The Zaepfels Weblog

Last week the Zbrzezny’s were in town, and it was great to see them again, and meet baby Tyler, who is adorable. The girls enjoyed Aubrie’s company:

And Clara got to meet Tyler:

Me: Are arranged marriages still in vogue?
Clara: What?!
Me: Quiet. He’s cute, and he has a great family.
Clara: So that means I automatically have to marry him?
Me: Yup.

Clara’s not sleeping any better, but she seems happier, which is great. She’s smiling and cooing, although never directly at the camera, of course. Here’s my best attempt to capture a smile so far:

And some bonus pictures -

Thomas Engineer Anna:

Tree frog Clara:

And the girls being sweet:

Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of John asleep yesterday in his desk chair at work to post, his colleagues were too slow in finding a camera. They were fast enough to gather around his desk and laugh and point before he woke up, though. We’ve had a rough few nights.

Hello!

Long-time-no-post. It seems whenever Clara is OK with being set down, Anna wants to be picked up. (who can blame her?) Anyway, it makes typing difficult.

I have been meaning to post about this for awhile now, really for real, so now that both girls are finally asleep, here we go.

Our dear friend Rebecca is going to run the Chicago Marathon next month!! She’s running to raise money for the American Cancer Society, in honor of her best friend Maggie, Uncle Jim, and of course our Tim. Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone whose life hasn’t been affected in some way by cancer. Cancer plays for keeps, but fortunately so does Rebecca - agreeing to run 26 miles and managing to raise over $2000 so far for the fight.

So if you want to tack a little on to support our friend and fight cancer, head over to her fundraising page:

http://main.acsevents.org/goto/RebeccaStigge

She has a snazzy picture of Tim on it, too, from the Benesch wedding.

Go Rebecca!!!

This weekend Liz and I went over to Peter and Katie’s house for dinner and then to pick any apples and pears they had left on there trees. We had a great dinner and walked away with an 18 gal container and 3 4 gal buckets full of apples and pears. They where all ready to be juiced! So I thought…

(1) The 50 year old juice press that my father brought home was not really in the finest shape. Some of the wooden frame was rotted. Not good for high pressure work. (2) 85% of the apple needed some kind attention, worms, rotten sections, worms, and… worms. (3) Once I put what was left of the cleaned apples (and I only made it though half) in the press, they where way to hard to press. I even tried my car’s hydrolic jack to move things along. Its only broke the frame of the press. Ugg… I decided it was time to set up our little kitchen juicer machine to try to salvage the day. It worked but what a mess. In the end I had 1 1/2 gallons of juice or cider. 1/2 gal of water more and I called it a day with 2 gals ready to begin fermenting.

The pears went a bit better probably because the fruit was almost flawless. I just cut it and juiced. 2 gals of pear juice ready to go.

So after severely neglecting my family on Saturday, Sunday was much better. Bills won to in dramatic fashion!

Greetings all. I added some Clara Pictures. Just a few more from August. Also when you go to Clara.TheZaepfels.com you will see the new design I made for her. Daryl and Kristen you are right. The camera does not seem to be clicking as often with Clara like it was with Anna.

Also, I found this really nifty picture gallery system. The system is Gallery2. As with most of these really good open source apps it has template capabilities that I am taking advantage of. Now instead of generating HTML files, thumbnails, etc. and having to upload the whole thing (at 128 kbps), I now can export directly from iPhoto to the system. I have not tried it out with movie files yet but I will give it a shot soon.

There certainly is a lot less time to play with this these types of fun toys these days.

It was a great weekend for Buffalo football. Both teams won! UB had a dream game ending. 5 seconds on the clock, with UB on the 35 yard line. Hail Mary Pass into the end zone and a UB guy came up with it! UB wins!

Josh and Lindsay came over for the day and Josh realized that he was missing a college football Saturday. So he turned the TV on and discovered the UB game. Boy, am I out of touch with UB athletics. I did not even know there was a home game this weekend. Anyway, the game was tied at 21 at the end of the 3rd. I thought woo I have to watch this! Bulls scored a FG, 24-21 YES! Temple scored a TD 24-28 Yikes. Watching the game we figured well it was a good effort but not to be. As they slowly got closer to the endzone, time was disappearing. I never thought. Then the last play came along. Holy Sh%t!! Josh and I shouted in the living room.

Bulls are 2-1 on the season. This could really be another very good year!

I was not as into the Bills game but I did enjoy watching it. It was a stressful nail bitter also but they did win. Bills now 2-0 for the season.

We spent the day at the Steele’s house and had tasty turkey club sandwiches and a Chinese feast. That plus the game plus the extremely hot, then windy, then rainy weather that was the remnants of hurricane Ike made yesterday quite exciting and fun.

Around noon today, we realized it was our anniversary. This year, no romantic dinner, no flowers, no chocolates, certainly no lingerie, unless you count the ultra sexy fishnet disposable hospital undies…

But, we gave each other the most wonderful present:

Even Anna is enjoying it:

Although, now that I think about it, I did enjoy some chocolate today. Thanks to the Benesch Brownies. Mmmmm…

I have created a subdomain for Clara: Clara.TheZaepfels.com I will do some fresh design work in a few days but there are some pictures. Here are high lights:

Here is Liz and Clara at 10:50 pm

Here is one of Clara with her eyes open at 11:11 pm

This is Martha, the nurse mid-wife, that was with us during most of labor and delivery. She was great. Having her was like having an inside person with us the entire time! She knew the best nurses to assist and also who to bump out when too annoying. (11:40 pm)

Liz is now napping and Clara is sitting in my lap as I type.

Clara Faith Zaepfel was born August 19, 2008, 10:33 pm. She weighed 7 lbs. 14 oz. She is healthy and so is mom!

More details and pictures as soon as Anna and the grandparents have seen here

Knowing now that I have internet access. It is entirely possible to have a web cam going. Actually, does any one have Skype?

Update: We are at 5 cm!

Yesterday, after a visit to the Mid-wives, a sonogram to check fluid levels, and some more talk with the mid-wives, we checked into the Children hospital. Before letting us go to sleep they gave Liz cervadil (sp?) to “soften her up”.

We did get a good night sleep and had some breakfast. Just a few minutes ago, they poked an i.v. in Liz. First they tried the left hand but that did not seam to work all that well. So then they went for the right. Lizzie is not very comfortable with those.

More to come!