Month: June 2013

Earlier this week Jessica was doing one of her regular checks on the website to see if Bruno had been adopted and she couldn’t find him. She emailed her contact at the shelter and we found out that Bruno has been adopted by a new family! Apparently the shelter had already turned down at least one family because they wanted to make sure they found the perfect fit for him. As we know, Bruno requires lots of outdoor time and exercise; something that we were no longer able to provide him with. His new family has teenage kids and they are very active, outdoor people, which is perfect for Bruno. We were very excited to hear the news, even though we still miss him and think of him often. He was such a character, and will never be replaced, but I’m very happy that he is with a family that can give him what he deserves.

We’re getting very close to Elise’s arrival. Our friends Leon and Jodi just had their son Miles on Friday, as did our friends James and Amanda, whose daughter Winslow was born the same day right down the hall. This means we’re the only ones left so hopefully it will be soon. Jessica hasn’t been feeling very good today so she’s resting in bed. It’s great having her home all the time but I know she’s getting anxious. I’m just glad she held out while I was traveling for work earlier in the week. I won’t be leaving again for a while.

Ava is doing great and absolutely loves going outside to play. Rain or shine, she wants to be out there everyday and doesn’t take no for an answer. In a way its a little bit sad that these are the last days we’ll have with her as our only child, but that sentiment is largely overshadowed by the excitement of the impending arrival of her little sister. Ava got to spend some time this week with Uncle Butch and Aunt Carol while we attended Kallan’s high school graduation. As usual she spent the whole time chasing their dog Max and playing in the yard.

I finished my final project of the quarter today which means several things: First it means I’m on a two week break from school. It would be so perfect if Elise could arrive during my break so my fingers are crossed. Next, it means that I am done with all of my prerequisite classes; no more math, no more economics, no more project management, etc. From here on out its all programming classes, which is exactly what I joined for. Getting classically trained in computer programming is going to help my career as a web developer quite a bit, so I’m excited to finally be at that stage in the curriculum. Finally, being done with this quarter means that I’m officially in my final year of school. Exactly one year from now I’ll be graduating and it feels good to know that I’m getting so close to completion.

Here are a few recent pics

More whip cream please

I’m a little late on writing this post. My intentions were good but at this stage of the pregnancy I am finding myself extremely forgetful, increasing tired and not nearly as productive as I’d like to be.

Even though this isn’t the first Father’s Day we’ve celebrated as a family it’s the first that we celebrated just the 3 of us and it will be the last. Last year my Dad was visiting us in San Diego and next year we’ll have another baby girl to spend the day with.

This week we will be celebrating my nephew Kallan’s high school graduation. Kallan and I have always been very close so I’m very proud to see him growing up and doing so well for himself. Kallan was my Dad’s first grandchild, as well as the only grandchild he ever got to meet in person, so that makes it extra special. I remember holding Kallan as a baby, then living with him a few years later. I used to take him to preschool at the Pike Place Market, let him rewire my stereo, and take him for rides in my Prelude. Should Jessica and I not have any more children, Kallan is the closest thing I’ll ever have to a son.

Tomorrow night Dana, Brad, Kallan, Anna, Jessica, and I will be having dinner at El Gaucho to celebrate, then we’ll be attending his graduation ceremony on Monday evening. Should be a great weekend. I also have my 2nd Father’s Day to look forward to this Sunday. We don’t have anything special planned, and unfortunately I’ll be working from home all day, but at least I’m home with my girls. Jessica is officially done working now and is on the home stretch preparing for the arrival of our baby girl Elise. She had initially expected to work another week or so but we mutually decided that it’s best to stop now and just relax. We got to work together on a private party at El Gaucho last weekend, and I’ll actually be covering her shift on another party this Saturday night.

Life has been incredibly busy for me lately and I’ve been doing my best not to freak out. I took on a huge challenge to prepare a version of an application my team is working on for a test in our Southern California Fulfillment Center next week. I have literally no support on this project and am working around the clock to get it finished on time. I’m actually not sure that I will be able to complete 100% of it before the test but I’m doing my best and my manager has already assured that whatever I get done will be fine. I’m spending all of my free time working on it, but I also have a significant amount of homework to do so I’m spending about 16 hours every day working either on work stuff or school stuff. Kallan’s graduation activities will provide a much needed break from all this work, even if only for a few hours.

The trip to Southern California next week will be my last until August. Although unlikely, I’m praying that Elise doesn’t decide to arrive while I’m away on Tuesday and Wednesday. Anytime after that will be just fine with me. The last 3 weeks have seen trips to California and Phoenix, air conditioning breakdowns on the plane in Phoenix before takeoff, sinus infections, and even more coding than normal. I wish I could say I’ll be taking time off when Elise is born but no such luck. Due to my limited tenure as a full–time employee at Amazon, I only qualify for an unpaid leave of absence, which I will not be taking. This is a very similar situation to the one I was in when Ava was born. Most likely I will be taking 3 days off, then working from home a few more days. Luckily I have a great manager who puts family first, so I have the freedom to work from home as long as necessary.

Today is WebDevCon at Amazon, which I’ve been looking forward to for a while. WebDevCon is an annual conference put on internally at Amazon to showcase the latest and greatest web development technologies. There are a variety of talks being put on, plus meals are provided. There are well over 1,000 attendees so it’s a pretty big event. This is the type of conference that you would normally pay a lot of money to attend, but in this case they’re paying me to attend, so that’s pretty cool. I arrived early this morning to help setup and soon found myself making a run to pickup 5 gallons of coffee and 5 gallons of orange juice. I’ve never seen so many bagels, cream cheese containers, or pizzas. The 250 pizzas we ordered from Mad Pizza in Seattle was a store record! Happy Hour is being catered tonight by Foundation but unfortunately I have too much work to be able to attend. At least I’ll be home with my girls listening to game 4 of the NBA Finals while I work.

There probably won’t be too many more posts on here before Elise arrives. It’s a bit hard to believe that we’re so close to her arrival but I can’t wait to hold her for the first time. Regardless of how much we have going on and how many responsibilities I have, I couldn’t be happier. If you would have told me a year ago that today I would be a web developer at Amazon, living in the Seattle area, and that Jessica would be on the verge of giving birth to our second child, I would have said you were crazy. It’s funny how life turns out when you set goals for yourself and work hard to achieve them.

My Mom got back from the Alaska cruise on Friday and stayed the weekend with us. She said the cruise went really well and everyone had a nice time. We’ve been looking forward to having her so that she can have some quality time with Ava and a much needed break from work. She’ll be going back home to Vegas tomorrow but unfortunately I have to fly out to Phoenix tonight for work. Jessica has the night off and I wish I could stay home with everyone but there’s nothing I can do. I just checked the weather down there and its going to be 106 degrees both days I’m there. Should be interesting.

We had brunch with Dana and Brad this morning. I hardly ever get to see them these days due to everyone’s work schedules so it was really nice to sit down and catch up. Ava did surprisingly well at the restaurant, but that was mostly due to her choices of: portable dvd player, Nana’s iPad, and pancakes with syrup. Yesterday the four of us found a great park near our house on Lake Sammamish that we hadn’t been too. It was really beautiful so I’m sure we’ll be back there again.

It was great having my Mom for the weekend, and I’m looking forward to her next visit at the end of July. By then she’ll have two granddaughters to play with. Here’s a few pics from the weekend.