A post from a guest writer...

We have had a lot of excitement this past week. The first time in the bumbo, cousins from NY visiting, and Easter!! I will post and upload all the pictures later this week but for now, I'll leave you with a few Easter faves and Brian's first (and possibly last) post...Enjoy!

He is obviously not impressed!

I love how worried he looks. He's thinking, "Mom - are you seriously thinking that this is cute?"


After all the family and cousins left. I have a similar picture of Brian in a meat coma from too much ham.

And now to Brian's post...

Surly – you can’t be serious"

So as I sit and read the blog my wife won’t let me write on, I am thinking to myself, ‘how am I going to document all of the great pieces of advice that I want to give to my son but he is too young to remember and I will forget by the time he is old enough to not listen to me?’ And then it donned on me – Add a column to Robyn’s blog that I can put advice down on, along with important talk about what movies to watch, beers to drink, and the sweet torque of a perfectly thrown ball (curve, foot-, basket-, doesn’t matter). You know - the important stuff.

So in lieu of any formal sponsorship, and under threat of copyright infringement by ESPN’s Bill Simmons’ pack of wild lawyers, I cannot call this section of advice I give to my son the "Miller Lite Great Call of the Month." Instead I will call this the "Surly – You Can’t Be Serious" advice section of Robyn’s Blog, where I pass advice on to my now 7-week old son while giving free publicity (to all 8 family members who read this) to one of my favorite beers, Surly(www.surlybrewing.com). So now, an open letter to Charlie:

Charlie –

As we begin this great journey called parenting I want to take this time to tell you what an awesome kid you have been over the first 6 weeks of your life. As you snuggled in my arms this morning while we were watching Die Hard (one of the best Christmas movies ever) I was hoping a tradition was being born: hanging out on the couch, eating a bowl of cereal while Mom is sleeping, and watching a really great 80’s action movie. Of course, once you are two I won’t be able to watch those movies with you until you are 14 or so, but for now it is great.

I would also like to thank you for being born just before the NCAA basketball tournament. Now I can use you as my excuse for not wanting to go anywhere, when instead I just want to hang out in front of the 3 TV’s I have set up so I can watch as many games as possible. I can already sense a Father-Son trip to Las Vegas when you are old enough (if it is still the place it is today in 21 years).

This brings me to this Month’s "Surly You Can’t Be Serious’ moment: a word of warning about the NCAA basketball pool. Don’t agree to a bet with your wife thinking that there is no way that you are going to lose. In the NCAA tourney – anything is possible. It just takes a couple teams to get hot and before you know it EVERY ONE of your Final Four picks have lost and the next thing you know you are taking your wife to the casino for an evening of hot Nickel-Slot action. At least they have cheap buffet’s. (I’ll explain those to you when you get older). For now I will leave you with 5 great 80’s Action Movies that you can count on seeing when you’re old enough:

- Die Hard

- Lethal Weapon

- Rocky

- Predator

- Top Gun

Now I just have to convince your Mom to put this in the blog.

Love, Dad