Today we finalized adoption for our daughter. This is a great day for us. After more than a year of struggling with various legal speed-bumps we finally have overcome it all. We thank our family and friends who have supported us during this past year, and we especially thank God (YHWH) for watching over us and helping us through the stressful times.
This is such an exciting time for us with our kids also because they are learning so much more now. Scooter has been trying to stand on her own. She will walk around holding our hands – which she enjoys very much. Sharkie has become very mobile, even though he still only lifts one knee when he crawls. Both the kids are starting to play together more and more. If Scooter is in the nursery and Sharkie is in the living room, he will sometimes crawl into the nursery to be with her. It’s so cool to see them both happy.
Last week was quite eventful; my sister got her High School Diploma, I fixed my truck, and I was offered a shift change to start working days. I also learned a cool feature of PHP which I've already put into place on my website.
On Thursday we went to Brandon to stop by my parent's place before going to the graduation ceremony for my sister. We're very proud of her. It was nice to see family again even though it was just a few short hours. Hopefully once I get on day shift I'll be able to visit with them more often.
Friday I got the alternator for my truck and spent a couple hours putting that in. It was a bit of a pain getting that serpentine belt to move. Since I had originally pulled it off by hand I wasn't quite sure how to get the tension pulley to move enough to get it back on. I thought that I'd eventually come up with a solution. After spending hours underneath the truck trying everything from prying it by hand to using my hydraulic jack to try to wedge it apart I finally discovered a small square hole where I could fit the bare head of a ratchet into. Then I was able to pry it down far enough with the help of another large wrench on the end of the ratchet handle. I can't believe how much time and energy I wasted on that. At least I got it done at a minimal cost.
I spent a few hours modifying a small PHP script to work with my website, primarily my forum, so that members of the site can upload avatar images. Since PHP is a new language to me I'm quite proud of my work and I hope that the members will appreciate the time that I spent on such a simple looking feature.
"The Vampire" will be going to the day shift in just a few weeks. My co-workers seem quite shocked that I agreed to go to days since I'm so comfortable in the night shift. Hopefully it will turn out to be beneficial for me. I really like working at night. It's a quite time, although sometimes the quiet is deafening. The benefits to going to days will be that I should have more time to spend with family and friends, I'll have an opportunity to meet other important people in the company (which could help me move up in my career), and I'll be able to get away from those annoying "Techlink" calls - at least for a while. I'll also be able to enjoy the weekend a little more since I won't have to sleep all day on Saturday - maybe my wife and I will be able to get out to enjoy the beach or go for a walk in the park with my kids. (That doesn't sound very Vampire-like does it?) Ahhh… Get the sunblock!