A New Year

I guess it's been a few weeks of me posting to my blog and it's time I get back into it. The post will be a followup from the last post.

First the setting: It's a cold winter night here in Florida and I am sitting in a chair on my back patio with a small fire going in my fire pit wishing I had some firewood. Luckily had one starter log and branches.

Now the rest:
The past few weeks have been very hectic at work and at home. First at work I have been slammed with new projects and along with fellow teammate taking their own time off to spend with family. As for my family it has been busy with go go go....shopping, fellowship, and anything else my mother-in-law or wife can find for me to do.

We ended up doing Christmas at our house Christmas eve and then Christmas morning. Christmas Eve we opened all the presents that we from our family and then Christmas morning the kids opened all the presents from Santa. Yes my kids still believe in Santa. The site on both my kids faces this year was what made it the best Christmas of all.

After opening presents Christmas morning we all bathed and hurried over to my mother-in-laws to open presents there along with eat breakfast. Of course my mother-in-law did no have all the ingredients necessary for breakfast so she was waiting on us to bring the shredded cheese. We did find out that my mother-in-law's sausage biscuits were much better without cheese and everybody agreed. My family showed up late as usual plus we had to stop at Walgreen's to get a gift for dirty Santa going on later that night. Everybody opened presents at my mother-in-laws to include my wife's brother's family. Everyone got nice gifts just maybe something they may not need or want.

After my mother-in-laws we headed across town to my brother-in-law's wife's families house for more fellowship. This is where the game dirty Santa commenced to be played on a group of 17 people. The rules were that no one could spend over eight dollars on a gift. Each person drew a number and the when it was your turn you had the choice of stealing a gift that was already opened or opening one from the pile. At the end whoever had number one got to decide if they wanted to swap gifts with someone or keep the gift they ended up with. Of course my daughter had not slept most of the day so she was being a pill to deal with until she finally fell asleep in my arms in the recliner. I think everybody was happy when she finally went to sleep. We also ate dunch (lunch and dinner) there and played my son's new monopoly game that uses cards instead of money.

Well I've almost made it through Christmas week when the baby sitter calls Thursday morning while I'm at work to say my daughter is running a fever. The is the first pickle my wife and I have been in since my wife went back to work. I decided to take off of work and take my daughter to the doctor as I wanted my wife to feel I was supporting her going back to work. We went to the doctor and my daughter has a virus which there's nothing they can do except make sure she gets enough fluid and sleep then take Motrin for the fever. My daughter is already a daddy's girl but Thursday she was all curled up in my arms most of the day. I did finally get her to lay down for a little while and I was able to log into work and get a few things done before she woke up again. Friday was pretty much more of Thursday, I ended up staying home with my daughter again so she didn't spread her virus to anyone else. I gave her some more Motrin after eating something for breakfast and her fever went away. She of course went back to being a kid except you could tell she was tired. We played and cleaned house till about 12 when she finally laid down and I had a meeting starting at 12. My wife brought me something for lunch about 12:30 from Burger King. My meeting dragged on till about 2:30 and my daughter ended up waking up soon after that.

This past weekend was more of go go go stuff and then we both went back to work Monday. Monday wasn't too hectic at work but for some reason I didn't get much done. Later that after noon I started feeling bad but I stuck it out as I wanted to go out and do something with my wife for New Year's Eve. We took my daughter over to the mother-in-laws and headed out to Destin to eat at Outback. We ended up getting a table in the bar section as soon as we got there and everything was cooked good. The forgot to cook my green beans for my meal and you could tell the manager and waiter were panicing. I had no problem as I've worked in the restaurant business before and I understand mistakes happen. On the way home we stopped by Target for more shopping. We ended up with a lot of stuff for the amount we paid. Really lots of dollar items and 75% off Christmas stuff. We picked up my daughter about 10:30 and headed home to see the ball drop. We waited up till it was New Year's here in central time zone and then my wife went to bed. I stayed up for a little while fighting my cold and sleep until I feel a sleep on the couch watch Jeff Dunham. I love Achmed the dead terrorist.

Today has been a decent day. I stayed in bed till 12:30 until my wife woke me up to get out of bed. I headed downstairs to gargle with some Listerine and eat a orange. My daughter wasn't up long after I got up before she went down for a nap. My wife left to go shopping and I laid on the couch for a while until I finally got up to clean house a little before my wife got home. My daughter woke up about 20 minutes before my wife got home and I had taken a few pills so I was beginning to feel a little better. My wife later cooked us some chicken fettuccine alfredo for dinner. So now we've caught up with the past few weeks and here we are with me sitting on laying in the floor inside because it was too damn cold outside to finish typing this out there. I've got to get some firewood before I try that again.

Well looking ahead and talking about some of the stuff going on in my head I am looking to do something with my server. I've got 24 days left on my evaluation version of Windows Home Server and I don't really want to drop $160 for an operating system. I really like linuxmce but its still in its infancy and so I'm looking at maybe switching over to FreeNAS. I currently have a server setup as a web server or I could stay with my web host and continue to pay the 11.90 every three months for it.

I've got a feeling this year is going to be a good year for my family and me I hope anyway.