Recent Updates:

Elliott Blackburn born June 12, 2008 at 8:26pm weighing 8lbs 8oz. Does he resemble his brother?
New update: Elliott Paul Blackburn comes home from the hospital for the first time.

Some miscellaneous pictures from May 2008. Including Alex's own waterpark and new car.

I visited the airshow this past weekend. Alex was also there working security.

We spent a day with Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends... in Baltimore. Alex enjoyed it a lot, but I was a bit more cynical. "Look out the window everyone! A live drug bust!"

Winter escape to Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Here's OC 07, NC 07, some misc summer pics, and last but not least, Alex's third birthday party. I think this finally clears out my photo backlog.

Took Alex to Orlando. Disney, MGM Studios, and Sea World.

Weekend with the guys. Including death hikes, hanging at the bar, and climbing a via ferrata course at... Nelson Rocks

Country roads... West Virginia

Did you ever complain about exorbitant hotel rates at the beach during peak season? Well, you should try going in February.

We finally got Alex to sing in front of a camera. We were really getting worried that we wouldn't have any embarrassing videos of him to play at future family functions. See him sing the A-B-C Song, and a medley of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and the song from the Elephant Show. Also, we also have a couple pictures of Alex venturing out into the first snowfall of the year.

Our family recently grew by two. Welcome into the world Samantha and Ariel!

Merry Christmas to everyone and Happy New Year as well! On Christmas, we had a leisurely morning opening our presents, and went to Grandma's for dinner and the infamous gift exchange. For New Year's, Alex rode the T around Pittsburgh and then partied until midnight.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

We took Alex to see the Carnegie Science Center this past weekend.

We took Alex to Mount Vernon, or as he calls it, Curious George's house. Thus continues the treasured family tradition of taking kids to places when they are far too young to remember that they've been there. In other news this weekend, Nana rode a dinosaur.

I added all the Halloween pictures into the October page of my photo album. Apparently, Pooh likes chocolate too.

Alex turned two. I think you'll notice really quickly that we couldn't find our digital camera.

Alex got a visit from a real firetruck and firefighter for his birthday this year. (We lost our digital camera, so his other birthday pics won't be up for a while.)

"Catch a wave and you're sitting on top of the world..." And if you can't catch a wave, just getting splashed feels pretty good too. Come see all the fun we had in Kitty Hawk this year, where two wrongs don't make a right but two Wrights make an airplane. (I blatently stole that off a T-shirt.)

Went to Turkey. That's the country, not the food.

Even though it was a dreary, rainy day, we braved the weather to take Alex on his first trip to Idlewild Park. Bet you didn't know that Idlewild has ranked as the second best amusement park for kids in the world since 2004.

As devoted sun worshippers, our family completes the Hajj to Ocean City MD each and every year. The water was inexplicably cold this year, but we had fun anyways.

Traveled around Russia for a while.

Congrats to my little sister, who graduated today with a degree in fine arts. We also finally got a chance to see her award winning masterpiece which will remain on display through next year.

To keep Alex from climbing the fences, we got him a climber for the backyard. We're not sure, but we think that he likes it.

We just returned from our Easter holiday. Alex had lots of fun painting eggs, making bunny hats, riding on tractors, and taking walks outside in the beautiful weather.

We had a great time this past weekend at Alan and Nadira's wedding. The ceremony was beautiful, the reception was spectacular, and the whole family turned out for it. We even had little Alex in a suit. There was a downside however; the paparazzi were everywhere.

We just got back from our Norooz celebration this past weekend. See all the pictures (and a few others) here. For the uninitiated, Norooz is the Persian New Year. His two favorite aunts also attended the festivities. We had a great time, and Alex was eager to open presents, as always. Maybe he has a future as a lounge singer in Vegas. If you have time for some long downloads, here is a clip of Alex's performance. Also, here is a clip of him reading his favorite book.

The real winner of TV's Dancing With the Stars. (13 meg file. Save file to your computer and open with Windows Media Player in case you have problems.)

My wife and I had the opportunity to spend some time in central Italy recently. I've loosely broken down the pictures into sights and scenery, posed shots, and me masquerading as a real photographer. As my family can attest, this is just a small subset of the pictures which we brought back. Also of interest, would you believe that this was done by the same Catholic monks for which capuccino is named? (Pictures were not allowed when we visited.)

Merry Christmas everyone! Here are some pictures leading up to the holiday, here are some more pictures on Christmas, and this was the madness at the gift exchange this year.

We just took Alex for his first trip to the zoo. He thought that the animals were okay, but he most liked the chance to really run around.

Alex just had a very Happy Halloween. He stayed up all night waiting for the Great Pumpkin, but he never showed. On a completely different topic, Alex has been using the computer to design and model his new line of baby casualwear.

We've been accumulating some random pictures throughout the month, so I figured I'd just throw them all up together. Perhaps of notable interest, my wife and Alex went to meet Giada De Laurentiis, the chef of Everyday Italian on the Food Network. I need to find a way to get paid for free publicity :-).

You know a kid is spoiled when he gets a car for his first birthday. My wife finally convinced me to let him open it. It turns out that he's pretty competent when it comes to automobiles; he even checked the oil and tire pressure before starting it up.

He lacks the polish of a perimeter player, but there's a lot of potential to get it done in the paint. Watch Alex take it to the hole.

Alex has been around for one year. Family came from far and wide for the celebration. The ridiculousness of presents can be blamed on my wife.

Alex received the sacrament of baptism, a very solemn event. No, that is not a jacuzzi.

Went on trip to San Francisco. See pics. Some others in the group continued on to Yosemite.

Alex is neat. Witness proof. (We take too many pictures of him for me to continue thinking of blurbs to describe these albums.)

The sweetie-pie and I escaped for 10 days to Hawaii alone. Now that's the life :-)

Just came back from a trip to San Antonio and Sydney, which means I am one of the only people in the world to eat a truly good enchilada and pet a koala on the same excursion (no picture of the enchilada I'm afraid). In Australia, I also snapped a picture of the world's most poisonous snake (inland taipan), a movie clip of a platypus, and video proof that Coriolis was correct.

If the pictures aren't enough Alex for you, here are a few Quicktime movie clips you can watch. This was the second time that he ever rolled over, and this is him practicing his first words. These clips will take a few minutes to download, so you may want to right-click on these links and select "Save Target As.."

Other Stuff:

Here's a link to some comics drawn by my sister. The title is Duck and Telly and is about a tiger named Telly and a duck named, well, Duck.

Check out my photo album.

This is a place to upload files to me if you have an account.
Rumor is that one day I will have enough initiative to divorce this feature from the mechanisms in place to help my sister upload comics. Just ignore the non-pertinent fields until that day arrives.

You can download files from the server here. You'll need to provide a pass phrase upon first arrival. Afterwards, a cookie saved on your machine will automatically allow you access. Just ask me for the pass phrase. It's not a secret, I just want to limit the unknown entities from the nether regions of the web from seeing what files are available.

Where do I spend my time on the Internet? This page lists some of my favorite sites.