Scott and Amber

Our friends Scott and Amber pulling their son, Riley, and Kerrigan on our way back to the waterfall.

Justin and his son, Brock

Great day for a walk

Scott, Kerrigan, Amber, Riley, Sunny, Tiffany & Amy on our walk in the back...

On a walk

Me and Ames on the trails past our backyard with Rob & Tiffany, Justin & Sunny, and Scott & Amber... on the way to the waterfall.

Visit from the Jeffers

This weekend, Rob, Tiifany & Kathy came down for a visit from Virginia Beach. What an amazing time. We're so grateful to have friends like them.

Me and Moo Moo at the park

Guitar Hero

Guitar Hero is amazing. Today, I picked up a second guitar so Amy and I could throw up the horns together in guitar-shredding unity. I predict that Jude is going to be the next Yngwie Malmsteen.

Hokie Hope

BT in the house

We had not-so-near, but very dear friends from Elyria, Ohio visit this weekend. Even though Samantha and Abbey couldn't make it down, Brian and Jessica came and we had a blast!!

God gave us an extra day because it was supposed to thunder storm Thursday, all day Saturday and then a dreary/rainy Sunday. Thursday was nice; Friday was brisk in the AM, but awesome the rest of the day; Saturday, which was supposed to be wet and nasty ended up being the day we spent almost entirely outside playing with the kids; then Sunday ended up being a decent day for a drive home for those guys.

What a refreshing and fun time! We played golf, shredded on Guitar Hero, had a nice cookout, played baseball, kickball, football, dodgeball and took the kids to the park... we all had a blast.

Sad News

Last weekend, Amy and I went to South Carolina for a funeral... for a 7 year-old. Amy's cousin, Jane, lost her son, Nicholas, in a car accident.

Below is an email from Amy's cousin, Carol (Jane's sister):

As many of you already know my nephew was killed in the accident on Monday involving the logging truck hitting a minivan in Richburg SC as the children left school. My sister's friend Alice Quinton was driving, her daughter Hannah (9), her son Timmy (7), my nephew Nicholas Cherry (7), my niece Taylor Cherry (5) were in the minivan. Nicholas and Hannah were killed instantly. Timmy was thrown from the vehicle and although he is making progress he is still in very critical condition, continued prayers please... they are working! Alice and Taylor were the least seriously injured. Alice was discharged today and Taylor hopefully in a few more days.

You can read about the accident on www.heraldonline.com or www.wcnc.com.

People have been asking what they can do. Funds have been set up for the families. The Quintons have very little if any insurance for expenses. People can mail donations, wire donations or walk into a branch office.

Founders Federal Credit Union
c/o Hannah Quinton Memorial Fund
607 North Main Street
Lancaster SC 29720
800-845-1614

First Citizens of SC
c/o Quinton Memorial Fund
3551 Lancaster Highway
Richburg SC 29729
803-789-6161

First Citizens of SC
c/o Cherry Memorial Fund
3551 Lancaster Highway
Richburg SC 29729
803-789-6161

For international donations, there will be a website for Hannah Quinton soon that will allow PayPal donations.

Thanks,
Carol Lambert

Below is Nicholas' obituary:

RICHBURG -- Master Nicholas Wayne Cherry, 7, of 3094 Lizzie Melton Road died Monday, March 26, 2007.

The funeral will be 11 a.m. Monday, April 2 at Greene Funeral Home Northwest Chapel, with Minister Wallace Beasley officiating. Burial will be at Forest Hills Cemetery.

A native of York County, Nicholas was the son of Wayne E. and Jane M. Cherry of Richburg. He was a second grader at Lewisville Elementary School. He was a member of Lesslie Highway Church of Christ and loved reading Bible stories with his mom every night. He loved fishing with his dad, who was his best friend, and was a loving child who enjoyed doing things for others. He loved his big brother and loved picking on his younger sister. He was mama's boy and will be greatly missed.

In addition to his parents, Nicholas is survived by his brother, William M. Patrick IV of Richburg; his sister, Taylor N. Cherry of the home; and his maternal grandmother, Barbara S. Williams of Rock Hill.
The family will receive friends Sunday from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at Greene Funeral Home Northwest Chapel, 2133 Ebenezer Road, Rock Hill and other times at the home.

Memorials may be made to Lewisville Elementary School PTO, 4006 Lewisville High School Road, Richburg, SC 29729.

Just today, it came out that the driver of the logging truck is going to be charged with wreckless homocide.

Isaiah

Just a couple weeks ago while we were up in Northern Virginia for a visit to see Amy's folks. While there, I took this picture of Isiah, one of about a dozen horses at their house and also my favorite. A few days after we got home from our visit we got word that Isaiah had become sick and died unexpectantly. All their horses are pretty cool, but Isaiah was the coolest and I was so bummed to hear that he was gone.

None of these pictures truly do justice to the size of this magnificent animal. He had to be totally bent over for me to be taller than him. When he was completely upright, he towered.

He was definately my favorite of all mom's horses and I'll miss him a ton. I'll try to attach a few other pictures of him as well.

Band Madness

So, with VCU and Wisconsin both eliminated from this year's NCAA basketball tournament we can shift to more important issues... MUSIC.

Rob turned me on to a great site that is set up like March Madness, but for music... BAND MADNESS!!!

Unfortunately, I'm posting this half-way through the voting of round one... sorry! But, it's not too late to go to the site and you can vote on head to head match-ups. The styles of music span the entire music spectrum.

A few examples:

Led Zeppelin vs Evanescence
Stereolab vs Faith No More
Decemberists vs Andrew W. K.
Steppenwolf vs George Thorogood
Creedence Clearwater Revival vs Carole King
The White Stripes vs Foreigner
Robert Palmer vs 50 cent
ABBA vs The Replacements
Johnny Cash vs The Villiage People
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah vs Godspeed You Black Emperor

...and so on.

Here's the opening of the official entry from the site:

"BAND MADNESS is a March-Madness style, single elimination tournament of pop/rock bands where the winners are determined strictly by fan voting. There are 512 artists from various decades and genres, all battling it out to determine once and for all which band is the voted-for-the-most-est!

The rules of voting are simple: vote for who you like better. That’s it. Not for who you think you should vote for, not for who’s more historically significant, etc. Just vote for who you like better, then go ahead and post some inflammatory comments about bands other people voted for. After a couple days, the voting wraps up, we move on to the next bracket, and a whole new round of voting and inflammatory comment-making begins. Simple enough?

The bands are divided into four brackets (check out the full bracket here) Right now, voting for Round 1, Bracket A is open now; the rest of the brackets will open as follows:

Round 1, Bracket A - Monday, March 12
Round 1, Bracket B - Wednesday, March 14
Round 1, Bracket C - Monday, March 19
Round 1, Bracket D - Wednesday, March 21

Pretty cool, eh? Better than basketball.

Go vote!

VCU defeats Duke

It's going to be a fun day at work tomorrow :)

I just watched my alma mater VCU Rams send my 'home-town' Duke Blue Devils packing 79-77.

Even though a majority of my co-workers are NC State folks, they all know I'm a VCU guy and it'll be nice to raise my VCU coffee mug in victory at our staff meeting tomorrow.

Well done guys!

Typical Monday...

A Monday wouldn't be a Monday without drama, right?

A little backstory first:

Back in October, a few days before our two-week trip to Wisconsin, my car died and was beyond what we could afford to fix but we were lucky enough to find a guy that would buy it for a small but helpful amount.

Amy and I managed with one car for 4 months. She would bring me to work, take the kids to school then go home, pick the kids up from school and then pick me up from work. Last week, we finally scraped up enough to get a cheap car for me to get to work everyday.

Well, that lasted just over a week. This morning, when it came time to go outside to warm the car up (yeah, there was frost on the car down here in Raleigh) the car wouldn't start. After we got someone to look at it, turns out to be a combination of the timing belt, alternator, and bad/wrong spark plugs. Comes out to be a bunch more money we may have to put into it.

Lame...

Great Concert

On Saturday night, Amy and I were able to go see Billy Joel at the RBC Center... for free.

Okay, a friend at work sent an email out to the company, "I have 5 free tickets to Saturday's Billy Joel concert. If anyone is interested, stop by." Needless to say, they went quickly... and before I was able to lay claim to two of them. She said she could make a call and land a few more. She ended up passing out 15 plus extra tickets for us at work... nice hook up!

What a great show! I liked him a lot when I was younger but lost interest over the years. When the ticket offer initially came up, I wasn't paticularly keen on going, even though the tix were free. I'm so glad I changed my mind, Amy and I had such a fun time. He was funny and engaging throughout the show, often poking fun at himself, his age, & his "auto-insurance rates".

I can't remember the order, but here's a set list of songs that I can remember:

Angry Young Man
My Life
An Innocent Man
Everybody Loves You Now
The Entertainer
New York State of Mind
Zanzibar
Allentown
Don't Ask Me Why
Movin' Out
Keeping the Faith
The Downeaster Alexa
Go to Extremes
She's Always A Woman
The River of Dreams
We Didn't Start the Fire
Big Shot
Root Beer Rag
You May Be Right
Only the Good Die Young
It's Still Rock N' Roll to Me
Piano Man (encore)

There were more that I can't remember, but as you can see he played a ton of his classics! I was hoping for my fav's "Pressure" and "Longest Time", but they didn't make it. And as an added bonus, their guitar roadie, "Chainsaw", came out and sang a uncannily Bon Scott version of AC/DC's Highway to Hell! Billy grabbed a Gibson Les Paul and shredded like Angus Young. For me, it was the highlight of the night.

I totally didn't expect to leave the show with my ears ringing, but hard as it is to believe, Billy rocked the joint.

Our free seats ended up not being bad ones either... Even though we were third deck, we were behind and to the left of the stage, which gave us a great view over the stage, plus with Billy's piano spinning around every few songs we felt like we were far from nose-bleed caliber seating.

Thanks for the tickets, Kim! You're the coolest.

Guitar Hero II

There's nothing like winding down at the end of a long day and shredding to some rockin tunes on Guitar Hero II.

About a week ago, we bought it and have been melting faces with pure rock adrenaline since. Even Amy has been into it... I have some pictures of her playing, but she won't let me post them :)

Dave, the next time I'm in Charlotte, you're going down!

Let's get rockin!

New friend for Kerrigan

The little kitty on the left is Princess Kitty Cat. She is forever attached to Kerrigan. Amy got her for Kerrigan a while back when she and Jude went on a trip to New York City.

When we realized how in love with her Kerrigan was, we searched for another one just like it... just in case she ever lost it.

Well, she never lost her, and the 'clone' was waiting in a bag in the closet for the fateful moment when Princess Kitty Cat came up missing. Amy and I thought that rather than leaving the new one in the dark, we'd tell Kerrigan that Princess Kitty Cat's sister came to stay with her.

Needless to say, Kerrigan was beside herself. She named her Princess Kitty Meow-Meow, and both of them are now forever by her side... so much so that she pretends to be a cat as well, her name is Princess Kitty Kerri.

Beyond the back yard

Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but the Neuse River runs just a few hundred yards from our backyard. The cool part is that there is an excellent trail that runs along it's shore. If you follow it long enough, you'll run into a great park.

Along the way the other day, we took a detour on a less traveled path that we'd never been down before. On the way, we ran into a small waterfall. The kids loved it and we'll probably be taking that detour from now on :)

Jude & Kerrigan

Packers' Favre to return for his 17th season

Packers' Favre to return for his 17th season
February 2, 2007

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) -- Brett Favre will return for his 17th NFL season, undeterred by his injuries and hoping to lead the Green Bay Packers back to the playoffs.
"I am so excited about coming back," the 37-year-old quarterback said Friday on the Web site of the Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss. "We have a good nucleus of young players. We were 8-8 last year, and that's encouraging."
Packers general manager Ted Thompson confirmed Favre had told the team he plans to return.
"The Packers are excited by his decision and look forward to a successful 2007 campaign," Thompson said in a statement.
The team scheduled a 4 p.m. EST news conference Friday.
"My offensive line looks good, the defense played good down the stretch," Favre told the Biloxi newspaper. "I'm excited about playing for a talented young football team."
The news came as a surprise to Packers CEO Bob Harlan.
"I hadn't heard it, and I hadn't seen the Biloxi paper -- not that I read the Biloxi paper every day," Harlan told The Associated Press on Friday.
Favre last left the field in an emotional scene in Chicago after leading the Packers to a victory to finish the season 8-8.
He has started 257 consecutive games including the playoffs, an NFL record for quarterbacks. Favre broke Dan Marino's record for career completions (4,967) in 2006 and is closing in on Marino's marks for career touchdown passes (420) and yards passing (61,361).
As he has done in the past several offseasons, Favre returned to his home in Mississippi after the season to deliberate about his future. Last year, Favre waited until late April to tell the team he was returning.
Favre complained about nagging injuries and the drudgery of practice toward the end of last season, then choked back tears as he talked about missing the game and missing his teammates in a television interview immediately after the regular-season finale in Chicago -- leading many to believe he intended to retire.
Apparently, he couldn't resist one more chance to try to lead the Packers back to the playoffs after the Packers won their final four games and were in playoff contention until the final weekend of the regular season.
Favre has led the Packers to 10 postseason appearances, six division titles, three NFC Championship games, two Super Bowls and one championship following the 1996 season.
Favre was acquired in a trade by former Packers general manager Ron Wolf after one season as a backup in Atlanta in 1991. He completed his first NFL pass -- to himself -- on Sept. 13, 1992, catching a deflection and losing seven yards.
The following week, he replaced injured starter Don Majkowski in the third quarter and led the Packers to a come-from-behind 24-23 victory over Cincinnati.
Favre started in place of Majkowski on Sept. 27, 1992, beginning the streak he often has called his biggest personal accomplishment. The 237-game regular-season streak is nearly six seasons ahead of the Colts' Peyton Manning at 144.
Favre's accomplishments include winning three league MVP awards -- he shared 1997 honors with Detroit Lions running back Barry Sanders -- and throwing two touchdown passes in a 35-21 victory over the New England Patriots in the 1997 Super Bowl to give the Packers their first championship in 29 years. Earlier in that championship season, Favre spent time in the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kan., battling an addiction to painkillers.
Favre led the Packers back to the Super Bowl the following season, but they lost to Elway's Denver Broncos 31-24.