I've been working on the same product at work for the past three years. It's a microchip that will go onto products like this one:



This picture is of the last product I developed -- the first PCI Express multifunction data acquisition card. The new microchip goes on cards like this, but integrates a lot of cool features. Well, the chips came in today, and it made for quite an exciting day! We got the chips in the early morning, put them on some prototype boards, and fired them up. The design was set, and it would be really expensive to change it. So it was quite a nervous time to see if the chips would perform as designed, not to mention the question of whether the design was right. Well, it was really easy: the microchip talked to the host computer, and we had it running with a few minor road bumps along the way. By 1 PM, we had the boards doing their thing, and the CEO even came by to see the impressive display.

What a good way to end the year!

-Brent

I've always grown up with pets around the house. When I went off to college, I missed having one but never got one. I guess it was a good thing because Meredith has allergies to cat dander and other unknown things in the environment. If I had had a cat, it would have been a little fluffy, and Meredith probably could not have handled that.

So when we became a family, it was natural to want to have a pet. Our first one was Swordbeak the checkered garter snake. We found Swordbeak in a nearby park as we were building a campfire just for fun. We spotted her in the water and caught her. When we brought her home, we placed her in a cage, and we feed her worms and fish. We almost got a pit bull, but we realized that it would have been too much for our family.

Then I got a fish tank and filled it with fish -- Pristella Tetras, Colombian Tetras, Cherry Barbs, a Bristlenose Plecostamus, and a Synodontis ("upside-down") Catfish. The Synodontis Catfish has gotten the biggest due to the amount of food that ends up the floor. These fish have various names -- Blacky, Mr. Grumply, Romeo, Juliet, and Tybalt come to mind.

Sadly, none of these pets were particularly glad to be a part of the Roberts family. Or at least, none has expressed joy in interacting with us. Swordbeak the snake just tries to get away. The fish look at us and freak out when we get close. Despite the number of pets we have so far, there has always been something missing. So we've often thought about what to get next. Specifically, we had hoped for something mammalian -- warm-blooded, furry, and glad to be around. But Meredith's allergies were always a concern.

When we were passing out cookies to our neighbors before Christmas, we met Mary down the street. She has pet rats and introduced us to one hers. She said that rats make great pets. (See this page for more information.) Her furry friend was very friendly and crawled onto my shoulders. It would sit in our arms and just enjoy being around us. Later on that day, we had some friends over who told us that they also had pet rats. What are the odds? I've lived for over 31 years without hearing about keeping rats as pets, but in one day we talked with two people who did just that!

So it was just a matter of time before we would look into getting one for our own. Meredith called me last Saturday while I was leaving a practice. She and Ethan were getting to know the newest addition to our family: Patty Snowflake Roberts. Patty (the ratty) was the name I came up with. Ethan wanted to name her Snowflake.

Patty is a hairless hooded fancy rat. "Fancy" is another way of saying "pet". She was bred in captivity from what is probably a long line of domesticated rats. She is very friendly. When Meredith and Ethan first met her at the pet store, she stood up to meet them. When I first met her later that day, she sat on my shoulder, where she likes to hang out. We knew we wanted to buy her that day, but first we had to get a cage for her. We did that yesterday and brought her home.

She considers her cage to be a safe place. The one we bought has four levels plus a hammock and a wheel. You can see her climbing on the side of the cage in this picture. We turned a used tissue box into her home. When we went to bed last night, I left a halfway used roll of toilet paper in her cage. During the night, she tugged on it and teepeed her home, wrapping her little home with it and pulling some of it into the hole. The toilet paper was still attached to the roll below.

Patty does love to be around kids. When we first brought her home yesterday, Ethan's cousin Savannah was on her way soon after to play with Ethan. Savannah liked to pet Patty, and Ethan likes to hold her too. Patty scurries around on me while I lay or sit down on the floor. She has even cleaned herself on me, a sign that she is comfortable.

Since rats are sociable animals, we plan to get more, and soon. Patty is 4-5 months old, and we will get another one that is young too. We were told that hairless rats get picked on by their hairy friends, so we want Patty to be the oldest and most established in her home before bringing any more home. It seems like we could easily have 3 more of these and not crowd the cage.

-Brent

Hello friends and family,

This year started for our new family well, though we were not a full family yet. 2007 ended with Meredith getting her Associates Degree in Nursing, and she passed her licensing to become an R.N. Meanwhile, Brent was working to learn more about how to be a daddy as he became more and more involved in Ethan's life. We were excited and busy in the months leading up to the big day, February 23.

But perhaps we should introduce each other to our respective friends and family first. Brent is an Electrical Engineer from Ohio that came to Texas in 2002. He works for National Instruments. Meredith was born and raised in Austin and is a full time mom for Ethan, who is now four and a half years old. Brent and Meredith met in 2006 while going to Hill Country Bible Church in Northwest Austin.

The wedding day was exciting for sure, and we were glad to have so many friends and family come to take part in our big day. We were married at the Riverbend Chapel on Highway 360 on February 23, and the reception took place nearby in an indoor-outdoor setting. The weather was absolutely perfect, especially for February! It would have been cramped for our reception to have been limited to the indoors, so it was truly a blessing from God.

Meredith waited until the night of the wedding to write her new name, Meredith Roberts, for the first time. It was an endearing thing for Brent that Meredith had saved so much of herself for him.

Meanwhile the next day was exciting for Ethan to come to his new home to live with his new daddy! There was and is a lot of growing to do for the three members of the new Roberts family, and we have seen God's hand in our family coming together.

After a few weeks, Meredith and Brent went to Colorado for their honeymoon. They spent time with some of Meredith's extended family, went skiing in Breckenridge, relaxed in Estes Park, and snowshoeing in Rocky Mountain National Park. They missed Ethan and returned 9 days later. The flight home was made a little interesting as Meredith packed a gun-shaped belt buckle in a carry-on bag.

During a trip to a nearby park, we found our fourth member of the family. Swordbeak, our female checkered garter snake, was swimming through a little pond as we were sitting on rocks above. She is harmless and eats worms and fish. More recently, twelve fish have joined the growing ranks of the Roberts family.

In April, we found out that Meredith was pregnant. God had other plans, though, and on June 13th at 11 weeks gestation we lost our baby.

In July we went to Ohio for the Fourth of July. Ethan got to know his new cousins a bit more, and Brent got to experience driving 1200 miles with a four-year-old. It was quite an experience! We saw lots of animals and tractors at Young's Dairy, the location of the picture on the right. Ethan had a lot of fun playing with his new cousins. He was also king of the low dive at the pool.

We celebrated our six-month anniversary in Fredericksburg, Texas, staying at a nice bed and breakfast. We ate, shopped a little, and had a fun time at the gun range. This picture was at Bonterra restaurant, where we enjoyed some of the best food we've ever had, and the chef was a teenager!

This fall, Ethan played T-ball with the YMCA. He had so much fun, and the coach said he liked watching Ethan connect with the ball when he was at bat. He was also so serious when it came to running from base to base! As mentioned in a previous post on this blog, we painted his room green to match his dinosaur comforter.

Ethan got to dress up as a Roman soldier for Halloween, costumes made by our good friends, the Levins'. His friends Jacob, Josh, and Seth also dressed up that way. Ethan loved playing the part!

We have a lot to look forward to in 2009. Meredith will be a bridesmaid in her sister Audrey's wedding, and Ethan will be the ring bearer. Brent will be a groomsman in his friend Dan's wedding. Some of Brent's family will visit from Ohio, and we plan to visit Ohio ourselves. Ethan will play indoor soccer in the wintertime, and Meredith will continue homeschooling him. Brent's work will be exciting as the project that he has been working on for the past two years will start its validation and introduction into shipping products.

We have been praying that God will bless you this Christmas season, and we wish you a happy and safe New Year!

Love,
Brent, Meredith, and Ethan Roberts

Last night our house's heat exchanger stopped working. I walked by the computerized thermostat and noticed that it was off. Dead. Kaput. "That's odd," I thought. So I walked around to the back of the house and checked the circuit breaker panels. None were tripped, so I cycled the compressor and heat exchanger's breakers and it still was off. So I inspected the compressor, and nothing was wrong. Then I inspected the heat exchanger and noticed something odd. The service disconnect was a little wonky. I pushed it a little, and I heard some buzzing inside.

Whoa. That's not a good noise.

So what is an A/C service disconnect? I didn't know until last night. It's basically a box that lets a service technician make sure that the power is off while working on the unit. It's kinda like unplugging a car battery while working on the engine. You don't want the starter to go off for whatever reason and take your arm off. So you disconnect the battery. This service disconnect does the same thing. Only in my case, it wouldn't and couldn't.

The thing is basically a switch. It has a block of plastic that has some metal conductors on it to bridge the gaps between two pairs of lugs. If the block is inserted fully, the electricity flows. If it is taken out, there is no way for the unit to get the power it needs. Ours happened to have one side connected and the other side broken. You see, for some reason, one of the pairs of lugs had a bad connection due to some sort of mechanical failure. It heated up and melted the plastic that was holding the lug in place, causing the heat exchanger to no longer receive power.

Before I continue the story, I should point out that, while I'm an electrical engineer, I'm not an electrician. The difference is significant, kinda like the difference between a nutritionist and a cook. The nutritionist knows what is good to eat. The cook knows how to make food taste good. An electrical engineer understands the rules about electrical properties and how to use electricity in cool ways. An electrician knows how to provide power for these purposes and deliver it in a safe way.

Being lacking in such understanding has not stopped me from dabbling in home or car wiring in the past. I remember as a teenager rigging up extension cords, a switch, and a light to provide light under my parent's crawl space. An electrician would not have smiled upon my work, but at least it was temporary. When I bought my house, I replaced the circuit breaker panel in the garage because it did not have enough circuits and was really old. So, armed with these kinds of experiences and a level head, I knew that I could fix this. It was, after all, only a switch, right?

So at this point, you are probably wondering how this story is going to turn into a debacle of incompetence. But it's not. I managed to cut away at the plastic so that I could remove the wires that were behind the fused plastic. For the night, I braided, taped, and wire-tied the wires whose connection was broken so that we could have heat. In the morning, I went to an electrical supply company and bought a new service disconnect. Then I installed it and everything is now working.

So what's the interesting part? Why write this story? It is a lesson in doing things yourself. By diagnosing the problem, I saved a visit from an HVAC repairman. The HVAC repairman may or may not have been qualified to work on an electrical service disconnect. By replacing the disconnect myself, I saved a visit from an electrician. It would probably have cost over $100 to get this $17 part replaced. It also helps to have a supportive wife. She wasn't too happy that I stayed up a little later to figure out a way to get heat despite having a broken disconnect. But she was supportive and proud of me.

-Brent

My step sister, Liz, brought her daughter, Savannah, over today to play today while she went to get a facial. Savannah is 13 months old which is such a super cute age, she can sing Old MacDonald Had a Farm (the EIEIO part), and dances, and she loves her big boy cousin Ethan. When she first got here they crawled around on the floor together for at least 10 minutes, both cracking up laughing. Then we played soccer outside, I was holding Savannah while running after the ball and kicking it back to Ethan and she thought that was pretty hilarious. Then we had lunch and Ethan fed Savannah while I was in the kitchen getting his lunch ready. After lunch we went on a walk with Savannah in the stroller and Ethan on his bike. It was really fun having her over and made me think how neat it will be to have another baby one day and what an awesome little helper Ethan will be/already is.

Ethan had his last T-Ball game of the season on 15 November, and the team went to DoubleDave's afterward to celebrate. That pizza was out of the question, of course, and Ethan was quite a good boy, enjoying his buckwheat pancakes with peanut butter. Meredith had the same food, and I ate loads of pizza. For the evening, we wanted to make pizza that we could enjoy as a family. What are the ingredients? Read on...

Pizza Dough

How easy is it to make pizza dough without flour, yeast, eggs, or milk? I know what you're thinking... that seems impossible! We tried, on Barb's suggestion, to use a mix based on tapioca flour, tapioca starch, and baking powder: Chebe All-Purpose Mix. The recipe calls for eggs, so we had to substitute. Barb recommended using oil and water. I found another substitution: use flax seeds So we tried both. The flax seed method worked better, but I found both to be gummy.

What can we do next time? I'm guessing that we needed more of some kind of starch to feed the baking powder so that it rises. Maybe we'll add buckwheat flour to it. This tapioca based bread made me think more of a very thick pudding than a pizza crust.

Tomato Sauce

Ethan is allergic to tomatoes, so we tried to make pesto. I found this Easy Vegan Pesto recipe. Meredith is allergic to yeast, so no Nutritional Yeast. Meredith and Ethan are allergic to garlic, so we tried asafoteda, which can substitute. Oh, and I didn't have pine nuts, so we used almonds.

I blended the recipe together, and what did I have? Weird funky almond butter with a hint of basil. Yuck. We spread it on some of the pizza and threw the rest away. If we try again, we'll use pine nuts, and less of them.

Cheese

Did you know that they make cheese out of rice? Galaxy Foods makes this stuff called Rice Shreds. It wasn't bad at all. Too bad it did have some milk proteins in it, so Meredith was feeling it. Anyway, we piled this stuff on, and it was a welcome success.

Sausage

Meredith and Ethan are allergic to garlic. It's difficult to find sausage without garlic, but Whole Foods did have some Chipotle Chicken sausage. Not bad!

Onions and Bell Peppers

This was the only easy part of the recipe. They worked out well!

Conclusion

We had limited success. I am not used to weird substitutions, so my criticism of my own creation here was not as positive as how Meredith and Ethan felt about it. I know that Meredith can't do something as elaborate as this on a regular basis, but that won't stop me from trying.

I have had visions of painting Ethan's room since before we got married and this weekend all my dreams came true. After many hours of removing old cracked 27 year old caulk, taping, re-caulking, and painting it was all finished. We had a good time doing it. Ethan helped for the first 10 minutes then was off to spend the night with Mimi. He came to his finished room this morning.

-Meredith

This is perhaps the most interesting area of the allergies so far. When I first met Meredith, I saw this buckwheat thing that she and Ethan did with the Levins family and found it very weird. I've come to like some parts of it and dislike others. I've also learned to embrace the grand little seed and give it a chance.

We buy our buckwheat groats from The Birkett Mills, a company I found early in our marriage. The Levins had previously relied on HEB and Whole Foods to stock buckwheat groats. The supply was from China, and prices and availability have made it harder to buy. Even though the Levins had already researched it and found that shipping costs made mail order unsuitable, I set out to find it wholesale and stumbled on The Birkett Mills. For about $80 I can get 50 pounds of the stuff, and its quality appears to be better than what HEB and Whole Foods has. There are some foreign particles in it, but Meredith takes care to pick them out.

For now, I believe that we will continue to buy from Birkett Mills.

How do we use our buckwheat? Here are some ways:

Buckwheat Pancakes

• 4 cups buckwheat groats, soaked overnight, rinsed
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 4 tsp baking powder

We soak buckwheat groats in water overnight to aid digestion. Blend the above mixture in a sturdy blender. Our Blendtec blender does the trick! Cook the pancakes on a cast iron skillet or non-stick pan. Add honey, molasses, or agave.

Since Meredith is sensitive to corn, we cannot use most baking powders. In fact, even the Rumford baking powder that Meredith liked could only be used on Saturday, the magical corn day on which we are able to eat that vegetable whose forms find their way into all sorts of food. Meredith thought we could omit baking powder, but I just wasn't a fan. Last week I bought some potato-based baking powder from Whole Foods. It turned out well, but since Meredith and Ethan are sensitive to potato, that only helps so much. Today was the first time that we used just Baking Soda and Cream of Tartar instead. 1 tsp baking powder = 1/2 tsp cream of tarter + 1/4 tsp baking soda Meredith says that it turned out well. I will see. Update: Brent liked it!

Buckwheat Bread

By pouring the above pancake mix into a shallow (1" deep) baking pan, we can make a bread that has the density of cornbread. Ethan loves it. We had stopped making this after discovering that baking powder has corn in it, but maybe we can make it again.

Cooked Buckwheat

This is more boring. Put olive oil and soaked buckwheat into a pot and cook for a little while. Then add water and cook until the water is gone.

-Brent

To start off this blog, I'd like to describe where we are with food allergies. When I married Meredith and took on Ethan as a son, I had no idea how encompassing the effort was to work with them in the food allergies. To me, that means giving of myself in order to support Meredith as she keeps her and Ethan on the straight and narrow. Now there are times when she makes exceptions, but it is not my place to determine these times for her.

So here is the current list of allergies:

• Ethan and Meredith are both allergic to: egg whites, garlic, gluten, watermelon, wheat
• Ethan is also allergic to: asparagus, avocado, cantaloupe, cashew, celery, eggplant, grape, lemon, lettuce, pea, sweet potato, sesame, soybean black tea, tomato, black walnut
• Meredith is also allergic to: crab, cow's milk, baker's yeast, brewer's yeast, oats, peanuts, salmon, sole, tuna
• Ethan and Meredith are both sensitive to: black pepper, carrot, coconut
• Ethan is also sensitive to: baker's yeast, bell pepper, blueberry, broccoli, oat, orange, peach, strawberry, white pepper, white potato
• Meredith is also sensitive to: almonds, corn, lima beans, pea, safflower, soybean

Yikes! God does not have us down an easy road! But we know that He will provide for our needs. Thankfully, we live in a world where there is an abundance of alternate foods and other people who go through the same things. We are blessed to be close to the Levins family who also shares many of our allergies. Meredith and I both believe in homeschooling for other reasons, so we are able to keep Ethan on the diet. We also have family and friends who support us through this.

Why do we know that these are allergies? Meredith and Ethan have both been tested for antibody levels in their blood. The "allergic" items represent one threshold of the antibodies that means that we should cut the foods out completely. Not doing so will produce allergic reactions. Doing so may remove the antibodies from the bloodstream. The "sensitive" items represent another threshold that means that we should limit consumption to about once a week.

Apart from blood testing, they have seen various symptoms, both mental and physical, that indicate when foods give problems. Ethan's face can become red. Meredith gets foggy, irritable, and tired. Ethan gets a little hyperactive. They can both have diarrhea. Meredith itches. It's not good, and we have to work through these issues.

Why do these allergies come? We're not clear, but we know that Meredith and Ethan are somewhat celiac, meaning that the villi of the intestinal wall are damaged. So they have to maintain a gluten-free lifestyle. Furthermore, they both have a compromised gut. We're not sure why, but the current theory is that food particles pass through the intestines that shouldn't and cause antibodies to form.

So what does this mean for us? It means these things:

1. We have to avoid wheat and other things that have gluten. Bread, wheat cereal, milk, etc are out. We do eat a lot of buckwheat. (Insert Little Rascals references here.) I will write later about our experiences with this.
2. We rarely have pre-processed foods. Exceptions to this include sausage (no garlic or sulfites), corn chips and tortillas (corn, water, lime, salt, and limited oils), and other things that promise to be free of our allergens.
3. We rotate food, having a weekly regimen of foods spread across the week. We have one fish day, two beef days, two chicken days, and two pork days. We have one quinoa day, one red potato day, two rice days, and three buckwheat days.
4. Seasonings tend to be simple. Dishes tend to be focused around their ingredients and don't have much fluorishes.
5. Meredith and Ethan have conflicting allergies regarding dairy: Meredith can't have dairy, and Ethan can't have soy. There are a few rice-based dairy items (milk, yogurt).

So this blog will continue to talk about our journey in this area. I hope that it serves to journal our experiences as we try things.

-Brent

We were married on a beautiful February day here in Austin at the Riverbend Wedding Chapel. Our reception was at House on the Hill off of Bee Caves Rd only about 5 miles from our wedding site. The reception was indoor outdoor so the perfect weather could not have worked out any better.