the engels: family news

Site Move

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:26:00 CST

Just a quick note - our family website will be moving soon. The new URL will be www.derrikandmary.com. Please update your bookmarks! Be sure to update your RSS feeds as well. The site will remain the same but on a different server and URL. derrikengel.com will be transformed in to a playground for my design and development projects. I will leave the family site up on derrikengel.com for about a week so everyone can update their bookmarks. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Party!!!!

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:29:00 CST

Hey all, just wanted to quickly say thanks to everyone that came out to Grayce's birthday party. She had a blast! She sat in the kitchen listening to her music and playing with all her new stuff most of the evening and didn't want to go to bed. We will try to get some photos up later this evening or tomorrow once we have had time to sort through them. Thanks again, everyone! See you soon.

One Month Old?

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:24:00 CST

I know, that doesn't seem right. Little baby G is almost one month old! Officially, on Wednesday. She is much more active now and, of course, growing like crazy. She is usually awake most of the day and wants to be held. Gretchen is now in daycare with Grayce and we are all back in our normal daily routines. Grayce has been a huge help. She always wants to feed Gretchen, and watch Noggin while doing so, of course! Everything is going great and we are excited for Halloween. Hopefully it is much warmer than last year. Grayce is dressing up as Princess Fiona from Shrek and Gretch is going to be a little pea. Hope everyone has a great Halloween and enjoy the new site theme this week!

Hello Everybody!!

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:16:00 CST

As you all can obviously see from the pictures, the baby has ARRIVED! Her name is Gretchen Margaret Engel and she's a beautiful addition to our family. She was born September 29th and weighed in at 6lbs 14oz. Surprisingly she was smaller than Grayce who was an 8lb baby!

We are all doing well, Gretchen has been a little jaundice and therefore we've been tied to the house for the past couple of days with her attached to a biliblanket. Hopefully she'll be able to come off of the blanket today as we have another Dr. Appointment today.

Grayce is adjusting well, and LOVES her baby sister. She has taken to calling her "baby G" and likes to watch her sleep in her basinet. She's been very helpful with taking diapers downstairs in the morning for me since I have a limit to how much I should be walking up and down the stairs. When people ask she is very helpful in saying that Gretchen is her baby stister (I added an extra "t" she does say it this way).

Coming up is Grayce's birthday, she will be 5. I really can't believe she's already 5 years old! She has grown so much in the past few months; it amazes me everyday she tells me something new that she's learned. Stay tuned for more updates in our lives!

Photo Printing

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:06:00 CST

Our Flickr account is set up for photo printing now! You will need to set up a Flickr account (through Yahoo!) to order prints. After you sign in to your Flickr account you will see a print icon just above the large version of the photos now. You can print any photo you see in our account, but some of our older photos may not be large enough. Flickr will warn you if this is the case. When you order your photos you can choose to have them delivered to your home or you can pick them up at Target immediately. You will notice there are two options for each size when you click "More Options..." (ie - 4x6 and 4xD). The D means the photo will be scaled proportionally. Most of our photos should be standard sizes from here on out but I wouldn't recommend using the "_xD" option. Let us know if you have any questions or issues with setting up an account or printing. Enjoy!

Just over three weeks away

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 07:44:00 CST

So we are just over three weeks away from the due date now. Good news: this baby will have a name! Yes, we finally decided on names. Gretchen Jayne if it is a girl. Olyn Zayne if it is a boy. Now we are just anxiously waiting for the baby to be here!

We also bought a Canon Digital Rebel XT digital camera this past week to take lots of photos of the kids. It is an 8 megapixel SLR and the quality of the photos is amazing. All of our new photos will be available for print through Flikr soon. The prints can be delivered to your home or you can pick them up at Target immediately after purchase. We will let you know as soon as that is set up!

The newest member of the Engels!

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:10:00 CST

No, the baby is not here yet, but we did take in our parent's cat. Her name is Ivey. She is a year older than our boys and she is not too fond of them yet. Cobes and Sak are really interested in her but she's not having any of it. She is doing a lot better and starting to venture around the house now at least. Also, only seven weeks until the baby is here! And we still haven't settled on a boy name...

Just a quick note: I've been working on an all new Restaurant Picker for the past few days and that is now available in my recent projects. Let me know what you think.

The Grayce Timeline

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:17:00 CST

Check out the Grayce Timeline!

Ask Grayce a question

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:57:00 CST

Hey everyone, thanks for all of the positive feedback on the new site! We still have a few ideas that may be implemented later on so please send us suggestions on new features you would like to see here and they may get added. You will notice a new link up above to send Grayce questions. She is going to start doing little "video blogs" for the site to say hi to everyone and get things off her chest. You know how stressful it can be as a 4 year old. We want this site to be more interactive for family and friends so we are asking you guys to submit questions regularly for her and she may answer them in her videos. Feel free to ask her anything! You may submit as many questions as often as you like. Stay tuned for Grayce's video blog Episode #1!

It's Finally Up!

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:10:00 CST

Well here it is folks! I know you were all on the edge of your seat. The first thing you will notice is a totally new layout. I tried to organize the content a little nicer. I also added RSS feeds for our news, videos, and photos for those of you who like to keep up to date! On that note, Mary and I will be updating our status that you see up above fairly often so there are more frequent updates. The big photo over here changes every time you refresh too. The news is now archived so you can see past entries. Just click the newer/older buttons below. And now, possibly the coolest feature of all, the entire site theme changes depending on what time you come to the site. If you come between 6am and 8pm you will see the "day" theme, otherwise you see the "night" theme. I know, now you are just dying to come back later and see it. Anyhow, I welcome any comments. Send me an email!

It's Almost Here

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:18:00 CST

The new site is coming along beautifully! It took a while longer to build because every time I came close to finishing a piece of it I would think of something even cooler to do with it functionality-wise, but then I would stumble through the programming. I'm still learning PHP! What do you want from me? Anyhow, I'm putting some finishing touches on it and then I want to test it for a few days to make sure everything is running smoothly. The plan is to launch the new site Friday morning (July 4), so keep an eye out. It is going to be AWESOME!

Summer Site

Mon, 12 May 2008 09:41:00 CST

I should have the summer site up soon. I'm so sick of looking at this winter stuff I had to take the background off of here. The entire site is being redesigned this time so it is taking a little longer, but the functionality should be pretty nice... including RSS feeds! I will also be adding some new ultrasound photos and whatnot soon. And for everyone that keeps asking - no, we are not going to find out the sex of the baby this time around. We want a surprise!

Baby names!

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:50:00 CST

We need some help. We finally each came up with some boy and girl names that we like but we can't quite decide which to use. Since I love being a nerd and utilizing the internets, I put together this sexy little poll off to the right so you can vote on which name you think we should use. We will leave the poll up for a few months and see what happens. When we take it down, I will say who came up with each name... since mine are more awesome.

Ultrasound

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:18:00 CST

I added a photo of our first ultrasound below. We are officially due on October 1!