Australia

I am officially going to Australia next week. The trip has been delayed a couple times so I waited until the last minute to buy tickets just in case, but everything is set. I am excited about the opportunity, but also a I don't like the idea of being away from Christina and Lauren for so long. I will be working at HK's subsidiary setting up a new network, server, and several new computers.

It should be an interesting trip! I will leave Indy around 3 p.m.on the 7th and get to Adelaide at noon on the 9th with stops in Fort Worth, LA, and Sydney. The return flight trip is even worse. I take off from Adelaide at 9 a.m. on the 17th and arrive in LA on the same day at 8 a.m.!

We're here!!

We made it to Washington PA around 4:30. Lauren did a great job in the car (with a little help from Mary Poppins). Rachel has already taken to Chris! She is snoring in her arms as I type. It is freezing here and we decided against going out again. We are going to try out Vocelli's pizza.

Thanksgiving

We had a really nice Thanksgiving. It was nice to be at Grandma Trankina's this year. Moon, Mom, Chris, and Grandma prepared a wonderful meal with the best desserts ever! I stuffed myself and then fell asleep watching the Lions get crushed.

We are heading out first thing tomorrow morning to meet Tom, Darc, and Rachel at Washington PA. We are going to spend a couple of nights with them. It will be our first time meeting Rachel! The Tribute is loaded up and we are taking 30 DVD's which will hopefully keep Lauren entertained. We are also trying out Grandpa's GPS. Hopefully it will get us there without any wrong turns!!

Chicken Little

Last night Chris and I took Laurent to see her first movie and had a really good time! It was really neat to see Lauren's face when we sat down in the theater. She got a restless the last few minutes of the show, but did a great job. After we settled in to the theater I ran to the concession stand to get some popcorn. The line was crazy and the person in front of me used a $100 bill to buy a $3 coke!! Like a dummy I bought a pop with the popcorn so I had to wade through the line a second time to get a $4 water for Lauren.

The movie was better than I thought it would be. It was pretty cute and was also the perfect length for restless 2 1/2 year olds! We will probably have to add it to the DVD collection when it comes out.

HK Upgrades

We wrapped up a project this weekend to move HK to a new ISP. Bandwidth doubled and we were still able to save $400 a month! We had power surge in the middle of the upgrade that turned a 4 hour project into a 14 hour one.

Chris had her big sale at the church today and it was a big success. She is now going through the catalogs to figure out what she is getting!

Rough week saved by Greyhound Sushi!

This week really wore us out! After Halloween Lauren started getting sick and we kept her home from daycare every day except for Monday. She has another ear infection, but the medicine seems to be doing the trick. To top things off Tuesday night I had to work till 3 am on a problem with HK's voicemail server, and on Thursday we found a new Trojan Horse on one of our servers. Symantec sent us a new definition file for the threat. I even caught Lauren's cold!

Thursday one of the consultants we work with took me out for Sushi in Bloomington and it was awesome! Apparently, the best fish distributors won't come south of Joliet so this restaurant worked out a deal with Greyhound Bus to transport fish on dry ice! I thought he was joking at first, but the waitress confirmed that their fish is delivered by bus!

Halloween

Halloween was a lot of fun this year. Lauren dressed up as cow girl riding a horse and hit the candy jackpot Sunday night. She was a little shy at the first few stops, but got into it as the night went along.