The bear necessities (Ba-dum *tish)

Well, I created this posting a few weeks ago when Lyzz and I went to the Woodland Park Zoo with some of her siblings and then forgot to finish since we hadn't loaded up the pictures yet. All that has been rectified.

We started our day fairly early and met up at Michelle's house in Mt. Vernon. Everyone traveled caravan style down to the zoo and we managed to not get totally lost in Seattle. Lyzz's oldest brother, Chris, his wife, Karima, and their little girl, Zaira were in town and basically the reason for the family zoo trip. Michelle and her boys, and Bonnie with her little girl rounded out the group. All the little kids running around just reminded me of what Lyzz and I get to look forward to in December. Tanner, Zaira, and Foster
Really, this post is mostly and excuse to put up a few pictures of the cool critters we saw that day.
Komodo Dragons, while neat, are hardly fire-breathers. Disappointing.
Meerkats are one of the newest additions to the Woodland Park Zoo. I hope there was one named Timon.


Here's an otter looking about as majestic as an otter is capable of looking.



The bird enclosure of course has a "feed the birds" option available. The birds are definitely not shy at this point.



Orangutans are allegedly a distant relative of mine (thanks, Dad). A joke that Lyzz enjoys perpetuating.



This is Simon the siamang. I know his name because I spent every week at the zoo watching him for several hours for a 300 level Behavioral Psychology class. He's slightly blind in one eye thanks to a cataract, and he can shriek like a demon.

The trip was a ton of fun. Afterwards, we headed to Dick's Drive-in and had some ridiculously cheap burgers (good though) and hung out for a little while with the rest of the Ashinhurst family. All in all, it was a neat trip. I've always enjoyed the zoo in the past, ever since I was a kid running around the San Francisco zoo, and now Lyzz and I are contemplating a membership. We'll see.

A new beginning, but one that is remarkably familiar

So, I'll try to keep this fairly concise since I'm due in to work tomorrow morning at 8am and it's nearly an hour drive to La Conner (yuck). I've been working at Wave cable/broadband now for a whole week, and to no one's surprise, it's almost the same thing that I was doing with Comcast for the last year and a half. I knock on doors and try to get people to add services or become new customers. It's pretty simple and not particularly exciting, though today I spent my afternoon on Blue Heron Dr. in Bow, WA looking across the bay towards Bellingham. It was beautiful. I also sold two telephones (Ka-ching! $100!), so that's always good.

Aside from work being work, life is treating us pretty well, all things considered. Although I understand how weird Lyzz feels staying at my parents' place for a while, it's kinda comforting to be back in the place I called home before I set out into the "real world" to be a "grown up" nearly a decade ago. In my near decade venturing forth into the wilds, I have come to realize that growing up pretty much sucks. Having to think about things like car insurance, medical insurance, car payments, cell phone bills, rent, gas money, power bills, grocery shopping, and all that is really not very exciting or interesting. Thank goodness for Lyzz. She keeps us both excited about life and its mysteries and adventures, while I keep us grounded when stress starts to catch up with us (or at least I hope that I manage that). Lucky for both of us, we're soon going to have a little reminder of what it means to be a kid again.

July 14th draws closer and I'm getting more and more impatient to know the gender of our bundle of joy. I honestly don't have a preference, but I do just really want to know what this new person is, that way I can decide whether to steal my little sister's old Barbies or root around in my closet and see how many old GI Joes I have left. Some people may think that getting gender neutral toys is important for teaching our child to be a balanced person or something like that (aka "wuss"), but I think that a little socially reinforced stereotypes of gender roles can be useful in showing a child how things are not. If my little girl wants the GI Joes and the BB gun, that's fine with me. And if my son wants to cook food, learn to sew, and all the other "girly" things that have been the social standard for generations then I have no problem with that. So long as it's their choice. I've spent 17+ years now doing something that I really love, Dungeons and Dragons, despite the fact that it has a less than stellar public image. We're not all basement dwelling mouth breathers who live on Cheetos and Mt. Dew (Dr. Pepper is way better), some of us are as "normal" as can be expected when the term has no real definition. I'm aware of what it's like to be seen as a little bit of an oddball, so I have no qualms about my child/children following their own interests and supporting them in their endeavors.

I'm not quite sure how I got onto the subject of my nerdiness, but I think my point has something to do with acceptance....or maybe it was about playing dinosaurs in the front yard with my kid. Whichever. I'll have fun.

Move, Oregon, and other things....

So the move went smoothly. And as with most moves, there are a few things we can't find. A box probably got mislabeled and now resides in the garage instead of being in our room. But we'll find everything when we move into our own place. Right? Well that's the hope anyways. I don't think we'd be too happy if we had to buy Sam a new pair of nice black shoes.

Living with the in-laws has been.... different. Their family works so differently than mine it's hard to get a grip on what's supposed to happen, and what exactly is going on from day to day. On days that Sam and I aren't running to Bellingham for something, I usually just sit in our room drawing, planning out paintings, facebook, updating everyone on things, or just watching TV. Maybe I'll go through Twilight Princess again, or take my chances at Super Mario Bros. Wii. Other than that, Sam's been going to work, or today he's got a job interview, and I'll have more on that later. And other than my car insurance going up by $60 just because we moved to Ferndale, life here has been pretty simple. We occasionally hear the coyotes howling, that was awesome, or the wind howls so loudly it scares me awake. Sam's used to it though since this was his room in high school. The kitties don't seem to mind it too much, although Miyuki refuses to go downstairs. She's a bit of a chicken. Yume is our more adventurous kitty, and she seems to like the extra space to find even more awkward places to sprawl out on and be a spaz. Rei is not with us at the moment. Brendan and Brian are watching her until Friday or Saturday. Mary didn't want all three cats here (and honestly she hasn't really been able to tell that there are two cats). Luckily we did find someone else to watch Rei temporarily, James Stewart. I think that's Matt Stewart's little brother, and if my memory serves me right, he just got married about a year ago? Something like that. Well he lives in Burlington and has two cats already, but he and his wife have graciously agreed to keep Rei until the end of July. Which is nice. That gives us time to save money and either find a new place to live, or find another temporary home for Rei. And no, we are not getting rid of her. That would break Sam's heart. She's very much Sam's little kitty.

So Oregon. The Hancock's (plus Amy's boyfriend Enoch) went on a trip Memorial Day Weekend to Pacific City, Oregon. It's pretty much an annual event now. Not the place so much as meeting up with the Nielsen's. Richard and Kaylene are long time friends of Mary and Kim from way back in California, and their kids are around the same age of the Hancocks, their kids range from 23-17. And they've been friends forever. Enoch and I were kind of in the same boat. We both had no idea what to expect. While he's never met them, I had never been around them for more than a few hours. But things turned out really fun and really cool. Definitely exhausting, but really fun. And I don't think we were too Caucasian for Enoch. Ha ha. And yes he was worried about that. There was this huge sandy hill (Haystack) blocking our total view of the ocean, but that's okay, we could still see the Gray Whale that was chilling out around Haystack for the first 3 days. That was amazing. Sadly we didn't get any good pictures of it. But it was amazing. we would see his spout, and then his little dorsal fin, and then sometimes his tail. My theory is that the rocks at the bottom of the cove are smooth, so whales come and like to rub their bellies on them. Orcas do it in the Sound and in the Islands. It really cool. So we hiked down to the beach and saw all the HUGE sea anemones that when they were closed and out of the water looked like giant boogers. Gross.


We also got some really good landscape shots too from the beach


From the top of Haystack




And from the deck of the rental house


Again, sadly we didn't get any good pictures of the Gray Whale. But it was definitely a great Family Vacation.

Back to Sam's job interview today. We finally got a hold of the motel owners, and they already filled the position, but neglected to call us. Jerks. We still haven't heard back from the government internship, which we probably wont for another month or so, but we did get a call from Sam's co-"manager" Chris Tull about a job opportunity that he thought Sam would be interested in. It's still selling Cable services, but it's for another cable company called Wave. They work in more rural areas than Comcast does, and the perks of this job sound really good. $1300/mo salary + commission, after a year you ear paid time off, medical and dental benefits, and all he has to do is sell. No more of this managing garbage that doesn't ever pan out, although with this company I bet being a manager wouldn't be so bad. Oh, and Sam gets paid on the sale and the install because he'll be able to do it himself. He'll use their trucks and equipment, so we might be able to go back down to one car instead of two. Yay for lowering bills! And since Sam has been doing the whole selling cable stuff for the past year and a half, and doing it well, we're thinking he's definitely got this one in the bag. Yay for w-2 jobs with reliable income that I can budget! Finally!

On the baby side of things, we have another visit with Dr. Mora on the 10th, probably to discuss my blood tests and such. Make sure I'm still healthy for the baby. And in july sometime will be the gender ultra sound! I'm really not patient enough to wait until the baby comes to find out the gender, because then we get all the ambiguous gender gifts and that's just annoying. Sam doesn't show it much, but I can tell he's getting giddier and giddier every day. And the look on his face when we go in for ultrasounds is so great. He's really excited to be a dad. And while I'm kind of excited, I think I'm still at the point of, "Really? What the hell am I doing?!" I'm sure that feeling wont ever completely go away, and honestly I don't think it should. I think all parents should never be to over confident about parenting, because ever kid is different and you can't treat them all the same. And every one of them is going to throw a wrench into your little I'm-A-Great-Parent Plan. So Sam and I have decided to at least never let a small part of the "what are we doing?!" get to far away from us. Because as my sister Michelle says, "That feeling never goes away, Tanner is 10, and I still feel that way."

All in all it's been a pretty good few weeks. Lets just hope this streak continues.

Baby and work

Well, I must say that even though I've always wanted to be a Dad, the moment we found out that Lyzz was pregnant was rather surprising and a little terrifying. As much as being a dad can be cool, fun, and all that, knowing that a little life will be my (and Lyzz's of course) responsibility freaked me out. What happens if I screw them up FOREVER?!? Will they hate me? Will I hate them or myself? WHAT AM I DOING?!?

After our first weekend of knowing that we are going to become parents by the end of the year I started to really look forward to this new adventure. A quick read through my patriarchal blessing brought some added reassurance as well. It says, essentially, that my wife and I will be kind and loving parents who create the type of home their children are happy to return to at the end of the day. Our kids will come to me for advice as a father and a friend. I don't know exactly what I'm doing, but it's nice to have that reinforcer there reminding me that I can be a good dad.

So, less about me freaking out and more about the picture here (yes, Lyzz told you I would likely do this in her post). This is the ultrasound from our May 13th appointment, so it's not the newest one we have, but we can't find our USB cable for the scanner at the moment (stupid packing and boxes and having to organize things all over again). At the time of the picture here, baby was just about an inch long, has arm/leg buds, and was very actively moving around. Our more recent visit, on the 18th (a mere five days later), the baby is nearly two inches long and has more defined facial features and limbs. The number of fingers and toes is still unclear, and is actually something we've been wondering about since Lyzz's twin brother is missing an entire forearm and our newest niece has 6 toes on her left foot. Hurray for mutations!

Lyzz is not showing her pregnancy yet, and if things with her sisters apply here it may be a little while yet, but she does have a new glow about her. She's been tired and a little sick some days, but nothing super serious that matches any of the horror stories I've heard about pregnancy. Each morning we lay in bed and I talk to her tummy and tell the kiddo to treat Mommy right. She's worried about being a mom, but I know that she'll do great. She's kind, fun, energetic, and creative, so any kid of ours will likely be tired out by the time bedtime rolls around. The closest thing we currently have to children are our cats, and Lyzz has taken a more motherly attitude with them recently. Sure, they still get into cupboards, chase each other around the house at odd hours, and make noise when we're trying to watch a movie or have some quiet time together, but Lyzz no longer gets frustrated by this. Now, it's only when they claw her in process of hurdling her on their way to attack a spot on the wall or use her tummy as a springboard to reach the window sill. At least with a kid they'll be able to learn and understand what we say to them. I'm pretty sure the only things the cats understand are their names and the sounds of treats being rattled in a can, or Lyzz's finger snaps that generally mean "scratching time!"

I know that we won't find our our baby's sex for another 9 weeks or so, but I'm guessing it's a boy. The fact that baby was using the placenta as a pillow and tried to roll over away from the ultrasound last time is a strong indication of guyness and our "Leave me alone. I'm trying to sleep" reactions. I'm sure the ladies do this too, but I'm just saying it's more of a guy thing to do. I suppose if it looks like baby's having a tea party next time I'll change my prediction.

On an unrelated note, Lyzz and I are in the midst of packing all our stuff up to move to Ferndale with my folks for a little while so we can save some money while I look for a new job. My Comcast sales position has been a great job for a little over a year now, but I've started to learn things about the way this company is run since I became a sales team leader/manager that I just don't find ethical or good business. Comcast pays all contractor companies the same amount of money for a given type of sale and then it is up to the contractor company to pay the contractors out of that total. Other companies pay as much as 50% of what Comcast gives them to their employees/sales people while mine is only paying about 33%. As far as I know, my boss does not have any extra costs associated with running his operation as compared to other contractor groups, so this difference is simply a way for him to make more $. Also, the fact that my boss has quite literally been ignoring the employees in Bellingham lately is just getting aggravating. Cutting corners to save a few bucks is pretty standard business practice, that I understand, but when cutting said corners means your team doesn't have the basic resources for customer information you're doing something wrong. I have applied to a few jobs that could be very promising, but we're just sitting on our thumbs since we have yet to hear back from them.

Growing Family

So with our family growing, Sam and I finally sat down to make a family blog. So here goes.

Sam and I were happily married in the Seattle Temple on March 21, 2008 for time and all eternity. While we had a rough first two years of uncertainty, fear, doubt, and a few good times, we can happily say that we are glad to have gone through all of that to get to this point in our life together where we get to be parents.

Sam graduated from Western Washington University on March 20, 2010, and our 11 toed niece was born on the 21st, our second anniversary.

On April 8th of this year, yes my 21st birthday, we found out we were expecting. I cried for probably 3 hours after first finding out. Sam's first words were, "Holy crap. Are you okay?" And in all honesty, I wasn't. It was such a shock to my system. I texted my oldest sister Michelle because she was the only one, I felt, that I could really talk to about this. The first thing she told me was "This is a good thing. I promise." She really helped me feel much better, and then going to Total Confidence Martial Arts (TCMA) for the Lean and Fit class was the best thing for me to do. However when I got back home that night I was still in shock and I, in my sane wisdom decided that the next day to double check the results with another at-home test. Again it was positive. So away to Planned Parenthood we go to get the official documentation so that I can get insurance for my prenatal care.

The next day Sam and I had decided already to go celebrate my birthday at the Mountlake Terrace Cinebarre. Mmmmmmm fried pickles. SO delicious. Anyways, on our way down, we stopped by the Perez's and Jim and Jony were both home. I showed them the official documentation. They're both really excited for us. And it was really nice to have support from them. I think Jim's just excited about having a grandkid so close.

It took the rest of that weekend for Sam and I to really get a grip on this whole thing. And by Sunday, Sam was ready to explode. He texted, "Holy Crap! I made a baby!" to just about every contact. And everyone was very supportive and extremely excited about everything. My family was surprisingly supportive, which was a relief. Sam's brother, Brendan, and sister, Amy, are also very excited about being a first time uncle and aunt. Mary, Sam's mother also seems very excited. I can't quite get a read on his dad Kim, though. He's a pretty hard guy to read anyways. I'm sure he'll be excited when the kid finally shows up anyways.

The biggest surprise from telling everyone came from my mother when I told her. Now for anyone who knows my mom, she's not exactly all there. And like most people that way, refuses to believe there is a problem. I tried my hardest to help my mom help herself, and tried convincing her that it was in her best interest for herself and her family. And after talking to her about needing space between her and my family, mom decided to walk out of my life for good. She doesn't even want the painting she paid me $240 for. I don't think I cried so hard so fast before. But honestly, I should be used to it. And as my darling friend Chelsea puts it, "You're a strong person, and your mom needs you far more that you need her, and she's going to realize that someday."

We had our first doctor visit on the 13th of May. The baby was kickboxing in the womb! How awesome is that! So far I'm healthy and so is the baby. Today we had our dating ultrasound. The baby was again being hysterical. They were using the placenta as a pillow and the umbilical cord as a punching bag. Then they tried to get to sleep, and turned away from us waving his arm as if to say, "I'm tried to sleep, stop making sound waves at me." Either that or "Okay, I gave you a show no scram." Already has a sense of humor about the whole thing. But really they have been treating me really well. After switching from the prenatal vitamins to the Flinstone's I've been feeling pretty good. Today was the first day that I really felt like spewing everywhere. The heartburn has been a small annoyance, but a nice glass of cold milk usually takes care of that.

Baby Hancock is officially due December 8th, 2010. Sam is ridiculously giddy. He has a really hard time not whipping out the ultrasound pictures at every chance he gets.