My wife had another ultrasound two weeks ago and as you might have guessed, we are having a boy. Time has really flown by. It doesn't feel like too long ago that we just got back from vacation and found out that we were pregnant, and here we are 5 months later. We've been slow moving on preparing the nursery. We only have two bedrooms in our house, one being ours and the other is used as an office/baseball card storage/memorabilia display/sewing room. Nearly everything has been cleared out, but we've still got to re-carpet the room as well as paint it. Traditionally, my wife's grandmother purchases the crib for each of her new great-grandchildren; the tradition continues. And both our parents went in together and purchased a dresser. We'll be borrowing an unused changing table, and although we haven't had a baby shower yet, the baby clothes and things are starting to slowly pile up from various family members.

In other news, my wife's sister is to undergo a C-Section on Wednesday, and it'll be exciting to welcome our 3rd niece, Avery, into the world in a few days. I might even get in there and change a few diapers for practice on this one. I avoided changing diapers at all costs for the twins, but now the duty will be unavoidable in about 4 months, so I might as well upgrade from my greenhorn status in the diaper changing arena.

I went to my first Red Wings game in Detroit this weekend (I've also seen them play in Chicago). I went with my Dad and brother, the Wings killed the Oilers 8-3, but we had a lot of fun. The Joe Louis Arena, while a bit outdated, certainly has a lot of history hanging in the rafters and wandering around the stadium. And in lieu of the previous picture, a literal brush with greatness: There are statues Wings Hall-of-Famers Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay and Alex Delvecchio, in the same vein as the ones in left field at Comerica Park of Tigers HOF'ers. As I was taking pictures of the Gordie Howe statue, Gordie Howe himself accidentally bumped into my brother, who was standing nearby. My brother turns to my Dad and says, "That's Gordie Howe!" to which Gordie, looking over his shoulder, replies with a smile, "No it isn't." He was making his way to a ringed off area on the concourse to sign some books, just blending into the crowd. Not until he sat down did people start to pay attention and immediately surround the table to get near.

For my brother, bumping into Gordie was awesome. While I enjoy seeing the Red Wings do well, admittedly, I don't follow them nearly as much as my Dad and brother. They love the Wings enough to drop $200 apiece for Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals last year. However, a few years ago we did get to check out the actual Stanley Cup trophy in person. Pretty cool.

As for the game itself, yeah there were a ton of goals scored, but the tension was gone after the Wings scored 3 goals in the first 5 minutes and were leading 5-0 after the 1st period. We spent the evening in Greektown, had dinner and did a little gambling. And after visiting the Joe for the first time this weekend, I already have tickets to go back at the end of March with 3 other buddies.

My wife and I spent a night in Grand Rapids weekend before last for our 3rd anniversary. On the way back we stopped at a liquidating Circuit City and picked up Rock Band 2 for the Wii for 40 bucks. I own all 3 Guitar Hero titles for the Wii and had played Rock Band sparingly a few other times at friends'. I bought Rock Band simply to play nearly 100 new songs I don't already have with the Guitar Hero games. And after playing for a week or so, Rock Band is clearly the better game. I really like the way the career mode is set up, as opposed to just a list of sets with seemingly random songs on Guitar Hero. It could be just me, but the music sounds cleaner than in Guitar Hero. And at first I was wary of the notes as skinny rectangles instead of fat circles as in Guitar Hero, but I like the note charts in Rock Band much better. They are easier to see against the black background, and it could be me, but it seems like because the notes are so skinny that there is more room to see more of the upcoming notes. Though I've only played the first 25 songs or so, the difficulty on "Hard" does seem a touch easier than GH World Tour's "Hard" difficulty. Which is quite a bit easier than GH III's "Hard" difficulty. Rambling a bit, but I think that made sense.

And finally, for no apparent reason, a recommendation for those of age beer drinkers, I just bought a 6-pack of Hop Hound the other night. Pretty good stuff and fairly easy drinking. It's a seasonal amber wheat from Michelob, and if you're not ashamed to buy a beer sporting a stupid dog with sunglasses on the bottle, I'd give it a try.

See you around and take it easy.

Disclaimer: All the pictures are mine except the Tigers statues and the Hop Hound.