Sunday, December 25, 2005

Merry Christmas

I've been good...Merry Christmas to you all. Jayden just wanted you to know that he's been a good boy and likes to get presents. :) We've had fun with the Wagner side, now it's time to have some fun with the Minnis side. Hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas.


More pictures can be found in the Christmas 2005 Set

 
 
 

Friday, December 16, 2005

Round Two

Well, it's time. Time to let you all know that Jayden's going to be a big brother. Isn't that something! :) Kim, Jayden, and I went for her first Doctor's visit today and everything is going smooth. The new lime (that's the size of it right now) had a heart rate of 160 which is great! Kim's been doing pretty well this week as prior weeks she's been feeling nauseated. But, she still is pretty tired...she could go to bed at 9 and some nights before that. She likes snack time too. Our due date is June 28, 2006, so mark your calendars.

Jayden's been practicing being a big brother these past two months. Kim's watching her cousin's baby, Kellen, two days a week. At first Jayden couldn't figure out what the deal was, but he's getting better at it now. In fact, now he knows how to get Kim's attention. As soon as she starts to feed Kellen, Jayden makes a mad dash for the stairs. Now, that would be fine and all, but he still hasn't mastered the last step yet, so Kim has to go stop him before he goes up. Jayden's getting almost there with walking. If we start walking with him holding his hand and then let go as he's walking towards the couch, he'll sprint for the couch or love seat. Maybe by Christmas? He likes to keep us guessing.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Ooooh, The Weather Outside is...

The weather is pretty snowy considering all the weather people predicting a warmer and drier winter. I can live with snow, even though it takes 40 minutes to get 12 miles (honestly, I can't believe people can't drive in snow), but I hate the cold.

In other news, Jayden's been rocking the house. He's warmed up to the singing/dancing "snowpeople" (snowmen). He's crawling up the stairs now with a little help at the top. He hasn't quite figured out how to get to the top and crawl farther from the steps to sit up. Most of the times he's got his collection of pots and pans strewn across the floor.

Let's see what else...oh. Thanksgiving was good. We traveled both up North and South to visit both sides. It was good to see my Mom and Dad. Especially after Mom being in the hospital for 4 days. She was/is having problems with her gall bladder. Next week she's having surgery to get it removed. Hopefully that will help her feel better.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Things that SuX0rz

I thought I'd take some time to rant on about some things that suck. Some are work and some are personal related items.

This time of the year provides a lot of "admin" time at work to do all sorts of surveys and "training" at work before the end of the year.


  1. Jayden getting croup - He's getting better, but he still has a little problem breathing at night. He's not as bad as he could have been though. The Doc said that he's actually 2 weeks behind the peek Ankeny experienced 2 weeks ago.

  2. Getting sick - because of a combination of changing of the weather and losing sleep while helping Jayden breath at night I have a slight cold.

  3. Paper work - this includes, but is not limited to: flexbile spending account submital forms, performance plans, rebates (give me the price of the item from the start), timesheets.

  4. When people ignore things or don't read the signs - For example, today I went to get my usual glass of water from the refreshment center but no cups were to be found. So, I went over to a different refreshment center and brought some back. Two people during that time had told me that it was like that yesterday too. Hmm. On the wall there was contact information to re-supply missing items. I emailed them and bam...we have cups.

  5. Occasional Driver Training - I've been driving for 17 years (actually more when you consider driving around the farm) and haven't been in an accident yet...is it really necessary to take "Driver's Ed" each year just to drive for work?

  6. Ethical Awareness and Decision Making training - Actually, I'm glad I had to take this one. Case in point, Martha Stewart. I don't want to be sent to prison for being unethical. Perhaps Bill Knapp and his buddy Dennis Elwell should be put through the same process as Martha. (Des Moines Register article)

  7. The price of iPods - I really wish I could afford one.

  8. Minimal Tinker Time - There needs to be 26 hours in a day so that I can tinker with new computer related technologies.



Well, that's it. I could have made the top 10 list, but I can't think of anything more to rant about and I think I feel pretty good now. haha.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Firefox Rules

It's been a while since I changed the theme for my blog, so last night messed around with a new design. It's not mine, but I like it so I'm using it (it's released under GPL) and it's easy to get implemented without a lot of time. You'll notice two different views depending on if you are using the better browser, Firefox, or the crappy non-standards compliant browser, Internet Explorer. Firefox does a great job with transparency while IE lacks any easy work around (1 2 or 3). So, you'll have to put up with the not so fun view with IE till version 7 comes out...but don't hold your breath for that one working either.

In other news, Jayden's been getting more teeth. He's been working on getting his molars in the back already. This weekend when he was eating it looked like he was trying to swallow his food with-out even "chewing" it. Kim figured out Tuesday that he's getting his back teeth and rather than feel more pain he was swallowing the food almost whole. He's also now walking with us holding one of his hands...so won't be long and he'll be tearing around the house on his feet instead of his butt.

Monday, October 31, 2005

Race'n Jayden

Race'n Jayden This year was pretty fun for Halloween. Jayden got to wear his racing costume and rode his "bike" around to get his treats. His favorite part was getting back home and eating his cheetos (Thanks Nehru and Karisa). He also is a big fan of twizzlers. Another food item that he all of a sudden started eating is bananas. The last time we shopping for food we decided to pick him up some bananas, but we should have picked them up at the end, because he thought he wanted to eat one in the store. It took a while to get him to forget they were in the shopping cart. :)

Monday, October 17, 2005

The Great Pumpkin

This weekend was a fun time of playing out on the farm in search of the great pumpkin. We managed to find the pumkin patch we were looking for near Cumming, IA at the Howell's Farm. Jayden found the perfect pumpkin for himself and picked one out for us too. I think it will become a tradition to go and visit Howell's each year. They offer a lot of cool things for kids to do.

Our garbage disposal took a dump on us, no pun intended, this weekend. So, Jayden helped me out in getting the new one ready to go.

You may also have noticed that the above picture links are all pointing to flickr.com. I decided to go the faster route in getting a better gallery going by utilizing flickr. They really do have a cool thing going and it's easy to manage all our photos. So, check out all of our pictures at flickr.com.

Friday, October 07, 2005

Trade Offs

Well, you saw it here first. Kim decided that she ain't a "Minivan Girl" so we decided to trade off the minivan and got a Pontiac Vibe. It's a pretty fun car to drive and is cheaper to drive than the van ever was (hopefully 35 mpg). We purchased it from Bob Brown GMC in Ankeny (Jamie Widen was our sales person). We were very happy with the way they treated us. Unlike Ramsey, they actually wanted our business.

Jayden's been learning like mad. He's now pulling his phone around by the cord like it was his once lost puppy. He's pushed through 2 more teeth this last weekend. He's cruising furniture now. He loves popcorn, but won't eat very many food groups. He can clap, do the "so big" move, dance a little (sitting of course) and has just started noticing his hair. We went for his physical therapy session yesterday, but the therapist called in sick and they forgot to call us. :( So, we'll continue to have Jayden kneel on and push his little cart. He also enjoys bouncing on the yoga ball we got to help him do his exercises.

Friday, September 02, 2005

Year One

Man, where has the time gone. Jayden celebrated his 1 year birthday last Monday. He did OK until everyone sang "Happy Birthday" to him. He got lots of gifts and he is really thankful for those of you who gave him something. Ah yes, and he's finally mastered holding his own sippy cup. Check out his Year 1 gallery.

Today he went in for his 1 year checkup. They gave him his two shots and stole some blood from him. Needless to say, it pissed him off royally. He's at 19.1 lbs and I think 30 inches.

As you may have seen I modified the gallery a bit. It's more simple to manage and now has friendly URLs. Hope you like it. Sometime I'll be adding a frame to the front page that shows the newly updated pictures. It'll probably take me a bit to fix previous articles with links to the old gallery so be patient.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

del.icio.us Tagging Zoo

Well, I decided to try this whole tag thing out for managing bookmarks/favorites. I got my account going at del.icio.us/kminnis and managed to get my favorites exported from Sitebar and imported into del.icio.us using a cool little .Net application called Bunny Hug Updater. I think one of the main reasons I chose to do it was to share some of the links that I've accumulated over the years and it's something different to try out. I think I'll still keep my links in sitebar for a time to see how it goes. But I think it's kind of cool to be able to share the same link between multiple key words/tags.

On to other news...this last weekend Kim, Jayden, Kim's Mom and Niece and I traveled to the Omaha Zoo. We had a good time and Jayden also enjoyed it a lot too. He loved to watch the fish and sharks go overhead at the aquarium, but, he had to be close to Grandma's side.

Jayden's been showing some more signs of his increased knowledge of what's going on around him. He's started to give waves to people. If he's done eating or doesn't like something he's started to conveniently drop his food on the floor. :/ He's also starting to like water more as Kim's been up with him this week in Ames at Camp. Today he didn't mind at all being in the pool. This next week he'll be helping Kim get ready for his big one year birthday party on Saturday so that'll keep things hop'n next week.

Check out his pictures in his 11 month gallery.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

First Day of Work

Yesterday I finally got to move to the Shull building where was located on my first day of work at Pioneer. Talk about déjà vu. I'm one cube east of where I was. I and 4 other co-workers were separated from the rest of our group for about a month. Weird. I wonder if they have a Moving 101 class that the Corporate Services could go to. At any rate, there are some things that suck about the Shull building. The fridge is smaller than the one in Emerson. The network keeps disconnecting everything and seems slower. Shull has NO WINDOWS as seen from my view from my desk. (Kind of looks like a prison cell). Here's where I used to be with a window view. The bathrooms are smaller and kind of smell like those in Merle Hay Mall. There are good thing about moving to shull. We're somewhat closer to the rest of our group. I have high cube walls, so it's kind of like a "mini-manager's" office. haha And, I no longer have to listen to this really loud lady that is still up on Emerson. Oh yeah, and probably the most important good thing, I still have my job that I love.

On to other news...well...not a lot has happened, other than Jayden getting bigger and learining how to do things more. He's now learned how to scoot on his butt to get around. He's given up on crawling, as we too have done. He loves to grab our fingers and walk around. We went up north to vist the Farm and my side of the family last weekend. That was pretty fun. Jayden loves the baby calves and kittens. And likes to sit on the tractor with Dad and Grandpa. Jayden's still as picky as ever on what he eats. He hates to eat "wet things" and seems to only eat certain kinds of food...bread with jelly, his dried fruit, cereal, chicken sticks, a couple of kinds of pudding and his most loved food, Milk.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Vacation Rules

Last week I took PTO from work. It was nice to be able to stay home and get some stuff done around the house. Kim and I painted our bedroom and bathroom on Monday. It looks pretty cool now. At least the bathroom isn't yellow. I cleaned the deck on Tuesday and then on Wednesday treated it. Now, the water beads up like it's supposed to. Thursday Jerilyon baby sat Jayden while Kim and I went on our hot date during the day. We went to Walmart and got our photograph taken. haha :) Then Friday we departed for Twin Lakes to go camping with Kim's family. We had a good time and Jayden actually slept pretty well. He only woke up once during the night on Friday night, but went right back to sleep after we gave him some juice.

Jayden's been doing pretty good. We think he's working on some more teeth as he's been biting everything in site, as well as, drooling all the time. I added some more pictures to his nine-month gallery, some of which were us camping and him not liking to swim. He's started this new thing where if he doesn't want to eat something he'll make two fists and lift his arms while squeezing the food out of his mouth. It's really quite comical to see, but frustrating at the same time. Lately, he's been so fussy that he'll only eat cereal, bread with jam on it, his dried fruit bits, juice and milk. Oh well, we'll keep trying.

Oh, and today I turned a year younger. hehe :)

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Fun in the Sun

Well, Jayden and Kim are camping for the next two weeks. It's kind of nice for Kim to be able to get out of the house, although, she said it can be rather hard getting everything done with Jayden at her hip. ;) Today my coworkers and I got to go to the Iowa Cubs game with the rest of the Pioneer IM group. It was a pretty good time and am glad that we get the opportunity.

Jayden now has 4 teeth and seems to be giving us a little break before getting more. He had his 9 month visit to the Doc today and everything's right on course. Jayden also had his 9 months pictures last week. You can find those along with some more recent pics in Jayden's 9 month gallery.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

All Focused in and Ready to Go

Well, we decided to trade the truck in. We ended up going to Willey's of Nevada to get it traded. They offered a pretty fair price. I got the Ford Focus ZX5. Kim calls it a "cracker box" but I think it get's the job done. It's a lot easier to park than the truck and gets a lot better gas milage. Check out the pictures of me and Jayden in our new cars in the gallery.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Truck For Sale

2002 Dodge Dakota Quad CabSOLD. Well, we've decided to sell the truck. We're trying to only have one car payment or 2 with one of the payments being small. We've been the sole owner of it. It's been well maintained and had all recalls performed by the dealer. More pictures can be seen in the Truck Album. So if you're interested in providing our truck with a good home see the details below.


2002 Dodge Dakota Quad Cab - Sport
4 x 4
Color: Black/Exterior and Amethyst/Interior
Power Locks
Power Windows
Power Mirrors
Sliding Rear Window
Keyless Entry
Cruise Control
4.7L - V8
Dual Air Bags
Fog Lamps
AM/FM + CD
Low Miles: 28,820

Asking price: $17,900 or best offer
Please contact me through my contact page if interested or you can call me if you know my number.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Wet Slobbery Kisses

Well, this weekend turned out pretty well. Kim and I went with some of her family to eat at Leaning Tower of Pizza on Friday night and then on Saturday went to a a bunch of garage sales. Urbandale had a lot of block garage sales so we got to cover a lot of them just by walking. We found some stuff, but not as much as we thought we would.

After our garage sale tour we decided to try out the new 50s style restaurant in Johnston named 5 and Dine. It was decent food, but over priced. We had fun with Jayden though. You can view all the pictures in his 8 month gallery. As you can see from the pictures he has graduated to the sippy cup, but still doesn't like to hold it by himself. He now has 3 teeth and is probably going to have his 4th come in next week. Still doesn't remotely like the opportunity to lay on his stomach, but is getting better at it. He's trying to move his legs to crawl, but can't quite figure it out. He does like to stand if you help him balanced so at least he's getting a few motor skills. He has also started giving wet slobbery kisses too. :)

Sunday, April 24, 2005

MOA - Power Shopping

Well, we're back from our trek up north. We took off Wednesday night for up north to visit my Parents. They took care of Jayden for us while we went up for a little vacation time in Minneapolis, MN. On our way we stopped at Cabela's to see what they had for camping supplies...needless-to-say they were out of what we were looking for. :( Then we stopped at the Medford Outlet Center.

While in Minneapolis we stayed at the Marriott's Fairfield Inn which was directly across from the Mall of America (MOA). We did our power shopping on Friday. I wish I wore a pedometer as I'm sure we probably walked about 20 miles, or at least it seemed like it. We covered all floors about 2-3 times. After the power-shopping we went back to Ikea (which is conveniently across from the MOA) to pick up some more items that we didn't pick up on our trip there on Thursday night.

As for shopping goes, I found quite a few things to wear from various stores in the MOA, but Kim wasn't as fortunate. So on our way back we stopped at Kohls in Burnsville and finally at the Burnsville Mall. Kim found a ton of clothes she liked at Kohls and a few more in the Mall. The best thing about the whole trip was that clothes are tax free in Minnesota.

We had a wonderful time up north even though it was the coldest time of the spring season to visit. It was in the 30s the mornings we were up there. We hope Jayden didn't wear out Grandpa and Grandma too much. :) (He's working on his 4th tooth so he was a little cranky for them on Friday.)

Monday, April 11, 2005

Where is Your Faith

A while back Kim and I watched the movie Bowling for Columbine. At first I was sceptical of even watching anything by Michael Moore as I thought he was "too far out there". I didn't agree with some of the things that he protrayed, but some of the things he expressed made me think of other areas that, during our day-to-day activities, we so often are all a frazel about.

In these short 7 months of Jayden's life we have been in many conversations with people on parenting issues, most of these converstions are by chance, and all of which are with relatives, friends, aquaintences and strangers you meet in Target that want to know about "your little one." And not one conversation has the same point of view: We all parent differently.

Quite often we are bombarded by so many different media's points of view that we often don't just rely on our faith and "instincts". For example, many people are in constant worry about what little Jane or Johny can and can't eat. Should she/he be eating all organic? Don't get me wrong, organic foods are awesome, in fact, my Dad grows organic crops. I eat organic foods, as well as, non-organic foods. Growing up on a farm I ate non-organic foods and I myself am healthy as can be. If you really want to know the whole truth, my family actually dipped milk out of the bulk-milk tank when growing up (my Dad also milked cows) and drank it...it wasn't even pasturized. Oh My! :)

I guess my whole point to this article is to express that people need to just relax and raise their children in the way they see fit. We as parents are the ones responsible for raising Jayden in a healthy and loving way. We listen to his needs and feed him what's best. We do reference a book from time to time, but we don't need the book to raise Jayden every day of his life. Kim and I have wonderful loving parents and back in the day when they raised us didn't raise us by a book. After all, babies don't come with an owner's manual. So, where is your faith? Do you rely on God to raise your child and not on what some book and sometimes doctor tells you what you should and should not do? It's always nice to have the advice and opinions from other parents, but most importantly your child is going to tell you what she or he needs, and it may not be "by the book" or what your doctor will tell you. Just listen to your child.

So, speaking of Jayden, He's working on his third tooth. It's been kind of a ride for him. It's not quite through yet, but it's peeking! He still has yet to figure out what rolling over is, or that his tummy is not really a bad thing. So, the inevitible crawling will probably never happen, or we'll be old and gray by then! He is definately into people food, which makes eating a meal with him twice as more fun. He gets mad when he cannot hold something in his hand to feed himself. It won't be long and he'll be able to do it all himself!

With this nice weather we have gotten him out to some local parks for entertainment. He loves to swing and has figured out that sand tastes good! Over the weekend we broke down and bought a bike trailer for him to go riding in so we can finally get back to biking! (Kim is very happy!) We made the trip to a bike trail the other day and Jayden LOVED every minute of it. He still needs to grow into his helmet but it won't be long. So biking season has begun and Jayden is in for the ride!! Look out summer here we come!
Matthew 7:1 - "Do not judge, or you too will be judged."

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Something New

OK. Finally, I'm updating my blog and the design. I decided to give Wordpress a try. It's pretty cool so far, but I haven't gotten the gallery to fit into the whole theme just yet. The gallery and web cam are now links under the pages structure. More will come later as I figure more things out. Hopefully the Google robots will find my site friendly and provide some better search results that actually point to links. :)

To give you an update on Jayden. He's now 7+ months old and is getting more "grown" up everyday. He's sitting up in shopping carts by himself and has graduated to a bigger car seat. He likes to play in water and likes to wear his shades outside. Pictures of Jayen at 7 months. He also likes to visit the farm and see the baby calves. While we were up at the farm this last weekend we also celebrated my Grandfather's 80th birthday. It was pretty cool. My Grandmother had kept some items that my Great Grandmother had kept for my Grandpa. One of those items was a speach that he had written for school and then his first baby tooth. :) Kind of neat to be able to hang on to something like that for 80 years.

Kim's doing great now that she gets to go outside and play with Jayden. She's looking forward to working for Campfire USA for about 2 weeks here in the Spring.

Monday, February 28, 2005

6 Months

As you can tell from my not entering much in my blog that I've been pretty busy. Jayden's growing like a weed and manages to come up with new stuff every day to entertain his parents. For instance, on our way back from a baby shower yesterday he was doing his normal ssssssssccccccreeeeeeeeeeacccccchhhh and making all sorts of noise. All of a sudden it was quiet and we thought what's going on...we looked back and he was sound a sleep. Jayden had his 6 month checkup today and passed with flying colors. He grew another inch and a quarter and weighs about a pound and a half more. He got two shots today :( but managed to not be affected by them too much. He now sits up on his own, but refuses to stand when you hold him up. He's getting better at it, but it isn't something he likes to do.

I've added some more pictures to his 6 month album along with some pictures of our nephews' wrestling. We went up to watch them wrestle for District a couple of weekends ago.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Dude! You're Getting a Dell

Well, it happened. My computer that I built around January 31, 2002 had a massive overheating of the VIA VT8366A system bus controller, or northbridge. The motherboard manual states that, "...it houses the high-speed system elements critical to overall system performance while also containing the system interface to the processor. The key functions...include the 266 MHz Athlon System Bus, the 266 MHz DDR Memory Subsystem, the AGP 4x/2x/1x modes Graphics Interface (AGP 2.0 Compliant) and the 33 MHz/32-bit PCI Bus Interface." The main cause of overheating was a stupid $3 fan quit turning. The first signs of it heading down hill was the video went blank and then came back on. I got a new fan for it, but it did little to help as the system finally quit working all together. The BIOS screen didn't even display anything. The trouble of it is, if I even wanted to attempt to salvage the computer, I'd have to go to EBay and wait 3 days to even win a bid on a new motherboard.

So, today I ordered our first Dell. I decided to try the Dell Outlet or Refurbished route as they're cheap. The price of computers these days is so cheap it's hardly worth spending a ton of money on stuff that's outdated the minute it leaves the factory. I never thought I'd be buying a pre-built system. Every computer that I've owned, except my first one, has been one that I've built. My first one was a 33 MHz 16 MB or ram Gateway 2000 (yes, that was before they changed their name to just Gateway). The "new" one is a Dimension 2400, 2.4 MHz with 256 MB of ram and cost $159 plus the rip off shipping of $99. I think my first computer was around $2,500. Luckily, I had my old 233 MHz PC that has FreeBSD installed on it up and running so that Kim could at least surf a little bit while at home. It's amazing how much our society relies on computers to get ordinary day-to-day activities accomplished.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

College Books

So it's been at least 6 years since I've opened a lot of my college books relating to database management and design. Well, today I pulled out a couple of them to reference some information on database design. It's kind of cool how everyday brings something new/different to the plate at work. That's why I like working in the field I'm in so much, never a dull moment and always a day of learning ahead.

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Relaxing Weekend

This weekend was a pleasant weekend. Friday we spent the evening with a couple from our small group from Church. We went out to eat and then spent the rest of the evening playing games and eating some ice cream. Saturday was a fun day as we went to the ISU women's basketball game and then went to the Vorm's where we enticed our taste buds with some Hickory Park. Yum! Today we strolled through Jordan Creek Mall and topped the evening by watching the lamest movie I have ever seen, Napoleon Dynamite. I can honestly say that I lost some brain cells by watching it.

Jayden's growing all the time. He's starting to be more active and getting his own personality. His Mom likes to dress him up on all kinds of different outfits. He likes to spend a lot of time playing with his toys, cheering on the ISU Women's Basketball team, drooling, and practicing to roll over. Another milestone he set tonight was "blowing bubbles" while taking his bath, and I don't mean with his mouth. ;)

Monday, January 03, 2005

Jayden our Race Car Driver

Ah, yes. Jayden's doing more everyday. During our stay up North while at my Grandparents, Jayden flipped from his stomach to his back 4 times. Last week he had his 4 month shots and survived rather well. He only cried a little bit after he got his shots. We've started to "train" him how to sleep. I know it sounds weird, you'd think a baby would already know how to get to sleep on his own. He's now for the most part doing rather well as he only cries for about 10 minutes and then falls asleep on his own.

We got him a Johnny Jumper for him to get started using his legs. He's liking it more now and likes to jump up and down. Santa got him a Little Tykes Car for Christmas and we've already got him practicing for race day. More Christmas pictures will be added later, but for now you can see what Jayden got that Pioneer Hi-Bred will be proud of.

We now have a bird feeder and "Squirrel Sitter" in our back yard and the squirrels so far have managed to rule both. We haven't seen a single bird eat out of the bird feeder and the squirrels manage to go through an ear of corn a day (at least). So far we've seen 4 of them at a time. I did have the bird feeder hanging from a bracket on a tree, but went out and bought a pole thinking that there's no way a squirrel would climb a 1/2 inch thick pipe. Well, I was wrong, so now I'm going to have to go and get one of those contraptions that keeps them from doing their acrobatic movements up the pole.

I've decided to use a different photo gallery to display pictures. This one provides an easier upload interface and more customizations. Hopefully you won't find too many bugs from previous image links.