Woot for Sam

A draft for the April issue of the Arizona magazine, Kids & Sports from the school.

Samantha Jenkins / Class of 2019 A Champion Schools student since Kindergarten, Samantha Jenkins is in the habit of getting it right. Her current third grade teacher, Mr. Allie, describes Samantha as, "a model student." The title is quite fitting since earlier this year Sam became the youngest student ever to attain both the Honor Roll and Student of the Week accolades. What makes her academic feat even more impressive is that Samantha achieved this award while competing in the Champion Schools 2nd-5th Grade Soccer Division and Kickball League. Sam's work ethic, focus and commitment towards perfection personify the Champion mindset and what Champion students strive to develop. She also has a younger brother, Timothy following in her footsteps.

Drawn and quartered???

There are times when life feels like it is a bit much.. ususally for me it seems it's not something I want ie finances, something breaking. Then there are the times when life is just busy and seems to be overwhelming.

I am at one of those overwhelming times..
Side job:
Currently I am trying to finish a todo list for my side job and getting frustrated because everytime I think about working on one or two of the big items there are a couple of small ones that pop up and eat up my time. I have make a couple of break throughs which help long term but I still want to get the stuff off my todo list and move on. On the other hand I just talked with Sonor Quest labs and got the process started to add another item to my todo list. This will both be helpful but will cause me to implement other changes that we had planned on earlier.

Regular job:
I am basicly a backup programmer for a project that doesn't require a full time programmer but when something needs to be fixed and they need it quickly and the main person is not here then it falls on me. Now the program was redone this last year and is now in C#. I can muddle my way though C but I haven't had any formal experience with it. So right now I am currently working my way though a book on programming C# in order to get a better idea on how to read the code and write it. Current deadline for the people useing the program mid September. Also I have undertaken a big project and converting it to .net as well before January.

Home:
Shhhh Girlfriend.. yes it's true. She is a nurse, 32 and has a 2 year old daughter. Because she works every other weekend I am watching her daughter for her. Kids are back in school. I didn't hear from a Montessori school I was expecting to put Timothy in and so he and Samantha are at the same school. Timothy is not doing the same behaviors as he was last year when we tried this but he is also use to being at a Montessori school vs a traditional one. So we have a issue of schoolwork not getting done. Being up out of his seat, ect. So I have to spend about a hour to a hour and half at night working with him on getting his homework and schoolwork done. I also signed up both kids for soccer starting next week. This means that 4 days a week one or the other will be there til 5:30pm. Not a huge thing but it's a half hour out of getting home, dinner and homework. Also their game are on Sat Mornings from 8am to 11am. I was leary about putting Tim in this since I am trying to get hom back into a Montessori school but hoping it all works out.

Girlfriend:
Trying to find time to spend with her. We have been trying to a lunch a week and then doing something on Friday or on the weekend she has off.

I am having a hard time shaking the feeling of being pulled in all directions and wanting a longer day.

Powering up again..wow

Ok, please note that in the previous post we had our last dove leave us with her kids. Update....we now have a new dove up there. I am going to assume that it is not the same one, I personally think it is way to soon especially with the young ones. But never the less she has been giving us hard looks. I was still amazed that after today she is still up there. So we will see how it goes..The Jenkins Power Company is now powering a fan again on the back porch via dove.

Now for today. It is, ok looks at the time, was Sam's B-Day party/sleepover. I had orginally though that there might be 7-8 people for the party, with it least 6 for the sleepover. Turns out that there were 5 for the party and 3 for the sleep over. The party portion went well. It got off to a late start because we were expecting 3 more, Sam kept saying, 'yes they are coming'. But it went well. I found that for waterballoons having the kids help fill them and the adults tying them off was very fun. The kids had fun and the adults got squirted. We had fun later while playing Uno Attack.. I actually think that it is more fun than regular uno. The girls stayed up very late watching a movie and then doing nails ect. Sam went to bed at 1am. The rest I finally said "Lights out, if you stay up and talk fine, but lights out and doors closed." Needless to say they crashed. Bad for me since I stayed up and talked til 4am and then woke up at 7am. Sam was up shortly there after. Don't you love us morning people.

Leave it to the Birds

Well we had a dove take up the nest that is out on the back porch. I didn't think to much off it. She just looked at us as we went in and out. About a week ago I finally confirmed that the did lay some eggs and that they did hatch. The young ones were so quiet that we didn't hear them. They were already big enough that this week the mother left the nest a couple of time. The next thing we knew the nest was empty.

I also have a bell shaped thing of bird seed that we have hung out there as well, along with a humming bird feeder. Well the bell is mostly gone and I though I would replace it with a regular bird feeder, especially one that more than one bird could be on... ya know pecking order(grins). So Grandma Bess had purchased on and given it to us. I put it out yesterday. At one point when I looked there were about 12 birds feeding on or around it, mostly sparrows. I also saw a couple of doves again on the ground. So looks like for now were are a popular place with the birds.

HTML Coding

Ok I have been working on the website for the place that I work on and off for about a week now. Working on a page that hopefully can go out shortly public and then having someone help us with a new menu. So I redid a webpage so that it used the same code for the rest of the site on the menu system and that it was able to swap out the picture on the top as well. We had one of our web consultants help us with a new menu. So I had to pull the old code and redo it on 3 web sites. So needless to say I am tired of doing web coding for the week and I hope not to get back to doing more for it least a couple of days.

When the switch goes

So I go by my side job this morning to drop off a scanner that I had for the weekend for testing. As I am walking in the manager says, "I can't get to the database or the internet." I asked if it was just one computer or all of them. We walk in the computer room and I see one switch for the network up and running. I look up for the other one by the patch panel and there are no lights on. I go oh no not the main switch! Try two power cables and a couple of different outlets and nothing. So talking to the network consultant and he says it's dead and to get a new one. So I run down to the store that I know has a 24 port switch and get a new one. I get back and the old one is on but they can't get anywhere. So I take down the old one and install the new one. It's fun swapping all 24 patch cables from the old to the new. I also had to re arrange a couple of things so that the new switch would plug into one of the upses that there, I think this may have possibly been the issue as they have enough power outages ect. due to the area. Needless to say I got to work late and it was a fun morning.

Spring around Arizona

Well we had a great weekend and I was reminded that Arizona does have a spring. The flowers that Grandma got us and we planted around one of the palo verde in the back are slowly coming up, 6 so far. I have some flowers that are coming up for humming birds/butterflies. And I stepped outside and look at one of the palo verde out front and it was in bloom. It looked so great I had to take a picture of it.

Included are some pics of the Phoenix Rock Art Center where we went Saturday as well.

My geek is showing

Ok so I got the tax return and I offered the kids two choices Big Screen TV or computer.... Personally I wanted the TV because I am getting tired of looking at stuff on the 20" tv that we have now. So they went with the computer. Process for the computer.. Order said computer. (duo core 2.6g, 320gb hd, 4gb ram, creative sound card, 20" ws monitor, ati 256mb video card) Get said computer. Laugh evilly while unpacking and setting up the computer. Immediatly do updates ect while kids say can I use it yet. Which I of course promptly ignore and growl... not really. I had ordered 3 usb flash drives(Scandisk Cruzer) when I ordered the computer 2 4gb and 1 8gb. 2 went on the computer, 1 for windows readyboost(4gb), and 1 for Lord of the Rings Online(LOTRO) (8gb) for speeding up the loading of the textures, ect in the game. The last one was for me and the side job as I got tired of waiting for my current usb flash drive to quit taking 17 minutes to copy the current version of the code I was working on over so I could upload it to the development computer on the job site. The new one only takes about 3-5 minutes. Needless to say that after setting it all up and then putting the kids to bed later.. I of course had to crack the case open. Yea I know I couldn't resist...well acutally it was because the front jacks for the headphones didn't work and I wanted to know why. So I poped the case open and then discoved that the connectors had been plugged into the motherboard vs the sound card! Problem solved.. tested, tweaked, played with and finally went to bed. Oh ya the upgrade thinking lasted less than a week. On list new power supply and upgraded video card.

Jenkins Power Company is Downsizing

Ok so I have had my Uncle here for two weeks now. He came out and found a job and is done with training today and will be officially moving into his apt close to his work tonight. Well mostly. So this mean that instead of having another adult and dishwasher around the house it will just be down to me and the kids again. One of the weird things is that for the most part he had the same sleeping schedule as me because he had to be to work at 6am. Since I have been getting up at 4-5am to work on the side job this means that we were both going to bed about the same time and getting up at the same time. It has been nice to have him as I could make some more foods that I like to eat and I know the kids don't. This has the upside in the fact that there are also less leftovers of the foods I like to eat and make. WOOT. We will miss him being around so much and enjoying his company.

Another busy day...

So I started the day thinking ok good day to do laundry(giggles), clean up the kitchen, get a mop bucket and clean house. Well it started that way until I got a call from Bess. Apparently my neice is in town from Germany and they are going to the Wildlife World Zoo today and wanted to know if I could come. I said sure when are they going to be there. Basiclly I finally got the call from her at noon saying that her son, Randy, was on the way to get her. So finished our quick lunch and left. We got to meet Chelsie,who is Randy's daughter in law, and her daughter, my neice, Miranda. She is so cute. We had fun at the zoo and came home after almost 4 hours and had a nice dinner. Posted this and calling it a night.

David(Donna R's boyfriend), Miranda and Donna R looking at penguins.

Here are some upsidedown jellyfish... they don't float they attach themselves to the floor bottom to feed

B-Days

Call me strange but this is mainly just me. It has kind of come to the point that for me it least birthdays are just another day. I have usually had to work or this or that. So for me I actually had a nice birthday this year. I took the kids to the zoo and had a nice quiet enjoyable day. Sam commented later that afternoon. Happy B-day Dad. I forgot it was yours today. I know my kids like going to other kids b-day parties and they like theirs. I am all for that but I guess for me now a days..and no it is not a age thing..ie oh you are that old.. it is more I would just like a nice quiet day of relaxing.

New Year recap from the last couple of months

Ok it's been a while. Some pics of what we have been doing lately.
Sam's 1st grade teacher's daughter's birthday party happed on 11/22 at Castle's and Coasters. I really didn't get any pics of Sam on the rides as she was with someone else. She did go on almost every ride but the one that drops you from about 80 feet up including the big adult rollercoaster there. I was amazed. Here is a pic of Tim on the go cart course with the son of the lady of the group I was with. They were in first execpt for the last lap.

Well as you know we don't have snow here so we had to have it imported. Here are the kids in the snow at the Goodyear Jolly Holly city festival with 40 tons of snow. Tim lost his gloves and his hands got quite cold while they were in there but they had fun.

We went to a boat parade at the begining of December out at where Grandma Bess Jonason lives. Her neighbor is right on the lake had had a big party that we briefly took the kids to. They only stayed long enough to see the boat parade but they had fun. The second shot is one of the better ones that I got where the people took the frame work for a hot air balloon burner and mounted it on the front of the boat and would ignite it. It was amazing to see.



Here is a shot on the day after Christmas where I setup Tim's Hot Wheels stunt sets. Each one basicly kicks off the other one. It pretty much took up the entire space between the kitchen table and the piano in the dining room area.

Of course Dad has been giggling gleefully since he got these installed and his coworkers are grateful he kept bugging them. Christmas present to myself finally. I love them. Not the best shot. The stand are also drawers to hold stuff as well as cabinates above. Way to much storage in certain parts of this house.


Ok let me explain this one. I took the kids out to one of the local parks and Sam was sliding down. For some reason this slide would build up a lot of static electricity. You can see her as she was sliding down. Then after she got up. Her hair would literally stand on end. I was laughing pretty hard and she thought it was great as well. click on the pic for a larger shot.

Trying to bake....

I was getting a little frustrated this week. I have been working on freezer meals. This has been working for the most part. A little annoying when I get home and look at the recipe and it says Oh yea cook for a half hour then remove the foil and cook for another 15 min....starts to tear my hair out. There have been some recipes that I find that the kids really do like. Such as the pasta tacos ie jumbo shells with taco meat and cheese on top that they loved. There have been some others that the kids really didn't like so much, chicken enchaladas. The main frustration has been when I put something in the oven and I set it to start at x time, I thought it was great when it finally dawned on me that the oven has a delayed start time. Cook x min and it would be hot and ready to almost ready when I get home about 6ish. No such luck. 2 times and nada. I even made sure it would come on by testing it. So I get to scramble to make some dinner and then cook the other dinner for the next day, I have to cook it or throw it out. I am going to try again when I get the manual and try some testing this weekend and see what is going on.

On a good note I decided to make some dinner rolls. I went to the store and realized a dozen was almost $3. Bread is cheaper than that. So I found a recipe and made some last night. I had Sam help and then using parchment paper to seperate them put the dough balls in the freezer to freeze. I though this would be great to defrost and then bake as something quick. Well pulled them out this morning put some in bags and baked a few to try out. The defrost on the microwave heated them up enough that they were already rising and popped them in the oven to cook. They were great. I have enough yeast leftover that I will probably make another batch to put in the freezer for later.

Honey do...when I am the Honey

Ok, it was a handyman weekend.
Saturday - Looked into the vibrating garbage disposal. Replaced the catch in the sink of the kitchen as well as it was starting to not look good. Both weren't bad but they weren't fun either. I was a happy camper either with the kids getting along as they usually do trying to put away a box of toys in Sam's room.

I borrowed a drill from Grandma and finally got the towel rack put up in the kids bathroom. Along with a replacement toilet paper holder and a hand towel rack. It now matches the rest of the forest green paint in the bathroom as these are oak and blend in well. The kids I am sure are much happier about having a towel within reach vs being up on top of the shower curtain rod.

Sunday - After buying a recipe book for freezer meals and making 2 of the 3 meals I found that sounded good. The third was being crockpotted so that I get to make it tonight for later this week. I was tired enought that I had to lay down for a nap. When the kids woke me from my slumber on the counch I found that I was still tired and they had been cooped up to much. So we were going to try for the bike ride again.

I had two flat tires last time so it was canceled last week. I looked at the front tube and discovered that the holes were bad enough that the slime would work. So I found my spare tube and put that on the front. Then I looked at the back tire. The valve was toast so it was back to see if I have another spare tube. I did but it wouldn't work on the rims that I had on the bike at the time. So I swapped the tube on the front to the one on the back. Then I drug out the other set of wheels that I have and put one of those on the front with a different type of tube. That worked. Whew.

So I wanted to explore the neighborhood and see what was around. I knew I had a greenbelt behind the house and that there were sidewalks behind some of the houses as well. WOW. Was I shocked.. There is a ton of area where the green belts are behind the houses. We ended up taking about a 45 min ride around and the kids had fun as well. It was nice enough outside as well to enjoy and the moon was full and looked great. We are going to have to do this again.

Lions, Tigers and Picachu Oh my.

We had pancakes, as usual for one day on the weekend, this morning and I did the molds right this time with spray so they came out this morning. So here's a pic of them.

The walking disaster...... but only to herself.

Ok, first things first... Timothy has gone to school all week with little to no issues. And no calls from the school asking me to come pick him up. Yea!!!! So things are going well on that front. He is also going to sleep at night within a couple of minutes vs at the apartment where I would hold Sam's hand for 5 minutes then go to Timmy because he wasn't calmed down yet. And even then he wouldn't go to sleep right away most of the time. Since we moved into the house he has been alsleep within minutes wether I hold his hand or not. I am cutting down on the hand holding especially with him to work on the seperation issues.

We are still working on scheduleing issues at home. I though I would catch a little bit of a break with Timmy going to kindergarden and having homework but no such luck with him going to the Montessori school. No homework for Timmy. So it's find something for him to do, while Sam does her homework, that doesn't bother Sam. Then it's Daddy making dinner and then helping with homework while doing this or right after dinner. I am trying to work on reading stuff with the kids but it is hard with us getting home about 6ish and not getting dinner on the table til 6:30-7pm and then the kids are tired and are really up for doing homework type stuff. We'll see how it goes. It does's help right now that I am pretty much crashing right after the kids.

So what's up with Samantha. Well lets see here she burned her hand a little on a hot cookie sheet the other night. Then she banged her head on her bed. This morning she banged one of her toes on the kitchen table and then got her finger caught in her chest of drawers. I told her I was going to put her in the middle of the living room and have her sit on the bean bag just to make sure she didn't hurt her self anymore. She also has been playing up the drama a little this morning with the fake crying ect as well. So she is becoming a walking disaster area but only to herself right now. Well see how the weekend goes for her. Hopefully I won't have a daughter that is black and blue come Monday.

On a quick side note it seems like for me this has a been a week of wierd errors at my regular job and my side job. I finally got the signature capture program up and running for the side job and it is out for testing after a permission error on the tablet pc that they are using was giving me fits. At the regular job there was a issue with the proxy server settings on a users machine and it not allowing a user to get to a internal web page to view some reports for a program being developed. Finnally got both issues resolved but it was one of those annoying issues that lasts a day or two. And on a project I am working on it doesn't want to create pdf's for me automaticcly via code so I am baby sitting a computer that goes pop every times it creates a pdf. There are only about 20K documents to do across a couple of days....pop...pop...pop...pop....Popcorn sounds good right now I think I will make some.

Tile is great....oh wait that's not part of the tile

I love having tile now... well for the most part. I hear it is going to be cold on the feet in the winter and it is a little hard on the feet but for the most part I like it. It also means that I don't have to replace the carpet every x number of years. Our feet are getting a bit dirtier but I am trying to keep up on keeping it swept/dust mopped so to speak. I can feel when I haven't been doing it as well and it doesn't take to long to do it.

This was all great until I was mopping about a week ago and realized that the dark spots ect. in the tile wasn't part of the tile. Then of course I realized how dirty the tiles were around here and how many of them are dirty. There is a attachment for the steam cleaner that helps it do floors. So I am tacking a section at a time today with that first then mopping up a little better behind it. It will take a while but it should look a lot better over the next day or two.

Also Samantha has been bugging me to get up her canopy around her bed from her Grandmother. I finally got it up today. It looks nice especially with the day bed. She seems to be happy with it so far.

Jenkins Power Company now a construction site

Wow posting 3 times this week. Really unusual. I guess enough stuff is happening in my dull and boring life that it is worth writing about at this time... or it least I feel like writing about it.

Well I knew it was going to be a busy day today, but I didn't realize how busy it was going to be. Kids started off the morning by getting up about 6:30ish this morning with a loud TV going on. I got up a little before 7 just because I didn't want to get up and get moving. What also suprised me was the fact that Samantha had gotten the step stool and gone into the panty and retrieved the box of Reces Puff's opened them and then both kids had a bowl of cereal with milk and eating when I got up. I was suprised and really counted my blessings this morning.

The kids got to watch some cartoons this morning while I cleaned up the back yard from the night before where I trimmed down the palo verde trees in the back yard.

On a quick side note, I had gotten a jucier a few months back with the intention of using it to help juice lemons and grapefruit, bad idea a $14-20 fruit juicer works much better. So after I got up I decided that now would be a great time to juice those carrots and celery. I am trying to find the right mix so that it tastes a bit better. So I finished off the carrots and celery and combined the juices together and had some with some OJ. It wasn't the best but it worked for this morning. I have been trying to do some fruit smoothies with some protein shake added. This has been working out well. It fills me up and is healthy since I am lucky if I eat breakfast half the time in the morning.

So we spent the morning cleaning up and putting stuff away.

About 11:30 is when the fun all started. I need to get the satellite dish fixed because it went out went the two storms blew through and I though it wasn't in a great spot and was blocked, and the old dish was usable but I couldn't connect to it because the previous installer cut the cable 3 feet short, grrrr. All I needed to do was swap the reciever outside and reconnect it. So the satellite guy came and I explained the issue and he agreed and proceded to fix the issue.

Noon, my new neighbors from a couple of houses down saw the tree down and gave me a good price to cut up, haul away the tree, and fix the sprinker system. They have a landscaping business and know what they are doing. I wasn't expecting them til later so I was suprised they were there that early.

12:30 ish The water softner guys show up. They were coming buy between 1 and 3 to do the install. So right now I have the Direct TV van in front. Tree branches in the front yard and drive way with their truck and trailer across the street and now a third van in the street. They were redoing some pipes as well because the previous installer that put the in the water softer for the house, read this as the previous owners took it so I didn't have one, didn't do so good a job of it. They were also working on the outside spigot as well. One of the guys commented that it felt like a construction site. I had to agree with him with all the work and vehicles around the house.

3ish Grandma Jonason shows up. I needed her to watch the kids real quick and hang out while the guys worked. I had to run around the corner to Walmart to get some inexpensive dress of drawers for the kids. She also brought her old charcoal BBQ for me that she didn't need anymore. Woot.
Just as I was leaving Walmart it started to rain. It did one the of Arizona brief but hard rains. The water softner guys have to come back tomarrow to check for leaks for the back yard spigot and the landscape guys need to come back to fix the sprinker system. The rain only lasted maybe a half hour but it soaked everything enough that they can't finish the work. Grandma had to go to get back to her dog that was freaking out when a storm comes in.

5pm-5:30ish or somewhere around there... get back from another trip to the store to grab a few quick things and started the BBQ and had steak and did some carmel apples. I got a idea from the fair or somthing. I decided to do carmel apples. The kids really haven't done then and I figured it would be a good treat. I need to only go about half to 3/4 at the very most with a apple corer/slicer where it cuts the apples in sections. It didn't quite work as well as I wanted but it was close enough and tasted pretty good.

8ish Blogging the long day and relaxing for a few before calling it a night..

It was stormy night

Well funny story now...not so funny when it happened.

Basically had another windy storm last night out here and it was blowing stuff around in the back yard. So I went out back to move some stuff inside for now. Now I though that I had the sliding patio door unlocked and went out the master bedroom door and forgot that it is locked. So I go out to the back patio in just shorts and close the door and then find out that the sliding patio door is locked and the other door inside is locked. I don't have my keys on me at the time either to get back in.

So here I am with the wind blowing really hard and it sprinkling a little as well and no way back inside the house. So I go to the side of the house where the kids rooms are and knock really hard on the windows. Nothing... so I make my way to the front of the house and try the door bell for a couple of minutes. Nothing. I am starting to wonder about my kids not waking up. I have another key to the house with the kids grandmother and can call if needed. So I went back and banged on the kids rooms windows for a little while long and finally got a rather freaked out and frightened Timmy. He went to the front door and let me in. Needless to say it took him a while to calm down and finally went to sleep on the couch.

Not to mention that while I was out front I discovered something. The big tree in the front yard had blown down as well. Thankfully it went away from the house. The funny thing is that I was just talking to a friend about deep watering and if you don't that the roots will grow sideways vs down. Bad time to realize that lesson from the previous house owner.

Update: After talking to the tree service company it looks like I won't be able to save the tree. So now I just need to figure out how I am going to get it removed.

House, school and more

Well it has been a week and a half since school started. Samantha has been doing well as usual. She likes her new teacher and is having fun. She has a set of triplet girls in her class...oh boy.

Timothy hasn't been adjusting as well and will be changing schools. He has been having behavior issues. We will see how he does in the new school next week.

Well also been in the new house for about a week and a half as well. Got the boxes in the kitchen put away and working on the rest. Working on cleaning up the trees ect. for the yard. The grass in the front yard is coming up amazingly quick. I didn't think that I would have to think about how to cut it quite yet.

On a side note...a home is a strange thing. A home has a set of noises and sounds. When you go somewhere else or to someone's house the sounds are different. I remember the noises from the apartment. I can still hear the water going from the neighbors showers. The kids upstairs running around. The radio in the morning from the nextdoor neighbor. The loud fan from the ac unit. But now there are new sounds. The sounds of the ac unit outside from the bedroom. The sounds of the fish tank. The sounds of the kids in their rooms as the move around. It's interesting how the sounds we get use to change. It's like music that we are use to listening to or comfort food. Slowly getting use to the new sounds around here slowly.