New and improved version (and newly added photos) of "Farewell BBQ for the Steenbliks (featuring special cameo appearance by Sarah)-July 5th"

On Saturday, July 5th Erin's parents threw a goodbye party for Erin, Nate and family. They will be going to Buffalo, New York (near Niagara Falls) for Nate's Nurse Anesthetist schooling. Nate promised to anesthetize me any time I want one he comes back (I have trouble sleeping). Even Justin joined us (he was on break from his military intelligence/spy training in Arizona). But, you may notice that Jake is strangely not in attendance (apparently he had better things to do than see the Steenblik's for the last time ever! j/k) Loni also came with her dreamboat boyfriend, who is in school to become a PhD/MD (I guess it's better to be both). Anyway, it was cool to see everyone; the number of children keeps growing and growing..! This video was updated on July 15th, new and improved! Enjoy!

Be sure to pause the music at the bottom of the page before you start the video.

Photos of "The Crew"

Partial group photo - from left: Heather, Ali, Tom, Sarah - Front row from left: Jeff, Erin, Nate, Justin, Ashley

Nate flirtatiously peering at Jeff

Jeff looking back at Nate, panicked and confused, wondering how to respond without hurting Nate or Heather's feelings...

After Jeff decided to go for it, Justin tried to intervene (out of jealously) - he was ultimately unsuccessful

Our Trip to Florida

The long promised photos are now available... actually, after we looked at the photos there really weren't many of them. We will publish more photo and a video later, but here are a few of them:

We arrived at Fort Jefferson - a really cool place. Fort Jefferson takes up almost all of Key Dry Tortugas, and is a 2 hour boat ride from the civilization. Cuban refugees land on this island almost daily (although I was not fortunate enough to see a landing myself):



Alison looking sexy on Key Biscayne:



Both of us hanging out on the beach:



A picture of me (Tom) looking super tan, flexing all of my muscles and trying to look cool (and probably succeeding, probably):




~Glamour shot removed due to popular outrage~




The trip was great, and a great deal for us. We had a really fun time. Check out the slide show for additional photos.

Precious Moments With Our Children

A Sugar Glider with its membrane fully extended, gliding from one tree to another:

These are our 2 beast-daughters, Sugar and Baby the Sugar Gliders (See pictures below). They are both just over 1 year old, and we've had them for a year this May, since they were about 1 month old. They can live up to 15 years, but on average the captive glider lives about 12-13 years. They come from Australia, New Zealand and parts of Indonesia. Due to the coloring of ours we know they are from Southern Australia (the ones from more Northern areas are brown in color and larger in size).

Sugar Gliders are arboreal (tree dwellers) and nocturnal (the sleep all day and get up around 10 PM). They are also Marsupials which means that the carry their babies around in a pouch. The name "Sugar Glider" was given to them because they eat (in the wild) the sugary sap of a certain tree indigenous to the area; and the glider part of the name comes from their gliding membrane that runs along the sides of their body from their wrists to their ankles. They use this to glide from tree to tree in the wild (and here in our house they use it to glide from the coat rack to the bed). Because they are arboreal they have very sharp claws that enable them to climb absolutely everything, including our textured walls (we have to clip them about once a month to keep them from tearing up our skin too badly).

When it comes to their diet they are opportunists, and omnivores, meaning that they will practically eat anything. In the wild they eat bugs, small rodents, vegetation, etc. We feed them fruits and veggies along with special pellets to ensure they get the nutrients they need. We also feed them a piece of meat once in a while, and on Youtube we've seen people feed them lizards and pinkie mice, but we don't do that because we think that's messy and disgusting. Anyway, they have big personalities and are very gregarious and curious (they love to get into everything and tear it up), but somewhat shy with new people and are afraid of other animals, and their smells (because they know their world through smell, which helps them avoid predators in the wild). But they are fun to take out on adventures (like grocery shopping or on an errand) in their carry pouches. Since they are so curious they have a lot of fun. One last strange thing about them, around midnight they often start barking, and it sounds like a little dog.

The natural born killers on the prowl:



Sugar attacking her prey, the crunch berry:



Sugar's adorable pathetic look that she uses to get our sympathy:



Tommy and his favorite daughter:



The deer caught in the headlights look:

Wedding Nostalgia On Our Two Year Anniversary!

So we were looking through our photos and we found some more that we really like, this time we picked them together (Alison pointed out that we have some that are better than others...):


In anticipation of the upcoming wedding:



Flirty bridal pic taken for Tom:



Alison daydreaming about marrying Tom:



The happy couple in front of the temple starting their eternity together!



Tom getting a little overly excited for the wedding night:

The CURE!

Last night Alison and I went to see The Cure at the E center - totally awesome. Our 2 year anniversary is on June 3rd, so this was part of the celebration.

The opening band was 65 Days of Static (http://www.65daysofstatic.com/wordpress/), who reminded me a lot of one of my favorite bands Mogwai (http://www.mogwai.co.uk/). Anyway, 65 Days was way cool, right up my alley. Alison and I both really liked them. They played from about 7:30 to 8:15 or so.

Finally, the lights dimmed, lazers fired off everywhere, mystical smoke spewed forth (probably caused by Wikka magic), and Robert Smith and his crew came out. I have to say, they were an interesting bunch; the bassist looked like a classic rocker (right), the lead guitarist wore platform high heels and skin tight shiny leather (left), the drummer's hair took up most of the stage, and Robert Smith wore classic punk garb and lots of eye liner (center).





The amazing thing was that they played for over 3 hours! They had 3 encores, and he only stopped because he lost his voice (I think they had planned one more song, but during the last song he wasn't really singing, more screaching).

Our Vacation

Well, no photos yet. But the trip was great. Besides having both of our flights cancelled, both ways, we managed to get there and back pretty much on schedule. Photos and a video to come!

From Crush to Marriage

Alison and I started dating in the Fall of 2004. We took it slow by local standards, but I think we both knew pretty early on that we had something special going on. We were married on June 3rd, 2006 (coming up on 2 years!) It's been a great 3 1/2 years! Here are a few photos (this website didn't like our high-def HUGE photos, so I could only insert 5...


A downtown kiss:



Just Married--right out the temple!



Our camera man was TALL!



Pretty Alison ;-)



An engagement photo:


Hope to have some more photos sometime soon!

Our Trip

So - we'll be off to Miami and the Keys this month. We are leaving on the 26th and coming back May 4th. You can all stop worrying about the sugar gliders - My mom Pam will be taking care of them. Anyway, we'll be spending the first part of our trip in the Keys, staying in Key west. We are actually going to be arriving on the day before they re-join the Union (they ritualistically break away from the US for a few days each year, declare war, then re-join and demand aid). So, pretty much the coolest building ever lies on the last key in the archipelago - it's called Fort Jefferson... it was a fort built on a super remote, super small island called "Dry Tortugas"--it's purpose was to fight pirates (I hope they don't try to fight me because I pirated the images used in this blog entry...) We have to take a 2 hr. boat ride, then we can snorkel, tour the building... stuff like that. Dr. Mudd (who was prosecuted as a conspirator to assassinate President Lincoln) spent some time there after it was converted into a prison... If I am sent to prison for disobeying copyright laws and posting these photos to our blog, then send me there please!! Anyway, we are both pretty excited.. I'll post the video when we are back.