In July, we had Scarlett's 15-month checkup and all is well. She remains in the 90th percentile for height and is simply growing like a weed. Her lightish-curly hair has taken over her head and she's more vocal than ever. No real words just yet, but she can answer simple questions and point out certain things. It's absolutely mind-blowing to see ( Read more... )

May was a good month. The weather is beginning to really transition into summer-like weather and all the trees have their leaves. The sun stays up past 9 PM now and the sunny days are that much more comforting. It's really lifted my mood concerning my job ( Read more... )

We've reached the 20-week mark with Nicole's pregnancy! Halfway there! So far so good. Towards the end of October, we went in for the big milestone 20-week Anatomy Scan where a long list of body features and functions were checked during a rather long ultrasound appointment. To our modest bemusement, our daughter was quite active and not terribly ( Read more... )

December marks the one-year anniversary of purchasing the house Nicole and I are living in here in McMinnville, Oregon. It's impossible to believe it's already been an entire year. It feels like only a few months have gone by since we got here. But when you look around at this house and all the things we've done to it, you do start to get a sense ( Read more... )

My buddy from high school, Bryan, had his 40th birthday earlier this month. For his birthday, we pulled off a nostalgic gift that succeeded in taking away a bit of the sting of turning 40. My brother, Ryan, has a hobby of collecting old school Apple iBook laptops from twenty years ago and while browsing eBay a few months back he stumbled upon a ( Read more... )

For the first time in at least a year, I was asked to go back into work to have a special introduction meeting with a new manager. Beforehand, I had a weird anxiety of being back in that building. It's been so long... As strange as it is, not much has changed. Lots of cubes are empty and I was recognized a couple times even with the mask. The entry ( Read more... )

Another birthday is here and this one is the last of my thirties. Next year, I will be forty, which I think is traditionally the "Over the Hill" birthday celebrated when ones life is now on the downstroke heading towards retirement and oblivion. I hardly feel forty let alone thirty-nine let alone thirty. I remember when my mother turned forty and ( 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... )

It's been a rough winter. I heard somewhere that people are trying to sue the groundhog for incorrectly predicting spring close at hand. Right up until April, we've had freezing mornings and snow here in the Pacific Northwest. There've even been days I've had to work from home because of the ice on the roads ( Read more... )