Vacation Update
December 17, 2007
Vacation continues to go nicely. I really needed some time off. The last part of the year at work was rough. I still haven’t decided if I am going to go back to work on the 2nd of January or delay until the 7th. I had been thinking the 2nd, but the kids are trying to get me to make it the 7th since they have that whole week off from school.
On Saturday, Suzanne and the kids had their annual Christmas dance recital with the Alma Dolores International Dance Centre. This tends to be the biggest production of the year. Unfortunately, its also the performance with the most little kids. One can only take so many 4 and 5 year olds up on stage trying to dance. Don’t get me wrong, we were there with our kids too, so I fully understand the families and how they like it. I just wish they didn’t cut out a large portion of the older kids and adults from this recital.
All that said, this recital was the most crowded that I have seen yet. Almost the entire theater was jammed pack and some folks had to stand up for the show. When the first act ended, it cleared out somewhat because most of the little kids had to go home for bed. Sean and Savannah did very well in their dances and had a great time. Suzanne didn’t actually dance in this recital, but as the pom pom teacher and song and dance teacher at the dance studio, she had several numbers in the show. Her pom pom class continues to be popular and growing in size. In fact, its too big and there was too many kids on the stage at once. They still looked pretty good, but if you have 50 girls on stage, at their age, there is no way to keep them all in time. After the first of the year, she will be breaking the pom pom class into two classes to keep the size more manageable.
The kids have finally won us over and sometime this coming week we will likely be getting them cell phones. We have wanted to wait until they are old enough, but will all of our activities, there are times that we give them one of ours so we know where everyone is and what they are doing. It is just making sense to get them a phone. There will obviously be some strict rules on when they can and can’t use them. It will cost $10 a month apiece to add them to our current plan. For a normal month, they will pay us half the bill out of their chore earnings. If they are particularly bad in a month, they will foot the whole bill. If they should happen to have an outstanding month, we will pick up the whole month tab. Hopefully, this cost / sharing type of arrangement will help them be responsible. It doesn’t hurt that I want to get myself a new phone too – probably one of those LG Voyagers.
We had a nice sight in our yard today as the local herd of antelope when strolling by our house. The herd size is definitely up this year, which is good. Enjoy the prong horn antelope images below. They were taken from our back porch.
Why Does Vacation Just Zip By?
December 12, 2007
Wow, the time just flies by when you are on vacation. It hardly seems like its been a week so far, but it has. Luckily, I will still be on vacation for almost another three weeks.
The worst part is that it seems like I have accomplished almost nothing of substance done while on vacation. Or at least nothing done except computer work and a bunch of work done on my websites. The kids are still in school, so we don’t get to play around as much as I like when on my yearly end of the year vacation. Unfortunately, they dont get much vacation before Christmas this year. They get the week of Christmas and the week of New Years off. I am slated to go back to work on the 2nd of January but am contemplating just taking that whole week off to enjoy the family.
Speaking of website work, its the holiday season, so it must be time to give Cruise Talk Central another facelift. I was pretty happy when I finished with the theme about a year ago, but every week, the happiness left a bit. The theme is just to wordy and too tubular. The information is good, but needs a different sort of presentation. So, I have been sitting down and sketching out how I wanted it too look. I plan to give it more of magazine look.
I had just started coding up the CSS for the new design when I came across a brand newly released theme that met like 80% of my requirements. So, I have shifted gears and am now customizing that theme for Cruise Talk Central. I hope to launch the new theme there before the first of the year.
I am also continuing my work on the Simple Forum plugin for WordPress. I am helping the main developer prepare the next major release of the software, version 3.0. We are hoping for a Beta release in January, but that may be overly aggressive considering with both have Christmas things to do.
The cold which hit me the first day of my vacation is slowly fading away. Luckily, it never really hit that hard, but it did let me know it was here. Suzanne appears that she may be coming down with a mild case of it too.
The two day snow storm that hit Southern Arizona yesterday has left. It actually was mostly rain for everyone except for folks in the higher elevations. The mountains around us are covered in a wonderful layer of snow. Some mountains received a couple feet of snow. At our elevation of 5000 feet, we had several brief snow showers, but no accumulation. In an average year here, we end up with some accumulation about twice a year. I wouldn’t actually mind a few more in a year. Having grown up in Michigan, though, I wouldn’t want to go back to those winters.
Okay, time to go do something useful with the vacation time, like maybe clean the house for Suzanne while she is off volunteering at the VA Hospital today.
-
Subscribe via Email
Sign up to receive the latest Mr Papa's World site updates! -
Subscribe via RSS
