This is the wooded area next to our house - it's a little hard to see, but check out the big tree that's fallen over in the background. There's also a bunch of debris on the sidewalks everywhere.
This is the tree behind our back neighbor's house. I think this was the cracking sound when it was falling over and the branches were crashing through the smaller trees. What makes me think a small tornado went over our house was this tree damage, because this was the scene behind the house, but out front, behind those houses, no trees are knocked over.
Chase was glad that our trees in front made it through the storm :)