Madeleine Update

Posting a couple updated pictures of Maddie. The first one Molly snapped at a particularly opportune moment! The second picture is Maddie and I on my John Deere tractor that I got for my 4th or 5th birthday. My parents had it redone, and it's better than ever!

Sleep-o-saurous

Here's a recent video of Maddie. She's definitely a morning person... at least for now. You can certainly tell by the video!

Carving Pumpkins

In the spirit of the season Mike and I did some pumpkin carving. It was a lot of fun -- it'd been at least 10 years since we'd last carved one up!

Maddie's Greatest Hits

Since I've been way behind in posting to the blog, I figured I'd post some highlights of Maddie's first two months on this earth.

- 10/01
We're able to get consistent smiles out of Maddie now. It started around the end of September. Here is one of my favorite pictures of Maddie. Molly's sister, Lainie took it during her visit.

- 10/02
In order to document Maddie's growth for our family up North, I'm periodically taking a picture of Maddie with these two stuffed animals. This should give them a good point of reference for her growth!

- 10/03
The dogs have been great with Maddie. The trick is keeping Ginger from licking her. Luckily Ginger listens well, and only manages to get a quick one in once in a while.

- 10/03
Vaska is, of course, the good dog. He likes to keep an eye on Maddie. He gets stressed out if he can't get to her - e.g. if we have Maddie behind closed doors for whatever reason.


We had visits from all of Molly's siblings - Lainie, Renee (Andy's wife), Andy, and Ali.

- 10/21
Maddie enjoyed wearing her "first Purdue shirt" from Uncle Matt.

- 10/22
Maddie got to meet the bulk of the ADCO group at lunch at Don Pico's. It was great for Molly to get together with everyone too. We had a good time.

- 10/25
Getting close to Halloween in this one. As you can see, it's Daddy's Little Pumpkin.

- 10/26
We made it out to a Pumpkin Patch. Well, as much of a Pumpkin Patch as you can have in the city anyway. We were looking to get some cute pictures with some pumpkins... We did get these two pictures...

- 10/26
Tremayne and Abi came to visit us yesterday. They were out enjoying the perfect weather. We had a great visit! Abi is an absolute sweetheart!!

- 10/26
And the last picture of the post. It's just Molly and Maddie hanging out on the bed. The late afternoon lighting is just so great in that room for picture taking. Not to mention two fantastic girls in the picture!

Arrival of Madeleine Claire Allyn

So, we have been pretty darn busy for the last several weeks. At 9:05 AM on August 25th, Madeleine Claire Allyn was born! She weighed in at 6 lbs. 7.7 oz. and was 19.5 inches long.

Here are some pictures over the last 3 weeks.


So, who would have thought you would be so busy just hanging around the house taking care of a newborn? Ha! Well, we can attest to the fact that you do stay quite busy. It's been absolutely fabulous so far! Madeleine (Maddie) is quite an easy baby to manage... so far anyway.

Of course I was on console for the night shift when Maddie decided to get started on the labor process. I got the call from Molly about an hour after I arrived at work, so about midnight. Molly wasn't very far into labor, so she was able to drive herself to work. I know that sounds horrible, but she insisted that she was fine to drive! Plus, it really does need to be an emergency to leave a national asset untended. I had to work on getting the on call personnel (3 of them) in to replace me. Remarkably all three of them showed up pretty quickly (thanks Jude, Todd, and Roger!). I showed up in the hospital room only about 10 or 15 minutes after Molly at about 12:45 AM. Just over 8 hours later, Maddie joined us in this world!

Here is a one-of-a-kind birth announcement and congratulations from the International Space Station Expedition 15 Flight Engineer, Clay Anderson.

Clay has been stationed on the ISS for right at 100 days now - he'll be returning soon, but I can't remember when exactly.

I (Mike) have taken off 4 weeks from work. Alas, I'll have to go back soon. Molly will be back in a few more weeks. I have enjoyed getting to know Maddie so much that I am absolutely not looking forward to going back to work.

As you can see from the pictures, we had visits from both sets of grandparents. It was great having them down to visit. It's hard to put a value on all the help they provided. In fact, Molly and I can now get both of our cars into the garage because my dad and I cleaned and organized the garage! Check it out:

That's about all there is to report for now. I'll try to post regular updates now that we're settled in.

Unexpected Visitor

Usually when you lead in with the phrase "unexpected visitor" one automatically assumes it's an unwelcome visitor. Not the case this time! On Sunday, my brother Robert called us and said that he was in Dallas and wanted to come down to Houston to visit. He hadn't been here yet, so we told him to come on down! So, he got here Monday evening and Molly and I went out to dinner with him and his friend, Kim. Robert and I stayed up late catching up, then I took them around NASA today for a nickle tour. It was a nice surprise, and I'm glad he finally got to visit us in Houston. Here are a few pictures:

From Robert's Visit Album

Astros Win!

Molly and I attended NASA Night at Minute Maid Park to watch the Astros open a can of whoop ass on the Los Angeles Dodgers. We went with a bunch of people from the ADCO group. Here is a picture of some of the motley crew.

From Astros vs. Dodgers

We got to see Craig Biggio hit a grand slam on the same day he announced his retirement - that was pretty cool. The crowd went wild! Well, that's about it.

Ginger's New Trick

OK, so it's not a real fancy trick, or even that entertaining..., but in the recent few weeks I taught Ginger to jump up into my arms. It's kind of funny to see a 65 lb. Lab do that. The REAL trick now is to make sure she only does it when you're ready and want her to!


Here's another video I took recently. It's Molly receiving her award at the 13A event at Space Center Houston

13A Wrapup

To wrap-up the 13A mission, a bunch of people on the 13A team went to Boondoggles for a couple drinks after the Plaque Hanging Ceremony. It's quite an honor to hang the mission plaque in the NASA circle. It goes to the team that stuck out during the mission as contributing the most towards achieving the mission objectives. Turns out, the ADCO team was selected and Molly hung the ISS plaque as the mission lead! Here you'll see a picture of the ADCO's that were present at Boondoggles.

Cory, Erin, Ann, Kevin, Todd, Molly, and Christina.

Here are our shift team pictures:

Molly's shift


Mike's shift

13A Complete

With ISS Flight 13A now complete, Molly and I are working on getting back into our routine. Molly was the flight lead for her group (ADCO), and I was just filling in for the ODIN team in the MPSR (supporting position). Of course we were on different shifts, so that was challenging. Also, as you may or may not know, we ran into some significant problems during the mission. But we came out of it and we're back into a good configuration... with the addition of two more solar arrays to boot! Here are some pictures:



In other news, a week before the flight my brother Joe, his wife Lisa, and their two boys Zach and Addyson came to visit. We had a great time!








Like I said, we all had fun, and if I don't say so myself, they had a killer tour of NASA!

Goin' Green

Well, Molly and I decided it was time we take energy and environment conservation more seriously. I wouldn't say that we were exceedingly wasteful - at least not compared to other Americans, but that's just not good enough. This isn't about saving money either. We just want to see what we can do to make our impact a little less. Here are some of the things we've done, and maybe some others we're going to do.

Replace Incandescent Light Bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) Bulbs.
I went through the house and replaced 54 Incandescent Light Bulbs with CFL Bulbs. What a pain in the rear! A CFL uses approximately one-fourth the wattage of an incandescent bulb producing a similar level of illumination, and they last 8,000 to 10,000 hours. This equates to a definite non-zero reduction of energy. I can't find a reference, but I had read once that lighting makes up about 10% of the overall bill. So, we perhaps shaved that 10% down by 75%. It was a decent initial cost to replace them all, but it was not too bad. We picked up the CFL bulbs at Sam's Club for about $10.50 for a package of 8 bulbs.

Reusable Grocery/Shopping Bags
We were looking into reusable bags that we could purchase, and we were about to narrow it down. Well, I was working and the conversation came up with a friend and colleague of ours, Christina. She just recently made the same purchase. So, we decided to go with the brand that they just purchased and raved about. ACME Bags EarthTote™ - Heavy Duty Reusable Shopping Bag

Turn down the temperature on the water heater.
This one was triggered by the pending arrival of the little peanut (Sept. 1), but it makes good energy sense too. Our house has two water heaters, of which we hardly tax one of them with two of us here. There really is no need for the water to be so hot that it can scald you. We're going to be playing with this one for a while until we can find the right temperature. Perhaps we could turn it up when company comes in to visit. According to the US Department of Energy, For each 10ºF reduction in water temperature, you can save between 3%–5% in energy costs.

Wash and Rinse Clothes in Cold Water
"Most of us are unaware of the full extent of energy required to wash our clothes. A staggering 85-90% of this energy is used by the water heater. Only 10-15% actually goes to running the washing machine." From TerraBlog. We actually wash most of our clothes in cold water, but this will be a reminder.

Unplug Unused Electronics
According to the DOE, Many appliances continue to draw a small amount of power when they are switched off. These "phantom" loads occur in most appliances that use electricity, such as VCRs, televisions, stereos, computers, and kitchen appliances. In the average home, 75% of the electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off. This can be avoided by unplugging the appliance or using a power strip and using the switch on the power strip to cut all power to the appliance. Oh, and this includes little things like cell phone chargers, etc...

Possible Future Endeavour. Still researching this one.
Addition of Radiant Barrier in Attic
Radiant barriers are materials that are installed in buildings to reduce summer heat gain and winter heat loss, and hence to reduce building heating and cooling energy usage. The potential benefit of attic radiant barriers is primarily in reducing air-conditioning cooling loads in warm or hot climates. Radiant barriers usually consist of a thin sheet or coating of a highly reflective material, usually aluminum, applied to one or both sides of a number of substrate materials. These substrates include Craft paper, plastic films, cardboard, plywood sheathing, and air infiltration barrier material. Some products are fiber reinforced to increase the durability and ease of handling.

DOE Fact Sheet

Wikipedia Entry

So, any suggestions to further reduce our footprint? What are you going to do? Let us know!

Follow up Spoiler Post

Links to Wikipedia entries for the sources of all the spoilers.

Luke's Father - Star Wars

It was Earth All Along - Planet of the Apes

Verbal is Keyser Soze - The Usual Suspects

The Villagers Sacrifice the Policeman - The Wicker Man

Dil is Actually a Man - The Crying Game

Snape Kills Dumbledore - Harry Potter

The Kid's Therapist is a Ghost - The Sixth Sense

Kristin (gun) JR - Dallas

Tyler Durden isn't Real - Fight Club

299 Die - 300

Neo is the One - The Matrix

Rosebud was the name of his sled - Citizen Kane

The protagonists are the Others - The Others

The Killer's mother is a part of his split personality - Psycho

Soylent Green is People - Soylent Green

The Village is part of a modern nature reserve - The Village

Donnie Dies - Donnie Darko

His friends are all a part of his beautiful mind - A Beautiful Mind

Spoiler T-Shirt

I ran across this tonight and couldn't resist posting it. I find this t-shirt hilarious... I am on the night shift, so that could have some influence on my sense of humor. I'm curious if others will find it funny (or if I will when I'm not sleep deprived).

Dog Day Afternoon

Nothing like the Movie Dog Day Afternoon staring Al Pacino... On Friday I took the dogs out to Challenger Seven Memorial Park to walk the nature trails. We had a great time. It was nice to kind of "get away" from Houston without having to go very far away. It kind of reminded me of Kolomenskoye in Moscow (without the 16th century churches). For those that haven't been, it's like a country get-away on the edge of Moscow - a must visit if you're ever there. Here are the dogs taking a break in the shade.


Here they are taking yet another break in the shade.


Here is a short video clip from the day.