Prebble Family Tales

It might seem like nothing is happening here, and that’s largely true.  Unfortunately, I’ve been posting most of the latest happenings at Facebook and forgetting about the family blog.  So if you want the latest and greatest, sign up there and we’ll get you settled.

But I didn’t just come here to post and run.  Here’s a video for you.

Well, it would be a happy new year if each and every one of us weren’t sick.

After a whirlwind couple of weeks, what with Collin in the hospital (he’s fine now), Christmas, Brandy having to deal with 15 consecutive days with both kids home, and the usual hectic nature of life, we’ve left 2008 behind and started 2009 tired.

But it’s not all doom and gloom.  Gareth and Collin both had a great Christmas and got lots (and lots) of gifts.  Gareth benefits from having a two-fer month in December with his birthday on the 3rd and Christmas the 25th.  After this month is over, we usually have to spend time getting rid of all the old toys with which Gare no longer plays.

Collin is not yet to that point.  The point to which he is, however, is the very vocal, chatty point.  He’s making a lot of noise these days to let us know he’s happy, excited, hungry, tired, and soiled.  He loves taking baths and enjoys a good round of beatboxing.  [For the sake of clarity, Travis beatboxes, Collin listens.]

Once a year, right around this time actually, I get an itch to purchase a video camera. This is a largely irrational itch as we don’t record anything with the VHS-C camcorder we have now. But this year, we’re actually going to upgrade.

Which means watch out, because we’re bound to have a lot more video to post in 2009 than we did in 2008. Some of you will be happy to hear that, but the smart ones out there will recognize that there is no such thing as an entertaining home movie.

Brandy and I proved this to ourselves by watching our old tapes of Gareth. Brandy will never be able to tolerate her own voice again.

I meant to do this some time ago and never got around to it.  The proper address for this blog is now http://www.prebblefamily.com and reflects the fact that we’re now not just all about Gareth.

The old www.sirgareth.com address will continue to bring you here, so there’s no immediate need to update your bookmarks.

It’s just before 7am and I have made the greatest discovery - I can blog from my phone.
Why am I wasting time figuring this out? Because we are both sitting here waiting for the shift change to occur so we can meet our nurse for the day.
Collin is doing fine based on the heart rate monitor. Brandy is extremely nervous but not so much that can’t be annoyed by me live blogging while she freezes in a hospital gown.

Okay, time to catch up!

The Miracle League baseball season has concluded.  We went to the closing picnic last weekend where Gareth was given his first ever trophy.  He didn’t want to let it go the rest of the day and was extremely proud to have it.  If you haven’t seen it yet, feel free to ask him to show it to you.

We’ve traded in Brandy’s “I don’t want to be a soccer mom” Mazda 5 for the purchase of a 2004 Toyota Sienna with an automated wheelchair ramp and kneeling system.  I think the kneeling system is incredibly cool (it lowers the right side of the van before deploying the ramp), but it doesn’t buy us much of an advantage and it increases the time waiting for the ramp to deploy, so we don’t use that feature.  And no, it can’t be wired to bounce the van up and down as though we were starring in a Dr. Dre video.

In less than two weeks, Collin will be born and will get to move into his patiently waiting nursery.  Things continue to go well, and we’re still on track to deliver in State College.  Brandy and I will be traveling to Danville on Friday to meet with yet another doctor there, just in case.  We’re struggling with the idea of experiencing a relatively normal birth and the challenges of a child without challenges.  You’d think we’d be pretty well battle worn, but we’ve spent the last nearly seven years tuned to what Gareth requires in care and are wholly unprepared for normalcy.

Anne (my mother) has moved in with us since the last blog entry.  She’s helping us with Gareth while we help her with support.  By October 26th, we’ll have six people and a cat in our house every night.  It’s starting to feel like Charlie Bucket’s house.

Those are the big items from the past month.  It has been far busier than we would have liked, but we’re just about out of it in time to have our second child.  Can we take 2009 off?

Miracle League is officially off its July hiatus, which means we were back in Altoona on Saturday for a ball game.  Gare was thrilled to be back on the field.  I was thrilled to have an excuse to get a strawberry Julius at the mall.  Gare and I also got some video game time in on Sunday, playing a few songs in Rock Band and a few rounds as Darth Vader in Soul Calibur IV.

Things are back in action in other facets, as well.  Brandy has a hectic school schedule this week with various meetings going on.

I’m getting back on track with finishing the work in the basement that will allow my mom to move in with us for the remainder of the pregnancy.  I’m also meeting with somebody this week on BikeAble business, dropping off books for the AAUW, and trying to sell more crap (know somebody who wants to buy 300+ CDs in one shot?).

Speaking of rampant consumerism, I’m sure some of you are wondering how many of the new Clone Wars toys I’ve been buying.  The answer is: zero.  After having just packed up all my Star Wars toys, there’s no way I’m going to add to the collection now.  Forget it.  Not worth the hassle.  I’m a practical junkie.

A hearty congratulations goes out to one Frances Jackson who successfully registered for an account on this blog without requiring technical support. She now has the capability of leaving comments.

And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

It probably didn’t take you long to figure out that the whole Sir Gareth blog has changed. For those who want the technical details, we’re transitioning from Nucleus to WordPress.

Some things still need shifted around (entries prior to a year ago have some problems with images), but this is what we’ll use going forward. With this change comes the return of comment functionality, though you’ll need to register an account to do it (click on Login on the bottom left, then click Register).

So why the shift? Well, that’s easy. With another addition on the way, it seemed silly to have the blog devoted to Gareth. And it also seemed silly to start up a second blog for Child 2. And while we’re at it, don’t you want to know about what happens to us, the wonderful parents? Of course you do! So now the blog is “Prebble Family Tales” instead of “Tales of Sir Gareth”.

Mind you, if you don’t care about the rest of us, you can still just click the Gareth category on the left to see only the items about him. If you want to be that way.