For Christmas Jacob got Crazy Forts, so today the two of use built his first fort. It was fun pulling the pieces out of the box, watching as he counted the purple ball connectors. Then we looked at the examples on the box and he picked the one he wanted to build. He had a little trouble putting the pieces together himself, but I’m sure he’ll get it in time. It was a great Father Son time. I can’t wait till we build our next fort. of course I can already see that to build really cool forts we’ll need to get another set or two.
My first photo for Project 365. It seems funny to me that my first photo would be taken from Melissa’s phone camera, Its the same model as my phone that died which supposed to be the camera I was going to use for most of my Project 365 pictures. I had hopped to capture the New Year snow fall I saw while running an errand this morning, instead all I captured was the desolate streets.
The start of a new year, a time to look forward to the future. To set goals and make resolutions. This year I haven’t set any resolutions, I have three geeky challenges I’ve set myself, there are some other personal challenges that I might share on the blog in the weeks to come but for today I want to focus on the geeky ones.
Find my Blogging Voice:
I have been blogging on and off now for 4 years. During that time I have gone through 3 iterations of my blog. Michael’s Thoughts, Evolving Dad and Geek With Kids. The first two were on the same site, one just evolved into the other, which has now been taken offline. I’m pretty sure I back up the posts but as I write this I have a sneaking suspicion that I forgot to back up the MySQL databases and so I might not have kept the posts. Backed-up or not, in all that time I have yet I’ve yet to find a consistent posting pattern for my posts. I would have spurts of high activity followed by months of nothing. That was one of the reasons I started Geek With Kids, to have a fresh start. Of course it didn’t work. I had a good month of posting before falling back to just weekly picture posts.
When I took up the Challenge of NaBloPoMo three months ago, I didn’t think I would have the stamina to still be going at it, but here I am over 90 days later and I’m still posting. Of course it hasn’t been easy there have been a ton of days where I just didn’t have anything to write, but I found something to say, even if it was just a cheesy video from YouTube. Now I’m still looking for a consistency in my posts but I am posting every day. I’m hoping my other 2 challenges will help with that. By giving me something to write about on even on days when nothing is coming to me. So going into 2010 I hope to have a post every day for the year, in fact as you’ll see below I’m hoping to have more then that.
Tonight we packed up the Christmas Decorations, including our tree. It seems a little strange to be packing up before the new year, but this year it just felt right. So now I sit here, writing this entry in our Christmas fee living room, all that’s left is a few of the new presents that are downstairs toys. We have Violets Fisher Price Singing toy and her Mail box. Jacob’s Motorized Marble Race, that isn’t really a downstairs toy but we were putting it together earlier and the box is still waiting to be taken to it’s home. We’ve also got new toy for Mommy and Daddy, a PlayStation 3. It’s on the PlayStation that I’m writing this post. I figured if I could write a post on a net book on Christmas day, why not use the PS3 today. So I plugged in a keyboard fired up the browser and headed over to my Blog. There have been some hicups, I lost the first draft of my post, It also doesn’t like the wysiwyg editior in wordpress so I’m using just plan text, and will probably tweak it on my desktop. But it’s working I plan on writing up my thoughts the PS3 in the new year, when I get a bit more of a chance to play with it. Over all I’lll really liking it.
It’s been a greate Christmas, Jacob has loved it. He face when he came down stairs christmas morning showed me it was worth all the hard work Melissa and I put in. Our kids are the most important thing in our lives and Christmas is for them and they both had a great time. Watching Violet open her first presants was special, she’s alot older then Jacob was for his first Christmas so it’s so different for her. She of course has her first birthday in Janurary and she’ll be able to use her new present opening skills again then.
It’s been a busy week and I’m glad to have a few more days with the family to enjoy with out any major events to prepare for. It’s nice to just relax and enjoy the spending time with Melissa and the Kids. It all changes in January, first Jacob starts preschool and them mommy goes back to work. I’m also hoping that Violet starts walking in the next few days, I missed her first few steps while as at work, I don’t want to miss when she finally releases that she can walk. Of course I can’t make it happen it will happen when she’s ready and with my luck it will be on the morning of my first day back at work.
With the Christmas rush over and our house mostly back together I had hopped to get back to regular blogging today, but when I saw this video I thought I had to share:
Today is Christmas Day, a day for family, food and presents. We started our day with Jacob coming into our room excited to go downstairs and see what Santa had left. We had a great time as a family sitting around the tree and opening presents. Jacob did very well, pulling the presents out from under the tree and watching and waiting while Violet opened hers. We took a bunch of photos and some video, but I’ve not had a chance to look at them yet.
After our family Christmas morning we packed up the car and headed over to Melissa’s moms place for breakfast, another round of presents and an afternoon of family before Christmas dinner. It’s been a great day so far, right now both the kids are napping. Danny is playing Modern Warfare 2, Melissa and Lynn are pealing potatoes. I’m experimenting with one Jimmy’s present. An Aspire One 10.1″ netbook. I’ve wanted a netbook for a while, but was never sure if I would like the keyboard. Or if they had enough power for what I’d want to do with it. So I thought why not write a blog post on it and give it a try.
Here is what I think:
The screen is pretty good. It’s got a 1024 X 600 res screen. Which is pretty good. On a few pages I found it a little annoying to have to scroll, but I probably get used to that. The bigger issue is the keyboard. Though as I continue to write this post I am getting faster at typing but my hands are feeling cramped. That’s something I don’t think I would be able to get used too. So I’m thinking if a netbook is in my future it would need to be a larger model, with a larger keyboard. For now I think I’ll wrap up my post, perhaps another day I’ll put it through a few more test. For now I think I should join the family instead of sitting in a corner writing my blog.
