Mar 31, 2016: Refocus

This has been one of those weeks, and yet my trusty calendar tells me that it’s not even over yet! Between trying to get back in gear from last week’s birthday festivities, coupled with illness recovery, trying to adjust to Sara moving temporarily from nights to days at work, a lack of motivation due to…

Mar 28, 2016: Flight School

I’ve always liked Tampa’s airport … possibly for a lot of the same reasons I like Tampa as a city itself. It’s big, but not so big that it’s easy to get lost and/or murdered wandering around it. It’s typically pretty clean, as opposed to Detroit Metro which I always used to fly out of and is…

Mar 27, 2016: Having a Ball!

We learned a valuable lesson today – when one desires to get nice, family photos out of a group of kids, it’s best to take those photos early in the day and not several hours past nap time… 😛 Still, it’s nice to see that Christopher enjoys playing with his cousins now that they’re close enough that visitation doesn’t require a…

Mar 26, 2016: Boy Builder

It’s good to be the birthday boy! Christopher got so many Duplos for his birthday – I think we’re going to be building trains and rocket ships and wildlife refuges for the next year! Though granted for now we seem to just be getting really good at building gigantic towers… In fact, I started building a few…

Mar 25, 2016: Life is Like a Boat

Sometimes things manage to stay remarkably on course, and sometimes the lady in front of you does a 180 and runs into your boat head-on while also blocking the entire waterway for ancillary boaters even further upstream… So today is Christopher’s 2nd birthday! We’re actually breaking up the festivities over several days – yesterday was…

Mar 24, 2016: A Day Later…

This was supposed to be yesterday, so at least we’re only 24-hours off schedule after being derided by The Great Sevener Family Stomach Bug of 2016! Today we went to the beach. A gorgeous, out of the way beach that until earlier this afternoon I didn’t even know existing, but is certainly going to get some of our recreational time in…

Mar 23, 2016: 24 Hours in Bed (Almost)

The human body wasn’t meant to spend an entire day at a time in bed … as much as I certainly do love my sleep from time to time! So yesterday was a bit rough when that nasty bug that the kid drudged his way through managed to snake its way back through the rest…

Mar 22, 2016: Sicko

Of all the firsts that I’ve enjoyed seeing Christopher experience over the last two years, his first time throwing up most certainly isn’t one of them … and yet here we are, a week before the little guy’s second birthday and he’s barely been able to keep anything but Pedialyte down the last couple of days… And not for nothing, but at $6 a bottle that…

Mar 21, 2016: Cutting Nails

There was a time when my wife and I actually tried cutting our dog’s nails ourselves, but that was long ago and frankly, I don’t miss those times one bit! It was a horrible process, so we didn’t do it very often … which also coincidentally resulted in it being a horrible process. It literally took two of us to…

Mar 20, 2016: Picture This!

For whatever reason it dawned on me today that I’d started putting together this new blog of family photos however many months ago, and then even after struggling to get the swanky domain name that I wanted, I don’t think I ever actually got around to sharing the link or even writing a post about…

Mar 19, 2016: Time Management

I’ve been spending a good bit of time lately … ironically … trying to figure out how to be more productive with my time. It’s something that I’ve always struggled with creatively when I’ve got a limited amount of time in the day and a seemingly endless list of things that I want to do, and as much…

Mar 18, 2016: Dinosaur Crayons

I wish I was five years-old again so I could’ve picked up a pack of these awesome crayons that I came across at Target today.  I mean, it’s not like they were checking for a lack of ID at the checkout in order to be able to buy them or anything, but aside from “Oooh…

Mar 17, 2016: Pool Break!

Sometimes you just have to take a quick break from the daily grind to run around the pool and play with your noodle! *ahem* What’s funny is that almost this exact same scenario played out a couple of days earlier this week, instead resulting in Christopher unexpectedly falling headfirst into the pool and realizing firsthand why he hasn’t…

Mar 16, 2016: Hippo Removal

Some phrases you really have to hear more than once to ever believe that you even heard them in the first place… “Can you get the hippo out of his room while I get him ready for bed?” The hippo.  The TOY hippo.  You know, as if there was any possibility in my mind that…

Mar 15, 2016: Walk the Vote

My voting precinct changed recently, so now instead of going to some random church to vote I was able to just walk down the street and vote at the community center in my subdivision. It made me wish that we lived in an area that was a little more conducive to walking because I wouldn’t mind…

Mar 14, 2016: How’s Your Day?

I find that when people ask you this question, a fair number of them don’t necessarily want to hear the truth so much as it’s just small talk until their limited exchange with you is finally over. Case in point, earlier today after I’d already spent half an hour on the phone with customer service… “And how’s your…

Mar 13, 2016: Oops, I Forgot

I didn’t realize until about 2:30am last night that I’d forgotten to do a post for Sunday, so instead you’re getting two posts today and one of them involves this fine picture of my breakfast. I know that I’ve said it roughly a million times, but I’m trying to eat better and get my diet…

Mar 12, 2016: Dishes are Stupid

There are few things that I dislike worse than doing the dishes.  Maybe shaving, and picking up dog poop, but dishes still easily rank within my top three because it seems like no matter how many loads I do, I’m just one night’s sleep away from returning to total chaos in the kitchen – like…

Mar 11, 2016: Big Brother

So that thing I wrote about last week? The thing that resulted in enormous stress over the last eight days??? …well… APPARENTLY IT WORKED!!!!! 😯 😯 😯 We ended up spending the day over at Epcot to help distract us from the anxiety, and then around 1:30pm the doctor’s office called to say that the…

Mar 10, 2016: Sriracha Shrimp

I like this meal because it’s super easy, and I think it’s pretty healthy, too. Throw a pound of shrimp in a frying pan with some olive oil, apply liberal doses of Garlic Sriracha Seasoning, and dump them over whatever rice or frozen veggies you can nuke while the shrimp are cooking. I’ve also done steamed…

Mar 9, 2016: Dad’s Root Beer

I’ve never really been a fan of traditional beer. I went through a phase in my early 20’s when I would drink the occasional Corona, but nowadays I don’t even much have the taste for that unless I’m specifically having seafood and there’s Jimmy Buffett music playing in the background. 😎 So that being said,…

Mar 8, 2016: Code Monkey

Today is one of those days when I pretty much spent the entire day going through code. My day job is kind of split between development and administrative work, so it goes back and forth what I spend my time on from one day to another. In addition to implementing some new functionality that we’re…

Mar 7, 2016: Swim Class

I ended up going with Sara to take Christopher to swim class this morning because she’s not supposed to do any lifting for the next week while we give the embryos a chance to take hold, and it never ceases to amaze me how much they’ve been able to teach him at such a young…

Mar 6, 2016: Recycling

I feel like recycling lately takes more effort than it ever has before, and yet I find myself spending the extra time anyways because ultimately I still think that it’s really, really important. I mean, seriously – have you ever visited your local landfill?! I have, and it’s kind of depressing … literally driving your car up a mountain of compacted garbage and…