Springfield Stephanie & Opening Day

Stephanie has now been Simpsonized as well. I think that you will agree, she is one good lookin' Springfield resident.

In other news, I am terrible at picking teams for the NCAA tournament. Stephanie won our home pool and whipped me good! Not sure what she wins for that, but hopefully it won't involve a lot of housework for me! Of course, who (besides the experts this year) would ever pick all 4 #1 seads to make it to the Final Four? I know that it has never happened before and I remember from stat class in college that the odds of all 4 #1 seeds making the tourney was far worse than a #16 seed taking out a mighty #1. Now that it has happened, does that change the probability?

On another note, today was opening day for Major League Baseball. My Tigers decided to loose to the Kansas City today. Yeah, the team with the best off-season this year decides to lose their home opener to the Royals in extra innings! At least new comer Miguel Cabrera took one Loooonnnnng Gone, as Hall of Fame Announcer Ernie Harwell would say! I'm predicting a big year for my beloved Tigers, they should win the AL Central, the AL Pennant, and this year they will be World Champs! Stephanie and her family like the Indians.


Stephanie and I are trying to make it to all 30 Major League Baseball parks together. We have done pretty well so far. So far we have been to 13 (Detroit, Chicago Cubs, Seattle, LA, Anaheim, Oakland, San Francisco, Arizona, Saint Louis, NY Yankees, NY Mets, Boston, Cincinatti). I have been to Minnestoa, Denver, Atlanta and the Chicago Sox without Stephanie and she has been to Cleveland and Atlanta on without me. Stadiums only get crossed off the list if we've been there together and we have decided that we do not have to go to new stadiums if we had been to their predacessor.


Happy Opening Day! Go Tigers!!

The Springfield Lesnets

The Indiana Lesnet's have had a big week filled with firsts.

This week, Kai went to his first baseball game. He went to see the Noblesville Millers beat up on the Lebanon Tigers.

Kai slept though the night on Wednesday March 26th. That was the same night as the baseball game. I think we may be going to more baseball games.

The Lesnet's have been cooking a lot this weekend (this much cooking is definitely a first!). Stephanie has discovered the art of freezer cooking. Stephanie ordered this book and has spent time on the Pioneer Woman's website. Our freezer is filled with lots of delicious food, but we are pretty tired after doing a month's worth of meals the past 2 nights.

Kai made his first trip to church today. Common Ground Christian Church, where we are members, doesn't have Saturday services, but Common Ground had a leaders conference today. Stephanie and I learned a lot today. I think that Kai got a lot out of it and although he is very advanced for his age, we feel that we may hold him out of church leadership for at least a couple more months.

Kai and I also got Simpsonized today. I highly recommend doing this. It is really easy and pretty fun. I had no idea that we would make such ridiculously good looking Simpsons!

Here is a picture of Kai with Kiki the beagle.

We hope that you all are doing well. Thank you for checking out our blog!

Happy Easter!

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) - John 20:1-9 (NIV)

Easter Sunday is the day that we Christians set aside to celebrate that Christ rose from the dead! He has risen! Hallelujah!

Today we returned from Bowling Green Ohio, where we went to celebrate with Stephanie's family. This weekend, Kai was able to meet his Aunt Kimberly, Great Uncle Kris, Great Aunt Bev, Great Uncle Jack, Great Aunt Pat, and cousins Shaun, Jennifer, and AJ.

Stephanie's family lives about 200 miles away from us, so this was a HUGE trip for our family. Kai did amazingly well. He kept to his schedule and did nearly as well at a "strange" place as he does here at home! Although Kai has came through just fine, mom and dad are exhausted!!

If you know Stephanie and I well, you know that we are pretty cheap...er, I mean value conscious. We are both accountants and so the "total cost of ownership" is king when we are looking to purchase autos. Therefore we own a Honda Accord and a Toyota Corolla, and with gas now North of $3.30 per gallon, the Corolla is our car of choice. The Corolla was a fine car for a lengthy road trip when there was just 2 of us, but now with Kai and his amazing amount of stuff, we've got a pretty tight fit. When we needed to stop on the way to feed Kai or change his diaper, it truely felt like we were in a clown car. We are going to try and hold out for at least 3 more years before we trade up for something bigger (we'll need some encouragement). Although we spent about 10 total hours crammed in to a sub-compact, we can feel good that we only burned about 11 gallons of fuel. That's a pretty small "carbon footprint" produced by the Indiana Lesnet's this weekend. Maybe Al Gore will read this post and commend us for our doing our part to save the environment!

Here is a couple of pictures from our weekend. The first is a picture of the Eridon family. Unfortunately Auntie Jessica is in the far East, teaching bad manners to Japanese school children, and couldn't be with us this weekend. The second is a picture of Kai and his parents.

God bless you all! We hope you had a very Happy Easter!!

Do We Have Irish Eyes to Smile?

Today is Saint Patrick's Day, which is a day of great celebration!

Here in the metro Indianapolis area, there is a very large Irish population. I haven't spent much time looking at my genealogy before today, but today I'm on a mission to find out if there is any Irish in my bloodline.

As you probably can tell if you have seen the title of this blog, our surname is Lesnet. It is a unique name and in case you are wondering, it is of German heritage. Christian Lesnett, whose story you can read about here, immigrated to America in 1752 from Hesse-Kassel, Germany.

There is a lot of information about the genealogy of my paternal grandparents, but my maternal grandparents family trees are a bit more mysterious. Since the Internet is crawling with information about my Lesnet lineage, we will start there in our search for some Blarney Stone Kissin' Irish blood!

My grandmother's maiden name was Briner (Breiner), which looks to be Dutch - No Dice!

My Great Grandmother's maiden name was Conkey, which appears to be Welsh. It also could have been McConky once upon a time, which is most definitely Irish! We've got a shot, but we'll keep going.

My Great Great Grandmother's maiden name was Logan - Let's keep going!

My Great Great Great Grandmother's maiden name was...BRANNEN! Elizabeth Brannen was born 3/13/1811 in IRELAND, which is where Irish people come from!!!

Well, I guess I'm at least 1/32 Irish! That is something to be proud of, although I feel bad that I missed the Saint Patrick's Day parade today. I also felt a little bad that my wonderful son, Kai may only be 1/64 Irish until Stephanie reminded me that her Great Grandfather's name was Bliss O'Ferrell, which makes her at least 1/16 Irish. Now for all of you math wizzes at home, I'm sure that you have done the math and you already know that Kai more than 1/13 Irish! This is truly a cause for celebration!

Here is a picture of 3 generations of Crazy Irish Lesnet Men:


The above picture was taken at a Lesnet family get together yesterday hosted by our cousins Brad and Molly up by Fort Wayne. It was the first time that any of our extended family members had met Kai. Next weekend, we are going to go up to Bowling Green, Ohio to see the Eridon side of the family. We will be spending a couple of nights up there and it looks like we may have to drive 2 cars up there with the amount of stuff that we have on our packing list. It is amazing how many accessories kids seem to need.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!

On Being Mr. Mom, Shots, and Insomnia

I know what you are thinking after reading the title; "This could be an epic blog entry". You are correct, it could be and it may be, it all depends on if I get sleepy enough to try to go to sleep again.

This past weekend my parents came down to visit for a couple of days (Grandpa and Grandma Lesnet) to help us get all ready for Stephanie's first day back to work. She still has several weeks left on her maternity leave but there were a few things that she wanted to get done, so I spent Monday playing Mr. Mom. First off, I never in a million years thought that being a stay-at-home parent was easy, although I did see a lot of cool perks to the job. Perks like lots of quality time with the kids, a stress-free commute, The Price is Right, just to name a few. Anyway, on Monday I had my chance!

Stephanie has been getting in a couple of hours a day of work from home every day lately and we have Kai on a pretty good routine. Since Stephanie can get some work done from home while watching Kai, I figured that I would be able to do so as well since there really isn't much to watching an 8 week old infant (I mean they just eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom right?). I even told my boss that I would have the laptop fired up and shouldn't have any trouble working on any projects that may come up.

I was wrong! It turns out that Kai cries himself to sleep for his first nap of the day. Who knew? The comedy of errors continued until mom returned at about 3:30. Kai was then a perfect angel for the rest of the evening...a little salt in the wound.

I thought that I may have been cut out for a Mr. Mom role. Nope, at least not yet!

Today Kai had his 8 week doctor's appointment. This is the appointment where they start giving babies vaccinations. Today he received 4 vaccinations. 3 were shots that they give him on his upper thigh, and one was an oral. The oral one must have tasted decent because Kai lapped it up pretty good, but those shots were another story. He received the first one and started screaming bloody murder. The second shot was close behind and the third one would have been if not for the nurses error. The nurse broke the syringe and had to go and get a new one for the final shot. It took me quite a while to get him calmed down a little. She then returned to give him that 3rd one...ugh! We were warned that he would probably be very fussy after his shots and he was. He whimpered and cried from the time we left the doctor's office until 9:30 tonight.

As for my insomnia, I think that this epic blog post is helping to cure it. I hope all of you blog readers are doing well!

GOOD NIGHT AND STAY CLASSY!

Diaper Shenanigans

It seems that every parent spends a lot of time talking about diapers and their child's bathroom habits. For newborns it is the #'s of wet and dirty diapers, for toddlers it is how incredibly smelly they are now that they are eating solid food, later it is potty training that dominates parental dialog. I've always tuned out these conversations, but it seems to come up in nearly every discussion that you have with other parents.

I promise that I will try to keep this blog clean and stay away from "toilet humor", but I am now a parent so I have to at least have one potty discussion on my blog.


Now, you have to understand, I am the resident expert on all things little boy since I was one 30 years ago. Because of my expertise (at least that's what I tell Stephanie), I have yet to be pee'd on. Last night, that all changed in dramatic fashion.


While we were putting Kai through his nightly bedtime routine, Stephanie handed Kai off to me to change his wet diaper. When I took the diaper off, he started to go #2. No worries, I was prepared for that. I then switched out the old diaper for a new one and before I could get the new one under him, he started peeing, then pooing, then peeing again, followed up by a little more poo. It was amazing, I don't think he did it on purpose but it started to seem that way as every time I started to work at getting a clean diaper on this boy, he started going #1 or #2 again! Hmmm, now that I read this, it doesn't sound nearly as funny as it was. Maybe it was one of those things where you just had to be there to appreciate it.

Kai says "Boiler Up!"

Sleep is Precious

In the last 2 days, little Kai has made some amazing progress on sleeping through the night and we are very thankful! Two nights ago, he slept for 5 hours in a row and last night he made it 6 hours! He has always been a good sleeper for his age, but this is an amazing breakthrough for a couple of over-tired parents!



There isn't a lot of new news to report except that we are somewhat rested and very happy about it!


Here is a picture of Kai Boilering Up! Too bad they won't win the Big Ten this year.

Our First Post

Hello Everyone!

The Indiana Lesnet's are going to give this blogging thing a shot. A little over 6 weeks ago, the Indiana Lesnets grew by one! Now in addition to Chad and Stephanie, we have a little boy named Malachi, whom we call Kai.

Here are Malachi's starting stats:
Malachi James Lesnet
January 16, 2008 at 11:58 am
20 Inches & 8 lbs, 0 ozs

The past 6 weeks have been incredible and tiring. Stephanie and I have learned so much about our new little guy and even more about ourselves. In outline form, here are some of the tidbits that we have learned about being parents:

1. When people say that having a child will change your life, they are right! It changes in all of the ways that you expect it to, but the changes that folks are talking about are much deeper than that.
2. Being up at 3am isn't as much fun as it used to be
3. We have amazing friends! We have had 3 meals delivered to us each week since he has been here. Our friends are also amazing chefs!
4. Babies create a lot of laundry. I firmly believe that if possible, families should use their dependant tax deduction to buy high capacity washer and dryers.
5. Mother-In-Laws (now grandmothers) are AWESOME!!!!
6. Mini Vans are the coolest! We don't have one, but we will get one someday. It's truely amazing the amount of stuff that these little ones require.
7. Take adavantage of every quiet moment, but don't try to fit too much in to them.
8. Dogs are not helpful (We have a 4 year old beagle named Kiki).
9. Your spouse still loves you. If you cry loud enough, they may actually acknowledge that you still exist.
10. The whole world stops when your little one smiles at you.

Alright, that will do for now. We are hoping for weekly updates.

Thanks for reading,
Chad, Stephanie, Kai, and Kiki the beagle