Congrats go out to Steven, Tammy, and Diego on the new addition to their family, Dominic James Coppit. My dad now has another grandchild, and this time one that shares his name! He was born early this morning, at around 4 am at a weight of 6 pounds 9 ounces. Pictures:
We’re back from Colorado. Everyone went out to see Gabrielle and Joshua graduate. We also stayed a couple extra days as a bit of a vacation. It was really nice–Dorothy rented a house in Estes Park, which is in the Rockies and 15 minutes from Rocky Mountain National Park. We saw lots of Elk and Mule Deer. (Differentiating the two was the source of much discussion.)
Joshua’s Graduation:
Gabrielle’s graduation:
Pictures from Golden, Colorado Springs, Estes Park, and Denver:
Saturday Daniel, Carmen and Maryanne came to celebrate Dan’s birthday. We all went to Christiana Campbell’s for dinner. They think we were put in the same room that they were in two decades ago when Daniel was visiting schools.
Christopher was good a dinner as usual. We just had to limit what he could reach. It’s good that he can eat bread now. We gave him some of our “drop” rolls, and they also brought him some applesauce, which was nice.
Afterward we walked up to the capitol building, but we came back because it was starting to get cold.
We went to Norfolk today to visit Jeremy and his daughter Willow. Unfortunately Willow’s mom Heather could not be there, although her Heather’s sister Dawn was there.
Jeremy has been helping us out with some research on the technical differences between the Cochlear, Advaned Bionics, and Med-El devices. I like his approach… In talking with the company, he tells them that the smiling baby on the website tells him nothing, and that he wanted technical details.
One important thing that came out of this was that AB’s upcoming 120 device would emulate 120 channels over their existing 16 channels. I think they do some sort of electronic dithering to get this to work. I’ve heard rumors from the trials that the new device does work better than the old, so that’s encouraging news. Their sampling rates are also significantly higher than their competitors… 5k/sec sound sampling, with 90k/sec processing samples. Jeremy says that this rivals high-end audio equipment that he works with.
After lunch we took Willow and Christopher to the park. This is the first time Christopher has been on a slide, or playing in sand. The pictures below show how much he hated it. (Password protected due to pictures of kids.)
The major news programs ran pieces on sleep inertia. They interviewed Joshua’s advisor, and showed Joshua as a guinea pig.
He says he was up for 36 hours. He sure looks it.
Well, just about anyone who reads this blog regularly probably attended Steven and Tammy’s wedding, but I thought I would write a short note anyway.
They were married last Saturday in Eugene, Oregon. Dorothy, Christopher, and I flew up for about a week. Unfortunately, that was about all the time I could afford, since classes were starting. It was the first time in a long time that my Dad and his two sons were in the same location.
The day before the rehearsal we went crawfishing, where my Dad’s Louisiana background helped us with the cooking part. Steven threw a big crawfish boil, and a bunch of his friends and Tammy’s family joined us.
I had come up a day early from Coos Bay for the crawfishing, so my Dad and Brenda finally met Christopher the next day at the rehearsal dinner.
After the rehearsal dinner, Steven threw a big poker night. I think we had about 14 people playing at two tables.
The wedding and reception were very nice. Since I was in the wedding, the only pictures I got were the ones I was able to sneak when no one was looking. I’m hoping other attendees will upload some more pictures.
Unfortunately, Steven’s best man and reception DJ had to go to the hospital due to a flare-up of a pancreas problem. While we were sleeping after the reception, poor Steven and Tammy spent the night in the emergency room. The next morning Dorothy and I met my mom and Larry, Emo and Odishi for brunch at the hotel. Steven and Tammy eventually came down and joined us.
The new couple is in Hawaii now. I hear that Steven says it’s the best vacation he’s ever been on.
Everyone in Dorothy’s family came into town this weekend for the 4th of July. Heather and Jeremy were here on Sunday with Willow, Christopher’s 7-month-old cousin.
Sunday I made faux risotto for the first time, which was a big hit. On the 4th we grilled chicken and corn on the barbecue. Then we packed up and tried to drive to Yorktown, but Colonial Parkway was blocked off–I guess they decided that they had had enough people for the day. So we turned around and went to Williamsburg.
I must say that the fireworks were better than I thought they would be. It was nice to be close enough to feel the explosions. (More than one kid was crying by the end.) Here are some pictures, and two movies of the fireworks:
Josh and Carmen arrived today. Gabrielle will arrive tomorrow. David and Jeremy will arrive Sunday. Daniel, who will probably drive in tomorrow, says it’s the first time in years that the whole Rodgers family will be in one place.