What about the family still in Tennessee?

While I've decided to jump start the family blog I haven't really had a chance to show off the family. The reason is that I'm here in New York and the rest of the family is in Knoxville. I'll be flying back on July 2nd and then driving with the rest of the family up to the new home in Scotch Plains, but until then, I'm flying solo. I want to make sure that the kids get in here, so I'm going to post a few pictures and rather than give commentary I'll let the cuteness speak for itself.

The New Office

So tomorrow is the first day in our new office. For the past few weeks RWE has been renting office space at Rockefeller Center, however we'll now be housed in the MetLife Building, directly across from Bryant Park. Here are a few pictures of the view from inside the building:

When I took this picture of the Chrysler Building I was in the middle of a game of pool. I've already told Jen that we may be taking a date night to shoot pool and look at the light of Manhattan.

In one of our conference rooms you can look out and see Brooklyn and Queens in the distance. Of course, you can also see the Empire State Building. The way I figure it, only a sucker would pay for his kids to get a view of the city from the observation deck at Rockefeller Center or the Empire State Building when a decent knock-off view could be had for free.

The picture below is a view of the New Year's Eve ball in Times Square. To be honest, it isn't the easiest view to get,

you need to squash your face against the glass and close one eye. However, if you can deal with the inconvenience it's better than dealing with all of the yahoos in Times Square.

Now this picture is not of the view looking out, but rather is a view of our office set up. No cubicles and no offices, everyone right on the trading floor. This is good and bad, good because I'm that the station against the far wall with the C.E.O. and the traders, bad because I don't have any wall space to hang my rail and barge system maps on. Oh, well, I suppose I'll have other opportunities before I retire to sequester myself away from the rest of the employees.

The House

So we have a new home in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, or at least we will once the clock strikesmid-night on July 1st. So here are a few pictures of the outside of home. It's on almost a full acre, we'll have about 5 bedrooms and one of the coolest fireplaces ever. I'll post pictures from the inside later on. While there isn't a fence on the house we plan on putting one on the back of the house. In this picture you can see on the left side a section where we can have a fence come off. In any event this will be home for a couple of years.

The End of Era...

I don't know if I should be impressed or not that my last post was almost three years ago. I suppose a lesser man would have just given up on the blog, while a better man would have kept at it. Me... well who knows, but I'm posting tonight.

So here I am at a hotel in Elmsford, NY listening to tunes and missing my family and catching up with the blog seems like a good idea. After all, I started the blog because we had just moved to Knoxville, so it only seems right that now that we're moving to the NYC area I should start it up again.

After 3 years of Tennessee living we'll be making Scotch Plains, New Jersey our home. I have a job running coal logistics for RWE Trading Americas in mid-town Manhattan and for the next few years we'll be exploring New England and all the seafood it has to offer. So anyway, here are my goals for this blog: cover all of the big events and adventures of the Watson Family for the next four years or we move to a warm weather town, whichever comes first.

Hopefully I'll have something to post this weekend, in any event feel free check back often and compare your family's life with mine, and see how it stacks up with my inflated version of the events I'll be reporting on.

The Blessing

This past weekend we finally blessed little Aurellia in church. It was really nice, my parents were able to fly out from California and my sister from Chattanooga came up with her husband and kids. I think we hit most of the essentials, bbq for lunch, a ride on a steam locomotive and a couple of mullets. Although to be fair, the mullets were on the locomotive, and I'm pretty sure it's some sort of law that steam locomotives have to either have a mullet or a guy smoking around kids on it.

The train ride was sort of a Halloween theme, and Rincon stole the show with his costume of Buzz Lightyear. Later that night we were able to hit the pool at my parents hotel and the kids stayed the night there. Meanwhile, my Dad hooked my up with an iPod, my last one was stolen 1 1/2 years ago, and like a little kid I feel asleep listening to it that night.

The next day was awesome, got to sleep in past 8:00 a.m., I know lucky me, and then we were off to church. No awkward moments, so that was good, and the blessing was really nice. It is always amazing to me how I will think I know what I am going to say, but when listening to the Spirit I end up giving an entirely different blessing. It was nice to have my brother-in-law there since I usually had my Uncle in the circle, and only one other family member seems like too little.

Then that afternoon I threw on a couple of tri-tips and my Dad, Tommy (my brother-in-law), Tyler and Matt Pulver (Elder's Quorum President) and I chilled around the grill and chewed the fat. Sadly there are no pictures of the tri-tip with which I can brag with, suffice to say it was good.

Then the weekend was done, and like the last bite of tri-tip you realize it went by way too quickly. My parents flew back to California and my sister was back to Chattanooga, and this post is waaaaaaay tooooooooooo long. But if you get the chance, ask my wife why she has had Johnny Law called on her, but I have not. It made for a fun Friday night. She "loves" telling the story.

UT Football

Tyler and I don't get to do a great many things together, but sometimes we're able to pull it off. The stars aligned correctly; the UT football team isn't very good this year, and the opponent was Northern Illinois. That could only mean one thing, ebay! The seats were pretty good, okay they weren't all that good, but they were good enough that Tyler was able to see all the action, and he knew the words to the chorus of Rocky Top, so it was all good. Only complaint I have though is this, the concessions were awful. Seriously, the hot dogs we're worse then convenience store.

But UT won, and Tyler thought that winning by four was alot, so he was more jazzed that he normally would have been. The two pictures that I'm posting are of Tyler, the first at our seats, and the second with a view of the stadium.

The Ballons, They're Hot and Full of Air

Unless you work hot air ballons for a living, they aren't something you see everyday. Lucky for my kids they at least got to experience one of those days. In fact for your viewing pleasure I have included a couple of photos of the whole thing. Check it out, pretty cool isn't it? The deal with this is that all of the ballons light up together coreographed with music. If you noticed the face paint then you're very astute. Hannah had hot air ballons painted onto her cheeks, while Rincon became Batman. I know he looks like he's not having fun, but trust me he was. Seriously, he was!