Schuetz Family

We finally decided to replace our cell phones. My 2.5-year-old Motorola PEBL phone had started acting flaky, and Andrea’s even older LG phone couldn’t hold a charge worth a damn. Plus, she was paying about $10 a month more with Verizon than I was with T-Mobile, and we figured that consolidating with a T-Mobile family plan would save us that money easily. So, I started my research.

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Okay, yes, it’s been 2.5 years. We’ve had two more kids since the last post (granted, we were really efficient and had them both at once, but still). Sorry. I put a bunch of pictures out earlier today (again, everyone’s been clamoring) and it felt like I really oughta at least mention them. So here we go.
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Well. First things first: We’ve had twins. It’s obviously been a long while since I’ve posted. If you know us, and know that we have twins, you’ll chuckle and understand why nothing’s been posted for like 2.5 years(!). If you don’t know us, and didn’t know we even existed until you surfed here, then you haven’t missed anything. If you know us, and didn’t know we had twins, well, surprise!

So anyway. Twins. (Boy and Girl, in case you were curious). With a 3-year-old son as well. That spells L-A-U-N-D-R-Y. And we’ve had this really cool front-loading washer/dryer combo since we moved into this house in 2002. Super efficient, super quiet, etc., etc. Kenmore Elite HE3t or something like that. Very good. Except that the washer keeps getting this F09 code, interestingly only on the delicate cycles (which is most of the kids’ and Andrea’s clothes). So I always figured it had to do with the Woolite we use, which isn’t High-Efficiency Washer “compatible” (that is, it makes too many suds). Every time we get the error, we hit pause, then start again and it finishes up in a few minutes. Read more…

UPDATE — We’ve now posted the rest of the “First 12 Months” photos here…including one of the first pictures after getting his first haircut! Read more…

Okay, okay, stop calling / writing / sending scary looking thugs named “Mikey the Neck.” Yes, we know that we’ve been ignoring the website. Yes, we know that our excuse (lack of time) is no better than the same excuse other people have had, and those other people have no problem finding time to send pictures to grandparents, friends, co-workers, or the Washington Post. Read more…

First, a real quick set of photos from our 2005 Beach Trip to Nags Head, NC. As usual, we had a fantastic time, though it was totally different from any beach trip we’ve ever been on before…amazing how having an infant affects your schedule in unpredictible and unavoidable ways…

I’ll post more details about the trip later. Right now, people are clamoring for pictures, so here they are. Read more…

I've been experimenting with an online photo gallery, and have been adding pictures beyond what we've posted in our blog entries. It's not really working right yet (some features, like “Add to Cart,” just don't work), but it does give you the ability to easily get the original full-sized photos, and it even has links to Shutterfly, so you can print photos directly from our webpage. We've got some England photos up (just the ones in our England travelogue, though), and a bunch of additional pictures of Dominic. Just go to the “Photos” link in the menu at the top of the page…

We’ve been busy lately…lunch with co-workers and their babies, movies, vaccinations, and Dominic’s first big road trip. Not to mention his first tub baths (which he really seems to enjoy!) Read more…

Well, okay, not quite his first cache find, but at least his first cache adventure. It all happened yesterday…

Earlier in the day, I’d finally begun working on the puzzle cache Top Rock. After finishing the puzzle, and verifying the coordinates, I plotted it on a map and saw that it was along some nice trails near a creek. When I got home, I mentioned it to Andrea, and told her I’d like to get it soon so she could actually see a White Jeep Travel Bug (the last ones I found never actually made it home with me). She seemed up for it, so we got Dominic all suited up and took off.

It took us a little while to get there, seeing as how this was Rush Hour. Once we got to the right area and found a parking spot, we thought, “hey, this isn’t too hot after all.” Put him in his stroller, keyed the coords into my GPS, and we took off down a paved trail in the woods.

Turns out the trail isn’t in as great shape as I’d hoped….bumpy, rutted, frequently covered with leaves, twigs, and sticks. Also, there were mosquitoes. Anyway, we went down into the woods, turned onto another trail, down some more, over some rocks, through some sand, onto a wider gravel trail, and stopped, looking straight at what the final cache location was. It wasn’t a place the stroller could go, so I clambered off, trying to avoid getting stung, bitten, or rubbing too much on poison ivy. Took about 30 seconds to find the cache (yay!) Then I came down the back face, met up with Andrea and Dominic on the return trail, and we headed back to the car.

Oh, yeah — the “not so hot after all” was a bit premature. We were both soaked by the time we got back to the parking lot. Then our car flashed the “Add Fuel” warning, so we had to find a gas station. Then Dominic needed to get changed. Then he had to get fed — which didn’t work too well, either, in the car at the gas station. So we got him partially fed, buckled back up, and drove home as fast as we could. All in all, about a 3-hour trip, but he got his first travel bug, and we got some valuable “long trip without real stops” experience, too.

I've been having some fun with the computers lately. A week ago, the GFI outlet that all our servers are plugged into tripped, for no obvious reason. So we were down for most of the day. Then, I decided it was finally time to get started on the server room walls, so I built a 4-foot section of wall and put it up (mostly. it's not quite square. but it's not load bearing, so I don't care.) Then I spent a few days re-wiring everything on the network panel. Buying patch panels. Getting a new firewall. And, finally, upgrading the site to the latest version of Drupal (because the old one had some security problems). I'm only now finally getting everything working.

Plus side: Better web software, soon to have better image support (maybe even with a link to shutterfly to print pics), faster link to the web server (good for me, nobody else will notice). Down side: Still way too much to do, and with a screaming (or, alternately, cute) baby, well, stuff slips.

I'll try to put up some pictures of the new server wall sometime, and hopefully I'll get the better photo support running in the next couple of days. But first I have to do all these same updates to my Wynmar site, too….