i'm happy to report that the progress report for amber poplion is very good.

amber finally got off of intubation this weekend and today was finally released from the icu unit and is in a regular room in children's hospital!

ruthie and i visited her today and she was fairly alert and playing with her doll and even smiling. the doctors say they expect her to fully recover.

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i'd like to introduce sophie anne levin, the newest member of our extended buford clan.

sophie anne arrived on august 30th, 2008 at 10:50am, weighing in at 7lb. 6oz.

the proud parents are julie and ben levin of manhattan, ny and they have made my cousins inez and bruce levin of tampa, florida proud new grandparents. also, ben's brother matthew is now an uncle for the first time too.

welcome to our family. now we just have to somehow make a visit to new york to see the cute little bundle.

ben and julie have a web photo gallery up (glad to say it was done on a mac and works great) where you can see a bunch of photos of sophie anne and their family.

spend most of the weekend at children's hospital with the poplion family.

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a little sweet 8 year old girl named amber poplion got very sick on vacation in hot springs, arkansas and had to be flown quickly to the hospital in dallas saturday morning. five days later she is still very sick and the cause is unknown.

the poplion's are a very warm family and we recently have become close friends with them.

please say a special prayer for amber's recovery.

the photo is from sometime in july when we got together with the poplion's to go pick wild grapes in south dallas county on the side of the road.

we just got back on saturday from our 5 night cruise out of galveston, texas on the carnival ecstasy.

wow. we all (the whole family of five) had a super time on the cruise. it really was a very relaxing and fun trip.

the food was endless and luckily i only gained back 1.5 pounds! i mean really endless.

the buffet food was pretty good, but nothing to get excited about. where the cruise line really shined was in the main dining room. the food was fabulous. the service was even better. we had a waiter from peru named martin (see photo of martin with the boys) who was really spectacular.

keep in mind that the boys (i have been told that i am not exactly the best here) are usually a bit to handle all together and they can pack away a lot of food (hmmm, i thought you were supposed to get fat when you ate that much) when given the chance.

well, the cruise was the ultimate test of that.

see, in the dining room, you can order as much as you want. you want two entrees, no problem. you want five appetizers, whatever. i think many people have no clue about this when they are new to cruising.

so ruthie and i had been before and we told the boys they could order as much as they wanted.

well, i think our average (in fairness, ruthie pretty much stuck to a few appetizers and one entree) was seven appetizers and 2.5 entrees per person over the entire cruise for dinners. plus there was one night when jon, ruthie and i went to the midnight extravaganza (with the ice sculptures and food carvings) so that day the three of us had 4 meals!

we asked martin who had ordered the most food in the dining room and he said "your table". then we asked him who ordered the most food on the whole cruise and he said "your table". well, i guess we got our money's worth out of this cruise. martin, you were great. he told us which food was the best and never flinched when we ordered 11-12 items overall each.

so besides the food, we woke up for early morning sunsets, told long walks on the decks, used the steam rooms and saunas, went to shows, karaoke, comedy shows and had a great time.

the ship stopped in mexico in the yucatan at a port called progresso and at cozumel.

in progresso we took a local bus to the capital merida (21 miles) and walked around among the true locals far away from all the tourists. had real mexican tacos in a market and did a bit of shopping.

in cozumel (which ruthie and i had been to the day after we got engaged) we got a cab to the mr. sancho beach and swam in the gulf, played ping pong, buried jon in the sand, had a few beers and ate a bit. it was very relaxing and calming.

on the way back from galveston, we dropped david off at a&m, visited with amy for 5 minutes and came home.

now they all want to go on another cruise.

we just got back from milwaukee, wisconsin (see really good family vacation to milwaukee) and i had promised my lovely wife ruthie that i would post a picture of our friend bart koenig as "soon as we got back".

yup, this is a honey do.

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we met bart years ago because his company, velocitie integration, inc. was doing business with ruthie's city of cedar hill, texas. we went to dinner then and then again when he was in town the next time a year or so later.

so, when we went to milwaukee, ruthie called bart and he happened to be coming from green bay down near milwaukee for business when we would be there. so we met for breakfast and took this photo.

good seeing you again bart. maybe one day we will get to meet your family too.