A Cerney Periodical

Selfishly, I wanted to snorkel in Hawaii, but also wanted to share the joy of fish with Brock. He is a good swimmer and likes fish, so I thought we could be him into it. With bribery, of course. So Brock had to complete 1.5 hours of water time, clear a mask, swim with fins and, the kicker, stay under water without coming up for 5 minutes. We've been working on this off and on for a couple of months. I am proud to say our little guppy has graduated to big tuna this past weekend!  As stated, Brock's snorkel chart. Here he is with the chart completed! He actually made it 6 minutes underwater!!  Bribery was toy of choice. He's had his eye on this large snake for awhile... now he's part of the family! Great job Brock!

Easter really has become our Christmas in the sense that it is the holiday that we are home for so we have started forged our own traditions - which revolve around various shades of gluttony and materialism. Whoo hoo! Annual egg dying. Now that Brock likes hard boiled eggs, we are not afraid to do a triple dozen and let our creativity fly. This year we picked up the rubber band technique and got to use up a stash of temporary tattoos. We broke a few as you can see. Our new love, the instapot makes some great hard boiled eggs, as Brock tells us, but we learned that if you put an egg in there that is already cracked, there is no setting for "put back together".  Grandma Omaha sent us a recipe for jello eggs. This was an endeavor, it took several rounds of trouble shooting the leaky eggs with Matt and I to make them hold the gelatinous goo. Easter morning! Brock finds the first clue with the remains of the offerings to the Easter Bunny. first clu

Uh. I don't know what happened or didn't happen last year, but apparently we didn't take pics, or they are with Matt or who knows. Not sure. But I guess I should post what I had for last year before I post this year's!! Wow. it he really 3.5 here? Was this just last year? Seems longer. Anyhow, last year we went to a giant city egg hunt that was hosted by Medieval Times.  Good day sir, and where did thou hide the eggs? Oi oi oi, we didn't actually get to do the hunt because of registration or some crumb dumb thing. So we just went to the park! It looked warmer last year. That is not saying much since it is 30 degrees today. I made the annual carrot cake last year! Looks delicious.  Well, that was it dear friends. No wonder I didn't post? This year is more meaty, I promise.

Well, it's been quite a journey, but it seems we've had a little Christmas miracle. 19.5 weeks later, here she is (yes, I did say, SHE!!).  She was VERY active during the photo session. We had to let her calm down a bit to get a heart rate and few other shots.  tiny tiny tooties.  uhh... it's a girl. There's really no words for how lucky we feel and how grateful we are for this likely opportunity to meet a new human we made: to get to know her, introduce to this world of many flavors and get a second round of the deepest love out there! Wish us luck for smooth and happy sailing the next few months!

Just as spring fever had thoroughly infected us, we were able to escape the forlorn 40's of Chicago for the 60's (I'm not complaining... much...but I was dreaming of high 70's) of Arizona. This year, instead of heading right to Tucson, Matt was able to cross off a major item on the bucket list (that will be revisited for sure) which was attending baseball's spring training in Phoenix. Luckily, the Thomas's (and Penko) were all game to hang with us in Phoenix while we had a "ball". Here we are at the hotel-house observing some slop house wrestling (the bean bag is the pig pen and the little ones are leaping from the arm rest into the mud/LoveSac).  The bean bag was such a hit that Joanne and I investigated the brand, LoveSac, only to discover that this bean bag was apparently the Holy Grail of amorphous furniture according to the listed price. I would like to say that the leaping stopped after gaining this new insight, but it did not. Thur