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Today was International Midwives Day – a day to recognize and honor midwives. So a big thanks to Alisa for being our wonderful midwife. George and I have been surprised at how quickly we have bonded with her. The kids like her a lot as well, despite the shyness act they sometimes put on when she’s around. I’ve loved every bit of being under a midwife’s care and wish I had done it sooner!

Filed under: Adventures on May 5th, 2006 | 6 Comments »

… an inspector shows up to check out your house and tells you that you have a lake in your side yard.

So today we were expecting the house inspector to come over at 3:30 and were a bit surprised when our doorbell rang promptly at 2:45. Only it was the termite inspector, not the house inspector. Hmmm, guess they forgot to tell us about that part. Oh well. Mr. Termite Guy says he will start outside so we go back to throwing dirty dishes in the dishwasher and sweeping up stray Cheerios. Ding-dong! Mr. Termite Guy is back and says “Did you know you have a lot of standing water over there on the side of your house?” Uhhh, not really what you want to hear when the home inspector is due to arrive in less than an hour. Mr. Termite Guy wasn’t kidding either. The area under our gate looked like a lake. At least 3 inches of standing water. To borrow Emily’s current favorite word: YIKES!

Fortunately for us the water was not coming from our house, but from our neighbor’s yard. However, that presented its own set of challenges since our neighbor is in a nursing home now. The water people told us to call the code compliance people, who told us to call the water people, who told us to call the gas/electricity people. And no one wanted to help or even try to contact any of the numbers they had on file for her. So, George cut off the water to their house and now our lake is just soggy grass. Hopefully we’ll find out tomorrow if the home inspector found any major problems that we get to fix.

Filed under: Adventures on May 1st, 2006 | No Comments »

We now have an official date for our house to go on the market. Wednesday April 19.

Shannon and I have been working on many projects to get ready for this long awaited day, but we can hardly believe that it’s almost here. I’m not quite sure that we’re ready just yet, but hopefully we will be by Wednesday.

BTW – if anyone out there is interested in a great house, give me a call 😉

Filed under: Adventures on April 15th, 2006 | No Comments »

Mommy, will you lay down with me? I need some Mommy cuddles!
– Nathan, 2 1/2

So, has anyone figured out how I can bottle up these moments and keep them forever?

Filed under: Family on April 12th, 2006 | 1 Comment »

In helping George with his current coding project I have had to write lots of several simple SQL queries. There’s a piece of the project that will eventually be available for the client to manage themselves. But in the meantime, it is only accessible through the database. So anytime they find a mistake in the data they gave us, I get to go change it in the database. It was fun for a time, but now it’s getting old. Things would be easier if I’d just take the time to re-figure out how to use JOINS instead of going back and forth between querying table a and table b. But it’s not all bad. I still get to feel geeky – and get to write geeky posts like this one.

By the way, someone needs to start calling me at 10:30pm and demanding that I go to bed right away. I am up way too late…again.

Filed under: Geek Talk on April 5th, 2006 | 1 Comment »

Wow, I can’t believe that it has already been 5 weeks since I quit my job! The time does fly. Some of you may not even know about all of the big changes we are going through right now. I have been intending to post about this for some time. I wanted to wait until I was actually out of there, but then I’ve just been caught up with lots of other stuff.

I have spent the past 7 years working at a large company here in SATX. It was a good experience for me, but it had become very clear that it was time to move on. My more perceptive wife recognized this much sooner than I did, but I can be slow and stubborn at times.

So, what exactly am I doing? Well, now I’m now independent, self-employed, or maybe un-employed. I’m spending my time being with my family, writing code, and working on my house.

The current coding project is a PHP/MySQL project for a non-profit organization. I’m learning lots of new stuff, and I really enjoy the project. It’s great to work on a project that has a more meaningful outcome that will help families in need. The organization I’m working for is a great group that helps children with their neurological development. They help everyone with a wide range of neurodevelopmental issues ranging from down syndrome, autism, ADD, and much more; or fairly “normal” families like us.

The current house project is getting it ready to sell. That’s right, we’re moving. We will be moving to Fort Worth soon. How soon? Well, we get that question a lot. The answer is: it depends. Depends on how soon we can sell this house and how soon we find a new place. Since I don’t have another job (“workin for the man”) lined up, we don’t have a move date / deadline. We hope to have our current house on the market next week and moved into a new place by mid-June. The only deadline to speak of is the baby whom we expect to arrive in mid-August.

The current family project is reconnecting. Over the past few years I have been far too focused on work and career development at the expense of my family. The time I have given to my family has been largely child focused. I need time to reconnect and especially with my wonderful wife. We need to remember what it is that is most important to us and what we want our lives to look like.

We live in a time of quick fixes and 10 step programs. We want everything spelled out and simplified for us, and we’re not willing to make sacrifices even for things that are of utmost importance. We want medicine that will protect us from all disease instead of eating well and living a healthy lifestyle; we want the 10 minutes a week workout that will enable us to scarf all the donuts we want and still be in great shape; we want the simple formula from (insert popular parenting author here) to make our children respect and obey us; we want to spend our 20 minute QT (quiet time) every morning and live the rest of our lives however we want and still have a great relationship with God; we possess and consume until our houses are overflowing and then we want more. I must admit that I have fallen into many of these attitudes myself, but I’m a recovering americano-hypocondri-donutScarfin-QTskippin-consumerist with hopes of a better life. I’m learning that sometimes you must make drastic changes and sacrifices. It’s usually not easy, but it is usually worth it.

Filed under: Faith, Family, Thoughts on April 4th, 2006 | 2 Comments »

Picked wildflowers on soccer fields (instead of playing) … Used a first modem at the age of 2 … Won the Most Original Decoration prize at Sunray Funday’s turtle race … Held a season pass to Sesame Place … Won grand prize in the 7th grade science fair for studying the effects of cotyledons on embryonic plants (in other words, if you pick off the pieces of a budding seed, it doesn’t grow so well) … Won 2nd prize in the 8th grade science fair for studying the environmental effects of plastics (if you bury a plastic Sprite bottle in the garden, it will still be there a few months later) … Viewed the Southern Cross constellation from Brazil … Reprimanded by the nice police officer during my driver’s license test for stopping TOO long at an intersection … Sang America the Beautiful on top of Pike’s Peak (as part of a group, not a solo) … Tried oysters (once!) … Won the air car race in high school physics class, easily beating Carl N.’s fancy dual-propeller car with my cute and simple single-propeller car … Had a pet gerbil named Sneakers … Rode 50 miles with my dad on a bike trip to the lake and back … Consumed a 54 oz. steak in one sitting all by myself … Worked in a computer shop putting computers together … Promised myself I would never date a fellow computer science major because they were all too weird … Ate yummy, juicy steaks at the Lowake Steak House – including one occassion when I was kidnapped from work by friends and driven there for a birthday dinner … Passed Dr. Motl’s Assembler II class the first time through … Worked as a lab assistant in the computer labs for over 4 years … Tutored a fellow computer science major in Dr. Motl’s Assembler II class (he was cute) … Won free plane tickets to anywhere in the world … Dated and eventually married that fellow computer science major (breaking previously mentioned promise) … Employed at a Fortune 500 company for 16 months before deciding that was enough time for me! … Had 2 unmedicated hospital births to 2 wonderful kiddos … Allowed 3 hens to live in my backyard until they became a neighborhood critter’s midnight snack … Showed my daughter how to do a somersault while very pregnant with child #2 (NOT a wise idea) … Witnessed a caterpillar forming a chrysallis … Grieved the loss of a child I never knew … Witnessed the beauty of Niagara Falls on our 7 year wedding anniversary … Discovered that being 30 years old isn’t that old after all!

Filed under: Adventures, Family, Thoughts on March 30th, 2006 | 6 Comments »

The kids are at Gramps and Gran’s house this week and it’s been several days since we’ve heard a sweet little voice announcing the time: “Nathan, it’s six – three – five!” Today I got quite a surprise when I rolled over to finally crawl out of bed and the clock said 9:02 am. I can’t remember the last time I stayed in bed that late. It was nice, but for some crazy reason I still miss that sweet voice waking me up at the crack of dawn every morning. But mostly I miss the two cute faces that appear by my bedside shortly after the morning announcement. And the cuddlers that occasionally crawl into the big bed for a few minutes – at least until the little male’s sweet voice announces that he’s hungry.

But I hear they are having a great time at Gramps’ house: a new scooter, baby chicks, a fishing trip, markers, homemade play dough, AND fork privileges!

Filed under: Adventures, Family on March 29th, 2006 | 1 Comment »

The only thing worse than a trailer full of poop is a trailer full of wet poop! This has become a new slogan of mine.

One of the many tasks we’re working on now is attempting to get our lawn looking alive and well again. That means fertilizer and water. We checked the weather report and saw that it was supposed to start raining Monday. So we decided we should get some fertilizer on the lawn so the rain can help soak it in. I happen to believe that the best kind of fertilizer is of the “natural” variety; yep that means poop to the unlearned.

We found a place here, Garden Ville, that carries composted manure, but when I got there, I forgot to ask what exactly is in the mix. I just asked what they had that would make my lawn green again. After filling my trailer, the guy driving the front-end loader waved me down and asked, “Is that pregnant girl over there your wife?” Yes she is. He then tells me, “don’t let her get too close to this stuff. It’s made from solids from the city sewage. It should be safe, but she shouldn’t be the one spreading it just in case”.
WHAT! I thought I was getting cow manure?! Yikes. Well, as you can imagine, Shannon was just heart broken that she would not be allowed to spread any of the fertilizer. I on the other had, got the joy of shoveling three trailer loads of the lovely smelling stuff while trying not to think about it’s origin. I did get it done today, but not before the rain started to fall. I really didn’t want to have a trailer full of wet poop in my driveway, so I stepped into over time and got the last of it spread out then headed inside for a long shower.

For those of you that live here in San Antonio, you can all take some pride in the healthy green lawn at our place. Keep up the good work!

Filed under: Adventures, Thoughts on March 27th, 2006 | 2 Comments »

…and other random thoughts…

I went to the ATM today and got a couple of the new orange $10 bills. I like the way they look just fine, but had to laugh when I came home and saw a very green $10 bill with a cartoon-ish drawing of Hamilton from the kid’s play money stash. The two don’t look much alike at all now. It’s interesting to think Nathan will probably never remember the time when money was not colored like monopoly money.

Our neighbor’s grandkid was seen walking across our large planter box thing this afternoon. Read more »

Filed under: Adventures, Family on March 22nd, 2006 | 3 Comments »