What did I see in 2009?

Plenty.

Beatrice is pregnant with our 3rd child. It’s an amazing thing.

Beatrice and I put our house on the market. We’re still waiting for it to sell.

Aiden was diagnosed with mild PDD-NOS, and is making HUGE strides. He’s in a new preschool, and is thriving.

Delfina gets bigger every day. It’s amazing how smart she is. It’s a shame she was too young to start school in 2009.

I lost two amazing women in my life. Both my grandmother’s passed. Even though I didn’t get to see them much, it’s very strange not to have them around anymore. The world will be a worse place without them.

Beatrice became a full-time, stay at home mom. With 2 kids, and one on the way, I’m sure she’ll be working much harder than she ever did at an office.

After 2 layoffs in a six month period, I became fully employed, and have been for over a year.

I started moving away from PHP to program in Ruby on Rails. I’m finally coming into my own as a web developer with my own technique and preferences.

I’ve made/kept some amazing friends, some of whom I’ve never physically met, though I hope to remedy that in the future.

2009 had its ups and downs, but then again, so does every year. I’m thankful to have my amazing family, and to continue moving forward in all that we do, even if it doesn’t always feel that way.

What will we be doing?

Coincidentally (or maybe not. I really don’t know) my son’s preschool is holding a group play-date at a local playground. We’ll be headed over there with both kids so they can spend a few hours playing outside on a really fantastic playscape, and we’ll get to meet some of our son’s schoolmate’s parents.

What will you be doing?

Who knows, but if you have kids you should take them outside to play!

This post is about Transformers in general. Recently we got our kids the Transformers Animated “Movie” (the first few episodes of the series) and they’ve absolutely loved it. This has led my wife and I to start researching some toys for Aiden, since his birthday is coming up in a few months.

Oh my…

To say that the Voyager class Transformers Animated toys are some of the best Transformers toys I’ve ever seen would be an understatement. Don’t get me wrong. I grew up on G1 and will always have a soft spot in my heart for it, but these toys are pretty fantastic.

You can tell a lot of work went into designing them. The toys look great in both robot mode and vehicle mode, and aren’t that hard to transform (I’m looking at YOU, movie Transformers).

So what’s the point of this post?

My kids love Transformers, and through them I’ve come to love them again also. The Animated series, which I thought would be a mess, is pretty damn great, and I love being able to get excited about something my kids are excited about.

The kids both bowled, though being so young they had trouble getting the ball up to a good speed. They also played some skee-ball and other arcade games (daddy even got to play some pinball). Overall it was fun time. A big thanks to Autism Speaks for providing another worry-free outing.

We were able to attend a special picnic, and the game, because out team, Aiden’s Awesomeness, has raised a good amount of money for Autism Speaks’ Walk Now for Autism.  We started the day off with burgers and dogs, and getting to meet a few of the team mascots.  We where then off to our seats (which were FANTASTIC) to watch the game.  Aiden especially loved it.  Thankfully my brother-in-law was there to help me understand what was going on.  I really have no clue when it comes to baseball.

We ended up leaving around the 5 inning because the kids where getting tired.  The Sea Dogs where winning 1 – 0 at that point, but I just found out the Rock Cats won 4 – 2.

Overall a fantastic day.  A huge thanks to Autism Speaks for arranging this.

—

Me:  Aiden, it’s time to (such and such)
Aiden:  Why?
Me:  Because that’s what we need to do.
Aiden:  That has nothing to do with Christmas!
(Argument over)

Sometimes the reasoning of children astounds me.

Just got back from a beach vacation with the family.

Good times.