Garrick and Rachel Baxter are loving life with kids Zander and Emmelia. We are carving out our lives in our Iowa town and church. We are endeavoring for great things as engineering and paid & search engine optimization leaders. And we always look forward to visits with family and friends. BTW ... GOBIGRED and LETSGOREDSOX >>> Thanks for carving out time to visit us online, on facebook (garrick / rachel), twitter (garrick), and wordpress! Oh, and I can't forget the PHOTOS.

4.20.09

We enjoy seeing our families in Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska when we can. A recent trip Palm Sunday weekend to Pella for my folks was a nice one. The grandparents got to catch up with the fast growing Zander and Emmelia.

The Nebraska and Iowa family got to catch up with all of the grandkids the weekend after Easter (a battle with influenza and a brother-in-law fighting cancer precluded actual Easter). New Easter outfits handmade by Grandma Belinda were worn by the kids, a day after we enjoyed the Husker spring game.

Even after a wonderful weekend, it’s smart money that one of the kids was going to get sick. It’s as inevitable as the sun rising every day. So, Bella Jo and Greta are sick today after our visit. Get better soon!

Since we’re updating photos, we can’t forget just a good ol’ fashioned Palm Sunday spent just hanging out with the kids.

We’re pacing at updating photos once a month. We’re better at updating our Facebook with mobile uploaded photos than we are updating Picasa, WordPress, and our own site. Fairly pathetic.

Next week is May. Chew on that for a second.

This post is solely intended for updating our photos links. Squeezing out any other dialogue is futile. More later this week.

Peace and God bless.

4.17.09

Zander woke up this morning at 4:20 (or 0420), and he’s made a habit of doing so. He’s Mr. Independent and he’s always adamant about getting breakfast right away and watching Noggin. I don’t have that kind of juice in the morning. I have to add tea, oatmeal, and some computer time to the brain before the synapses start functioning. Meanwhile, Zander has probably burned off 100 calories just thinking and noshing on “bumble bees” (Honeycomb cereal). It’s just one of the millions of things that I love about the Z-monster.

The family has recovered from an awful case of influenza, which tormented our home for over a week. Both kids had fevers for two days of over 103 degrees. Both Mom and Dad were down for a day. After burning through a box of diapers in a day, we HAD to get Zander potty-trained. Rachel made it happen, and life has been much better ever since. It just costs us a Thomas the Tank Engine sticker and a Dum Dum lollipop to reinforce this. We’re ready to enjoy the outdoors after the whole affair.

mmmm…Starbucks latte…now that’s the legalized drug that works.

We’ve got a nice weekend planned in Nebraska this weekend. The Huskers’ Red-White spring game is on tap for Garrick, Rachel, Zander, and for Lucas. It’s supposed to rain but there’s nothing like a Husker Game Day. It will be Zander’s first.

Easter will be celebrated since we missed out on it all last weekend. Eggs will be hidden, Sunday gear will be worn, and plenty of food will be prepared.

Above all this, we’ll see Dan, who is recovering from chemotherapy for Hodgkins lymphoma (stage III). Last weekend was extremely tough. Many many prayers went out to him and to Molly in order to recover from complications. We’re still praying for him, especially that our visit this weekend will lift his spirits.

I can’t forget Runzas and Fairbury hot dogs. They will be headed to Nebraska friends in Oregon next month.

Back to the influenza, Rachel and Garrick have been returning to full days of work. Our professional lives in window manufacturing and financial services are going well, but there’s so much to be done for our collective employers. Our industries are still down, headcount is low, and our particular jobs contribute to the bottom line. We fully enjoy our jobs and we want to do the best performance. It’s nice to return to 100%.

The Red Sox are back at home playing Baltimore, Minnesota, and the Yankees in Fenway the next nine games. FANTASTIC! Let’s get out of this homestand with a winning record, Sawx!

4.13.09

Call it the Facebook / Twitter effect because we find ourselves wanting to use this site to update our lives in a little more detail than just three-five "what's on your mind" lines or 140 characters for "what are you doing?" Like we introduced on 4.12, we're hoping to update this a couple days per week. I'm benefiting from a day with Zander and his fifth day of the flu. I have time to journal more while I await the opportunity to add a sticker and give a sucker for a Zander "good job."

I'm considering converting to a Wordpress account. I've found search engine consultants (and Curt Schilling) who have their own domain name but use Wordpress to update their web site. This may make life easy. More on that later.

Zander update (10:20 AM): 16 stickers (and Dum Dums) since waking up at 5:30 ... oy!

4.12.09

Ahhh, there's nothing like spring cleaning for your house, car ... and web site. We've started to update our site just because it needs it. We'll update the four photos above but you'll find all of our more recent photos on our facebook and picasa pages. We'll start to use this site for more news updates and general blogger type dialogue.

This weekend, we endured days 5 and 6 of influenza's shock and awe. Emme started it last Monday with a fever of 104. After Garrick and Rachel had a day of the funk, Zander finished his fourth day of his own misery today. Blech. At least we took this opportunity to potty train the Z-monster. Gotta love silver linings, which are underrated.

With that comes the good news of Easter ... and the recovery of our brother-in-law from complications due to cancer and chemotherapy. Low blood pressure and a stay in ICU at UNMC had the family on their knees praying. On Sunday afternoon, he was playing cards and was in good spirits. Thankfully, he gets a week off from chemo.

I haven't done a good job of educating myself about cancer but I will try to donate to the cause of fighting cancer. We've already been donating to the Jimmy Fund, especially during their WEEI/NESN telethon drive.

Are you reading any good books? We've just finished Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and The Tipping Point books. Garrick is now reading CrazyBusy with The Wisdom of Crowds, The Long Tail, and the third edition of Now I Can Die in Peace on deck.

We'll see how this new site and updating goes. It's said that a habit is formed in 21 days. We'll see if we can at least update twice a week, then work our way up.

God bless and keep in touch.