ebirth of Donaghe.com If you've ever dropped by before, you probably know it's been several years since we actually had anything here worth note. I decided it was time to get off my butt and put something here. We're using Blogger technology, and hopfully that will make it easy enough to actually update this in a timely manner!! Cross your fingers.
There will probably be a good number of changes coming up, including new site sections and probably changing the look and feel several times. Though this page will probably only be interesting to our family and friends, both Tad and I are planning on doing some more things with our "personal" sites in the near future as well.
e's growing up so fast... Today was Avynn's "graduation" from preschool ceremony. He'll be in kindergarten next year and that should be an interesting experience for him (and us too).
His teacher, Mrs. Schmidt, gave out "awards" to each of the children based on her favorite parts of their personality. Avynn got the "Science Award", she said, because he was always asking her questions and telling her about the things we had read and talked about at home (I have read him some things from my old Childcraft Encyclopedias, especially the one about the Earth and Space and Tad reads and explains the complex illustrations in The Coolest Cross Section Book Ever to him as well).
She gave him a big book titled Your World, a First Encyclopedia. It has lots of kid-friendly illustrations that explain a little bit about just about everything. Avynn was immediately fascinated. He wasn't interested in anything else during the event after that and was very disappointed that we were going to take the book with us when we left (it was in the early morning, so they still had half a day of school to go). The first thing he asked me when I picked him up this afternoon was "Can we read the book when we get home tonight??"
I'm glad that he likes to learn about how things work and we need to nurture that so he'll always be inquisitive. If we can do that, he'll also be interested in finding things out for himself instead of just relying on what people tell him when he gets old enough to do the research for himself: the first step in becoming a thinking individual.
y First Actual Entry Lindsay is demanding that I put something in our blog, so here it is! Hopefully this weekend I'll be creating my own personal blog. I see this space as a place for family news, photos and trip reports of our trips into the wilds (and not so wilds) of Arizona and the Southwest. Eventually we hope to have a pretty cool picture gallery attached to this site.
ummer Begins! Today is the last day of school for Avynn. Summer promises to be full of swimming lessons and fun with his buddies. Hopefully we will get to do some travelling this Summer as well. Anything to escape for a while the average 115 degree days here in Phoenix!
pring Show 2002, or Getting to Ride The Bus! The Spring Show this year was a fun event. It's one of Avynn's favorite things about the school year. He gets excited about the singing and dancing, but, most of all, he LOVES riding the bus for the dress rehearsal all the way across town to the high school whose auditorium his school "borrows". According to Avynn, riding buses is lots more fun than whatever you do when you get to the destination, even if it's somewhere like the Zoo or the Fair. He was still talking about the bus ride to Spring Show 2001 in the Winter of 2002!
The show was a patriotic theme this year and very well done. Unfortunately, because I couldn't figure out the manual settings on my camera for the lighting situation, I didn't get many good pictures inside. I managed to save one shot from the ranks of the hopelessly blurred, and at least you can see their costumes. Avynn is the mostly disheveled one in the middle.
His class sang "Anchors Away" and "Off We Go (Into the Wild Blue Yonder)". They were significantly more composed this year than last, when most of the class was immediately stunned by all the people in the audience and behind them on stage (who obviously weren't there for the dress rehersal). Most of them were too overwhelmed to possibly remember what words to sing or what the next dance move was. But, this year, they all had it down pat, being veteran Spring Show performers. It was very cute, of course.
echstropia Relaunch! Well, Techstropia.com is now mostly redone... there is no valuable content as of yet, but I'm sure that Tad will fix that problem very soon. I'm also sure there will also be several revisions to the look, feel and features of that site as well, but at least now, since we "bloggerized" it, it should be easy for him to update. We'll see! Now to add some more fun stuff to this site!
Lindsay is in the midst of creating me my very own weblog. It will be located at Techstropia.com which is an old site that I once ran that was going to have all the up-to-date technology news on it. It was too much work, so the site has been languishing for quite some time. I've been wanting to blog for a while and once she's done, I'll start. It should be interesting. I'm going to try to update it on a very frequent basis and also include photographs and maybe, eventually videos. I'll post here once it is up and running.
unnies, but no Cowboy Hats. We didn't do much particularly memorializing for Memorial Day, except discover that owners of western-wear stores are apparently pretty patriotic. Avynn is spending several fun-filled days with Grammy during the break between "real school" and "summer school" and she took him horseback riding this morning, so he needed a nice cowboy hat for the adventure. Of course, as with anything else he doesn't use daily, the last one that Grammy bought for him is now lost in the deep, dark, mysterious clutter piles in his room and closet, so we were trying to find a replacement in time for the dinner and "release" of Avynn into Grammy's constant attention that evening.
We drove all over mid and Northwest Phoenix, walking through 2 malls and driving through almost every strip mall parking lot on Bell Road West of I-17 looking for a place to buy Avynn a cowboy hat, and every time we excitedly drove up to a promising possibility, it had the big "Sorry we're closed" sign in the window. Unlike every OTHER possible store we might want to go to, which were not only open, but typically having a big sale in honor of the day. Of course, it was amazing that we managed to find at least 3 western-wear stores in the first place, considering that I have never in my life consciously looked for one before. Poor Avynn had to go without a hat, though. I'm sure he had a great bare-headed time today anyway!
Dinner at Grammy and Milty-Pop's house was a wild-life exposition, as always. Their back yard is basically a desert herbivore conservatory, much to the displeasure of at least one set of next-door neighbors. The newest additions to the usual crew of between 10 to 30 doves, quail, pigeons and hummingbirds that inhabit the yard until someone comes outside are 3 baby rabbits. I got a few good pictures of one of them as he was eating a carrot on the porch. Isn't it cute! Tad says "Looks like good eatin' to me!". Well, no rabbit stew this time, buddy!
t Least It's a Dry Heat... It was 112 degrees outside while I was driving home today. It was also 112 degrees inside my Explorer - I have no AC! Argh!!! I think I'm quite well done.
It hurts my brain thinking about how bad it will be if I don't get the AC fixed before it hits 120... sheesh!
Today was Avynn's "graduation" from preschool ceremony. He'll be in kindergarten next year and that should be an interesting experience for him (and us too). 
(it was in the early morning, so they still had half a day of school to go). The first thing he asked me when I picked him up this afternoon was "Can we read the book when we get home tonight??"
on my camera for the lighting situation, I didn't get many good pictures inside. I managed to save one shot from the ranks of the hopelessly blurred, and at least you can see their costumes. Avynn is the mostly disheveled one in the middle.