Scarlett is eleven months old and is getting tantalizingly close to her first birthday. It's just weeks away at this point. In March, I'll be taking off the final couple weeks of Paternity Leave that I still have remaining and I'll be taking a bit more PTO after that too, so I'll be out the majority of March. That's something I've been looking ( Read more... )

Nicole is thirty weeks along with her pregnancy! We continue to have wonderful check-ups at the doctor's and things are proceeding wonderfully. Our daughter likes to bounce around and poke at the womb day in and day out and although it's been rough for Nicole to get a good night's sleep with the girl inside her being awake overnight, it's ( Read more... )

Another month has passed during this strange time of COVID-19. I'm still working from home and we're very thankful that I still have a job and we're relatively unscathed. Nicole has been venturing out into the world more and more and although she's unhappy and uncomfortable with wearing a mask, she's not letting it stop her from getting things done ( Read more... )

The software engineering team I work in at my job is very small and gets pushed around a lot. I think management doesn't totally know what to do with us or how to properly utilize us to do awesome things for the factory, so they let strange things happen. For instance, just as October ended, my team was told we'd have to pack up and spend three ( Read more... )

Every month it seems I mention the North Dakota family trust farm sale but every month it's like nothing's actually happening. That was true for June, which seemed to come and go like a bolt. We're still waiting on the interested party to send us paperwork and contracts detailing the sale. It was more frustrating months ago but now I think Nicole ( Read more... )

2018 was a building year. If 2017 was the year my family began to repair and grow from the loss of my father in December of 2016, then 2018 was the year we picked up speed on our way to what should be a successful if not triumphant 2019. Let's talk about it.

In January, I bought a new laptop and we met Nicole's best friend's baby girl, Mabel. ( Read more... )

This year, Nicole and I spent Christmas with her parents and brother at their family home in central California. It was a short trip bookended by the ten-hour drive to and from. This time of year, driving from northern Oregon through the mountains to get to California could be dicey, but the weather cooperated and we survived. This was a special ( Read more... )

Been a bizarre June month. For months, there's been a group of people plotting to move my software department to the basement level below the cleanroom at the factory I work at. For the last 18 months, we've been in a quiet corner of the ground floor just outside the cleanroom, which allowed us to pass equipment back and forth with ease. Sure, it ( Read more... )

In the three months since my last entry, our Pomeranian dog, Chip, has been living nearly full-time with my mother. Nicole and I live in an apartment (Hopefully this is our last year doing so) and Chip still has extreme separation anxiety so he can't be left alone. If he is left alone, he barks uncontrollably and won't calm down. We can't have that ( Read more... )

Yesterday was my 35th birthday! It's been a fast year. So this is my mid-30s. I'm closer to 40 than 30 as of yesterday. I've done a good job these last few days of reminding myself of how young I still am and that there's much left to do. I worry that as time goes on, that I'll resent how much time is gone. That's possible. Only time will tell. ( Read more... )