Kevin & Johna .com

Since he was born in September … and in Minnesota … Kyler has spent very little time outside in the sun. When we went to Florida this past January, we quickly saw that he wasn’t crazy about being out in the sun. On our first couple of days there, we bought him a hat to keep his eyes in the shade, which he found mildly acceptable.

Now that Summer is around the corner, we thought we’d try to find some sunglasses. We were curious to see if he would be OK with them or would just want them off his face. As you can see, he thought they were pretty cool.

On Friday, Kyler will be seven months old. Man, has that gone quickly! Since he’s (technically) still in the half-way to a year point, I thought we should sneak in some six month pictures before the end of the week.

One of my goals with Netcot this year is to really take advantage of the renewed success that its seen in the last couple of years. For those of you who don’t know, it was actually one of the very first Disney fan sites on the internet and for a period of time considered to be one of the Big 5. As more sites came on-line, we tried to differentiate from the rest of them as much as possible.

Netcot quickly became the opposite of everyone else. If other sites put watermarks on pictures to prevent you from re-using them on your own website or computer - we put up twice as many in higher quality without any watermarks. If other sites banned people, we encouraged people to speak their mind and be constructively critical about EXACTLY what they thought of Disney-stuff. The format worked. People found Netcot to be a refreshing change … except other sites, who seemed to see us as an enemy. To this day, I don’t understand why we couldn’t just all get along.

We then hand the brilliant idea to massively redo the site with a new design that was unlike anything else out there. It was an ambitious idea… and it didn’t work. The site eventually launched (on our 4th design concept) 3 years later than expected. We came back on-line and found that only a small group of core fans were still there waiting for us. (There was also a whole “legal” incident related to a misunderstanding of our satirical approach on ride reviews - but I’ll save that for another day).

We regrouped, retooled and restarted.

The latest generation of Netcot started a little over 2 years ago when we launched the Netcot podcast. Since then, Netcot has become bigger than ever! The podcast has been one of the featured iTunes Music Store podcasts (on iTunes & AppleTVs) for 26 months in a row (”Kids & Family” category)! Tens of thousands of people download the show each month. Our first-ever video podcast episode also continues to attract attention over at YouTube.com.

Last June, we launched the newest version of Netcot.com, this time determined to be one of the best sites to find the biggest and most interesting Disney news. In the last 6 months, well over a million people visited Netcot.com and the numbers continue to grow every week. Google’s news site polls Netcot.com frequently and often uses Netcot as a news source in their Google Alerts system. We’ve even been told that some radio station DJ’s have mentioned Netcot as their source of a Disney-related story.

We’ve even attracted the attention (in this case, GOOD attention) of Disney themselves, who recently wrote us to clarify confusion of Netcot visitors over details of a press release we covered. We got advanced notice of these corrections a full day in advance of the press release being corrected and re-issued to the media!

There are a number of people that have also stepped forward and offered to help at Netcot. We have 5 people on “staff” that donate their time to helping out with the site writing editorial articles, covering news stories and publishing original artwork for the site. We have a number of sponsorship deals in the works, including one with an upcoming book publisher. And today, our first full page ad hit a targeted magazine audience…

The site continues to grow in popularity and I continue to be amazed and thankful to everyone who follows it, listens to the weekly podcast and participates in the message boards. Their passion for Netcot fuels my late nights of keeping the site updated and cranking out a podcast. Long after Johna and Kyler have been asleep, I can be found in the “studio” working on last minute editing before that week’s show is launched.

I’m thrilled about where the site is now and I can’t wait to see where it goes from here…

To really appreciate this, you need to know something about my dad… his attire during the summer always consists of at least one part Polo by Ralph Lauren. Its somewhat of an obsession. Often, we find that he’s taken special care to match the Polo horse logo to a pair of matching shorts.

My brother (Rob) also had this obsession for a brief period of time. Then he countered it with a new found love: the salvation army store. The family intervened and now he’s a bit back on track sporting mostly American Eagle in his attire. Still, my dad will often look at Rob and jokingly ask “where did we go wrong?” as he fondly remembers comparing his Polo collection with Rob’s.

No, we’re not all stuck up snobs… its just one of those little inside jokes that carries from year to year. Now that you know that, you’ll be able to more fully appreciate this:

Wow. I haven’t blogged in a long time and THAT is the best title I can come up with?

Here’s some new Kyler pictures. As you can see, he’s starting to figure out what a sippy-cup is and loves books … especially when they can be placed in the mouth and not read. Enjoy:

Wow! That’s a really clever title for this entry, isn’t it?! Hopefully I will think of something better before I hit “publish” on this post. If you’re still reading this, I wasn’t successful in doing that.

Here are some new pictures we’ve taken of Kyler since we got back from our last trip.

The box:

Fingers:

Relaxing:

Posing:

Valentine’s Day:

We’re back.

We had a very fun time on this trip. It certainly was a different experience with a 4-month old (you’ll have to listen to upcoming episodes of my Netcot Podcast to hear more about that). Now that we’re home, Kyler has been doing some serious napping. Its almost like he knows he’s home and can relax and un-wind from a very busy couple of weeks.

The grand total of photos this year was 345 and about 2 DVDs worth video (that still needs to be edited together). I’ll spare you the balance of the 345 pictures that I haven’t posted yet (mostly because a lot just aren’t that interesting - or are very similar to what I have posted) and instead leave you with this final set below.

We took Kyler to meet Mickey today at Chef Mickey’s in the Contemporary Resort. He started breakfast by sleeping but woke up just in time to meet Minnie, Pluto and Mickey. We had to leave before we got a chance to meet Donald and Goofy, so we’ll have to meet up with those guys next time.