Mark, Nicole, Lincoln, and Cora
What's new with the family
Almost Wordless Wednesday . . .
Feb 24th
Ta-da!
Lincoln playing Hide-n-Seek with Daddy.
I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I actually put something on our Blog!!! Nicole
Hacked! (And apologies)
Feb 5th
Hi All,
It appears that the theme associated with my blog was hacked, and that if you visited in the past couple days you would be redirected to any number of sites (ChinaNowTV, or some lewd ones as well). I apologize if this affected you, I believe that I have fixed it. Please email me if you ever see this kind of problem again (thanks Dave!).
Mark.
Thankful – 2009
Nov 26th
Here are just a few of the reasons I’m thankful this year. These are pictures we’ve taken, and though they may be worth thousands of words, but more can be said for sure. God is good. (Notice the dove on the mountain…)
Happy Thanksgiving!
~Mark, Nicole, Lincoln, and Cora
P.S. You can click the little square on the player above to make it full screen, and click “HD” to watch in high definition if your connection supports it (or if you don’t mind waiting).
Introducing: Cora Ciara Phillips
Nov 13th
Born at 5:10am on her due date of November 12th after 16 hours of labor (with only an hour at the hospital), Cora came into the world with a full head of hair (currently looks dark brown), weighing 8 lbs. 9 oz., and measuring 22.5 inches long. She’s a big little girl! Nicole delivered naturally and did super. She’s pretty tired but is doing okay.
Murder Mysteries!
Nov 6th
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My exceedingly creative and always entertaining friend, Bret Carter, has written 3 murder mysteries! Having put one on before, I know the games are not easy to put together. His include up to twenty characters and he aimed for somewhere between too easy and too hard. He teamed up with a business partner, they’ve tested them and are ready to go with a website and everything. There are alien, super hero, and WWII themes and all are appropriate for teens or adults. I couldn’t resist putting a plug in here: http://www.foglightgames.com/
Costumes
Nov 1st
Lincoln wore a cute Lion outfit that Grandma Marnie made.
Nicole capitalized on the pregnancy (Humpty Dumpty) and I capitalized on the recent news (balloon boy):
Lincoln has some interesting things to say:
Halloween + Blizzard = Snow Pumpkin
Oct 29th
We live at the end of a cul-de-sac. No, not the cool traffic free end, the other end. We’re having a big snow and last night I heard a plow pushing snow out of the cul-de-sac onto our yard. We noticed an 8 ft. tall mound this morning. So, what to do?
Make a snow-pumpkin of course!
Baby Status: Not here yet.
Oct 26th
So, here’s some baby info, for those interested. I think we’re having a girl (but keep in mind that I was convinced Lincoln was a girl until the very moment I saw he wasn’t) because I have not gotten the Puppps rash this time (Thank You, God!), the heart rate has averaged slightly higher than Lincoln’s was, and there are some cute girl clothes I want to buy. Pretty flimsy, heh? More >
Lincoln-speak
Aug 30th
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| From Summer 2009 |
As a speech pathologist, I often understand why Lincoln is saying words certain ways, but he continues to surprise me wtih some original words and ways of talking. For my part, I’m surprised how adorable I find it when he does so; in fact, I have no desire at all to help him say his words correctly, at least not at this point. Some of my current favorites from Incoln, as he calls himself, are: “wummy” for yummy, “wes” or “wass” for yes, “dunk” for dump, and DE-wicious or sometimes “de-WISH-us” when he is enjoying what he is eating. He is also getting creative with his language, as today he referred to a cow as a “moo-er” and when using a toy wheelbarrow, he says, “wheel, wheel” since of course that must be the verb form of wheelbarrow. Similarly, the verb form of using a squeegee is logically, “squeeg, squeeg.” He is talking all the time it seems, narrating what he sees and what he is thinking. I really had no idea just how much fun it would be to find out what is going on in that little mind of his.
India Part IV: Lovely Lava
Jul 19th
Lava is situated on a ridge in Himalayan mountains. From our little balcony on the third floor of “The Hotel Orchid”, you can just see down to the plains. We saw very few other customers during our stay, but it was not tourist season. The hotel staff seemed to be family and treated us warmly, serving us tasty food and offering lots of smiles.
Music Monday II: Epic Story Songs
Jul 6th
Over the past two years, I’ve come across 3 songs that transcend the typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus format to music tell stories on an epic scale. While progressive rock often has atypical song structures and immense stories of fantasy, these songs are accessible to the masses (sill sound like pop/rock) and tell life stories.
The first has been around a while: Billy Joel’s “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant“. For seven and a half minutes it uses various musical styles to tell the rise and fall of a relationship and ties it all together with a casual storyteller-style. A “greatest hit” for good reason.
Look who’s two
Jun 21st
Lincoln has turned two, and it’s hard for us to believe. He’s still fairly mild mannered, but seems to have come out of his shell some. He’s in the typical vacuum phase kids go through. He pretends to vacuum with his toys, including his toy razor which he flips over, brushes on the carpet and says, “Vacuum, vacuuuum.” That is a normal phase, right?
SYD on TV (or “Look! That’s the back of my head!”)
Jun 21st
Over the past couple of years I’ve recorded the Singing Youth of Denver (SYD) at various times. Recently I was recording them when the director, Lee Cole, was honored as a “Channel 7 Everyday Hero”. As I set up my audio equipment, they were preparing to film the kids. The segment aired on TV recently and you can see the video here. If you look carefully near the beginning when you see the choir, you’ll see my laptop and the back of my head. No, really, it’s my head. –Mark
Music Monday I: Free Ambient Techno
May 4th
I’ve been thinking about doing this for awhile. I tend to make projects too large and then never start them. So, with a fresh commitment to just doing something and no promise on consistency, I introduce to you: Music Monday!
This week I want to share something with you that is free and legal. Too good to be true? Not if you like electronic and/or ambient music. There are more and more artists releasing free or name-your-price music. This selection is, for the most part, gentle electronica. Some “noise as music” done with real artistry.
Colorado warms up Texas
Mar 18th
Last weekend we made a quick trip to Texas, starting with a flight into Houston to pick up the used car we just bought there, then a drive to Dallas to surprise my brother and his family, meet their 2-month-old twins, help them move into their new house, and then a long road trip home.
It was a great trip, and a good thing we took warm clothes! On the way back, the temperature got progressively warmer, until it was positively balmy here in Colorado. Aside from the chill of the wind, though, family sure did warm us up.
Lincoln had a great time playing with Landon and Liam (and I got some good ideas for birthday gifts for him this summer), Mark did some serious painting and seemed to enjoy the trips to Home Depot in the “new-for-us” car, and I loved holding those beautiful little babies, Kallie and Klaire.
I was doing great with telling them apart, but the day we left, the last time I tried to say who was who, I got it wrong 
. Guess I’d better label the pictures so everybody else has an idea about it too. Overall, it was a great weekend–we have great extended families, Link is a trooper of a traveler, Mark thoroughly enjoys the car, and I still love road trips.
India Part III: Orchids? We kid.
Jan 11th
After Jaldapara we headed from the plains into the mountains, the Himalayas to be precise. We were still in the state of West Bengal, but the terrain was to change significantly. Taking another reserved jeep, we hit the road (and believe me, it hit us back).
We could see the Bhutanese Himalayas to the north of us and we drove on the plains, often crossing rivers with little water, but wide beds of mountain gravel. During monsoon, it would be a different story.
In this picture you can see a tall chimney. These were for brick-making, and dotted the area. If you look carefully on the right side of the picture (you may need to click on it to see it more clearly), there is a dump truck in the stream bed. We commonly saw piles of rocks that people were making from the stones in the river bed. They were then loaded onto trucks which took them to construction projects. At times we saw people smashing rocks by hand to make gravel.
More >
India Part II: Elephant Day
Jan 6th
We find Ryan, Amanda, and Asher (as well as a friend of theirs and a jeep driver) on a train platform on the other side of the world in New Alipurdaur, India. I have to say it felt great to see someone we knew. We piled in the “reserved jeep” and I told the adventure of getting there. Ryan later said it was one of his favorite parts of our visit; to hear what he knew so well about India from a brother’s new eyes.
A “reserved jeep” is a SUV that is wholly for us. A luxury in India. We drive through country roads, constantly using either side of the road to avoid large potholes, or rather stretches of broken pavement, and we catch up. Somehow we got to the topic of the side-to-side wagging of the head that Indian people do. Though it looks like “no”, it turns out it means an emphatic yes. That had already been the source of quite a bit of confusion on the train.
We went to Jaldapara, where we were dropped off at Jaldapara Lodge. Like most things in India, it looks rundown, but the inside was recently renovated. There were queen beds, a walk-in shower with a small dedicated water heater on the wall, a functioning western toilet, and an A/C unit that was not wired up yet. Lincoln was exhausted from the journey, and fell asleep in the kiddy backpack.
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| From India 2008 |
India Part I: Getting There
Dec 30th
This is overdue, but we’re going to attempt to give our India trip some justice. Hopefully we’ll be able to share something interesting. We’ll be putting all the pictures up in Picasa and you could look at a slide show of all of them there, but there will be stories here to go with the pictures, so I’d recommend exploring here. However, click on the pictures if you want to see them larger. This will be in multiple installments which will hopefully take less time than the trip did.
Days 1-3: Getting there.
We left from Denver, with a direct flight to London. This might have been more exciting for Lincoln if it wasn’t his 7th or so round-trip flight this year. Still, he likes planes.
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| From India 2008 |
One thing that can be interesting to track is the H.P.R. (the Happy Picture Ratio). It is usually much higher at the beginning of the trip. More >