Zoo

Since the summer was winding down, we decided to enjoy some of the last nice weather by going to the zoo with the Runyans. It turned out to be a great trip. The highlights were the bird show, the baby monkey and rare white alligator ( not albino).

I feel a kickin'

Marcia and I are laying in bed after a wild night at chucky cheese's and though we are winding down, our little baby is getting riled up. I can feel her kicking and thats a lot of fun. There is actually a little person in there!

Marcia is one amazing little oven. I can't believe what a miracle it is to have a human grow inside you!

Brazilian Festival

We went to a Brazilian festival a little while back and it was a great time. There were about 6,000 people packed into the Mackay Events Center.
We spent $30 in amazing Brazilian food and had a good time. My favorite thing I ate was a Churro filled with dulce de leche.
We also got to see an impressive capoeira show. Here is a little video (may or may not work... I'm having trouble with uploading video to blogger).

Sam's third birthday

Since we had already celebrated Sam's birthday with our family we decided not to do anything crazy, and just have the three of us do the things that he likes.

So we went bike riding around the pond.



Finally bought him his favorite movie, Cars. And we even let him stay up late watching it :)



We went tubing down the river again.



And we busted out the sprinkler toy that my parents gave him for his birthday. He loved it!! He kept doing somersaults over the water!



Happy birthday Sam!! Its been 3 very fun years!! We love you buddy!

Winter Park, CO

Our family vacation started with Brooklyn's baby blessing. Sam got to meet his little cousin and he loved her. He wanted to hold her and he was always really nice to her. Hopefully, this means that he will be a good older brother.







After the blessing we went to the Hogan family reunion. We had fun canoing and playing games around the fire. Sam loved his older cousins, especially the ones who kept giving him M&Ms.

The next day we drove to Winter Park. There we had fun playing "truco", ( a Brazilian card game), the train game, going on hikes, bike ridings, barbecues, playing wallyball, swimming, driving through Rocky Mountain National Park, playing miniature golfing etc.


By the waterfall we hiked to



Tracy got us these orange shirts so we could say: "Orange you glad you came to our family vacation?"







One of the days we went to Rocky Mountain National Park. It was very beautiful. We saw quite a few herds of Elk, but none were as impressive as these bulls which we ran into at the top of the world. (Really, we took this picture a few hundred feet from the highest paved road in the world. We were a few hundred feet above the tree line)



We celebrated Sam's 3rd birthday two weeks earlier. He had fun singing happy birthday to himself, blowing candles, eating cup cakes and opening presents.

Austin NAMM Show

A couple of people from mediaRAIN went down to Austin Texas for the NAMM show. All in all it was a great experience and we had a worthwhile trip.

This first picture is of the amazing house that we rented out while down there. It was beautiful and just outside of the city.



My boss bought this "freakin sweet" hat for me at a gas station.



Here is our booth at the show. It looked quite nice, and very different from the rest of the other displays. Ours was much more tech savvy, people loved looking at our big iMac computers.



Here is the Afred Publishing booth, mediaRAIN and Alfred were buddies over this conference, we brought quite a few people over to their booth, and they brought a bunch of their clients over to ours. We are excited about a deal that we are doing with them to sell their sheet music using our player.



For those of you who may have played Guitar Hero, you might recognize this next pic. This is actually Guitar Hero III, to be released later this year. They had a demo that I was able to play, it was pretty much the same thing as II, still really fun, just better graphics and more songs.



Here is Tyler holding the Wii remote for GH for the Wii. I'm excited about this, it is such a fun game. Anyone know the release date?



This is the John Lennon recording-studio/touring bus. They had performances everyday during lunch. My favorite was Ben Rector, shown here. I talked to him after his performance and he was a very nice guy.



While driving over the Colorado river leaving downtown Austin everyday around sunset, we noticed hundreds of people lining the bridge. It occurred to Andrew that he had seen a discovery channel special on how millions of bats flew out of this bridge everyday at around sunset. So we stopped and watched the bats, which was a very interesting experience.



Here is an 8 string bass.

Hello Pravin, Goodbye Pravin

Pravin, who has been in Fiji with the peace corps for the last 2 years, had one month back home in Colorado before heading back down again for his year extension. Since it had been so long since we had seen him last, we were excited to travel over to Colorado to say hello, and catch up before having to say goodbye again.

Last Friday morning, Mom and Dad, skipped out of work so we could go to Water World. We had a blast, and little Sam loved everything expect the "journey to the center of the earth" ride, where we descended into a dark tunnel and floated past robotronic dinosaurs. It was a little too much for him.



Then on Saturday, we went to the zoo with Shawn(who also drove out from Utah) and Pravin. It was a blast. Marcia got a wheelchair because it was so hot, she thought she was going to faint. But that is a pretty normal thing for Barrands to do at airports, amusement parks and places like that. It wouldn't even be abnormal to have 2 of us in wheelchairs.

Here are some pics of the crazy animals at the zoo. HEY SHAWN WATCH OUT FOR THAT SNAKE! Here are my best friends. I really love the people in this picture.



Sam loved hanging out with Pravin. He always helped Sam get a good view of the animals, and pushed his umbrella stroller. I love this pic of Sam and Pravin running on the grass at the zoo.



After the zoo, we got to see some other old friends, Tweedo and his fiancée Sarah, as well as Bob Martin and his wife Teresa. Tweedo made a killer BBQ, and then we played some cards. Teresa was a natural, and killed us all at "up and down the river". Sam watched Lilo and Stitch.





After church on Sunday, we had lunch at Pravin's Parent's house. This is must for our family. Every time we go to Colorado, whether Pravin is there or not, we go to his parents house for some amazing authentic Indian food. Its always nice to see his parents, who have been good friends of mine since high school.



After our stomachs were full the time came to say goodbye again. I'm so proud of Pravin and his willingness to serve others. One of his crowing achivements while there was to create a fish pond and a bee hive for a local school, to help teach Fijians learn some life skills and provide substance as well. When he goes back, he will be doing more office work and training new peace corp volunteers. Basically helping to make the world a better place. I'll miss you P!