Bradley Family Blog

Sorry for the absence

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:51:00 +0000

So most of you know that we've kind of stopped posting here, uh, permanently. We have been posting videos on youtube instead, because it's just easier to do from the iPhone.

We may even get rid of the blog altogether, but I hate to lose all the entries. Does anyone know how to preserve blog content?

We're back!

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:10:00 +0000

Sorry for our absence! We hadn't updated our credit card info with our domain host people.

I just put some photos of our trips up on Facebook, so you can check those out!

Also, I've started a YouTube channel for Lukie! http://www.youtube.com/edbradl

You can go to this link, or if you're out, you can search for the phrase 'lukiesb' on YouTube. It's very easy for me to add videos to YouTube, so I'll likely be putting them up there more often than here.

Enjoy!

Luke and Audrey at the Pool

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:43:00 +0000

Eileen sent me this pic the other day when we put the kids in the pool. It's funny because you can see a bit of their personalities. Below is a pic of them from about a year ago.

Luke's 2nd Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (Rich) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 01:56:00 +0000

I had to quickly upload this video of Luke after opening a present from Pop-Pop and Mamma Rose.

Videos

noreply@blogger.com (Rich) — Fri, 01 May 2009 22:54:00 +0000

Luke loves his bedtime routine, which includes brushing his teeth! We replaced the medicine cabinet, so I kept the old one down at Luke's level for a while.

He ran laps after the second attempt. Just unacceptable. Sometimes he gets confused and throws a basketball like a football, or a baseball like a basketball, etc. We're working on it. He's doing so well throwing, though.

Sometimes when I need to press "reset" with Luke, I do this...."Go LUKE!"

He has been doing this cute "flex" thing lately....it's at the end of this video

Just a sample

noreply@blogger.com (Rich) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:37:00 +0000

While sitting down for some toast today, here are the words that Luke said in a 5-minute span:

Ba-ball, bird, fly, toast, please (3x), break, please (7x), bird, shoul (8x), George, bird, George, bird, Wiggles, Baby, Wiggles, Baby (2x), A-do, No, pray?, cereal, ba-ball, a-do (3x), George, a-do (2x), buk (2x), a-do (5x), draw (3x), gabackaball, draw (2x), crayon (5x), haf (2x), gabackaball (3x), draw (4x), on paper (3x), gabackaball (9x!!!), yea (2x), yea George yea, out (2x), No!, No-No (4x), seat, a-do (2x), George (3x)

Translation

Ba-ball: football

gabackaball: basketball

shoul: shoulder

A-do: all done

buk: milk

haf: help

Watching Kiddos

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:49:00 +0000

Eileen had her baby on Monday evening. She had a very short labor--about four hours from start to finish--and has a very entertaining birth story as a result. We watched Audrey for a couple of days to help out, and it just happened to be the same two days that I usually watch Camera.

We were also in Charleston last weekend, so hopefully we'll get some pics of that trip up soon!

I'm Back Baby!

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 01:18:00 +0000

As many of you know, our laptop broke towards the end of January, and our blog suffered as a result. We also couldn't find our camera cord until earlier this week. So let's pretend that February 2009, the twenty first month of our dear son's life, never happened. There is something funny, however, about people calling you to complain about how you haven't posted on your blog. Anyway, with the new laptop and the camera cord, we feel reborn. We're like a phoenix rising from Arizona.

So to answer your question, Luke is doing awesome. He is saying so many words and is getting so big. Here's a pic or two from Monday when we got 6 inches of snow. Ironically, we had a warm front come in this weekend, so we had temperatures in the 60s on Saturday and Sunday. It was just wonderful. So Luke and I went to shoot baskets for the first time, and Luke was so excited. Our friends have a little court in their backyard, so Luke ran down the hill to the court and was like, "GABACKABALL!! GABACKABALL!" He then proceeded to hold onto a little boy basketball and would periodically bend his knees and then jump up in the air and let go of the basketball. Too cute. I wanted to do the whole "father holds up the son who then throws the ball into the basket", but I'm 5'5". So we worked on footwork and "playing with heart" instead.

Today I was reading one of his number books that goes from 1-10. He's saying numbers now and constantly counting. In the book, he always skips ahead to 6, because there are 6 footballs and 9, because there are nine basketballs. So on the basketball page, I said, "Luke, how many basketballs are there?" He started counting: "Won, two, fee, fofivsixxxxx(he says those three very fast), eigh (he has never said seven), niiii. Then there was a long pause and he goes, "Niiiin........gabackaballs." That's right: he put an "s" on gabackaball! I was cracking up.

Random video from January that is funny. This is still sort of the "old" Luke before he was talking a lot and having opinions about the stimulus bill.

If you don't already know, we recently closed on a 2 bedroom condo, and moved into it last weekend. It's literally in the same building and is right next door to our old place. So we own both of them, so if we wanted, we could knock down a wall. But we're trying to rent it out. Anyway, Luke is now sleeping in his own room in his own bed, and he loves it. And we think we're pretty darn cool for having 2 bedrooms.

Here's a video of Luke helping me shovel. As you can see we had a large turnout of homeowners.

Life after the Super Bowl

noreply@blogger.com (Rich) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:14:00 +0000

When you love football, it's always sobering to be faced with the end of another season. No more team to cheer for; no more fantasy football; no more playoffs. Sad, indeed. But what has surprised me is seeing Luke deal with this reality for the first time.

I will preface this by stating that Luke will see sports-related things and point them out to you, even if you don't see them. A couple weeks ago, Em was in Target and all of a sudden Luke started pointing to this guy and saying "ba-ball" which is his word for football. This guy wasn't carrying a football, however, he was wearing a Green Bay Packer hat. So she thought it was pretty amazing that he recognized the Green Bay Packers logo of all things. However, it gets better. When she walked closer, Luke specifically pointed to the NFL logo on the hat and said, "Ba-ball! Ba-ball!" Wow, the power of branding!

Then the other day Em was eating Frosted Flakes and he started saying ba-ball again, but this time we were like, "No Luke, this is cereal! And no, there's no football on!" But he was so adamant about it; he kept pointing at the box and saying ba-ball. Lo and behold, there was this really really small NFL logo (again with the logo) on the side of the box. When we gave him the box, he then pointed directly at it, said ba-ball, and put the box down, having made his point.

There are many other "ba-ball" moments. He never misses a beat. He really enjoys watching it. There are really strange coincidences where it's a little scary. He'll cheer especially loud on 3rd and long, he'll yell, "Go! Go!" when someone is taking off, and he's always clapping. Plus, on Sundays after church, when we get in the apartment he calmly goes to the tv, says ba-ball in a normal tone, and will often turn the tv on himself. He doesn't do this on other days. I'm glad that I'm instilling a relationship between church and football in him from an early age.

So anyway, Luke was living life and enjoying all the fun that the NFL has to offer. This leads us to the week before the Super Bowl. That hard week when there is no football. He did all his normal gestures as I've described above, so I had to look him in the eyes and gently tell him that there was not going to be any football on today. I tried to temper that statement with the fact that the championship was going to be the following week, but I could see Luke trying to process this earth-shattering moment in a young toddler's life. He was so confused! Poor guy!

I didn't talk about football all week, and then Sunday afternoon Luke and I were hanging out and I told him, "Guess what son? I have a present for you!" And I turned on the tv and there was the pre-game with plenty of football imagery for him to get the point that football was on. He was so happy!! He started sprinting up and down the hallway, and he would just point and point at the tv saying ba-ball. So cute.

Watching "Nina"

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:24:00 +0000

Alanna dropped off Carolina this morning (or "ny-na" as she calls herself) at our house. Jonathan was supposed to stay home with her, but he got sick last night. So she's spending the day with us. So far, she and Luke have gotten on well, minus a few sharing problems.

They're currently finishing up their mac and cheese for lunch while watching the Wiggles concert DVD. "Wake up Jeff!!" We'll see how nap time goes, as we only have the one queen bed.

Lukie Screwdriverhands

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:05:00 +0000

Christmas Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:42:00 +0000

Sorry we've been so long in posting! We've been far too busy watching the Wiggles concert DVD over and over and over again. :)

Here are some pics and videos from Christmastime! We will likely close on the two-bedroom condo next to us around the end of this month.

Click on the link to go to the slideshow: http://picasaweb.google.com/bradley.emily/Christmas2008?authkey=qrOnuHliOqY#slideshow

They are both so funny

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:04:00 +0000

Last night as we were putting Luke to bed, Rich was putting his shoes away and humming to himself. Here is what he said, all in one stream:

"*singing* Westward leaning, still pro-- That's like Poland. Westward leaning, still proceeding, guide us to thy missile defense...! *chuckling to himself* Poland is so faithful to us. I'm going to start calling Poland 'Boo.' Poland, you're our Boo. 'What up Boo?!'"

Meanwhile, Luke is getting smarter. His favorite hobby has been to tear off bits of toilet paper, put them in the toilet and flush them down. Yesterday he stared at the toilet for a few seconds and then proceeded to put the end of the toilet paper roll in the toilet and flush. He watched with glee as the toilet pulled a long string of paper as it flushed. *shakes head*

Live Nativity

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:14:00 +0000

We meet every other week with other parents with babies from our church. We eat, worship, pray and talk. (It's our "life group.") This past Saturday, we went to this "live nativity" that a church in our area was holding. They had a manger scene with actors portraying Mary, Jesus and Joseph and the wise men, complete with minature donkeys and alpacas. Then there was a petting zoo portion with rabbits, baby goats and sheep. Luke really liked it, although it was pretty cold outside. We had trouble keeping gloves on him.

Here are pictures of Luke with his friends!

Me and Lukie B.

Camera and Ashley

Sam and Christy

The Thomas Family

Our family!!

Luke's new friend, Grace. Born 10/22/08. Luke gave her this cute onesie at her baby shower. It says "Who needs mistletoe with a face like this?"

New Vocab

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:45:00 +0000

We've noticed a pick-up in Lukie's vocab lately. Here are his words:

mama

daddy

doggie

hot

cold

sock

owl (AAH-GUULL)

all done (a-doo)

butterfly (wrah-rah!)

diaper

bye-bye (accompanied by a little wave)

good-bye

pee-pie (pa-pa)

He's also said "ice", "poo-poo" and "you," but he doesn't say them regularly.

Here's a random video for you all. Sorry we've been lax in posting!

I have taken over a new responsibility that's keeping me pretty busy, and that is leading the musicians in practice for the worship team on Wednesdays. You would think it's no big deal, but not only is it sort of nerve-wracking to tell your friends what to do, but it takes lots of preparation. I research songs, find chords, edit them online, find free downloads of songs, communicate with the leaders and the team. I really have a lot of fun doing it, so it's not a burden. But it does take time!

I've been spurred to shore up on my musical weaknesses. So far I plan to improve on my very small knowledge of music theory and to train my ear better. Did you know that Paul Ahn has perfect pitch? It's so great to have him there to figure out chords...

OWL!

noreply@blogger.com (Rich) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:37:00 +0000

With the exception of a disturbing coloring book called "Elmo goes to the potty" (I will write a future post on this issue), Luke's favorite book right now is probably, "Franklin Goes to School". Franklin is a turtle who is a bit apprehensive about leaving his parents and hopping on that school bus for the first time. You know, a typical turtle. However, everything works out well for Franklin as he ends up having a very supportive teacher who happens to be an owl.

The story has really touched Luke's heart and he just loves that teacher. So much so that he yells "OWL!" many times throughout the day. I made a little video this evening while we were all eating dinner. I can't say that the video is really funny, but it does capture a Luke-Owl moment. You can also see our "staged" living room in the background. Didn't Em do an amazing job?

I looked on the memory stick just now and found this picture of Luke from a couple weeks ago. I'm just ecstatic. Why? Well, Em has this cute thing where she gets mad at me when I go to certain food establishments without her. Like if she finds out that I had lunch at one of these places during the work day without her, she's like, "How could you do this to me?" and not in a totally joking way either. These places include Five Guys, Chipotle, Maggiano's, and Potbelly. Ah-ha! This picture of a cute boy innocently sipping a milkshake will forever remind me of my wife's betrayal!

In closing, Luke knows his body parts!

HILLoween

noreply@blogger.com (Rich) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:58:00 +0000

Today, Alanna uploaded some new pictures from the Swiatkowski family. Carolina is a great kid, and is getting prettier and prettier every day. Anyway, I absolutely cracked up at some of the photos of Luke they had. Let me explain.

Jonathan and Alanna were so sweet to watch Luke on Halloween night while Em and I went to this retreat. So they took him and Carolina to this Halloween fun night on Capitol Hill called "Hilloween". You see, they just replaced the "Hall" with "Hill". It was really an omen of "change" now that I think about it.

Alanna asked if they could dress Luke up in a costume, and I agreed, just as long as he wasn't anything satanic. So, they dressed him up as a gorilla.

However, Luke took it a step further. As he searched for his true "motivation" for the role, he decided to portray not a wild gorilla, but more of a caged gorilla who had been separated from his parents in the wild. Luke played the part perfectly. No other baby could have better portrayed the outright despair and utter hopelessness of caged gorillas like my son.

Sock Weather

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:48:00 +0000

Luke and I have been hanging out tonight as usual, and he's been pretty low key. I've been enjoying it. Tonight he's been working on putting his socks on. Now that it's getting cold, we've been putting them on around the house. He always takes them off, of course, but tonight is the first night where I've seen him want to put them back on. Multiple times over the course of the night he has taken off his socks, and then said "coewl" (his word for cold), which is promptly followed by an attempt to put his socks back on.

But it's hard to get your sock on when you have a MAN FOOT!

Where IS it?!

noreply@blogger.com (Rich) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 23:06:00 +0000

I was thinking how funny it would be if Obama was actually not born in the United States. And further, if it wasn't the result of some big international conspiracy, but just a family oversight. What if Obama's Mom was always like, "Maybe I'll tell him when he's a little older."

You know, my Uncle who married into the family always thought he was Irish-Welsh until he found out in his mid fifties that he was actually Italian! It would be akin to finding out that Joe wasn't actually a plumber. Imagine how that would shake you to your very core.

So here you have Obama about to become the president of the most powerful country in the world, but you know he's been in the attic all evening looking for that box. But gosh darnit, he's combed through every box marked "Hawaii" without success!

Speaking of boxes, we've been packing a few of our own. Luke has been lending a hand.

In big news, Em passed the bar! We found out about a week ago. She jumped in my arms and we started screaming and jumping up and down. Poor Luke was so scared! So we picked him up and we were all jumping around together. Afterwards, I gave my two-weeks notice.

This is for you, Pops!

noreply@blogger.com (Rich) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:12:00 +0000

I know that a lot of you have been waiting for some new Luke pics. So I went ahead and made a slideshow of some pics from the last month or so. Enjoy!

Love,

Rich & Em

Luke Around the House

Family Trip to Texas

Updates!

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 04:42:00 +0000

But no pictures or videos yet, because the camera is in our bedroom, where Rich and Luke are sleeeeeping... Probably where I should be, but something comes over me on the weekends. Late at night, I finally feel like I'm free to do just what I want to do. Usually Rich and I force each other to go to sleep rather than stay up, but since he went to bed early, I haven't anyone to tell me to go to bed! This happened on our girls' weekend when Ange was in town. Ash and I shared a hotel room and I forced her to stay up till 3am, flipping back and forth between "JAWS" and "My Best Friend's Wedding."

Briefly, our life, of late, has included...

1) An audit from the IRS. We'll hear back from them in October when they review our documentation.

2) ~$200 fine for Rich for speeding. This is actually a big relief, because he had been snagged for "reckless driving," AKA high speeding, which carried major, major penalties, but since his driving record was otherwise clean, they let him off with a "light" fine.

3) Packing up excess stuff around the house and putting it in storage. All in preparation for staging our house and prepping it to sell! We're going to try selling it ourselves for a few weeks. If that doesn't work, we'll pay some friends to list it in MLS.

4) Looking for a house to buy. We'd like to get a bit more space and be much closer to Rich's work. However, our real estate market is really expensive, so we are trusting God to provide a place for us in the right spot for the right price.

5) Softball. Rich's team made the playoffs! They play tomorrow at 10am. We're waking up at 7am, so I'd better go to sleep.

Luke is still very VERY cute. I'll make sure to post videos/pics soon! Thanks for bearing with us!

OH. And I've been terrible with birthdays this year. I remembered to call my dad and sisters, I think, but I forgot my grandfather's, grandmother's and best friend's. Boo!! I hate that sinking feeling. I've always wanted to be good with birthday card sending... Happy belated b-day Granddad, Mimi and Skoo!

Wed nights with Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Rich) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 02:30:00 +0000

Emily is back to playing the bass at "praise and worship practice" on Wed nights (she used to promise she'd stop when she finished school, and that it was just to help pay bills). Tonight was a magical night where Luke didn't cry when Em left, he ate his whole dinner, and we had a really smooth bath time and bed time. He even scratched my back. Of course, it's 10:33 PM and he just woke up, but let's hope that he falls back asleep.

First of all, before showing you some of the funny videos from tonight, check out this cute Luke and George Lubbers video Emily took yesterday.

Luke cracks me up, because he's always lifting things. He's always lifting this rachet set and bringing it to you, and now he's lifting this. It makes me laugh, because he makes this grunt noise.

Here's some reading fun. I enjoy making up facts about the animals, as well as pouring out misinformation.

Who didn't want a wolf for a pet when you were a kid? On a random note, did you just think of the movie "Teen Wolf" when I said that? You can admit it, it's ok. Also this video shows how much Luke really knows when it comes to working the tv. Here I was just teasing Luke when I asked him where the remotes were, because I knew he wanted to watch his video! I had never asked him that before.

Some Enchanted Evening

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:09:00 +0000

We've had a mouse for a long time. We first noticed him a few months ago when we were still sleeping in the living room on the air mattress. He was behind the stove, clanging about. For a few nights, he woke us up with his noisiness. Then I began research on homemade mousetraps online.

I saw several varieties. Most involve some sort of tunnel or bottle that the mouse runs into from a horizontal surface and then by the time he gets to the end, his weight is enough to topple the tube into a waiting trashcan below. Like so:

I finally settled on this one (below), because our mouse hadn't progressed to the counter tops or table. (So the tube method would be more difficult, involving a ramp and other materials.) I rigged it on a baking sheet with heavy baking dish on top and a piece of cheese on the end of the bamboo skewer.

Lo and behold, we caught him that very night! I was amazed! He was a good size, too. Sometimes mice are SO tiny. This was early in my mouse-hunting career and I wanted Rich to bring him to work so we could release him on GW Parkway, where he would make himself a nice burrow and eat berries and flax... or something like that. Oh, how times changed.

In what I thought was a very careful attempt to extricate him from under the baking dish and into a manila envelope, he escaped. Behind the bookshelf, into the bathroom, out into the hallway and into the unknown, back to safety... It was depressing.

I was undaunted, though, because I naively thought, "Well, I'll just set the trap out again tonight." He didn't bite. In fact, we didn't hear from him for a while. But he came back eventually, and he was more brazen than ever. We began to hear him in the early evening. Then a couple of times we SAW him. The first time, we had him cornered under the bookshelves and we stuffed a towel under his escape door. Guess we didn't plug it enough, cause he burrowed his way out.

By this time, I had named given him the name Sandy. It was the gayest boy name I could think of. Plus, I connote it with stupidity. (You'll recall that in "Growing Pains," Carol's boyfriend who was killed driving drunk was named Sandy. While that behavior is probably not best described as "stupid," when I saw it at age 9, that's what I thought.)

These are pictures from the last time we saw him in the living room. It was July 31, the day after I finished the bar. We were watching "Georgia Rule" when we saw him run under the changing table. We immediately flew into action. Our plan was to have me flush him out and then Rich would pounce on him with a large piece of Gladware. We moved everything that would hinder us to the center of the rug.
When he ran from the changing table to under the couch (a favorite hideout), we got serious. I put tape under all the appliances in the kitchen so that if he ran in there, we'd have him cornered and he couldn't escape. Now, Sandy doesn't just go under the couch. He has several holes in the lining under the couch, and he actually goes in the couch. So what do you think I did? Cut the whole lining off and flipped the couch over!
We couldn't see him anywhere, so we figured we'd just have to wait for him to come out of the couch. We flipped it back right side up and I jumped up and down several times while Rich waited in the kitchen with his Gladware. Nothing.

Finally we sat down, tired and defeated. Sandy had eluded us again! The next week I bought six mousetraps and laid them out like I had read in another article. (You should lay them out, multiples in a row, so that the mouse will be caught as he runs along the wall.) Here are some under the bookshelf. Three days later, no mouse.

So yesterday was our anniversary. I got home from worship practice just in time to sit down with Rich on the couch and reflect on our three years of marriage. I suggested that we say three thing (for three years) that we liked about being married to each other. After we had each shared one thing, I said, "Honey, not to be rude, but you smell like garbage." (He had been doing the dishes.) I smelled his shirt and hands--no scent. Rich confirmed that he smelled it, too.

We began searching for the smell. I finally smelled the trashcan--no smell. Then I smelled the floor. Stinky. "Could it be Sandy?" I wondered. We flipped the couch, and with our flashlight, sure enough, we saw a little tail. We figured that when I jumped on the couch to get him to fall out last Thursday, I smushed him and he fell onto a piece of foam and was perched there until we found him last night.

Happy Anniversary!

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:04:00 +0000

It's Rich's and my three-year anniversary today! Here's the e-card he sent me. It made me chuckle. What a burden it is to be married to the funniest man I know! :)

Luke and Lincoln

noreply@blogger.com (Emily) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:43:00 +0000

Luke

Luke's second cousin Lincoln