- CyberManX

The kids have been doing great and growing up nicely. Garrett is getting bigger each day and won’t be long until he is crawling around getting into as much as possible. For Bethany, Emma, and Hannah, I signed them up for Soccer this past Spring for fun and they enjoyed it overall. My dad coached (as he enjoys that kind of thing and allows him to be involved) and I help coached from time to time. I think this Fall we will try Basketball as Bethany said it was her turn to pick.

Last month, we had my aunt and her family visit us. They stayed with my mom and it was good to see them for the short time we were able to. Difficult times lay ahead for them though and hopefully things will improve. I can only hope my neice matures and understands how you only go around once and gets things in order for her and her son’s life.

This summer will be a busy one I am sure with all the kids being out of school and stuff to do around the house. The wife has already commissioned me to put up garage door openers, put up a fence in the backyard, frame the basement, stain the deck, and a few other odd jobs around the house. I have already done the garage door openers this past month and will hopefully get started on the fence and complete it this month. Its fun to have the experience of doing such projects so I look forward to them somewhat. I just hate the financial backing needed for them even though it does save money doing the projects myself.

Supposedly there is a ten year reunion in the works as well from high school would should be interesting. Even though to some it will no doubt be a measure of success, it should be nice to see familiar faces. I know the wife keeps in touch with some of them online more than I do, but I never was much a fan of the social networking that has now become common place.

Work continues to go well for the most part, boring as it may be the majority of the time. I am often working overtime as usual, which helps pay the bills and allow for extracurricular activites. I was recently awarded based on my work performance during April and given a $50 gift check.

School continues to be a pain in the neck and short one class for my four year C.S. degree. Unfotunately I might not be able to take it until Fall 2010 or Spring 2011 due to class rotations. I am hoping I can do an independent study for it though, but ultimately that requires finding a professor willing to do so.

A few days ago, we ended up deciding to get a 29 gallon fish tank as the wife has been enjoying the 5 gallon tank so much. It should look very nice once setup this weekend. I also purchased a couple Gerbils for the girls (too early still for a cat or dog) and they love to watch them. I am still working on getting them hand trained which will no doubt be a longer process than first anticipated. Due to their age it is still tough to tell the sex of the Gerbils, but we can only hope they are both male male or female female. This has also delayed the naming of them as well. Although the girls have already volunteered to name them “Sparkles” and “Princess”. Pictures to follow soon of both endeavours.

In the interim, I have been going back catching up on TV series I missed during the first two decades of my life. I just recently finished watching Deadwood, which I must admit was a disappointing turn in the end. Perhaps the most interesting thing was learning how the language was during the period. However, due to contraints of losely basing it on the facts of the era, it ultimately failed and could have gotten the same and factual information by simply reading Wikipedia on Deadwod and the people there during that time. I just finished Keen Eddie as well and wish it had gone longer than it did (reminds me of Psych to a degree). Soon I will start First Wave and Inu Yasha.

I have also been playing World of Warcraft since January of this year. Its fun, but I still prefer EverQuest and Vanguard over it, but lack of content in the other two have given me no choice really. I am hoping Aion, which is due to release late this year, will be fun and a replacement for World of Warcraft. Console games I haven’t been playing as much as a result. Currently playing Prince of Persia for the XBOX360 right now with Left 4 Dead next in line. The kids and wife enjoy the Wii, but I am not as big a fan due to lack of story and gimmicky gameplay/controls in most respects.

Overall, it has been a good year and can only hope the future years are as good to me and my family. Time will tell.

- CyberManX

Anyway, we’ve recently had another edition to our family, Garrett Joshua. This ends up making our fourth one and it can be rather crazy, but totally worth it. I’ve always felt having babies is the one thing you can’t do wrong in this world and God enabling us the ability to create life is one of his greatest gifts. Personally I would love to have more, but its more up to her as having to carry for nine months can be very stressful, especially with taking care of the other ones as well regardless of how much I help. She said we’ll wait til 35 before we do anything “permanent” (which would most likely be on my end I have a feeling).

Bethany started her first year of school. She rode the bus on her first day (her dream so to speak) and really enjoys going to school. I’m really glad she is so enthusiastic about it and hope it continues. The other girls, Emma and Hannah, won’t start pre-school until later in September and are really itching to go as it is already due to seeing their older sister in action. No bus for them though, yet.

More frequent updates soon I hope.

- CyberManX

I finally finished up the Xenosaga series and I’m quite impressed by the storyline. It was very interesting and took about 150 hours total to get through all three Episodes and complete everything. Any fan of the RPG (Role Playing Game) genre should definetly check them out. You can check out the Games section for more information. At this time I’m playing through Tales of Symphonia and at first it took a while to get used to the ATB (Active Time Battle) style of gameplay. I’m really enjoying it now and curious to see how the story plays out.

- CyberManX

During April…well now that I come to think of it, I don’t remember anything I did during that month. In June, my brother, David, got married to Amy. I was my brother’s best man and that was a fun experience. The wedding itself was nice and I had to do a couple announcements/toasts afterwards, which I did surprisingly well at considering I’m not a fan of public speaking. I also started back up my GameFly subscription since its been about a year and some games I have been wanting to play are out now. Funny thing is, I swore I wouldn’t subscribe again until GameFly established a distribution center on the East Coast, but I figured how to speed up the turn around time a bit. You can check out the Games section of the site for comments on some of the games I have been playing lately. I’m still updating that though.

Not much really happened during the months of July and August. In September, Emma started preschool and turned two years old. She definetly has a different temperament than Bethany and can be very stubborn headed at times. Bethany also started back at the same time and goes three days a week now instead of two. We also visited the Georgia Aquarium during this time and about the only thing I really liked that was huge tank with all the Stingrays, Whale Sharks, etc. Other than that, the Tennesse Aquarium has them beat on variety and such I believe or at least it seemed like there was more to see.

Now here we are at October. Me and Rebecca will be celebrating our six year anniversary in exactly one week. It really doesn’t seem like six years, but that just goes to show how fast life can pass you by at times. I still love her a lot and I’m glad I found someone who can put up with my geek-like ways. She’s been a great mother to our three girls and hopefully one day the girls will realize that as well and keep a strong relationship with her. I try to help her out as much as I can, but its still probably not enough and over time I expect to improve in that.

Anyway, that’s pretty much what we have been up to. Nothing exciting or exotic, but I don’t for a minute take that for granted due to how much worse things could be. This also now brings me to why I entitled this log as I did. You see, recently Rebecca has become more internet savvy and found that bane of a site called MySpace. I dislike that site so much, but I won’t resort to ranting about that now. As a result, she has come in touch with a handful of people we knew in high school. Its rather interesting how most of them turned out and their current situation in life. I thought some of them would have done a lot better, but most seem content and happy from their blogs/comments on there. The really weird thing is or that I’m surprised by is how many no longer seem to know God like they did in high school.

I’m far from perfect, but I still love God and know that he is the reason where I am today. Plus, the things I learned from high school and were instilled in me by my parents have brought me to this spot as well. I only hope that I am able to do the same for my girls. My greatest fear I think is that my daughters might grow up one day to reject the values me and Rebecca share. I don’t want it to all have been for naught. Anyway, I’ll probably start a thread over in the Forums to keep track so to speak and maybe restablish some of those relationships. But for me, I was never really close with anyone in high school (ie. kept in touch after high school, developed a relationship outside of common events like baseball, classes, etc.) except my wife. I fit very well into that “geek” or “computer nerd” stereotype, but I never let it bother me, because I knew it wasn’t them that I had to gain acceptance of or do right by, but God.

- CyberManX

Its one of those things I’m really good at and the reason for lack of updates concerning my site. Anyway, I’ll be updating the Weblog and site over the next couple of weeks (and that’s a promise!). No…really…I’m serious…

- CyberManX

In January not a whole lot happened that I can really remember, except for the last week of it. I ended up breaking the radial bone in my elbow at Kaleigh’s, my neice, birthday party. It was a skating party and one of the rental skates had a bad habit of turning itself outward while skating straight. So to make a short story even shorter, I was going pretty fast and started to fall back. I tried to catch myself with my left arm, but it ended up getting it caught up under me and it resulted in me breaking it. It’s been about 6 weeks now and I still can’t straighten my elbow out fully. I’ll probably go see the doctor again about it next week.

For Feburary, we ended up going to the Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey Circus with Bethany and Emma. It was pretty fun, but was a little too long for the attention span of a three and one year old. However, overall both me and the wife enjoyed and so did they. We took a lot of pictures and I’ll upload them to the Album when I get some time.

Towards the end of Feburary and for most of March, I have been working a lot and having to stay late. A couple of employees are on vacation, so like always I volunteer to take up the slack and make some extra cash. Its starting to get a little tedious and I’ll be happy once I can get back to normal schedule so that I can see the family more. Rebecca has been fairly patient with all the hours I have been putting in and it will pay off in the end I think.

Hannah, our youngest daughter, finally got over RSV. However now we have to go to the doctor to get an MRI of her head due to what appears to be some sort of cacilfication on the top of head. Hopefully, it won’t be anything serious and at most require minor surgery. Emma has started to learn to talk more in fragmented sentences and she loves just running around the house yelling “Josh! Josh! Josh!”. Bethany has started testing her limits more with talking back, getting an attitude, etc. and we end up disciplining her so that we can hopefully nip those things in the bud while she is still young. Emma and Bethany like to play with each other now, which can be interesting at times. Unfortunately, they like to pester each other as well. Sometimes its amusing because Emma can just so ever lightly touch Bethany to send her crying and saying “Emma hit me.” Other times, its just stressful (mainly on Rebecca right now as I’ve been working so much). All the kids are growing up fast and they are really well behaved most of the time. I hope me and Rebecca can instill some solid values in them so that as they get older, life won’t be too hard for them as it can be.

A couple days ago I decided to upgrade my Netflix plan to four DVDs out at a time. Three at a time just wasn’t enough considering all I really watch is DVDs for movies, tv shows, etc. Its been nice because now I can get one movie for the kids, one movie for the wife, and two movies for me. I haven’t really been playing many games lately though, mainly due to work. However, Kingdom Hearts 2 just came out March 28th and I hope to rent it soon. I thought about restarting my GameFly account, but until they get a distribution center on the East Coast I don’t see it happening.

Next week I plan to do a bunch of around the house things I have been needing to do, like painting some of the non-vinyl siding that was pressured washed off, redoing the threshold on the back door, etc. Ultimately though, I just hope we sell our house this summer as Rebecca and me are so ready for a bigger house. Things are rather cramped for the five of us, but to be honest, we are still lucky to have the home we have. There are many more people out there is worse shape than we are.

- CyberManX

For Thanksgiving, we had lunch with my wife’s side of the family and dinner with my side of the family like we do every year. This year though my Uncle and Grandmother attended as they lost there home during Hurrican Katrina and were already staying with my parents. It was nice and I’m glad we are getting to see more of them. The kids really enjoy their company and having all the family around is great for them. Both sides had the usual dishes to eat and I liked both but as always I enjoyed my mother’s more.

For Christmas, the children and us opened presents in the morning at our house and it was really nice. Hopefully we will be able to start our own traditions as the children get older and are able to participate more in the holiday. Afterwards, we did Christmas gifts and lunch at my side of the family’s house. Then, we did something different this year and had my wife’s parents over to our house for gifts and dinner, whereas we normally go to their house for lunch or dinner. The ham was so good that her mom had done. Definetly the best ham I have ever had so far in my life. Overall, both meals, we’re really good but to be honest I didn’t really enjoy either of them that much. The turkey and ham were not that good at my parent’s house and the side choices for dinner at my house were just “yucky”. Next year we shall have to plan the meal better if we cook at our house again. The gifts were all appreciated and everyone liked what they given. My wife received a mother’s ring she had really been wanting and was overwhelmed enough to cry (Bethany kept asking her what was wrong and made her start laughing because of it). The children received several different gifts but Bethany’s big gift was a Cinderella castle and Emma’s was a rocking chair as she just loves to rock and act all adult-like. It was truly a memorable Christmas and I took plenty of pictures that will be posted in the Album soon.

For New Year’s Eve, we didn’t do much other than have my parents, uncle, and grandmother over for some sparkling grapejuice (as I don’t drink alcohol and its kind of a tradition me and the wife do), wine, and Oreo and Key Lime pie. We allowed Bethany to stay up for this, but Emma just was getting too tired to stay up for the countdown.

During this time, I have been working 16 hour shifts at work for overtime, but luckily none of it really interfered with the holidays other than Christmas Eve as I had to work til nearly midnight. It is definetly a mistake I will avoid in the future. All in all, it has been a great two months to go out of the year on. I’ll be working on the site some more and hopefully will have all of the pictures for 2005 uploaded into the Album for family members to look over. So be sure to check back soon.

- CyberManX

- CyberManX

My youngest daughter’s first birthday went really great and I’ll be posting the pictures in the Album soon for family members to see. It was a really fun event and all the kids loved playing on the playground I built over the summer. Soon it will be my oldest daughter’s birthday and she will be turning three. I look forward to it.

Anyway, I have a few other things going on and I’ll be sure to post once the new baby is here.

- CyberManX