posted February 11th, 2007 by Shannon
A few weeks ago we had a beautiful Sunday afternoon. So beautiful, in fact, that a bike ride to the local school playground with kites in tow was in order.
This butterfly kite joined our collection last year. It was purchased at the kite festival at Ziker Park (in Austin). This was the first good fly we’ve had with it since then.
Filed under: Family on February 11th, 2007 | 2 Comments »
posted February 8th, 2007 by Shannon
It’s Thursday night and there’s so many things I should be doing to get ready for your party this weekend. There are balloons to be found and mermaids to be cut out. And have you seen your bathroom lately? It’s getting a bit nasty. That should really be cleaned before people get here so they don’t think we live like that all the time. Despite all the things I feel I need to be doing, I chose to go snuggle with you tonight. I haven’t done that in a long time. I doubt I’ll ever get to snuggle with my 5 year old little girl again. I bet you’ll be 6 by the next time. Here’s what I learned while we snuggled:
Sometimes when you wear your purple nightgown you like to pretend you are a mermaid. You dive under the blanket like it was water and you peek out the side. At dance class today, Miss Annie played some music and told you to raise your hand up really high if you liked it. She played a song from The Little Mermaid and you liked it so you raised your hand up really high but Deztiney didn’t. Then she played a song from The Lion King and Deztiney raised her hand up but you didn’t. She went with The Lion King song and you didn’t really like it. But now you like it okay. What does harmony mean? Like “perfect harmony†that’s in that song. You’ve never seen The Lion King and don’t really want to because you think it might be scary. Have you seen it Mommy? Did you like it? No, you didn’t know that Aunt Lala used to like The Lion King so much that she decorated her entire room with Lion King stuff. Does she still have her room decorated in Lion King? Did she ever ask Gran if Gran would decorate her whole house in Lion King? You’re so excited for your birthday. You know that tonight is Lilli’s first night to be 6. And tomorrow night will be her second night to be 6. And the night of your birthday will be the third night for her to be 6. You wonder why your brother wants to have more than you. You wonder why he wanted to eat more pretzels than you did tonight. “I love you so much Mommy. I love you so much that I want to be with you all the time. I used to really only want to be around Daddy all the time, but now I want to be around Daddy AND you all the time.â€
Gosh, what bathroom floor is really more valuable than that?
I love you, my little mermaid!
Mommy
Filed under: Family on February 8th, 2007 | 5 Comments »
posted January 6th, 2007 by Shannon
No, not us. My cousin and his wife will be on Wife Swap this next Monday. From what we hear, it will be ….. interesting!
Filed under: Family on January 6th, 2007 | 4 Comments »
posted January 4th, 2007 by Shannon
I spent 9 days visiting family for the holidays and had a great time. Tonight I realized that in each of the past 4 days I have shared a meal with different members of my extended family. Lunch in my hometown with my family on Monday. Dinner with some members of G’s family on Tuesday. Lunch on Wednesday with my sister-in-law and her daughter as I was running errands in her neck of the woods. And finally dinner with my extended family tonight.
How much family would that be? I’m glad you asked. It would be 2 grandparents, 2 parents, 2 parents-in-law, 2 sisters, 2 sisters-in-law, 3 brothers-in-law, 1 niece, 1 nephew, 7 cousins, 3 aunts, 3 uncles, 4 first cousins once removed (or children of my cousins).
If you want to extend that to include the past 2 weeks you can add 2 more grandparents, 2 more brothers-in-law, 2 uncles-in-law, 2 aunts-in-law, 1 cousin-in-law and 3 first-cousins-once-removed-in-laws (or something like that). But that is getting WAY too complicated so I’ll stop there.
One of the cousins I was able to see tonight was a cousin George has never met. He brought his two kids for us all to meet. It was really good to see him after such a long absence.
George and I both feel blessed to have such family around us. There are definitely crazy moments, and I doubt that any of our family gatherings will ever be called “calm”. But we do feel blessed.
Filed under: Family on January 4th, 2007 | 3 Comments »
posted December 12th, 2006 by Shannon
It’s been a year and a half now and this is apparently my 101st post.
My youngest sister is scheduled to arrive at my house in approximately 35 hours.
I made my 3 kids cry at the store today. H cried because I tried a couple shirts on and couldn’t hold her while doing so. N cried because I wouldn’t buy the pink (yes, pink) car he wanted. E cried because I wouldn’t buy the large mermaid horse stuffed animal she wanted. (Yes, a mermaid horse!) It was MY turn to cry when we got home.
Filed under: Family on December 12th, 2006 | 2 Comments »
posted December 8th, 2006 by Shannon
Ant~Swing~Spring~Hibernate~Eclipse
AJAX~Ruby~Rails~Struts~Tomcat~SOAP
SAX~Velocity~Wet~Watir (spelling intended)
It’s been almost 6 years that I’ve been out of the programming world and I just can’t keep up any longer. George has been using these words lately and I’m starting to get that eyes-glazed-over look when he does. You know the look. It’s the one that non-computer geeks get when the computer geeks get together and start talking their geeky language. Only now I’m on the outside. I know there’s a computer definition for all those words and I half-way know what several of them mean. But I couldn’t participate in a conversation about them. I don’t know that I’ll ever have a chance to catch up and be a productive member of the programming world again, and that makes me a bit sad. I wouldn’t trade the time I have at home with my kids (even after days like today), but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss the thrill of programming. *sigh*
And now you ask where such a randon post came from. It’s a bit embarrasing, but I’ll tell you anyway. Tonight I had to ask George what a POJO was. See, I told you I was definitely behind. Any programmer worth their salt would know that!!
Filed under: Family on December 8th, 2006 | 5 Comments »
posted November 27th, 2006 by Shannon
One of the things we miss about San Antonio is H-E-B. (That would be the grocery store, not the school district we are currently in.) Another thing we miss is the Spurs. Sure, we can still watch the games here, but it’s not the same. Put those two together and what do you have? Spurs commercials for H-E-B!
For those not fortunate enough to live in the San Antonio viewing area, take a peek at the commercials you are missing. My favorite is Coach Pop’s commercial.
Filed under: Family on November 27th, 2006 | No Comments »
posted November 24th, 2006 by Shannon
In addition to last year’s list, I am also thankful for:
Hannah-bear and our midwives Alisa and Ann ~ Our S.A. friends (we sure miss you guys!) ~ Our new community of faith ~ Our health ~ Thrift stores ~ Books that make me think ~ George’s new job ~ Our families (I know I said that last year too, but you guys are really important to us!)
We’re sorry the blog has been so quiet lately. Yes, George does have a full-time job now and he is enjoying the work. Maybe he can find some time to blog about it himself.
Filed under: Family on November 24th, 2006 | No Comments »
posted November 5th, 2006 by George
Well, we took the kids trick-or-treating in our new neighborhood this year. We had a great time. Emily dressed up as a fairy and Nathan decided to be a brown bear. Hannah picked a cute pink flower costume her mommy made.
In the past years in SA, we really didn’t get much traffic and ended up with lots of candy left at the end of the night. This year was quite different for us. The streets were packed! I was quite surprised. One block over was a haunted house and there were easily close to 150 people on that block alone. There were kiddos everywhere in all kinds of costumes. We made two trips out to knock on doors, but Emily was getting cold and wanting to be carried, so we called it a night.
You may have also seen the picture from Christy from our gathering at Carissa’s house on Saturday. We had a great time hanging out with the the fam and watching all the cousins play. At one point the 3 older cousins that can run around were running all over the backyard with some small lights. They looked like a swarm of fireflies. And Ryan showed off his prowess on the grill. Very tasty.
Filed under: Family on November 5th, 2006 | 3 Comments »
posted November 4th, 2006 by George
I recently found out that the free anti-virus software we have been using for years is no longer going to be free. Ouch.
As a result, I’m now on the hunt for a new solution. We have been using a hardware firewall and the free anti-virus software with occasional scans from an online virus scan. I want to find a good anti-virus software and a good Internet filter software. So, I thought I’d launch an informal survey here of our readers and/or friends. What do you use for your Internet security solution?
Filed under: Geek Talk on November 4th, 2006 | 6 Comments »