It's been a while
January 16, 2011, 11:24 pm - James Farrer
Well, it's been a while and since I was writing Dano, my brother who's on a mission in Norway right now, anyway I thought I'd post a similar update here.
Christmas and the trip to Colorado were good. The kids got way too many toys as usual though they're apparently a hit because the kids have been playing with them a ton.
The kids are growing like crazy. Abby is learning to read and is picking it up tremendously fast. We have to be careful because we can't spell things anymore and expect the same privacy since she can sometimes pick it up. And she loves playing games. Especially "Daddy's games". We got the Seafarer's expansion to Settlers, Ticket To Ride, and Creationary (pictionary, but with Lego's, it's awesome!) Today we played Settler's and she doesn't quite get all the rules and how it works, but she wants to be involved and is watching.
William still loves anything ship related. Pirates, treasure, swords, water, cannons, etc. Peter Pan and his flying ship and Eric from the Little Mermaid with the ship he rams into Ursula are two of the favorites. He likes playing games with us too, though his attention span is still significantly shorter than Abby's. He actually won when we played a game called Quoridor a few days ago. It's a relatively simple game and Abby and he are starting to understand how it works.
Alex is just cool. He acts almost a year older than his age and is talking quite a bit. It's hard to remember he's only two and doesn't understand as much as the other kids yet. He plays with the other kids, chases, tackles, plays with whatever they're playing with (sometimes to the frustration of the others) and can melt your heart in a second with his smile, laugh, growl, hug, or just about anything it seems.
On a different note, I got a promotion of sorts at work. When we went through the reorganization earlier this year they just moved me straight across in job level (well they didn't actually do anything to my job description at the time so it was more of a default) but just before the end of the year they were updating my job description and we looked at the 3 levels of engineer that I can now fit into and I ended up fitting into a level higher than my job before. Which is really awesome and meant an extra raise to boot. I always seem to be causing some sort of stir at work so it's nice to see that they appreciate what I do.
It seems that now I'm getting into the winter doldrums and just chugging along. So I'm just trying not to spend money and stay positive. Drifting...
On a brighter note, I was able to sneak a 20 minute motorcycle ride in yesterday which was really nice. It's been really cold and it finally got above freezing for more than a few minutes and the roads cleared enough to go ride. I'm excited for spring and am hoping to go on a lot of small trips and maybe even a few big ones. But I was hoping that last summer too and it sure didn't happen like I'd hoped.
I've been reading a travelogue of a guy who rode around the world, top to bottom and then around (WorldRider.com). I'm not quite that ambitious, but I think I'd like to ride coast to coast. I doubt it would ever happen in the same trip, but even split up would be cool. I remember driving it (two trips a year and a half apart) with my family growing up and it was cool then, though long squished in the back of a car/van. I'd love to do it on a motorcycle now. On the bike you're much more a part of the landscape instead of just watching it through a window. Someday...
