West Point

Here's a few pictures from West Point. The Cadet Chapel, with some barracks on the right:MacArthur statue:

Dinner in the Mess Hall:

And just for Dad, a giant slide rule:

Update on the newest McClain

Hi Everyone, Matt and I went for the 20 week anatomy scan of the baby last week and we found out lots of exciting news. As you know, it's a boy! Also, we got to look at all of his perfectly formed organs and bones - brain, heart, stomach, spine, feet, hands, etc. He's normal and healthy. He was moving around a lot, trying to squirm away from the nurse. Since then, I've been feeling some pretty strong kicks or punches in there too! He weighed 12 ounces that day, but I'm sure he's already gained weight, probably up to a whole pound by now. Here are the latest shots:

Bedroom Bench is FINALLY Done

Note the bead board accent that matches the bed.

Project is finally done but it turned out to be expensive -
about $100.00 in materials and $1000.00 in medical bills.
Also about a year behind schedule.

Empty Nesters Once Again

Our three baby robins have flown the nest!

My how they've grown - about 12 days old & too

big for the nest.

Just hatched and very hungry!

Big weekend in Columbus

Had to share some photos from our big weekend this weekend! Friday night we finally had our photo shoot at Ohio Stadium (delayed from May because of the crazy rain). The official photos from the photographers will take a couple of weeks but we did get a few snapshots:


Chuck coming out of the tunnel from the OSU locker room onto the field:


On Sunday afternoon we went to a ropes course in Westerville for some climbing and high-wire walking. It was pretty cool to do although the weather was really too hot!

Looking forward to seeing 4 of the 6 other McClains in Columbus this weekend! Matt and Chris, we'll miss you--hope you're doing well!

Squatter at the McClain Residence

We avoided the first attempt of this robin to lay eggs in our front door wreath, but alas, we didn't discover the second nest in time. We had even changed wreaths after the first attempt, but she built another nest atop the wreath and now sits on three eggs. That's two weeks to hatch and two weeks to get the fledglings out of the nest. So we are avoiding the front door as much as possible. Why don't birds use trees?

Trumpet Trio

On Mother's Day we played a trumpet trio for church. This link should take you to a video of the great musical selection! (I'll never ask if you listened to it!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-9Y2vBegKQ

New Toon

This photo was taken in the emergency room after Myron's fingers were bandaged. He thought it looked like a toon's hand with three large fat fingers.

What looks like an alien invasion...

...is actually a sonogram of the newest McClain.  Christina and I went to the doctor and hospital on Monday for a check on the baby's development and a listen to the heartbeat which clocked in at 168 beats per minute, like a humminbird.

These are the first images anyone has seen of the newest McClain!  You can see from the dimensions in the bottom right, we're talking about 6cm long, that's 2.36 inches.

Here's a close-up of the head.

And oh yeah, USA! USA!

Happy Easter!

A picture of Amanda's plate from Easter dinner. WAIT, there are green things on her dishes! Note the asparagus spears on the main plate! Also, a spinach salad! And yes, she ate them - good job Amanda.

Now for a brainteaser. We had a very nice applesauce raisin cake for dessert. It was made Saturday afternoon and kept in this special manner. The quiz is why was the cake stored overnight like this? (Note the water in the glass dish.) Post your guesses in the comment section - there may be a prize for the correct answer.

McClain Bros. Photographers Present...

Here are a few favorite photos from the hundreds that were taken. What a beautiful, happy occasion!

Engaged! Finally!

Amazingly, she said "yes."

Friday Fun

Definitely the coolest website I've seen in a while: http://worldnames.publicprofiler.org/Main.aspx. It has a database of last names from 26 countries (mostly Europe and North America) and you can put in a last name and see where the most people live with that name. So I found out that there really aren't that many McClains still in Scotland--they're mostly in North Carolina, Tennessee, and other parts of Appalachia. In fact, Huntingdon County has the highest % of McClains in the state of Pennsylvania.

I also found out that Roose seems to be a Belgian/Dutch name. The highest concentration of Rooses is in Zeeland province in the Netherlands--and a good number seem to have emigrated from there to New Zealand. And Williams County, Ohio (where Chuck is from) is in the top 5 for Rooses in the US.

So yeah, I'm kind of a geek, but I think it's really really interesting to play with. Check it out!

Spoke's Current Project

Here are a few photos of the project Spoke is working on right now. Of course, it's another fairly large-scale build making something we've never made before.

We're building windows sets for a company called Moncler. They're an Italian-owned company and sell really expensive down coats. We're building sets for all three of their US stores in NY, Chicago and Aspen.

The photos are primarily of the NY sets which we're installing on Friday night. The Chicago set is shipping on Monday and the pieces for Aspen are much smaller and going sometime in February.

The concept is basically a cave or tunnel in which a mannequin will be placed. There will also be some lighting and a mirrored backdrop with mirrored film on the window to create a sort of "infinity mirror" effect. We've also built the platform and structure as set walls (which won't really be visible) so they are light-weight and easy to re-assemble at the time of installation. The caves are carved from foam panels and painted to somewhat resemble real rock.




You can see some photos of us carving the foam, an amazingly messy process, on the blog on the Spoke website. You will probably not be able to recognize me in the white suit, dust mask and goggles. But I'm the one in all the photos except the first. www.spokevisuals.com/blog

Holiday Blizzard of 2010

Here's what we came home to:

The sidewalk in front of our neighbors' house.

Cars buried in front of our house.

Cars in front of our house. Notice our car, completely snow-free, across the street! How lucky are we?!