What about Alison's birthday

Did it just get forgotten? It was last week wasn't it?
--David Dougall

Happy Birthday to David!

It is another special day . . . Today David celebrates his 32nd birthday!! So here's what I've been able to pull from the hard drive . . .

Here's a photo showing toddler David, an independent thinker. David is always proud to work through problems on his own and figure out his own solution. I think that is something we can see in this photo.

I'm thinking he had a small sit & scoot toy at one end of the yard and he needed to figure out a way to get it back to the house. Of course, he could've sat on it and scooted across the yard. There was probably a rope or handle on it so he could drag it across the yard. But instead, he probably did some physics equations to determine the efficiency of dragging the little wheels vs pulling something with larger wheels. In the end, we can see that he concluded that the most efficient method was to load his toy with the small wheels into the wagon which has bigger wheels. Well done, young engineer!

I don't have many recent photos for most siblings, but since David was here in England just a few weeks back, I have plenty of fresh photos. I thought I'd find a few that really showed the strength and endurance that he displayed while he was here. In these two pictures, I guess you can't really see it, so you'll have to let me explain. . . .

This picture is taken in the very north of England. The wall we're standing at is what remains of Hadrians Wall, a 2,000 year old wall built by the Romans to protect the edge of their empire. The wall was built along the top of the hills that roll along the countryside. David did not let his stiff, aching legs stop him from climbing to the top of the hill. At multiple points along the wall he made it his personal quest to climb up to the wall, which was no small feat.

On Sunday afternoon we stopped for lunch along the Bamburgh Castle which sits on a bluff over looking the North Sea. The nice little spot we found to have lunch was in a little patch of sand dune at the bottom of the bluff. David was a real trooper for sticking with us on this one. . . as hiking in the steep sand was not easy for him to do, especially since there are no handrails to hold as you climb down the steep dunes.

David: I think I speak for everyone in the family when I say that you are an amazing example of faith and endurance. You have been through so much, and through it all you maintain a marvelous positive attitude. Here's to a great 33rd year for you! I hope you continue to regain your health and full-mobility in the coming year.

As a lead up to David's birthday, I wanted to post something that I thought he'd get a kick out of. But I also thought this was significant enough for the rest of the family . . .

Does anyone else have fond memories of the families first PC, the compaq? Follow this link and you can see what modern mechanix had to say in their 1983 review of this new machine.

My first memories were the new years eve family extravaganzas when dad would haul it home from the office. Two kids would grab the keyboard & pound at it ferociously in a Friendlyware competition. At the same time five other kids would gather round to gaze into the 9 inch monochrome monitor to follow the action. of course it wasn't all fun & games - John Jr. spent plenty of time on the world's most boring application, the flight simulator, and John Sr. used it for some kind of office work for the 364 other day of the year.

It weighed in at 28 pounds which made it far heavier than I could possibly lift at the time. It seemed massive, but I guess that is only the weight of 5 modern laptops. It had 128k of ram vs a modern laptop which could have 4gb - if I've done the arithmetic right it would take 312,500 compaqs to get the same memory. The best comparison, though, might be the price: $3,600 in 1983 is equivalent to around 10,000 in 2008 dollars. That kind of money could get you quite a machine in 2008.

But i'm sure Dad got his moneys worth out of this thing. Aside from the value it provided at the office, there were hours of good ol' family fun in the early days. After the office upgraded, this became the family's home computer. it was a real work horse for years and years. I'm willing to bet that David kept that thing running until he was in high school. That was the first machine we used to dial onto the internet ("Nobody touch the phone for the next hour! I'm dialling onto Prodigy to find out the weather in Peoria!")

Yes, we easily got our money's worth. I'd say it had a profound impact upon some of the family members. This was Dave's original computer, he might not have become a computer whiz kid if he didn't have the chance to mess around on this thing when he was 7 years old, and if he weren't allow to totally dismantle it at age 17. For me, I spent many hours playing Millionare on that machine - it gave me my first introduction into the world of financial risk & return (I was probably the only ten year old in the area who could explain the difference between a call and a put).

Thanks Dad for being a step ahead of the technology curve. Thanks for bringing home the compaq on New Years Eve.

Happy birthday to Sarah bear

This is such a beautiful day to enjoy the birthday of my middle child. I wish I had a scanned in photo. I can add that later. Thanks for everything Sarah.
OK, this is a little bit older than I would have liked, but it is my cute little Sarah Bear!!!

Happy Birthday to THE TWINS !

Here they are, the birthday girls! Sheri and I thought that in your honor, Emily & Julie, we would draft 27 birthday wishes, etc. But then we realized it would be quite tedious, and perhaps annoying. So if I had one wish then it would be, "A Very Happy Birthday to You From Me!"

There are so many cute pictures of the twins, and I am short on time these days . . . so I'm only picking out two goods ones. The one below in the snow is one we've seen here before, but it's one of my favorites: Mt Hood, in the snow with the little plastic tubs.

By the way, can anyone help me with a little Dougall Birthday trivia - which week has the most birthdays? Would it be early January (Geoff, Rob, Zabie & Sawyer) or mid-June (Emily, Julie, Sarah, & Ty)

Anyone else getting excited for the reunion?

Thought I'd throw up a reminder that we have just a month to go, and I'm getting SO excited!

I thought it might be a good time to post another gem from the past. Here is a family photo that wasn't good enough to be framed and hung in the house. But I'm glad that it still got saved, nonetheless.

You don't have to look too hard to spot that Dad has drifted off to sleep. Top center we see John Jr. beaming with a look that says, "Vote for Me!". Rich is mustering as much effort as he can to act interest - I don't think he could possibly raise his eyebrows any higher. I can't quite read the look that David has in eyes, but the way he is tugging at his baby sister makes it look like he's preparing to yank her from Mom's lap & get her out of the picture. The Dougall girls are obviously much more photogenic - Mom, Heather & Alison all look very natural - Well Done.

Hope you all enjoy this little family shot as much as me. I might try to find the time to post a few more as we approach the reunion.

Announcing the Arrival of the Newest Dougall

The appointed day for the c-section arrived (fortunately with much less drama than our last two kids). We had a beautiful morning stroll through the park to get to the hospital. It was a much quieter hospital than I've ever been to, so we got a fantastic amount of attention from the doctors and staff there. The whole experience went without a single hitch. Some of you may have heard horror stories about the British childbirth experience (courtesy of nationalized medicine), but I have nothing but good things to say about how things went for us today (albeit with private British doctors).

At roughly 11:00am the little one was delivered - a beautiful, healthy baby boy, weighing in at 3.6 kilograms (which I believe is 7lbs 14.5oz). We haven't reached consensus on the name yet, but the chances are very high that he will be named Aiden Thomas Dougall.

Mum & Baby both had a mellow, uneventful afternoon . . .

. . . until an evening visit from the family. Needless to say, his three big brothers couldn't be more thrilled.