Berger Blog

Halloween Extravaganza 2008-The Cast

The village Seamstress and the Blacksmith (Doug and Allison) pose before leaving. The Seamstress won the Personal Goal game, getting 11 people to wear her swathes of colorful cloth. Both ended up getting staked, which was a good thing in the Seamstress's case, since she ended up being a Dark Cultist.

Dirty smelly Peasants! (Mark and Katie). Mrs. Peasant was a member of the Illuminati as well, and really cut a swath through the village, engineering the death of the Baron and sevearl others. However, she did figure it out, but the vampires got the villagers to stake her instead!

Ze Baker and the Fortune Teller (Rex and Linda). No, the Baker was not getting a little "frisky" in his kitchen, he ended up dead. However! He was one of the vampires who held on to the very end.

The Town Fool and the Town Drunk (Lori and Rob) were, very sadly, the first two people to become ghosts! But at least they embraced the ghosting process, as you can see. The Drunk was supposed to help protect the people, and the Town Fool was actually a Vampire.

The village Priest and Nun (Jeremy and Natalie) enjoying some spectral libations. Sadly, the clergy didn't fair well, with the Priest getting attacked by the vampires and the Nun getting caught by one of the several Double Stakings(TM).

The Baron and Baroness (Nicole and Anthony) upon departure. The Baroness has cleaned up a bit, but sadly the town needed new nobility by the end of the night. However, the Baroness was apparently one of the Illuminati!

The Gypsies (Michael and Amy) upon departure. Mr. Gypsy seems quite happy to have been killed by the vampires, but Mrs. Gypsy was one of the final vampires, having been infected just before the festival and slowly changing over six days! However, Mr. Gypsy was a stealing fiend, snagging no less than 9 different objects from unsuspecting villagers.

The Sherrif and Deputy (George and Catharine) provided the law in the town, rather ineffectively, sadly. The deptuy got attacked by the vampires, but I believe the sherrif held on! Catharine enjoyed those teeth a little too much.

The male and female Vintners, grape growers and wine makers, (Ray and Linda) from the edge of town came in a little late, but got in the swing of things quickly, accusing their fellow townsfolk wildly. Mrs. Vintner ended up getting staked as well, but Mr. Vintner was one of the four surviving townsfolks!

Here we have the Gravediggers (Karl and Alice) upon departure. Mrs. Gravedigger was ghosted a little over midway though, and Mr. Gravedigger was one of the vampires, lasting quite a while before gettings staked!

Kaylee's Baptism

Here is a link to a video done for Kaylee's baptism.

Welcoming Kaylee

So, the minor details: on Monday 8/18 during Heather's routine doctor's appointment she got met in the waiting room by her doctor as soon as she entered, who told her to come right in. How often has that happened to you? It seems that her tests from the week before showed that she had a form of Strep B that a certain small percentage of all women can get during the end of pregnancy. Harmless to her, but potentially trouble for the baby should it catch the bug upon exit. As such, they were scheduling a hospital stay for us on Wednesday since we needed an induction. A quick course of antibiotics, administered within a tight timetable (hence the induction), reduced the risk to nil. We agreed, scheduled, waited nervously.

Here is breakfast, the morning of. Pretty routine. Bagels. My dad was still here from his previous visit. Jackson was up to wish Momma well.

We got to Banner Desert Medical center at 7am. They were a little busy, so after check-in things didn't really get rolling until around 11am, when she got the IV for the antibiotics and a gel to get things moving. They did, and she started having regular contractions. Same as with Jackson, the goal was "healthy momma, healthy baby, as natural as possible," so no drugs. Breathing and walking. Here we are at lunch, on the ball, eating between contractions, watching a movie on the laptop:

We hit the 4cm mark in the early afternoon, but by around 6:30 when her doctor came to visit we were still at 4cm. This was a scary number for Heather, she spent almost 16 hours at 4cm with Jackson and it took both the Pitocin and the Epidural to get things moving. After talking with Dr., she broke the bag of waters. This made the contractions a bit more intense. Stuffed dog Coco lends support:

It was described to me that with the bag of waters gone, its the difference between squeezing an empty fist and one holding a stress ball. See how much further you can squeeze the empty fist? Friend Lori was the other key person in the Team Omega Birth Unit, and she really helped in these hours:

By 9:30pm Heather had moved to 8cm. So success! However, she was really tiring out. Talking it through with the nurses and us, she decided to ask for the epidural at this point so she would have a chance to rest before pushing. It took almost 90 minutes to get it installed, and they weren't pleasant at all. However, within minutes:

Much happier! She also had a chance to rest for almost three hours, so just before 3am, we got the doctor in the room and started the main event! Just like for Jackson, there was very little pushing, maybe 15 minutes worth, and at 3:10am, we got our first glimpse! The doctor had said that Michael got to make the call as to the baby's gender, and he gleefully shouted "It's a girl!!"

So tiny!

What is that? You want a pony? Of course you can have a pony! Anything for Daddy's Little Girl!

We still didn't have a name for her at this point. Heather and I honestly expected a boy. But the nameless beauty wasted no time in having her first meal and winning the hearts of everyone in the room. A great big thanks again goes out to Lori Simonson, we would have never had such a great birth without her:

Madonna and Child, part II:

Interestingly, all the post-partum rooms above were full, so we stayed the rest of the night and most of the next day in the labor and delivery room. We didn't mind, we knew it was much larger than the one we'd be going to. So later on Thursday Jackson came to visit. Here he is getting asked the question we've asked him a lot one final time, finally with an answer:
"What do you want, a baby brother or a baby sister?"
"Baby sister."
"Well good! That's what we got for you!"

Jackson has been very good with Kaylee. He likes to watch her, wants to hold her, kisses her, and gets very worried when she cries:

Here we are, the whole family:

Aren't these the most beautiful ladies you've ever seen?

Ready for her closeup!

But after two days at the hospital it was time to go! Jackson came to help get his new baby sister ready to leave:

My mom had come in to help out. She had actually been out here in Phoenix until the 18th, leaving scant hours before the doctor's appointment. She flew back out on Saturday to help out.

Finally back at the house! Welcome home Kaylee Maryanne Monigan Berger!

Labels: birth, Jackson, Kaylee

X-mas List

Ok, my X-mas list for those who are in the unfortunate position of having to buy me presents. What I would like:

Cash. No, really. Our church is having a budget shortfall, so in lieu of presents to me a donation to them would be great. We don't have online donations, so I'll have to schlep the money there directly.
A Great Outdoor Fight t-shirt. I've wanted one of these for over a year.
The Achewood Cookbook. Yes.
The "Current Baby Status" compilation. This is one of the things that helped me realize being a father was going to be ok.
A fabulous device which makes a breakfast sandwich in one go. Heather won't get me this. It's the pinnacle of modern science, I tell you! A bit pricey though.
Bento Boxes: Japanese Meals on the Go. I want to get into some Bento making, mainly for Jackson, but to help me start packing and not eating out all the damn time. Plus, Bento! So cool!
Schlock Mercenary: The Tub of Happiness. My longest-favorite Webcomic in dead-tree form. A bit pricey.
Wolfgang's Big Night Out. Its classical music rock.
Da Vinci's Notebook: A Capella wackiness.

Halloween 2008

Yeah, yeah, I know. Halloween 2007 hasn't made it up here yet. I'll get back to it, I swear. Sorry for the delay, the conversion of Blogger to a Google property has made logging in more complicated for me. But I finally figured it out now.

So anyway! This was the year of Transylvania Polygnostic University's 2007 Mad Science Symposium. A collection of the brightest, evilest, and maddest practitioners of science out there. Good turn out with minimal body count this year:

In addition, we had a large variety of minions and henchmen:

Still, it is the Mad Scientists who were the primary attendees. We had your standards lab-coated ones:

We had some Mad "Pharmacologists":

A Mad Cyberneticist, with killer AI creation:

A Mad Necrotechnologist, with soulless monstrosity:

Horrifyingly cute Mad Medical Doctors and sexy mad Nurses:

Mad Veterinarians:

We even had some Victorian Mad Scientists fire up the old Aetheric Time Machine and make it:

Plus sundry other folks!

The Symposium had several events. First off was a Chemistry exhibition, with teams mixing up creations in test-tubs for judging:

After that, we had a Evil Laugh competition. The lovely judges:

Contestants:

Third, we had the "Build a Better Deathtrap" competition. Each team had to design a deathtrap that included three "iron chef" style elements: A robotic personality, an animal with something dangerous strapped to it, and defenestration. There was much intelligent planning:

Well, planning, at any rate.

Finally, there was a Science trivia contest with three categories: Science, Psuedoscience, and Technobabble. To "buzz in" the teams had to "ray gun" a henchman: