Luke and Ocean’s Wedding from Nate Murray on Vimeo.
Luke and Ocean’s Wedding
Cinnamin and Ashley
I just thought I’d blog this because they both look so cute!
Ashley + Uncle Bob
On our trip, when we were at Olive Garden in NC we noticed this striking similarity between Ashley and Uncle Bob.
Powdered Drano and Pee
The other day a friend of ours told me about an old wives tale for finding out the gender of your baby. We’re planning on finding out the gender, but when I heard the test I laughed and told Nate that we should do it so we could post about it on the blog…so here’s the post.
The test is that you get powdered Drano and mix it with the urine of the pregnant woman in question, and the gender of the baby is determined by the color of the mixture. Warm colors like red, yellow, orange and brown indicate a boy and cool colors such as blue, green or purple indicate a girl.
So we got some powdered Drano (who knew that even existed), and mixed it in a small bowl with some of my urine. The mixture immediately started to smoke and give off these horrible fumes. It was sputtering and fizzing and Nate was saying, “Ashley! Don’t breathe that!!” We took the bowl outside and opened all the doors and windows, turned on the fans and waited for the lightheadedness to go away. After a few minutes we took a look at the mixture and the color was a brownish-greenish color. So we’ve conclusively decided that we’re having a boy… or a girl.
As a side note, we’d like to add that the test really should never be done since you are in essence mixing bleach and ammonia which is a toxic combination (pdf). So leave it to the professionals - like us.
We didn’t really want to post a picture of the test on the blog because let’s face it, that’s just gross. So here’s a picture of my growing belly (17 weeks) instead.
Mat’s Haiku
I just wanted to point out that our friend Mat has been producing some great Haiku’s over at his Haiku Blog. The above picture is the cover of his recent paper Zine.
Here’s a favorite of mine:
an ugly poodle
glances back after crossing
five lanes of traffic
All right Mr DeMille, I’m ready for my close up
We have our first ultrasound pictures!
I know it looks like a black blob, but when we were there we could see him/her kicking and moving around. We were glad to see that
- the heart was beating strongly
- no arms were sticking out of any heads
- there was only one baby
See the whole photo set here.
UPDATE
Ashley had another ultrasound at the SCV Pregnancy Center’s new sonogram. These pictures came out better than before and are recommended if this is the type of thing that interests you.
Dad’s Motorcycle Accident
A week ago Sunday, dad was in a motorcycle accident. Though he came off the bike at about 50 MPH he didn’t break a single bone. We’re praising God for that. Here’s what happened:
Dad was on his way to church in Hollywood. It was a two lane exit, Dad was in the left lane and the other car was in the right. As they were exiting the car changed his mind and cut in front of Dad. I don’t think they hit, but Dad had to slam on the front break and lean back to the left.
The bike went out from under him and he fell on his left hand. He wasn’t wearing gloves, but thankfully he was wearing a leather jacket. Next he hit is face and the helmet came up a bit and he scraped his chin. Then he started skidding on his back-end and tried to slow himself down so he put down his foot and immediately lost his shoe. Slowly the bike slide away from him and he stopped in the white exit triangle, out of the way of traffic.
His computer and Bible came out of the saddle bags and papers started blowing down the freeway. He picked up his Bible and called my mom. The message went something like this: “Uh, accident on the motorcycle. I’m okay. Blood… I’m getting blood on my Bible! I’ve got to go. *click*”. There was an off-duty cop from another state who watched the whole thing. He pulled over and called the ambulance. The car that cut him off never stopped.
Dad was able to come home from the hospital that night. He was in good spirits at the hospital and made plenty of jokes to the E.R. staff. Ashley and I were in Oklahoma at the time so we weren’t able to help them. Thankfully this opened up an opportunity for a couple of members of their church to help out. One in particular was Dante who graciously drove my parents to five different pharmacies to get the drugs Dad was prescribed.
Dad is now beat up and bandaged but the bruises are healing and, like I said, not a bone was broken. We’re so thankful for that. Here are some pictures.
Baby Toys 101
Nate and I have some very specific ideas about the kinds of toys that we would like our children to have. While some of this is based only on preference, some of it comes from having 700 sq.ft. in our condo and knowing that we have no place to put 3′x3′ baby gym. That’s 9 sq.ft. of precious floor space! We were walking through Target tonight and saw things like Lincoln Logs and said, “We should totally get these for the kids someday.” We also came across the battery operated dragon that roars, moves it’s head and “breathes fire” and said, “No way.” We both have a traditional view of toys and have seen dozens of kids set aside the flashy new toy and play contentedly with the box it came in. While we do appreciate the strides that mankind has made to improve early childhood development, we are confident that this can be made without the crib mounted remote control aquatic sounds simulator that we saw on the shelves tonight. So here are some examples of things that if we receive as gifts we will be returning if possible or that may find their way over to grandma and grandpas living room:
Here are some toys that we love:
Nate’s going to create a Baby Murray Gift Buying Guide Flowchart for the interested gift buyers out there. Stay tuned, it should be interesting.
I’m off to Oklahoma
I leave today for Oklahoma until next Wednesday. Ashley’s mom is getting married! It will be great because we’re going to be able to see Rodney and Erin and the kids.
It’s been a while since I’ve flown and I’m looking forward to have a few hours to sit and read and work on my Linear Algebra.
Here’s what I’ll be reading on the plane:
Van Til’s Apologetic
Godel, Escher, Bach
Introduction to Linear Algebra
Visit to Pennsylvania
Here are some pictures from my recent visit to Pennsylvania. It was so great to see Erin and Rod and the kids and experience an actual winter again. You can see the ice floating in the river in some of the pictures. The kids are hilarious - whenever I turned on the video camera they wanted to sing “Holy, Holy, Holy”. No other songs, just “Holy, Holy, Holy”. Adelaide is learning how to read and working on basic math. While I was there she did a lesson on counting change and did a great job. She really knows how to count those dimes. Henry is two and learning how to pee-pee in the potty. Actually, he’s learning how to stay dry between trips to the bathroom, a task that became much easier last Friday when Erin decided that she was tired of washing three pairs of little boys jeans a day, and sprung for some snazzy vinyl underwear for him. Henry wasn’t too happy about that, and it took a great deal of coaxing to get him excited about wearing an elasticized poncho. Adelaide took the rubber undies out of the package and smelled them and said, “They smell like my swimming pool.” While I was there we went to this iron works place called John Wright Company. They had tons of great things, especially in the bargain room upstairs, but unfortunately, I had to think about how I would get items made of iron into my suitcase and home. I did get some great baking dishes, but had to leave the five foot coat rack behind.
Henry and Adelaide
Here is a video Ash took of Henry and Adelaide during her trip to PA. This seemed to be the only song they wanted to sing.
saturday’s pictures
Here are more pictures of us:
family circus
Sunday was my birthday. A while back I bought a slackline and on Sunday my parents gave me a unicycle. We went to the park to try out our new toys and the result is that we look like we’re training for a circus. I’ve posted a video below its not very long (or very good).
checking in
Ash and I got a new camera for my birthday. Here is a picture of us:
puppies!!! oh wait…
My company hit its revenue goal for the year so I got a Christmas bonus. I wanted to buy myself something fun with the money. I was in the mood for something electronic so we went to Curcuit City and walked around the store. It was weird because I looked around and thought to myself “I could buy anything I want here with no problem” (except the really big plasma TVs). It was a strange feeling to be able to afford an expensive toy. The problem was that now that i had the opportunity I couldn’t find any thing I actually wanted.
So the hunt continued. We went to the mall and walked around the whole thing. Again, every store I walked into I said to myself “Okay, basically anything in this store you can buy, just pick something.” I couldn’t find anything. It was all remote control UFO’s or “just-add-water snow” or a really expensive sweater, blar blar blar.
I wanted something more.
Saturday I morning I had a brilliant idea: we should get a puppy! We’d been talking about getting a puppy for a while and we thought a beagle would be a good idea. So Ash and I talked about it and I found a breeder in Victorville that had some ready to take home for Christmas. Perfect. There was still one problem though, we read that beagles can get lonely if they are left alone for long periods of time. Since we both work we were kind of worried this would happen to our dog. So then I got my second great idea:
We should get two puppies!
Not only would they keep each other company, the breeder was offering $100 off if you bought two to encourage this companionship. By now I was really excited. We drove an hour and a half to Victorville and picked up our friend Bekah and took her to the breeders house.
We picked out two male puppies, one from Group A and one from Group B. We put them in the back seat of our new car and they fell asleep. We think its funny when dogs have human names so we named them Herrold and Albert. Everything was right with the world.
That is, until we got them home.
As soon as the dogs were in our house the following list became very clear:
5 Reasons why we shouldn’t have a dog (right now)
5) We’re never home - We thought that this wouldn’t be a big issue if we got two. While this helps with the dog’s loneliness it just means they can chew twice as many pieces of furniture.
4) Our house is small - Even a little smell fills up the entire house.
3) We live on a second story - This means when they start to go on the floor we have to pick them up, walk down a flight of stairs and then find a patch of grass. By this time the pee is spread along all of that path and some is on my clothes.
2) We don’t have a yard - This means every time the dogs need to go outside we have to go with them and they have to be on a leash the entire time.
1) We have to pick up their “lawn-treats” in a bag.
That’s when we got The Fear. We realized that our lives were suddenly strapped to our house and these dogs. Our friends were going to ask us, “Want to come over sometime tonight?” Nope. No-can-do, gotta go home and take out the dogs.
We put the dogs in their crate and they only whined for about 5 minutes. But we barely slept. All we could think about was if the breeder would take them back in the morning. Ashley said that if he took them and only gave us $1 it would be worth it. I wasn’t ready to give them up so cheaply, but I wasn’t looking forward to trying to sell them either. I called the breeder in the morning and thankfully he let us return them and gave us most of the money back.
I was sad to leave Herrold and Albert, but I knew it was the right thing. Bekah left her keys in our car so we dropped them off at her house on our way out of town.
If you’re interested in beagle pups you can see the breeders website here. I guess the moral of the story is “Don’t impulse-buy something that can poop on your floor.”
family update
We still haven’t bought a car. Timber and Georgia from our church are letting us borrow their Toyota. It has has been a huge blessing.
We just found out that Ashley is going to be laid off in March. That is stressful on many levels but particularly because the housing market is poor right now and we would have a hard time selling our condo. Thankfully we have time for her to find another job and some opportunities are already cropping up. If Ash has to find a new job soon she may just get a job in Pasadena. Then we could commute there together until we can move down there.
