Wow, where to begin?

I haven’t written a This and That since December 14th and that is an awfully long time ago. I feel just horrible.

We have a lot going on these days, some of which I wont mention right away but stay tuned!

On February 1st I started working at Ch2M Hill after having been with my previous employer for over seven years. That’s a heck of a long time to work somewhere, especially for me. I haven’t worked anywhere for longer than 3 years and that was back in my AMC Theater days when I was around 20.

CH2 is a fantastic company, they are huge, international and boast around 24,000 employees worldwide. We are in charge of the London Olympics and the Panama Canal expansion.

I of course will be steadily working on some projects in Henderson, Nevada.

Jina is doing great. Her job has kind of changed up a bit on her, so she’s not working with the same guys she’s been accustomed to helping for the last many, many years, so it’s been a hard adjustment for her.

I don’t know if you guys know this or not, but Jina is pretty amazing. My photography business keeps growing and growing, and at the core of it all is Jina. Not in the way you might think, but in the way she supports me, helps me and takes care of not just me, but our entire family. She’s simply perfect and I am fairly confident I wouldn’t be near the man I am right now without her.

I know for certain I wouldn’t be into photography. I think all of who I am is because of her.

Now we have some Lyla to talk about.

Everytime she does something, I want to save it in a notebook so I can write about it later because I always forget when it comes time to write one of these. Ugh.

Before I get to the fun stuff, I should talk about her first visit to the emergency room

Sometimes she can be a brat (although since this incident she’s calmed down a bit), but on my birthday we were trying to meet my mom for lunch. Jina had her hands full and Lyla ran off, so Jina tried to grab her arm to walk her back to the car.

Of course Lyla goes LIMP and Jina tries to hold her up, which results in some screaming and crying. We had no idea what was up, but she suddenly was a different kid and holding her right arm like it was broken. We skipped lunched and went to Phoenix Children’s Hospital which is right down the street.

Turns out she had Nursemaid’s Elbow, a little dislocation of one of the long forearm bones. Yikes. This amazing doctor walked into our room, looked at her arm, said he knew what it was and BOOM…he twisted her are this way and that and suddenly it was fixed. Within 5 minutes she was back up, waving and running around.

It was definitely a crazy experience and we were just happy it was nothing worse. Apparently this type of thing is hugely common and they see kids all the time for it.

She saw snow for the first time when we had that crazy winter weather in the last week of December.

Now on to some fun stuff.

She’s just so smart. She’s talking like crazy now. “What doing daddy? “What’s that?” Asking a lot of questions. She can open all the doors in the house so we have to be careful. She’s awesome at carrying her little plate of food to the living room without spilling anything.

Lately she’s been a dream sleeper. Not like she sleeps forever, but she’s actually asking to go to bed a lot more. She knows when she’s tired in the middle of the day and actually says “Mommy, bed.” It’s amazing. At night she asks to pray and then just lays down quietly to go to sleep.

Whenever there is dance music playing, she forces us to dance with her. She’s getting better at her numbers and colors.

Lately she’s been saying “Hey!” Like if I take something away and she doesn’t like it…”Hey!”

She loves going to church and she loves the nursery and the music. It’s just such a blessing to have her excited to go with us…makes it all easier.

I can’t remember much else to say about her other than she’s just the joy of our lives. I honestly couldn’t count the number of times a day I think to myself “Oh man, she is ours and she’s the cutest thing on the planet.”

We’ll be writing again soon…

Pop Critics was one such thing. It was a fun idea, but I put my heart and soul into it and we took the website to an amazing place in less than a year. Who knows where it might have ended up if I hadn’t realized how much it was interfering with life. It was fun, but not the thing I needed to be doing anymore.

Photography is different. To me this was always there inside me waiting to get out and in the last year I’ve come to realize that more and more. With that of course has come the focus and the drive to be better and do better. And good things are happening.

All that to say my lack of writing about my family, myself, my little girl, my beautiful wife…is something I regret having put aside. Not as much for the people who enjoy reading it, but just for me being able to put my thoughts and feelings down on…paper. Electronic paper I guess.

So with that being said…here is what is going on with us.

Lyla…is almost two years old. Just a few weeks to go actually. She’s headstrong, stubborn, fast and independent. As frustrating as all that sounds and can definitely be, it’s also the stuff I love about her the most. She says “No daddy” in about the sweetest, cutest way possible and it makes me want to smile even though I know I need to correct her. She loves to take off running down the street, she hates being in a stroller that’s not moving, she doesn’t always like the shopping cart…she just wants to explore everything around her on her own terms.

Some recent pics of her:

She’s talking like crazy. Just in the last week she’s started asking what things are. “Ah…dis?” So we tell her. She belts out words and things we haven’t heard her say before and aren’t quite sure what they even are. She says things like “Thank you daddy”, “I love you momma” and lots of stuff. She doesn’t like her feet being dirty. She now loves bubble baths. She loves plucking the flowers in the front yard and dropping them to the ground.

One of the best moments recently was Halloween. Lyla was dressed like a bumblebee and there was just something emotionally overwhelming watching her experience trick-or-treating for the first time. Seeing Jina walking down the sidewalk, holding Lyla’s hand, Lyla’s other hand holding onto her candy bucket…it was amazing. I got to take her up to the very first house for her very first time saying “Trick or Treat!”

Of course, she just said “Treat!” But that’s all that matters really right?

She also would say “Thank you” and it’s about the sweetest thing you’ll ever hear, so people got all nuts over how cute she was.

Some pictures from the big day:

I have a ton of stuff to talk about and don’t know if I can squeeze it all into this one post. We are doing great living downtown…it’s been an absolutely dream for me to be so close to work. But in general we love our neighbors, we love how close a lot of things are, we love the house and the bigger yard and are happy with our decision. It’s been an adjustment for sure…we feel a bit far away from friends now, but are looking forward to meeting others down here as well.

Jina has been working hard trying to get everything looking how she wants…it’s been a month already that we’ve lived there and things are finally looking almost done. We do have the guest house to tackle next, so that should prove interesting.

This Friday I am displaying photos at an old house downtown along with 5 other photographers. You can read all about it here. I’d love for anyone reading this to come on down and see all our work, meet us and just hang out for a bit.

Here are just a few random pictures from the past few months in our lives!

I know everyone is dying for an update on what’s going on with our little family, so the wait is over!

Before I start though, I want to make a note on how hard it is to type on my laptop now that Lyla has destroyed my “x” key and rendered my left shift button semi-workable. It would be nice if she just wanted to push the keys, but instead she’d rather curl her fingers and just rip them up!

So as I wrote last time, Jina and I are picking up and moving to downtown Phoenix to help startup a new church called Day Twelve.  At that time we were in the process of listing our house and seeing what might happen.

Well, fast-forward to this week and we actually had an offer after only SIX days on the market. We of course accepted it and now the waiting begins. We have around 2-3 months to wait for the short sale process to get done…and hopefully not much longer than that.

So that is really good news. We’re sort of anxious to look for a rental now, but we know with 2-3 months to go, we should just sit back and wait awhile. Many rentals we’ve sort of found online in the last few weeks have already been rented out, so it’s kind of pointless even looking right now.

Otherwise, things are good, if not busy. Jina heads out to Memphis this week to see her sister, who is pregnant and finds out the sex of the baby on Thursday morning. Jina is soooo excited to be there when they find out. After that they are going to start some work on the baby’s room depending on the gender verdict!

I’ll be playing single dad for about four days and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m super-busy at work, but I’m hoping to get all 40+ hours in before Friday so Lyla and I can spend the day together and maybe go somewhere fun. Who knows where, but we’ll find something.

So that’s the story of us right now. Lyla is crazy as always, learning things all the time. In fact, she just learned how to open the doors in our house (see picture to the right), which has opened up a whole other set of issues. She’s pretty good about closing them when we tell her, so it’s not awful…but just one more thing to add to the things to watch out for pile.

She also is in the habit of answering”No” to any question you ask her. It’s always in a very happy tone too.

“Are you hungry Lyla?”

“No.”

“Are you full Lyla?”

“No.”

We had some fun in the car the other day.

Me: “Lyla, do you love mommy more than me?”

“No.”

A nice retort from Jina:

“Lyla, do you love daddy more than Riley?”

“No.”

LOL

For those interested…she’s still sleeping about 12 hours at night (6:30pm to 6:30am) and then a 2-3 hour nap during the day (naptime is around 11:30). She turns 17 months on Thursday! She’s getting the speed-walking-running thing down, she can climb on furniture way better and she’s more adept at going down slides at various parks.

Below is a video of her from last weekend playing in the fountains by Liberty Market in downtown Gilbert. She was mesmerized by the water spouts for awhile then got the courage to get closer.

Lyla…of course you want to know about our little girl who’s going nuts with growing, walking, learning and just being cute as can be.

And who turns ONE YEAR OLD on Sunday. Holy crap! It’s gone by so fast.

It’s honestly amazing seeing her change right before our eyes. I thought that once she walked, the next big step would be talking or her first word. But there is so much other stuff going on right now that is crazy. You can see her little mind working on things now.

She’s been pushing this big box around the house, putting stuff on top of it and treating it like a shopping cart. Not sure where she got that idea, but it’s just amazing to see the stuff she does (She also sat on it, see picture to the right, and got “stuck”). She’s learned the specific cabinet that we allow her to open, so she goes into it everyday, dumps all the tubberware from it and has a grand ol’ time.

Obeying isn’t always perfect, but the girl KNOWS what she should and shouldn’t do, and it’s just another thing that I’m in awe of about her.

She knows all kinds of little gestures now, like clapping, high five, TOUCHDOWN! and a few more. She just in the last few days learned “come give me a hug Lyla” and she’ll run into your arms and actually try to squeeze hug you. It’s so danged cute.

When I pick her up from the sitter, she now comes running and gives me a big ol’ bear hug. Never happened before until the last few times. I love it!

So this Friday starts our big annual vacation to Jefferson, Texas to spend time with Jina’s family for Thanksgiving. Lyla will have a little First Birthday Party on Sunday which should be such a blast. There is a beautiful park across the street from The Hale House that we’ll do the party so the setting will be perfect.

Picture taking time of course!

It’s definitely a busy time right now for me personally. The last few weeks at work have been crazy, and once vacation is over I’m off to Toronto for work from Nov 30th – Dec 11th. It’s an unbearably long time and I’m not really looking forward to it at all except for the chance to see Niagara Falls while I’m there.

Jina is going to have her hands full for those two weeks and I just pray everything is easy for her. Lyla, you be good!

Vacation can’t get here soon enough! Busy next two days, but then it’s relaxation time. The photographer inside me is already dreaming about Jefferson and finding bazillion things to take pictures of. I want to do a great new shot of The Hale House itself…maybe an HDR as well. But there is so much around town…train tracks, old antique shops, cars, materials…an awesome bridge for trains…the Bayou…and tons of other stuff.

You can’t even imagine how many shots I’ll be taking next week *grin*

Here is a short little video of Lyla from the last week. You get to see the “box” and her liking to push it around. What really makes this video great is the fact that she had no idea Jina was filming her until halfway through, then she gets a huge smile! Hope you enjoy!

She’s right (of course)…I’ve been preoccupied lately with this new hobby of photography and I haven’t been finding the time to just write.

So here I am.

What has been going on with us? Soooo much.

Lyla is turning a year old in just  19 days. It’s seriously incredible all the changes happening to her every week. She’s walking now and it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. She picks up stuff, carries it with her and just talks to herself as she walks around the house.

One of the funnier moments (for me) was us sitting on the couch, and Lyla goes walking down the hallway to her bedroom. You hear her talking all the way…then she comes back and looks at us around the corner, smiling.

Heart melting.

She’s gotten very good at feeding herself finger foods. From barely being able to grab a piece of bread to very coordinated efforts, the growth has been great to witness.

There have been so many changes that it’s hard to remember them all. New sounds…new “words”…she also reaches for each of us like she never did before. Jina holds her and she leans over reaching for me and vice versa. She’s waving at people and clapping.

She’s also been a bit bratty lately…she likes to explore and touch things, so when we take stuff away…man the tears flow.

OHHHH, congrats to my brother and his wife Jennifer on the birth of their baby girl, Ava Carly. You can see her pictured to the right yawning a bit, newborn baby yawn. She’s so cute and perfect, it was great to hold her for the first time on Monday.

Ava is my first niece (Jina’s too) and we’re so thrilled to have her in our lives.

Jina has been busy with baby showers and going-away parties the last month or so. She’s also (and she’ll hate me for saying this) gotten WAY into the Twilight book series and has been doing a TON of reading. I’m so glad she’s been doing that, because she used to read a lot and Lyla arriving kind of threw a kink in all that.

She had to put up with me being gone all last week for work, not to mention a 10-day trip coming up in Nov-Dec for me.

For myself…I’ve been busy working and shooting photos. I’m actually going to try and take a break this week from doingany photography, because it’s taken hold of me and become a bit of an obsession, albeit it a good one in my opinion. I feel like my eyes have been opened and I’m starting to get better and better at this hobby.

But I need the break I think. I have been working on a DVD for Lyla’s first birthday for quite awhile now, and with November 22nd only a few weeks away, I REALLY need to finish it. The DVD is a compilation of pictures and videos from the first year of her life. I can’t wait to see it all done.

This Saturday is my official graduation ceremony at the University of Phoenix Stadium @ 10am. Most of my family will be there and it’s going to be a great time. My diploma came in the mail last week, so it feels official now, but I’m looking forward to doing the “walk” and truly making it real.

November/December is going to be busy. I have a project that needs to reach a certain point by November 19th. Lots to do. Then on the 20th, we fly to Texas for Thanksgiving to see Jina’s family and stay at The Hale House Inn for almost a week. We return on the 26th, which leaves me only about 3 days at home before I head off to Toronto for the afore mentioned work trip.

I’m definitely going to be looking forward to a long break around Christmas. I usually line up vacation days so that I end up with a week and a half off during that time, and this year should be the same thing. Can’t wait!

Well, that’s about it for now. I have a little Lyla video for you below, which really shows off her new walking skills. Enjoy!

(By the way, sorry about the lower quality video…Facebook is really compressing photos and videos lately, so I may have to find a different place to host them)

Okay, really not that wild or wacky, but it was very busy and we even accomplished a few things. The first is that I started my second to last class at University of Phoenix, meaning in about 10 weeks, I’ll be completely FINISHED.

And to go along with that, I registered for COMMENCEMENT which will be on November 7th at the Arizona Cardinals stadium at 10am. I’m soooo excited, I cannot wait to be done with school and cannot wait to actually WALK at my graduation.

Work was busy last week and ended on a sour note as two more people got laid off, including my boss. I’ve been told not to worry, and I believe it, but the carnage around me is always hard to take.

On the homefront, we changed up our master bathroom a bit by removing the glass doors and framing from the shower and hanging a curtain up instead. I was just tired of trying to keep the glass clean, it’s just not worth it and the curtain really makes the place feel a lot warmer. Took a lot of work and elbow grease to get the glue from the framing off the tile.

The three-day weekend flew past unbelievably quick. We took Lyla to see the animated film Up on Friday and she did great as in not crying or whining. But my bright idea was to go right after her morning nap so she wouldn’t be fussy, but that is her “active” time and proved to be the wrong time to go. She wanted to play the whole time.

On the 4th we went out to Maricopa and our friends the Eeds’ house to hang with them and a bunch of other friends. A nice day of swimming, eating, playing cornhole and watching fireworks. Lyla did great in the pool again and even went under the water for quick dips a bunch of times and always held her breath!

She also played with her friend Tatum, which you can see in the picture to the right.

Not sure if I told the story already, but we found Lyla in the morning sitting up in her crib. We saw her on the monitor, walked into her room and there she was, sitting up, hands clasped and smiling. I lowered the crib later that day.

Oh and we got our first monsoon storm on Friday night, and I went a bit nuts posting about it and photographing it. I posted some of my own lightning photos on my weather blog, haboobing.com, so go check them out!

I was in Las Vegas for two days last week doing a “proof of concept” demo with our client up there and it went very well. The feedback was positive and we only have some minor changes to make to our application in order to move forward. I have a ton of work to do THIS week as well for the same client as I have a 90% deliverable due on July 6th. Yikes.

Back on the homefront, Jina and I are trying to plan out some things for the house that we have been wanting to do for awhile but just have been putting off. We need to replace our carpet in the living room at some point. Either with new carpet or maybe wood floors. Stuff like that. We may get rid of our shower doors in the master bath and just hang a curtain up. I think it will look better and be easier to keep clean. Glass shower doors are a P-A-I-N.

This weekend was busy though. I had a golf tournament on Saturday morning up in Scottsdale, got home around 12:45pm and then drove off to Maricopa for our friend Sara’s birthday/cancer-free party. We had a great time there, stayed over until after 7, swam, goofed off and ate A LOT of food.

It was at that party that we filmed the video below of Lyla “crawling” for the first time. It’s mostly lunging and pulling, but the way I see it…any forward motion is awesome.

She’s been growing up fast it feel like. Now she routinely sleeps through the night, even on occasion not crying a SINGLE TIME for the 11-12 hours she sleeps. We’ve discovered that the sleeping book I read awhile ago seems pretty accurate. The earlier she goes to bed, the more she sleeps. The fact is, she starts waking up from 5:30-6:00 every morning, no matter if she’s in bed at 6pm or 8pm. The more sleep for a baby, the better.

Then she takes about 3 total hours worth of naps during the day. And she’s as happy as a clam.

That’s about it from the Olbinski house. Enjoy the video below! Also, there are a few new pictures of Lyla in our photo album section under Random Lyla!

The system I’m building (with some help) needs to be done before then, so I have a lot of work to do. Headed into the office around 5am this week just to get some extra time in, and possibly work in the evenings. We’ll see how much I can get done early in the week.

To top it off, I have a new class starting on Tuesday, so that will take some of my time as well.

Really enjoyed this weekend. Actually reading a book called Flash Forward…the first book I’ve read in awhile. Started The Alienist, but it looks LONG, so took a break for Flash Forward (which will be a new TV series in the fall).

We’re headed to Oklahoma in a few weeks for a Jackson Family Reunion, and we’re looking forward to it. The trip will be Lyla’s first and in that aspect it’s a little scary, but I’m sure she’ll do great.

Speaking of Lyla, she’s just growing up and becoming so very curious. I’ll post a video in a week or so, whenever I get a chance to actually film it, but she loves grabbing at whatever you are holding: A glass, a remote, a beer, whatever.

But when she reaches for it, she is such a spazz it’s hilarious. You’ll have to see it to believe it.

She’s also officially switched to “tummy sleeper” as whenever we put her down at night, she ends up on her belly after just a short while. I dunno why, but that is just fascinating and amazing to me. Suddenly out of nowhere, she learns something new and it just changes her habits.

This week, I have a little video for you of Lyla jumping around in a bungee-apparatus. There are also some new pictures from the weekend and a party we attended of a friend of mine, Sam, and his little girl’s first birthday.

Enjoy!

So for the time being, you’ll get “This and That” whenever I get a chance to write an update on the Olbinskis.

It’s been a crazy few weeks around our house. We threw a little party to celebrate my brother getting married, and we all had a good time. Lots of kiddies running around, but I think Lyla enjoyed seeing her great-grandma and great-aunt/uncle.

Lyla’s hair is starting to grow more and more, and her little bald spot is all but gone. She’s also slept on her tummy at least twice during the night for around 4-5 hours, which is great to see. We’ve been worried that she’d wake up crying anytime she found herself on her tummy, but so far it hasn’t been bad.

Yesterday was Jina’s first Mother’s Day, something that was a big deal to her personally. There have been so many years and Mother’s Days gone by where she wondered if she’d ever get to be one of them herself.

Finally she is, and what a great mom at that. I’m so proud of her and the way she loves our little girl.

As for me, I’ve started a new project at work which I’m absolutely loving. I’m getting to build an entire HMI system from the ground up for Henderson, Nevada, and it’s just the kind of thing I get into.

The downside is that we laid off three more people last week and word is that there will be more soon. I’m about 99% sure I’m safe, but one always has a little bit of worry anyways.

I also just finished (today) my Proposal Writing elective at University of Phoenix, meaning I only have THREE more classes left until I graduate!

My last day will be September 7th and I hope to walk sometime in November. The ceremony will be held at none other than UoP Stadium in Glendale, so that will be awesome.

Finally, there are a few more photo albums added to the site here…one of our little micro mission we did for church at Sunshine Acres this past weekend, and the second is just some random photos from last week and Mother’s Day.

With ones like this treat, how can you skip looking at them? *grin*