So after a few dozen pow-wows with family over the phone we have made the big decision to move to Houston over 4th of July weekend. That’s less than a month away! Ack. I’m not a really spontaneous kinda girl, so this is all a little crazy for me. I mean we were going to move to Houston anyway, I just thought it would be next year after I had a chance to plan ad nauseum.

But maybe this is a good thing. What if the housing market is even worse next year? That’s certainly possible. And if he had not been laid off, in August my husband would have been traveling to meet clients all over the United States (possible international travel as well) and would have been gone all the time. He didn’t want to miss out on Daphne and it was just a temporary thing in his mind anyway because the money would have been awesome. Plus it would have been almost impossible to have another kid with his work schedule. And let’s face it, I’m not getting any younger with the big 3-5 looming in August. We are either going to have another kid in the next year or two, or look into adoption when Daphne gets a little older.

I have a feeling I’m going to wake up in July and wonder what the heck just happened! And something else that’s going to be weird- living in the same city with my father. I haven’t done that since I was in 1st grade. And I haven’t even lived in the same state with him since I was 8. Weird.

What a crazy week this has been. It started off with a really odd situation at my husband’s workplace. I won’t go into details, but it left both of us scratching our heads trying to figure out what was going on. Well, that got answered yesterday when my husband got called into HR and was informed he was being laid off. Here’s your severance package, have a nice day. Fabulous.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, he was almost laid off from the same company two weeks before Daphne was born. I have never seen a company play so fast and loose with their employees. And this is a large company with divisions all over the world, not some small local place. There were quite a few layoffs last year (including entire departments) and I think HR took pity on us with the impending birth and tried their best to find him another position in a different area. This time he wasn’t so lucky.

Honestly, our first response is to pack up and get out of Alabama. We’d put the house up on the market and hope for the best. In the meantime my husband could work for my father (so we could have health insurance and a little $$ to move) until he could find something in his field. I never liked living in Alabama really. I’m totally ready to go to Houston. The house thing does stress me out, but you never know, maybe we will get lucky and find a buyer quickly.

So, we have a lot of decisions to make. And surprisingly I’m not freaking out. I’ve mellowed big time since having Daphne. As long as we are all healthy who cares about the rest. It will all work out.

Just an update on my Flickr account. A few days after I posted Daphne’s picture to a few children’s photography groups and I blogged about privacy, I noticed a few hits on my Flickr account from Orkut.com. This is the picture that was getting all the traffic:

The only reason I knew anything about Orkut was that I had seen so many other Flickr users complain about their pictures being stolen and fake Orkut profiles being set up with photos of their kids. I’m not sure that’s what is going on here, but you never know. (Google Orkut and Flickr) Anyway, I have disabled all downloads from my Flickr account, unless you are listed as a friend or family contact. I will probably consider watermarking my photos from now on and will limit the amount of public photos. Honestly, these are things I probably should have done to begin with. I went through my Flickr contacts today and deleted a few people, and added some others who had already listed me as a contact but I failed to reciprocate (sorry!).

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!!!  I wanted to upload a picture of us together when I was little, but you must still have most of those.  This was the best I could come up with:

Easter, 1976.  I have no idea why I look so odd in this picture.  You, however, look great!  And since I know this is one of your favorite pics of me I thought I’d add this one too:

Me at 18 months.  Little ragamuffin girl.  Man, I had bad hair.

I love you, and wish we could be with you to celebrate.  Hope you have a great day!!

Jenny

Congrats to my brother-in-law, John and his new bride, Terrie who were married today!  Sorry Daphne & I couldn’t be there for your special day.  We wish you a lifetime of happiness!

I think I might need to shop for a new web host. You probably didn’t notice, but our sites were down for about an hour this evening. Not just our sites, but all of DreamHost (660,000 + sites). This is the third time in about a month we’ve had a problem with them. Strange, because for the first 2 or 3 years I never had a problem. Even dreamhost.com was down tonight.

While the sites were down Chris and I had a good time laughing at the comments on their system status blog. According to the blog it was a typo that caused the system outage. So when I see comments like, “F-ing Loosers, take a typing class!” Ok, what is a looser? You mean loser, dumbass? Criticize a typo with a typo. Unless they were trying to be ironic, but I doubt it. I also liked a comment to fix DreamHost’s fat finger problem by buying some Bugles for their fingertips. I totally forgot about Bugles.

The looser comment reminded me of a stern letter I received from a customer’s attorney when I worked in Missouri. It was an overcharge claim that I was trying to dodge with a technicality in their contract and while it was crappy of us, we were within our right to deny it. Of course they were pissed and sent us a fiery letter but the really funny part was the last line… “We trust this matter will be handled WITH further delay (emphasis mine).” WITH further delay? Absolutely!! How long would you like me to sit on this? I think you meant WITHOUT further delay. I laughed so hard. It’s always good to proofread.

I have enabled user comments again, but I have to moderate them first before they appear on the site.  So feel free to leave some feedback.

Don’t forget- OU plays West Virginia tonight in the Fiesta Bowl.  Daphne is ready with her new OU bib from  Grandpa Hill (who also went to OU).  Go Sooners!  Please don’t choke this year.

Today is Chris’ 35th birthday. Daphne & I are home, making cupcakes and cleaning the house in anticipation of the weekend’s festivities. Chris requested a simple white or yellow cake with buttercream frosting and I thought cupcakes would be more fun, and easier for portion control. I’m trying out Amy Sedaris’ famous cupcake recipe and so far it’s pretty good. They remind me of the cupcakes from Whole Foods, dense and not overly sweet. If you normally get your cake from a box then you probably won’t like these. I look forward to trying them with icing.

Tonight we are keeping it simple- quick dinner at Five Guys, Starbucks, then looking at Christmas lights. Tomorrow we feast on filet mignon from Whole Foods (Side note- the meat at Whole Foods is worth the splurge. We don’t normally spend $30/lb on meat but this is worth every penny. It cooks up so tender and flavorful it’s better than what you can get at most restaurants, cheaper too.) and attempt one last time to get a Christmas card shot of Daphne.

Anyway, happy birthday sweetie!!!! Hope you have a wonderful day. We love you! - Jen & Daphne

What a messed up year for college football.  Luckily OU was able to pull off another win over Missouri last night in the Big 12 championship game.  I wish we could have gone to San Antonio.  The OU alumni association has been tempting me with travel arrangement emails for weeks now.  Oh well, some other time when we don’t have a 3 month old.