All this week is Read an RPG in Public Week. It’s meant to get the hobby “out of the basement” and into the public eye.

I already game at work, and keep a few of my RPG books there on my shelf, so this week is kinda like every day for me.

If you’re participating in the glorious week, make sure and snap a pic of yourself doing it and entering the contest over at Purple Pawn.  The prize pool is pretty slick, and contains a Tremorworks bundle that includes the above HDL Basic Rules.

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.

It seemed to help.

I started up my workout routine, and everything was going fine…then the leg pain returned. I’ve gone from working out 4 nights a week to 2, and it’s still no help.

Guess it’s time to see my doctor. I hate skipping workouts, because it makes me feel like I lose so much more progress than I’ve gained.

The truth of it is, I’m having a hard time keeping up with this blog. I seem to update it in waves. I am very good with updating Twitter, Plurk, etc… Tumblr has a feel similar to those sites (at least for updating), and is very easy for me to update from my iPhone.

We’ll see how long as lasts, but for now I think it’s going to work out.

Anyway. We finally moved the kids from the nursery to their own bedrooms. A LOT was involved in this process. Both rooms where basically storage for us, so we first needed to clean them out. After that was painting. 2 coats of primer and 2 coats for the wall and trim each.

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Fun.

Then came the “moving them in” part. Everything went smooth until Aiden decided to help take apart his bed, destroying the stabilizer bar that helps keep the bed steady. In his defense, the thing was made out of particle board, even though the rest of the bed is Canadian maple.

A new stabilizer bar is almost $200 for his bed.

Yikes.

So what did I do? I took a trip to Lowes, bought a cedar plank and a new drill bit. I then proceeded to make a new bar on my own.

Did it work?

HELL YES.

Booyah.

The one things that sucks? I broke another resistance band. This time the Reebok one I bought.

I’ve decided to try things with 5lb dumbbells now, as I can’t afford to keep buying new resistance bands.

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!

Aiden’s Awesomeness will be more active this coming season with new fund raising events, contents, and more. Of course we’ll also be at the 2010 Greater Hartford Walk Now for Autism even.

There’s more work to be done on all 3 fronts I’ve setup, but at least they’re up and in a functioning capacity. I’ve got a lot in store for each, so keep your eyes peeled!

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.