Lucas Firsts Video

Lucas experienced a few "firsts" these past couple of weeks. Last weekend at El Dorado Park he experienced his first ride on a swing. He liked it a lot. Today, he experienced his first beach day at Mother's Beach and also his first dip in the pool at my cousin's house in Anaheim. He likes water a lot, especially splashing it. Sand was different though - he was at first cautious with it but he gradually realized it was nothing to be afraid of. Next weekend hopefully we can get his first haircut!

Lucas Video Montage

Here's a three minute clip of what Lucas has been up to. He loves chasing his firetruck around the living room. He also shows that he can now furniture-walk, and he just loves being filmed!

Windows Vista Upgrade Project

I recently installed Windows Vista on my 2.5 year old desktop PC because the original OS on there, Windows Media Center Edition 2005, was starting to bog down and was running really slowly. The PC is running on an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ single core chip (2.2 GHz), with 2GB of DDR RAM and a discrete 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6200 LE video card. Before upgrading, I ran the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor and, based on the PC's specs, reported that the PC can run Vista with the Aero interface. So I decided to clean install a fresh copy of Vista Ultimate.

I wanted to install Vista because of all the nifty features of the OS (Windows DVD Maker, Windows Movie Maker, better media organization, improved media center capabilities, Windows Sidebar, etc). After backing up my data onto my external hard drive, I ran the install program and it took about 30 minutes to complete.

Vista has built-in firewall and spyware programs, all that is needed is an anti-virus program. I installed Windows Live OneCare which integrates nicely with Vista. I also installed Office 2007, and pretty much that was it. Startup is now much faster, taking place in 20 seconds compared to 1 minute plus on MCE. Shutdown is equally as fast. The interface is clean and crisp with the discrete video card, and the sidebar is useful because I have a couple of RSS feeds being constantly updated as well as the current weather and a mini-slideshow of our photos.

I've also linked Xbox 360 to the PC as a media center extender to stream our music, photos, and videos, which offers an improved media center experience versus MCE 2005. I'm hoping that installing Vista will prolong the usable life of my PC for another couple of years or so.

One Year Old

Today is Lucas' first birthday! We already celebrated his birthday this past Sunday and we had a lot of fun. Today he had a lot of fun as his cousins Kaelyn and Madelyn visited him. Key milestones: he's now furniture-walking, he's eating more and more table food, we're now brushing his four teeth and gums, he's trying to climb everywhere, he drinks water on his own using his sippy cup, and he knows how to "tell" us that he's hungry.

He has his one year wellness appointment tomorrow so more shots and we'll know his height and weight. His favorite TV program is Sesame Street and we're going to start him on cow's milk soon. He'll also be sitting in his car seat facing forward starting this weekend.

Here is a picture of him when he was just born at 6:00 p.m. last year and another picture of him today exactly one year later also at 6:00 p.m. What a difference a year makes!

Lucas' First Birthday Party!

Click here for more pictures from Lucas' party!

We celebrated Lucas' first birthday party today at Monte Verde Park in Lakewood. There were lots of good food like grilled pork sticks, egg rolls, fried noodles (pancit), lemongrass beef skewers, grilled vegetables, and other goodies. For dessert, we had very special cupcakes courtesy of Charmed Cupcakes, Jimmy's soon to open bakery. Delicious flavors like chocolate banana, Andes mint, strawberry shortcake, cookies and cream, and red velvet.

We had our families from both sides there, as well as friends and co-workers. Lucas enjoyed the pinata event, as well as his special cupcake (although he didn't know how to blow the candle yet). We loved the venue because it provided security for the children because they can only exit the park from the front.

Overall it was a great and very fun event, we can see that Lucas is loved by many and that he seemed to enjoy the festivities. It was funny seeing him figuring out what to do with his cupcake! Hard to believe that our baby boy is now one year old!