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!

Chillin'

So I decided that it was time to give our loyal fans a taste of what we've been up to lately. Just a taste, but it's a savory taste. Well life has been going smoothly here, the humidity broke, Aurellia has slept a lot and Jen is the happy homemaker. Actually, Jen is more of a tired homemaker, so she says, it's not as though five kids is tiring, so I don't know what she's talking about.

What to say about the kids, they run around all day barefoot in bib overalls and steal apples from old man Nielsen's orchard. Rincon has really gotten into whittling wood figures and Tyler keeps ripping his britches while chasing down ground hogs in the woods behind the house. Hannah and Tommy have joined a bluegrass band, Hannah plays a washboard and Tommy keeps rhythm on the spoons. I couldn't be prouder.

School keeps me busy, and this week it really got hectic, tests, projects and USC beating Oregon State by 24, it never ends. But I deal with it the only way I know how, with style. Well, with style and ... jazz hands!!!!!

But fall is here, and when I informed Rincon yesterday that it was the first day of Autumn he said, "Oh man, now we have to rake up all the leaves!" When I told him we'd wait until there were more leaves on the ground he said, "I guess I can live with that." Thank goodness, I didn't want to rake leaves this weekend. The mornings have been crisp, the leaves are changing colors and falling, and soon it will be time to read the kids The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow. Jen and I were talking the other day, and it turns out she loves cinnamon smells and fall, and I like meat. I guess you could say that East Tennessee is agreeing with us.

I hope your Labor Day was as good as mine

Since it was Labor Day and all I thought I'd just post some of the pictures from that most magical of days; no work or school. For those of you who are slightly more astute than others, you'll may feel that Jen and Aurellia are nowhere to be found. So pat yourself on the back because you are correct, they didn't come home until 9:30 that night. So enjoy the pictures, and enjoy the summer for the last few precious weeks we have. Actually, I had a ton of trouble getting the pictures to line up right, and since I'm not in the patient mood all you get are three. I hope you can handle it with only a little taste. And yes, that picture on the top is the grinds I was grillin there in the backyard.

Baby Aurellia Has Arrived

As of August 30, 2008 at 11:30 p.m. Jennifer took the lead in our weight loss competition by giving birth to a beautiful 7 lb 4 oz baby girl. She answers to the name of Aurellia Catalina Watson. For those of you keeping track, I now have five children and Aurellia has five digits on each hand and foot. Not sure what it means, but the symmetry is perfect.

The day started innocently enough, a two hour trip to Chattanooga and a long walk in 90 degree weather at the top of Lookout Mountain. I suppose that this may have contributed to her labor, but it's all good since Aurellia was over a week over due. It was just her time.

Jen started to have some contractions at the top of Lookout Mountain, and they continued while we stood in line for a half hour waiting to catch the train down the mountain. We thought about going straight back to Knoxville, but my sister told us about this great Mexican restaurant, so you know there was no stopping us.

The food was good, but I find the fare to be a little dry, and if I were to go again I'd try to get some sauce or something on the tacos & burritos. Take it or leave it, the advice is free.

On the trip back the contractions were about 5 minutes apart, but so we started to get the idea, that it was probably going to happen that night. And how right we were. Jen started nesting almost as soon as we got home. That means she cleaned the house like our kids weren't going to mess it up within 12 hours. I kept asking Jen if she was ready to go to the hospital, but she only replied that she was still on her feet. Fair enough I thought, I taped the SC game, I was good.

However, as the first half of the telecast came to an end Jen informed me that it was time to go. Soon we had both sets of babysitters at the house and we were off. We had stalled so long that we were only at the hospital 45 minutes before Aurellia graced us with her presence. And that my friends, is the whole story.

It has begun! ... but in a good way

So it has been a while since I've posted, but really it was all a ploy to whet your appetite for what was coming.

So now that you're all in a frenzy let me drop a little science on you. School has started and Jen is still preggo, and school is just as fun as you remember. Some phd's are a good time, and the econ instructor is somehow the funniest dude of them all.

So, I've done the first section of the MBA program, known as "Core I" and now I'm onto "Core II." I'm having a great time, although it is now getting a little tougher, we had two projects assigned today. Since I'm trying to learn as much as I can I have to train myself not to wish for the classes to be easier. The kids are also in school, although in a little quirk they go to different schools, and Hannah's school assigns homwork while Tyler's doesn't. East Tennessee, gotta love it.

As far as Jen goes she is now a week overdue and ready to have Aurellia in her arms and out of her belly. As I don't have any control over this I mostly sympathize and try to make her feel comfortable. Anyway that's all for today, and now that I know people actually read the blog I'll try and get to this thing just a little more often.

Pickin' Up Steam

Well school started this week, and except for still not having my laptop or all of my loans complete I think that I'm really prepared. If you want to figure out why I chose Tennessee check out this link: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/95/lead-careers-cz_07mba_Tennessee_BIZ0411.html

Anyway, I'm back in school and Tyler and Hannah are stoked to be going back to school next week. So is Rincon, but that's because he hasn't figured out that he's not going to school yet. But he does his workbook pages with his mom, so he feels like he's part of the whole scholastics scene.

Life in Tennessee is really good, the area is beautiful, the rolling hills, the lakes and of course the thunder storms. Plus I finally got a DVR, so the sleuth channel and I are becoming fast friends. I should have some pictures of the new house and the family up soon, so check back, you just might dig it.

Just Gettin' Started

Since all the cool kids were starting blogs, that's you Ryan and Becca, but not so much Jeff & Eliza, I thought I'd try my hand at this thing called blogging.

Anyway, I should be putting up some stuff related to our move to Tennessee, the new baby when she's born, and whatever else moves me.