Its a lemon

Roughly 6 months to go until bean makes his/her debue. Actually Sarah has taken to calling it blueberry instead of bean. But this week marks the first week of the second trimester. Sarah swears she can feel it kick already, and according to some web-sites that is possible. To keep track of the progress, on my nifty little iphone (all the cool Tokola's have one) I have a program that keeps track of the gestational age, countdown, what trimester we're in, and it also gives about what it's weights and size are along with a fruit/veggie equivalent. Right now we're a lemon.

Sarah has been prepping Max, telling him he is going to be a big brother soon, the Kanicks also bought him a doll so he can get use to the idea of taking care of a little sibling. Max has been quite proficient at pointing out other babies. If he sees one he point and say "baby" in his own little max way. But I'm not so sure he has quite made the connection to his soon to be little brother/sister. Max is taking Sarah pregnancy in stride, at this point the blueberry belly offers excellent lower lumbar support for max's story time.

And they're off...

About a week ago our little town of Fircrest held its 3rd annual 5k "watch your speed" fun run. I know, a few of you would debate the terms "5k run" and "fun" being used in the same sentence together. A few others were also quick to point out lacking a certain Uncle John but he'll get heckled for that later. Well aside from the missing Lemming, a few of us did go out and despite the rainy weather completed the race. The participants were Nick Steier (32:39), Reid Benson (31:35), Jenny Bridges (27:03), Jean Bridges & Max Bridges (hey at least they finished), and Jeff Bridges (19:36). Sarah and Alex were there to cheer us on, and as a added bonus Alex makes a handy stretching post. Hey if you have a talent go with it I guess. Since the race was in Fircrest, we just waddled over the our house afterwards where Sarah and I made breakfast for everyone that came over.

Max not really feeling much fatigue after the race took advantage of the extra attention available at the house after the race. Right below we see Max wrangling Nick with a book. It took Max about .5secs to wear Nick down.

All in all, I think all of us had a good time. And hopefully we'll do it again sometime. Maybe a few more will step up to the start line and join us. Cough "uncle John" cough.

Halloween Jedi

The force is strong with this one. This Halloween we went with a Starwars Theme for our costumes. Max as you can see went as Yoda. Sarah made the hat, robe and feet. If you saw him from the back it was pretty convincing when you add in Max's little waddle walk he does. When he crawls it look very similar to Empire Strikes Back when Yoda was crawling in his little hut.

As you notice Yoda has honed his light saber skills to near perfection. He also has a walking stick he was fond of.

And what would Starwars be without the epic light saber duals. Here we have The dark lord of the Sith himself; Darth Popi. Standing against Darth Popi is Yoda and his padawan. Yoda stepped in just in time with his force powers to save the young Jedi.

Actually what Max is after is the Iphones we each have in our hands as we dual, we each downloaded the light saber web-app to add some sound effects to our battle.

Unfortunately we do not live in that galaxy that is far, far away. Our version of the force, does indeed flows though us, but.... you guessed it is Starbucks. Its where all the cool Jedi and Sith hang out.

The Return of Bean...

Max's reign as lone child ruler of the house will soon be coming to a close. In roughly seven and a half months Max will have a new brother or sister to play with. Due date being something in the neighborhood of May 9th. Now I know some of you may feel intimidated, like Reid or Jenny another May b-day hogging some of your glory. Well... its true, and to top it off the new born will be way cuter then you too.
But it won't be all fun and games for Sarah and me this means I'll have to be dusting off some of the baby equipment we just put away in the attic, and Sarah will have to stick to virgin gin and tonics for a while. And I'm not evening going to try and think about packing our Ion for Otter Crest with 2 little ones.

PS: JJ if you are still needing any "how to" tips give me a call, I'm batting 2 for 2 over here. Would be more then happy to give you some pointers.

Onward and upward to Covington

Well I bid adieu to my old Tacoma Costco. For the past few years I have been a PM stocker/fork lift driver. Closing the warehouse nearly every night for the past 3+ years. What draws me away? A new Costco is about to open in Covington, a community to the north. About a 30min drive from our house here in Fircrest. The new warehouse manager for Covington is the same one I had here in Tacoma, so he agreed to take me along with a promotion to supervisor of the gas station. So I'll be running the new 16 pump, 90000gallon gas station.

The folks here in Tacoma were nice enough to hold a going away party for those of us departing to the new building at the local Azteca restaurant. My old department did something a little more personalized for me on my last day...

This is how I found my car when I left the building on my last night at the Tacoma Costco. Now I knew something was up that night, some coworkers were asking to borrow my register keys, I later found out there were hoping to find a locker key on my key chain (my locker is a combo lock to which they found the key to in the form of a bolt cuter). After borrowing my car keys they moved my car and wrapped it up for me. But they weren't done yet...

After unwrapping it, I found that my car now had a cream filling or at least a plastic one now. They stuffed about 5 Costco shopping carts worth of plastic wrap in there. It took me about half hour to get my car clear of all the extra baggage it had taken on.

It was nice to see people say they would miss me. Though I think that part was more of a formality, the truth later came out that the one they would really miss is Max, over all I had more comments that my ex-coworkers would miss his blue eye and cute smile much more then my mug. *sigh*

It's quiet around here....

It is that time again. The time where all the Tokolas pack up and high tail it to the beach. This year Sarah and Max went off leaving me here by my lonesome. Its rough, not being woken up at night. That kind of thing can wear on ya, leaving you rested and energized the following day. Not sure if I can take much more of it. After taking care of a few details here in T-town, I'll make my way down south just for a few days, someone has to keep Uncle John running, H2C is only a week away.

My new toy

For our anniversary, Sarah bought me a ipod nano along with the Nike+ chip and sensor. Its pretty cool, I attach a chip to my shoe laces and a plug goes into the ipod. Then my run info goes to nike's website where you can challenge other folks to run and join teams to compete with one another.

It has the best of both worlds, on one hand you are out running and getting buff. On the other hand you still get the gadgety side and get to fiddle around on the web. A nice combo of jock & geek. Now I just need to get Uncle John to get one, then we could smack talk each other in cyber-space, yippee.