Jackson

Project Sunken Treasure

You probably didn’t notice or care. But this site has been down since August 22nd. That’s 8 weeks to the day.  That was a rough day as I woke up to 8 inches of water in my basement.
I learned a few lessons that day. Here are a few of them.

1. Don’t store your computer tower on the floor.
2. Don’t put your hard drive in the lowest bay in your computer tower.
3. Your backups of your computer files should not be on the computer next to your tower.  (I wasn’t quite at the 3 – 2 – 1 backup rule.)
4. You’d be surprised how much junk you store in your basement that you don’t need.
5. Throwing away your stuff is emotional. (It was my junk!)
6. Thank God for insurance.

So despite that major setback in life, things have been crazy busy and the world drives on.

Project Sunken Treasure is the complete restore of my website from cached pages on the web. The hard drive was toast. Completely underwater.  A company wanted $1800 to try and recover files from it. But now my site is back live on a new linode server! I’ll be working to push out new updates and more content as often as my busy life will allow me to. Click the icons to the right or at the top or bottom of my page to interact and follow me on all my various platforms.

Here are some of the things I’ve been up to and some upcoming things.

1. Benjamin is now almost 9 months old!
2. I attended WOCS in April – May and appointed to Warrant Officer in the Army.
3. I traveled to Brazil in South America for the first time for a week of work.
4. My refrigerator quit working.
5. I’ve been busy packing and cleaning getting ready to put my house on the market in November.
6. I’m moving to Georgia for 9 months of Active Duty school for my Warrant Officer MOS job early next year.
7. I’ve still got 2 trips tentatively on the calendar and I’m looking forward to the holidays as well.
8. LetterboxD is an amazing social network for movie nerds and tracking all your movies you’ve watched. Connect with me over there!

As far as my list of goals for the year, I’m about where I expected to be. I’m behind on the reading and writing ones, but making good progress on the career and physical health ones.
Having 4 kids and planning a house move means I really spend all my free time just doing logistics. Food, daycare, school, work, projects, travel, etc are always on my mind. The two most useful tools I have are Google Calendar and You Need a Budget (YNAB) budgeting tool.  Click here for a discount! They are both very useful for making sure things get done on time and not breaking the bank.

And finally, here are some photo dumps from my phone. Mostly of my kids because honestly that’s all you probably really wanted to see anyways. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later,
Derek

Jack is 6 years old!

Today is my son’s birthday. Time seems to be speeding up the older I get.
2008 seems like such a long time ago.
Jack is in kindergarten now. Watching him learn new things is quite amazing.

I can’t believe how good he is at reading.
I laugh at how juvenile and boyish his humour is. I can’t imagine what he’ll be like in jr. high.

He makes me want to be better for him.
I often feel like I am too hard on him.
He pushes me to be a better dadeven though I don’t always know how to do that.

I can’t wait to see what adventures life takes him on.
Happy Birthday Jack. I love you. -Dad

Here are some of my favorite pictures of me and Jack.

Update


Hey all,
Just wanted to update everybody cause I know a few people are reading this alot.

Today has been a good day. Jackson is very healthy and doing well. The doctors say he is doing great. He passed his hearing test with flying colors. He is feeding well and sleeps good. He is a very quiet baby and doesn’t fuss much. When he does cry, he calms down very quickly after being held.

He and Amy are both napping right now.

We have had lots of visitors from friends and family. Thanks for stopping by.

I’ll update soon.

A Note from Amy

Thank goodness for Epidural’s and wi-fi at the hospital.

Water broke around 2:30 last night and we checked into the hospital about 4:30 this morning. Despite the water breaking, I didn’t go into labor, so I was given the inducing drug around probably 8 or so. After dealing with contractions for a couple hours, I got an epidural around noon. It is now 3 and I’m still just put-putting along. Hopefully soon I’ll get to meet my son.

Derek is finally napping. I’ve gotten a couple naps in already today, but he’s been by my side waiting for me to need him. He was the perfect support during the contractions and didn’t complain even when I was hurting him! He’s been updating his blog and has a few pictures and that will have the most current news as we progress. I would be posting this on his blog, but I don’t know the password and I’m not going to wake him.

Both grandma’s are here and we’ve just been hanging out.

thanks for all the messages, texts, and calls! :)