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We all had a great time this past weekend at my parent’s house.  We hadn’t been there for a while so it was nice to see them and catch up.  My sister “Coco” was there too with her family so everyone enjoyed.  We also got to visit some friends on Sunday at a party they hosted so the kids all got to swim as well.

The kids are not great swimmers, so it was really nice to see them take to the water and stretch themselves.  Randi, Hailee, and Shalen were all jumping off the diving board by the end of the evening (all for the first time without floating devices strapped to them) and Corby finally let me hold him in the water.  By the end of the evening he was actually walking around in the shallow water by himself!  Go Corby!!!

We had a really nice time and look forward to visiting again REALLY soon.  Deb and Q are coming this week and we plan to be there again during their visit to be with them too…

If you have family or friends in these pictures, drop me an e-mail with the names of any images you’d like larger shots of. 

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Mixed in with all the gut-wrenching emotions that come with losing your job (and now hunting for a new one), there are still some wonderful moments. I’ve had a few those recently, so I thought it only right to discuss them as well.

First was finding out that the van breaking down was due to a simple bad hose. “That’s a wonderful moment?” you ask. When you’ve spent the prior 24 hours mulling over the other MUCH more expensive alternative things that could have been wrong, you bet it is!!!

Second was this past Sunday when I got to spend the afternoon with my four kids and a bunch of other friends playing some softball at the local high school. My kids have just discovered baseball this year (through videogames of course) and they just love it. They play in the backyard, just the four of them (or at times 2 or 3 of them) for hours on end. So they really enjoyed the outing. Here are a few images to enjoy…

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Third is the fact that I’ve become a great-uncle twice over in the past eight months or so, the second just arriving. On the slightly down side to that is the fact that I’m feeling a bit old because of it. I mean I feel like I just got married and the two new mothers were two of our little flower girls!

Here’s Kennadie…

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And here’s Autumn…

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Last are our beach trips. We love going to the beach in the evenings so the kids can swim and then we watch the sunset. Randi wasn’t with this time, but we got a spare kid in the trade to play with Hailee…

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That’s all, good night…

Wednesday night this was true in a literal sense as about 2 months worth of missing rain all fell on Michiana (that’s the really annoying nick-name this area of Northern Indiana/Southern Michigan has) over the course of about 6 hours.  What came from that storm helped fulfill the more philosophical angle of that saying as well. 

We had to hunker down in the basement for about an hour as “heavy rotation” in our area caused a tornado warning to be declared.  The flash flood warning lasted all night.  Randi was home with us, but the three youngest kids (who happen to be scared to death of tornados) were ALL spending the night at friend’s houses.  So the calls began back and forth making sure everyone was safe (and calm).  The warning came and went without incident, but we ended up with a nice river of water in the basement.  This was most likely due to the gutter system on the back of the house getting ripped off by all the ice build-up last winter and me not getting it repaired yet.  D’oh!

So…

1)      The company I helped build from the ground up declared (after 10 1/2 years) it’s plan to sell or merge and laid off all but a skeleton crew to keep the lights on.  I was one of the ones to go.

2)      The flexible spending account I’ve been paying in to (which is a use it or lose it type of account) closes upon termination, so all the sandbagging I’ve done building up to Randi getting braces this summer was for naught.  I may be able to get a bridge put in for myself in the small window I have left, but money WILL go to waste.

3)      Sheila finds a lump on her neck which added a lot of tension to an already tense time.  She did get in the doctor who was not concerned with it and made her feel a lot better. (follow-up next month if it’s still there!)

4)      The storm hits at night, frightening our children who were at friend’s houses.  Two want to come home at 11:00pm, but due to my having drank a few glasses of wine, their uncle Shane had to bring them home.  (he’s usually in bed by 9 or 10)  Sorry Shane!  Water comes flowing through our basement.

5)      And finally yesterday (well, hopefully “finally”) as we were driving around Mishawaka, IN our van (our only vehicle) starts to overheat and we lose coolant all over the Barnes & Noble parking lot.  Had to get it towed back to Michigan.  I now sit typing this and waiting to hear back from the garage to see what the damage will be.

Joy!  

But hey, it could be a lot worse.  I just feel like complaining right now…

I’m now officially one hour in to the 33rd anniversary of my mother’s pain.  Apparently I had a huge head when I was born…

For those who may not know, I don’t actually celebrate my birthday, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the fact that another year has passed…

Old “and” Unemployed…   Woot!

This was a bad day.

I’ve added a sculpture gallery to the art section.  The first one I’ve posted is a custom figure of Eric the Blob from the Invader Zim episode “The Frycook What Came From All That Space”.  I’ll be adding more soon, so check back!

Whew… The new version of my Invader Zim Screenshot Gallery is done! It’s now complete with screenshots from every 2 to 3 seconds of every episode including the alternate scene that was cut from “Door to Door” and the extended escape scene that never made it to the final version of “Abducted”. Please enjoy and feel free to leave comments on any gallery page you find useful or entertaining…

UPDATE Jan 3rd, 2009 – Sorry, but after having to completely recreate this site after a porn idiot hacked it, the Invader Zim gallery is no longer here… You can find it here…

I changed back the theme this morning. I just liked the one I was using a lot and I finally figured out how to get the comments to work on the pages. So yeah, now I just need to figure out how to carry over the cool effects I made for the header in the short lived redesign…

We’re at it again, playing Yahtzee at night and Moranda has been joining us on and off.  What does that mean?  It means there are new Yahtzee Doodles, of course!  

Booyah!

Well, I got the search feature to work again, but I had to disable the Sidebar Widget plug-in to do so.  Now I just need to find a new plug-in to customize my sidebar and I’ll be set.  Then I’ll think about upgrading WordPress, but quite frankly I’m a bit nervous about it.  It’ll be my first upgrade since I started using WordPress…