Every year since Ashley was born we’ve had birthday parties for her where we invited family and friends. This year we decided to take her to the American Girl Store in New York. We always have a fun time going to NYC and we thought she was old enough to enjoy it too.

We did more than just visit the store, though I think that’s the part Ashley liked the best. We visited the Statue of Liberty for the first time. We spent some time in Central Park (and took a short carriage ride around the park). And we did a lot of walking in general.

The American Girl Store is a little crazy. There’s three floors devoted totally to the dolls. Ashley got her doll’s hair done and had her doll’s ears pierced (seriously). On the third floor there is a small cafe where we had a birthday dinner for Ashley.

The tour out to the Statue of Liberty was fun. The weather was great so we had a fun time on the boat ride and walking around the island. It amazes me how much security has increased in New York too. The security checkpoints to go out to the island was as serious as those to get on a plane (if not more so).

Every year our family takes a beach vacation with a couple of other families to NJ. We spend most of the day at the beach (with me hanging out on my beach chair watching the kids most of that time). May not sound very exciting, but for me it's very relaxing. Same routine almost everyday, wake up and find something to eat, apply the sun block, fill the beach cart (and I mean fill) and head to the beach.

This year we stayed at a house that was one street back from the downtown area which has a few things (like mini-golf and shopping) to do in the evenings. We had a great time this year, just wish we could have stayed another week. Maybe next year.

I just spent the afternoon with Ashley and my sister-in-law's family at the New Jersey State Aquarium in Camden, NJ. We had a fun time and the aquarium was great. We typically would go to the aquarium in Baltimore, but this was a great alternative. Ashley enjoyed the exhibits and was able to pet a few different kinds of fish. She petted some jelly fish, a stingray and she may have even touched a little shark (I'm not sure if she got up enough nerve for that).

I decided to redo my website to be simpler and more about me personally. The goal would be if someone wants to see what I've been up to they can go here and keep up-to-date. Previously I experimented with a lot of non-related content here that was just kinda useless to anyone but myself (or for people looking for information on big dogs). On the bright side, I probably made a couple hundred dollars from Adsense. But it turned out that I was hesitant to send people here because of the clutter.

So as of right now, it is still a work in progress because I don't know what should really go here. I'll likely keep it to a bare minimum until I figure it out. Most of the "useless" information is still around if you know what you're looking for, likely buried in my "On The Side" area.

On the home page there is a banner image that you can click thru. Those pictures were taken by me at some point and I thought they would make a neat decoration.