July 4
July 10, 2009
Categories: Baby, Steph and Mike . Tags: belly, July 4, pregnant, steph . Author: Mike McDowell . Comments: Leave a Comment
Belly Update July 4th
July 4
4th of July
July 3-4, 2009
This year, we were invited by our friends, Chris and Shenea, to join them at her parents’ cabin in Lake Tahoe (Glenbrook). The house was beautiful, and had an extremely nice wine cellar with more than 5,000 bottles of wine! There are some photos of the wine cellar below. You’ll notice that it has a full professional kitchen setup too. How cool is that? What’s better is that the wine cellar also has a secret passageway! I LOVE secret passageways! We spent some time on the beach and had a really relaxing weekend.
Saturday night, we headed back to town to catch the Reno Aces game with our friends Mike and Amy. We had pretty good seats, near the plate on the first base side. The stadium was packed – in fact, an attendance record was set on the 4th of July with more than 9,100 people (I forget the exact number). The Aces lost in a close one to the first-place Sacramento Rivercats, 12-14. After the game, the Aces provided the crowd with a short patriotic presentation and then a fireworks show. The City of Reno had cancelled its fireworks show for this year, so we felt especially glad to be seeing fireworks on the 4th of July. And what’s more American than watching fireworks on the 4th of July from a baseball stadium. The fireworks were really done well, and it was a great and memorable 4th of July experience for us.
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- Tahoe
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- Lake Tahoe
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- Wine cellar stairs
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- Stairwell
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- Wine Cellar
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- Wine Cellar
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- Wine Cellar
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- Wine Cellar
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- Wine Cellar
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- Patriotic Frankie
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- Hummer Golf Cart
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- Tahoe
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- Chris and the Hummer Golf Cart
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- Shenea and Steph
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- Aces Stadium
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- Aces Stadium
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- Aces at bat
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- Game’s getting close
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- Mike and Mike
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- Flag ceremony
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- Patriotic Video
Riley and Byren Birthday
June 28, 2009
Riley and Byren (our nephews), celebrated their birthdays with a singe party (since they’re born so close to each other). Riley turned 4 and Byren turned 2. As you may expect, there were a whole lot of kids at the party (Like 15-20, I’m thinking. And that doesn’t count the ones in people’s bellies.). At some points it was just craziness. But I learned a bit of knowledge from these kids today. Beware of agreeing to pitch baseballs for batting practice to a kid. They will never stop. Seriously – they just keep swinging and swinging and swinging. I fell for this request not once, but twice today. Below are some photos of the day. Since it was about 95 degrees today, the water slide was a welcome addition to the party (check out some of the sweet splash action photos I got). Steph and I got Riley and Byren a big Tonka dump truck and about a dozen toy dinosaurs (Riley is really in to dinosaurs right now). Riley was flipping out when he saw all of the dinosaurs he got. Of course, this lasted until the next present was put in front of him to open. We hope they have fun with the toys, and we hope that Corey or Valerie don’t step on the Triceratops in the middle of the night.
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- The birthday cake
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- Waiting for cake
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- Riley for cake
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- Blowing out the lighter
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- Ayson running in the grass
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- Water slide
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- Splashdown
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- Splish splash
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- Valerie and Byren
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- Woah!
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- Dump truck
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- Dinosaurs!
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- Dump truck and dinos
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- Byren with some presents
Belly Update June 21 and 27
June 21 and 27, 2009
A couple more belly photos for all you loyal fans.
June 21
June 27
Reno Rodeo
June 27, 2009
The Reno Rodeo was back in town and we were able to make the final night with our friends, Mike and Amy. It’s always entertaining to watch the bull and bronc riding, as well as the mutton bustin’ (which is basically just little kids riding a sheep for a couple of seconds, but it’s really fun to watch).
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- Reno Rodeo
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- Steph and Amy
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- Mike and Mike
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- The arena at night
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- Mike and Mike
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- Bull riding
Romeo Eats Corn
OK, this is just a funny photo of Romeo eating corn on the cob. He loves it! He bites down on it just like a person would, and eats it off of the cob. Very funny.
Romeo Eats Corn on the Cob
Father’s Day
June 21, 2009
For the last several years, we’ve played a friendly game of softball on Father’s Day (which includes several families). This year, we faced a shortage of softball players, so we decided to simply have a day of games in the park. We had Croquet, Bocce Ball and Ladder Golf. We had multiple families again, but neither my dad nor Dom was able to make it, unfortunately. But, we still had a lot of fun. I forgot to take many photos. In fact, the only photo I got was a picture of Hudson (Ryan and Hannah’s son) riding on his truck. We went out to dinner with my dad later that night.
Hudson on his truck
Prom Gone Wrong Party
June 20, 2009
Steph’s co-worker/friend, Michele, was celebrating her 40th birthday, and themed it as “Prom Gone Wrong.” Even though Steph and I don’t really like themed parties (super sarcasm!), we decided to get dressed up and attend. Most everybody at the party really put effort into their prom outfits (ugly prom dresses and tuxedos). Steph was, of course, pregnant – which served her prom costume well. In fact, one guest came up and touched her stomach and said, “It feels so real.” “It is!” said Steph. Michele has certainly aged well, and in fact, wore the same dress she wore to her actual prom more than 20 years ago! Below are a few photos from the night.
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- Mike and Steph Prom Photo
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- A few prom studs
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- Prom (drag)Queen and King
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- The Butt Grab
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- Happy 40th Michele
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- Prom Girls
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- Steph and Michele
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- Sweet Tux
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- Bill (Steph’s boss) and Antionette
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- Kevin and Michele
Steph’s 29th Birthday
June 13, 2009
June 9 marked Stephanie’s 29th birthday, and we headed out to celebrate on Saturday. First, we went to dinner at a new (a few months old) restaurant called Jazz – which is out in Sparks in the new Legends shopping area. Jazz is a New Orleans (or Naw-luns, if you want to pronounce it authentically) themed restaurant with southern cuisine. The atmosphere was very cool (especially when they brought in live music at 7pm), and the food was really good! We even had some alligator. But if you do anything at Jazz, save room for dessert. Everything was so good – bread pudding, key lime cheesecake, the beignets (which is kind of like a doughnut). Sorry, no photos of Jazz – I guess we were too focused on the food to remember we had a camera.
From Jazz, we headed over to Coconut Bowl to bowl a couple of games (I somehow got a 174!). There’s a number of photos from bowling below. Once the games were over, people headed home, but Steph, Taylor (did I mention Steph’s cousin, Taylor flew up?), Shawn and myself just hung out at the bar and chatted.
It was a fun night overall. I hope Steph enjoyed it, it was her last birthday in her 20s. Next one is the big 3-0. (she is going to punch me)
Update: She did hit me after she read this entry!
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- Taylor’s bowling skills
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- Taylor, Steph, Amy, Sara
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- Steph and Ryan
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- Mike and Taylor
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- Hudson
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- Hudson bowling
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- Shawn chillin’
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- Steph and Mike
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- Mike and Ryan
Ken and Stacy’s Wedding
June 6, 2009
We attended the wedding of Ken Jacobs and Stacy Stout on June 6, 2009. Ken is my fraternity brother, and Stacy is my… fraternity sister? Stacy is the little sister of my fraternity brother (and former roommate in college), Loren Stout. So, it was kind of funny to have my brother marry my brother’s sister : )
The wedding ceremony and reception were held at Red Hawk. It had been a rainy week, and that Saturday was not any different – it had been raining off and on throughout the day, and it forced the ceremony to be moved to a drier location at the golf resort. Everything was still outstanding. Ken and Stacy had the audience in stitches with their sarcastic sense of humor that shined brightly throughout the entire ceremony. There was a lot of happiness and laughter during the ceremony.
The reception was equally wonderful. We saw a lot of fraternity friends (and their respective wives, girlfriends, fiances, etc). Loren (my former roommate and the bride’s brother) has been away in Macao, China for a few years now, and we hadn’t seen him since he moved. So, it was a lot of fun overall. Here’s a few photos from the night…
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- Ceremony
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- The Newlyweds
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- Mike, Steph, Chris, Shenea
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- Chris, Mike, Loren, Marcus
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- Fraternity Brothers
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- Guys with Bride and Groom
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- Mike and Wysong
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- Wysong, Magali, Mike
