Big Boy

A few weeks ago Ian was moved into a forward-facing, big-boy car seat. I thought he would be permanently happy to travel in the car now that he could see out the windows, but not so. He howels about not being able to adjust the radio station (How old is he? 17?) and is generally less content than in his rear-facing infant seat. Perhaps as it was with his new crib, comfort takes getting used to. And I have to get used to being unable to sneak snacks while driving without escaping his notice. But I do love that I can tilt the rear-view mirror and see him. And if Graco is telling the truth, this is THE LAST car seat we will ever have to buy for Ian.

Here he is on the car seats' maiden voyage.

Then that weekend we decided it was time to give Ian his first haircut! I have loved the little curls forming at the tips of his hair, but it was time to kiss them goodbye in the name of masculinity.

Here is the front of his hair, pre-haircut.

The back of his hair, pre-haircut.

The side of his hair, pre-haircut... mullet-like, isn't it?

How Ian feels about having a mullet.

We began the haircut with Ian and Scott sitting on the toilet seat, and me weilding the scissors. After I was unable to force myself cut Ian's precious hair, we reorganized and Scott held Ian between his legs and cut Ian's hair in the tub. I just winced with each cut, and took pictures. That arrangement worked much better.

This is how Ian feels about his new big-boy haircut. And I agree-- he looks older, and the cut is adorable.

Ian's Bird House

It is so nice to be all together again. The two weeks Scott was gone were the most lonely, sad days ever. Thankfully Scott arrived early in the morning on the Fourth of July holiday and the three of us got in plenty of play time over the long weekend. Here are some pictures of a trip to Home Depot on Saturday morning where "Ian" built a bird house. This was his first Kids Workshop.

We also had an excellent Fourth of July. We BBQ'd with our good friends the Linfords and watched the fireworks in the local Target parking lot. Scott held Ian up to see the fireworks and Ian was enthralled. He pointed at the show in the sky the entire time and kept shouting with glee. During some loud thunderstorms the next week, Ian kept shouting "Boom! Boom!" and searching the sky for more fireworks.

Africa

I recently spent two weeks in Angola while we were starting up a new project. It was fun to see that part of the world and be part of that project. Here are some pictures.

This is the center of Luanda, the capital of Angola. There are 4 million people in the city.

Here is a picture taken out the window of our car. Notice the woman behind the truck with the load on here head and the baby strapped to her back. We saw that a lot. Often the load was much bigger. The baby is just strapped on with a piece of cloth, kind of like a towel around your waste.

I spent a night on one of our floating production facilities (FPSO-Floating Production, Storage, and Offloading). Crude oil travels through miles of underwater pipelines and then up a mile-long riser to reach this vessel. It is processed and stored on board and offloaded to a tanker (if you watch the video below you will see a tanker slowly approaching, preparing to hook up and offload 1 million barrels of crude). They offload every ten days. Do the math on that with oil at $140 a barrel.

Here is the same view in the morning.

Here is some video of us taking off from the FPSO in the helicopter.