Bugs Palace!

I just want to wish my beautiful wife the happiest of birthdays. I know she has been dreading this one coming for quite some time. She has no reason to. She’s as beautiful and young at heart as she was when I first fell in love with her over 18 years ago.

In those 18 years she has went from a beautiful, goofy, (semi)hard working student and waitress – to a hardworking and dedicated employee, wife and mother of two. As she worked up the ranks from a private office in Burlington to the City of Hamilton she kept proving over and over just how much smarter she is than I. At this point, I realized I had to marry this woman.

I married my best friend; my better half; the woman I love.

She continued working and upgrading her skills through more online and night courses than I can count. She switched jobs to Haldimand County. It was during this time we started our family. We have been blessed with two amazing children – Abby and Joe. Being a Mom has proven just one more task for Shannon to amaze me with. She is a wonderful mother and our kids couldn’t be luckier. There isn’t another person on the planet that I would rather have as the mother of my children.

As the kids got bigger and maternity leaves came and went, she focused on finishing her OPPI (fancy planning accreditation). One more job job change to Norfolk County and a handful of additional courses and she finally finished off the OPPI and became a member! (Still very proud!). At Norfolk County, Shannon seems to finally be in a place where she feels at home. She loves her job and the people she works with.  And she even seems to like the challenges it brings. It has been a long time since I’ve seen her actually excited and enjoying going to work. — Well…. As much as one can enjoy working I guess….

In the last year or so, as our lives seem to be finally be at a point where things are slowly coming together. Challenges come but together we have been doing a pretty good job of staying ahead of them. As things seem to be coming together, I am seeing more and more of the goofy, fun loving, caring, beautiful girl that I fell in love with nearly 2 decades ago. I couldn’t be more proud of the mother that you are; the woman you have became and the wife that I love.

You are still a Jackass. But you are my Jackass. 40 Looks great on you. Enjoy it!

Love you.

Another quick update to get the blog back on track so I can get back to my semi-regular posts. Funny how much I missed doing these things. I realize very few people read them, but I like looking back at them, and hope someday the kids will enjoy going back in time and visit their dads mindless babble.

It’s 2018. New year, new plans. This year Shannon and I will be turning the big 4-0. Scary thought! One big goal I have this year is to get back into better shape as well as a better place mentally/emotionally. My goal is to start my 40’s in better condition then I was in during my 30s and maybe even my 20’s. I’m eating a bit better – certainly better portion control. I’ve been off soda/pop for over 5 years now. With my back in a bit better shape I am starting to get back into some actual exercise again. If my shoulder would just cooperate I’d be rockin! — progress. Mentally/emotionally is a slower progress, but it is progress just the same. While I’m at it, I’m also doing what I can to try and be the best husband and father that I can be. I love my little family with all my heart — I just want them to know that without question. With better health both physically and mentally I hope to be able to keep showing them that love for a very long lifetime to come.

Small personal task was completed earlier this year : I got my boat license! No, I have no plans on buying a boat or any other watercraft in the foreseeable future, but with some motivation from a good friend , I spent the time and got it done. Hoping to put it to good use this summer!

While I’m on the topic of vehicles, I don’t have a great deal to update regarding the garage. Bug and bike are in hibernation still. Hoping to wake them in March/April to get them polished up and do some small tasks before putting them back on the road for the summer. I installed some new grab handles in the jeep as a Christmas gift for Shannon and also picked up a replacement soft top as hers was getting a bit beat up. One small interior upgrade to do to the back seat and the jeep mods will be done until it’s time for summer tires. And finally the Sierra is coming along. All the tasks I had planned out for stage 1 have been finished. Interior is basically all updated. Power windows, LS door panels and seats, stereo system, etc. Also installed a muffler I got as a gift from Shan/kids. Sounds awesome! They also bought me the parts I need for my rear suspension. Hoping this spring to grab the remaining parts and finish the suspension as well. Right now that’s scheduled for the May24 week that I have booked off while Shannon is working and the kids are still in school.

Finally, we have officially started planning out the garage/laundry room addition for the house. Right now we are really hoping to begin construction this summer. Money will dictate if it will happen this year or not, but the process has officially begun. Hoping to make some more progress in the next week or so. If I have my way, we will break ground before school is out in June. To follow along with the progress click HERE or select PROJECT GARAGE from the top of my page.

What a crazy few months this has been! For those who don’t know, back in October while we were away on vacation (more on this shortly…),  a pipe burst in our basement. The good news is the damage was isolated to just one corner of the basement. The bad news is, that corner is where my file/web server lived. Up on a shelf, battery backed-up, away from harm – or so I thought. Water hit the server and nothing else, killing 2 of the 3 hard drives in the computer. The drive with no real data on it survived, whereas the data drive and the backup both fried – killing every single piece of data I have ever kept. This included my website, every single photo we have ever taken and a bunch of other personal files. I was with no exaggeration: heart broken. Thankfully a local data recovery lab was able to recover 100% of my data!!! It was the happiest I have ever been to pay 1100$ for service. Over the last couple months I bought some new equipment to finally rebuilt the server that you are reading this from now.  Only thing left to do is rebuild the photo server – which is coming soon! So with that sad tale hopefully behind us, time to move on with some much abbreviated updates!!! I know this will be a long post, so please bear with me.

As I mentioned before, we were away on vacation. Early in October Shannon, the kids and I joined Jeff and Cathy on a wonderful Disney Cruise. In part as a fun vacation and also to celebrate Abby’s 10th birthday! This is Shannon and my second cruise, first for the kids. And first Disney cruise for all of us. It was as you would expect from Disney – pretty amazing. The ship was gorgeous, the food was great and plentiful, and the service was second to none! We were at sea for a week.

Due to some tropical storms the weeks prior, our trip had to be someone re-routed. We ended up with 4 stops: Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Jamaica and finally Disneys Castaway Key. Each stop had it’s own amazing adventure. In Cozumel we swam with the dolphins and manatees. In Jamaica we went to the Chaka resort where we did a tube ride  through a rain forest and swam on a very cool multi level pool where the kids were able to jump off the face of a rock wall into the pool. On Grand Cayman we went out snorkeling with the sting rays in what felt like the middle of the ocean.  And finally on Castaway Key we had a “quiet” beach day full of snorkeling, swimming, sunbathing and bicycle riding. Each excursion seemed to out-do the previous. The days at sea were a nice quiet break from the ports. The weather was fantastic each and every day.

Once we were back on dry land, we ended up staying a couple nights at the Disney Swan Hotel and spent the first afternoon just exploring the Disney grounds and the Downtown Disney area. The second day the kids joined Jeff and Cathy at a fun day at Animal Kingdom while Shannon and I ventured over to the Magic Kingdom. We spent the morning doing an incredible behind the scenes tour of the park. Big bucket list item checked off there! Once the tour was done we wandered the park much like we did many years ago – just the two of us jumping on and off rides all afternoon and just enjoying the park. Later that evening the kids and in-laws met us at Magic Kingdom around 7pm and we watched the parade and firework displays. Jeff and Cathy were pretty zonked at this point and headed to the hotel, but the kids, Shannon and I kept going! We hit up a bunch more rides and played at the park right up until it closed at midnight. Back to the hotel for a short night sleep and then finally back on the plane int he morning to head home! Thank you so much for such a great trip Jeff and Cathy! It is one we will never forget! And to my baby girl, I hope you had a wonderful 10th birthday! Mommy and Daddy love you so very much and hope you had as much fun as I did!!!

Christmas has also came and gone since I last posted. Normally I like to break things down but given the length of this post already, I will simply say that it was another great Christmas! With so much time being spent with family and friends. Good times, great people and lots of love (and way too many presents!).  Thank you everyone for everything! I will have the photos up in the near future. Just need to finish some server work first!

I am having a bit of writers block at the moment, so I think I will cut the update off here. There is so much more detail I could put into all the above but I’m just going to keep it semi-short. In the next post I will try and cover a bit more including some vehicle updates, house updates, 2018 plans and much more. So stay tuned !