As told by Kat

Rainy Tuesday

// June 9th, 2009 // No Comments » // Boston, Fitness, Health, John, Julie, Kat, Life, London, Rachel, Work

I figure I will make this one a public entry.  For those who don’t know, we have (within the last month or two) found out that Rachel has a very significant vision problem that is actively degenerating her retina and her optic nerve is very affected.  We have done lots of blood tests to find out the source but ultimately she needs to have an ERG test completed for a definitive answer.  The ERG was scheduled for a few weeks ago but it was too much for her and we could barely even “drop her” (with the different kinds of eye drops required) so we are awaiting a miracle (LOL) in the schedule of Dr Ann Fulton at Children’s Hospital who can do an ERG under general anesthesia.   We have upgraded her IEP for next year and as a part of that, Rachel is (RIGHT NOW!!!) undergoing a functional vision assessment at school by a Teacher of the Visually Impaired.   The vision appears to be a symptom of something much bigger and we are working with a geneticist who is looking for specific stuff (including some chromosome deletions) that might be responsible for a great deal of things.  All of this takes time.

Julie and Rachel will be out of school in about 2 weeks and my Juliebean is GRADUATING PRESCHOOL next week in preparation for Kindergarten!  The girls both have their school concerts on Thursday so expect to see some pictures up here at the end of the week!  Rachel is now 9 and Juliebean turned 5 in March.

The boys are doing well and are the best of friends.  London is into playing Indiana Jones Legos and in the sandbox with Julie and Boston is a professional laptop destroyer and amateur escape artist.  They are healthy and obnoxious and eating me into the poor house.  Just as it should be.

I have lots of doctor appointments lined up for Rachel and hopefully this summer will bring us some answers so we can know how to best apply our efforts.  The girls won’t be doing summer school (at my request) so I will be trying to think of some fun summer ideas.  We did join the zoo last week so I will certainly want to get my money’s worth (LOL).

Most importantly I look forward to watch them just be kids.

John had nose and throat surgery on Thursday so I’ve been playing nursemaid with the help of the kids.  He is on the mend now but I am sure is drooling at the thought of steak right now even though he is nowhere near ready for that yet.  I’m sure it will be another week before he is better.  The nose is healing faster than the throat (he had his uvula out and his nose fixed).  No more snoring!!

Drop me a comment if you’re out there…

The Good Geeks new website!

// February 5th, 2008 // No Comments » // Work

The Good Geeks website is going to be getting a facelift in another month. This is a preview of what it will look like….

vbulletin 3.7 (Beta 4)

// January 28th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Health, Work

I’ve had the pleasure of being able to “play around with the latest and greatest version of vBulletin, the leading PHP based forum / community software. I can’t get over how far this software has come with new features, security fixes and amazing ease of contribution installations. I’ve really loved getting to know Fireboard and its seamless integration into Joomla, but vBulletin just makes my me really excited about the features they may release when this goes Gold!

Front Range Billing

// January 28th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Work

One of my bestest friends ever had me re-do her website this week, here is a screenshot and a link:

Front Range Billing Solutions
URL: http://www.frontrangebilling.com/

Opening Day…

// October 8th, 2007 // 7 Comments » // John, Kat, London, Work

John

Moi

London. He was grouchy this morning.

The waiting area

Kate’s work space being set-up

Front Desk

Front Desk II

Front Desk III

Front Desk IV

The meeting room, chock full of my boys

A word of advice

// October 7th, 2007 // 2 Comments » // John, Kat, Work

Don’t try to finish painting your new office/shop with three kids in tow. You’ll end up stressed out and they’ll “trash” the place.

It wasn’t a good idea in the first place so I don’t know why I tried (but I did finish so go figure).

Tomorrow is our opening. I’m nervous and excited.

I miss my husband. Hopefully we’ll be able to grab five minutes together tomorrow morning.

Pictures of tomorrow will be posted tomorrow night.

Now if only we could get internet access. Verizon and Comcast have both been extremely disappointing. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Our table at Endless Summer

// September 17th, 2007 // No Comments » // Work

I posted pictures of our table at Endless Summer on our “Geek Blog”.

Here is a teaser:

Wednesday au jus

// August 8th, 2007 // No Comments » // Boston, Good Stuff, Health, John, Julie, Kat, Life, London, Rachel, Work

I will resume my blog soon, I promise.

The marriage has been going pretty good and I am very happy about it!

The girls are great, their summer school finished a couple of weeks ago.

The boys are coming up on 1 and 2 and I cannot freakin’ wait! Once Boston turns 1, I’ll take a deep breath and start to look for the light at the end of the tunnel.

This weekend I plan on taking major amounts of pictures and will share them with y’all. I have had a horrible relationship with my digital camera and have been terrible about taking pictures because of it.

School starts in 5(ish) weeks for me and I am working on getting John enrolled as well. : – o

Ollie Ollie Oxen Free

// August 25th, 2006 // 1 Comment » // Boston, Health, John, Julie, Kat, Life, London, Rachel, Work

My name is Kate (the wife/Mommy)and I turned 28 yesterday. I do most of the writing because John (the husband/Daddy) who is a geek by nature and by trade doesn’t seem to pay much attention to email and blogs. Together we have almost 4 children.

Rachel is 6. She is a great kid who is always trying to be friends with everyone she meets. John and I definitely find it a challenge to balance our attention to Rachel (formerly known as Glue or SuperGlue) because she is 4 years older than her (next) younger sibling. Rach is about to start the first grade and she can’t wait! There are a lot of things I am hoping that she will learn early on and it won’t be too painful. We kept her out of public school for the most part during Kindergarten and have recently given up on plans to homeschool her because our proverbial “plate” is too full to give her the attention that she both needs and deserves.

Julie is 2. Formerly known as Firecracker and Fire, she is definitely our “challenge.” The first 9 months of her life I spent walking her around the house, on my hip and in the “facing out” position. She would scream and scream and (!)scream(!). For some reason I never had the thought cross my mind, that maybe she would be a difficult toddler.

In retrospect, I feel like a dumbass.

I remember thinking “If she could just sit-up and play on the floor.” Or “if she could just walk so she could entertain herself a little bit better.” Our Julie has a heart of gold, but she is a very trying child. Lots of screaming, lots of collapsing on any floor: carpet or concrete, at home or in public, wet or dry. Now I am saying “if she could only communicate better.” Right now she is a “hitter” and tends to forcefully try and take what she wants… whether that be from her older sister or her baby brother (Julie is a *very* tall 2yo). Julie is as smart and as high strung as they come. I think she might try and take over my business in a hostile takeover before preschool starts. LOL

London is 10months. The sweetest and most easy going baby I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. He is very much like Rachel was as an infant and we are really enjoying him. I think within the next couple of months his vocabulary might surpass that of his sister Julie (18 months his senior). He is sitting up, pulling himself to a stand and flirting with anything or anyone that has a heartbeat. He is a dream baby! Already a member of our family. Clapping, answering questions, and talking quite a bit more than I ever thought was possible. (See the above sisters who were/are late talkers).

Boston is t-minus 6 weeks (I hit the 34week pregnant mark in 14 minutes). Boston is due to arrive 3 days before London turns 1.

Yes. We know what causes pregnancy.

No. It isn’t in the water.

John and I met online in October of 2001 through Yahoo.com after we were both previously married. After living in sin (without the safety pin) we got married in November of 2003 and have been quickly building our family and are *done* after Boston arrives. John is definitely a “foodie” and shares my passion for small business, home improvement and hanging out with our children. Our dream is to continue building our businesses, remodel a large “dump (my word for fixer-upperer) and have a gourmet kitchen and teach all of our children how to do all three (small biz, remodeling/decorating and cooking).

On a totally random note: Next spring we are going on a cruise to celebrate my parents 40th anniversary and we vow not to be “the fat ones” on the ship. Not out of everyone on the ship. We’ve been on a cruise together before and there is no way I could gain *that* much weight, some of the people on cruise ships are unbelievably obese. My goal is not to be “the fat one” out of all of my family members that are going.

All I know is that I have lived in maternity clothes for the last 3 years and I am donating all of my maternity wear in November. Goodbye Motherhood. Goodbye Take9. Goodbye Old Navy Maternity.” I will *NOT* be missing you. I’ll slowly wean myself off of maternity clothes and maybe buy a few Lane Bryant items… and then will work my way back into Old Navy clothing…. I can’t wait to get rid of my dumpy clothes. I love my babies. I love my stretch marks. I love my breasts as they are. I am not ashamed of my body or how it has changed after making four human beings.

But if I never see another maternity outfit with the hideous looking maternity panel again (after Mr Boston arrives), it will be too soon! I am very blessed to have a working body that makes gorgeous babies, but I am done making them. Put a fork in me, Jose Cuervo and pass me a margarita. I am *DONE*!

Pregnancy #4

// April 25th, 2006 // 2 Comments » // Boston, Health, John, Julie, Kat, Life, London, Rachel, Work

I’m 16ish weeks with #4. We have decided to call him “Boston” and if he is a she, we have no names yet. My stomach is starting to pop out and as soon as I feel that I look more pregnant than fat, I will post a picture.

On a side note, FireCracker is calling LittleMan: “Boy.” When LittleMan is asleep, FireCracker goes searching the house calling “Boy?” “BOY?!” It is very cute.

SuperGlue is going to Boston for a week without me, accompanied by her Granny. I don’t think it has hit her yet, and it probably won’t until she gets there. I am going to feel like half a person until I fly home to Boston to bring her back here.

HotHubby is pretty much feeling better, but a little sore. I wasn’t sure how much more of the pain-induced grouchyness that I could take. He’s a keeper, but apparently really difficult when under the weather. What hubby isn’t I guess?

He is calling to make the appointment for the snip-snip that will be done before I bring another little soul into the world. It’s either he gets it done by a licensed physician or I get it done after hours at Pet Smart, or drunk on the kitchen table. We are going on a family cruise in a year, I am not going to be pregnant for another cruise. I was 22weeks preggo with FireCracker on our honeymoon, I got so sick at our day at sea and we didn’t have SuperGlue with us. I can’t imagine being pregnant with #5 on a cruise while feeling insanely pukey.

Speaking of the cruise and my weight loss goals, I picked up an elliptical and a treadmill. The treadmill still hasn’t made it into our condo, HotHubby and I carried the elliptical upstairs together and that thing was hea-vy! I am doing a few minutes here and there on the elliptical, I have had to slowly build up my knee muscles as I’ve had two knee surgeries and my left knee area muscles aren’t all that strong. SuperGlue is LOVING the elliptical and has been working out everyday. She rocks!

We got our Staples Business Rewards check over the weekend and max’d out our quarterly rewards, getting the full $100 check. I took the girls and bought them some paints yesterday which we used today after I got back from my meeting and have been working on explaining the color wheel to SuperGlue – obviously FireCracker (newly 2) is too young to do much more than mix the paints. They were stoked and we turned two of HotHubby’s “Good Geek” shirts into painting smocks. I was very happy about not having to fork out money for smocks that are only going to get gross. I will have to take a picture of it tomorrow. I have made a resolution to take more pictures of the kids and have prints made.

Things are going well on the Geek front. The fact HotHubby is feeling better has made the gray cloud over my life go away. It was really hard to do more around the house while be pregnant with #4 at this altitude. Over the weekend I actually sat down for a full hour just to catch my breath and get my blood pressure up (yes, I am aware that it sounds backwards). I have been monitoring it and it fluctuates between 110-90 ish over 60-40 ish. I got the low blood pressure from my Dad and have been watching in every few days. I’d definitely take the low bp from my Dad over the high bp which I luckily did not get from my Mum.

Has anyone heard of metformin/glucophage making ones average blood sugar go up?

Beddy bawda biddah buddah

// April 14th, 2006 // 3 Comments » // John, Life, Rachel, Work

I’m feeling better and wanted to thank my online family for your support. It isn’t often that I have down days, and I despise the rare down day that I have. HotHubby was really great and gave me an encouragement card with 40 bucks in it. The card was a little lame, he wrote something sweet in it. The best part of the whole card thing was the money. How can 40 bucks NOT cheer a woman up?

We’ve been busy looking at retail office space. It’s very expensive and competitive in Colorado Springs but we both feel it is the next step for our business, mainly for his side of the business. For those that are new to my blog, HotHubby and I own “The Good Geeks” a multi-faceted business that essentially offers Computer Repair/Networking type services (HotHubby’s side) and Website/Database Development/Hosting (my side). I don’t need a store front for the work I do and manage, but having an official location would definitely bring in more business for HotHubby and set us on the path to setting up another location in another city.

This has definitely been a learning experience, both professionally and in the family sense. It is the most stressful thing I have ever done. If we were to have a “bad” few months, we’d still be responsible to feed nearly 4 kiddos, keep the cars insured and pay our mortgage.

Our children are in for the ride of their lives and will benefit immensely from the experience they will have in business, just by growing up in our family. Being a business owner is in my blood, I was practically bred for it. I know there are a lot of people that believe that professional success is about luck, but I can tell you (first hand) that the non-famous-person success of an average person is about hard work, mixed in with blood, sweat and tears.

I had to yell at HotHubby today (not yell, but express my pissedoffedness (LOL)) and basically said “As your business partner I disagree because….” and then I said “If you still disagree with your business partner, come home and your wife will kick your ass.” A disagreement at work can easily be continued into a disagreement at home in the marriage but we are pretty good about separating the two. I know most people believe we are truly crazy for working together (I hear “I could never work with my husband” all the time)… but I can’t say there is another person on this earth that I would rather work with. That’s not true. I’d love to work with my children, in any possible way that I am able.

I look back on the time when HotHubby was working in retail and how miserable we both were, I feel nearly stupid for not finding a way to convince him sooner to do this (and believe me, I tried). I am not quite sure where we are headed, but I know that we’ll have fun getting there.

***Switching Gears***
I have been having a really hard time dealing with SuperGlue (6yo next month) and her attitude and behavior. Until she turned 5ish, she was the sweetest kid who generally never had to be spoken to. She has gone haywire. I’ve been in touch with many ladies from my very original expecting board and they assure me that it is totally normal. I’ve been having a hard time coping with her and her crappy behavior, while keeping myself in check. I can be prone to yelling when pushed to the limit. I’m trying to stick with positive and gentle discipline but I am just not getting through to her. The child is brilliant, and gorgeous and STUBBORN. Where the hell did she get that from, I wonder? (Insert sarcastic smiley). We had multiple incidents today as we do everyday… but before she went to bed I made sure to tell her that regardless of her actions, I still really love her and that “we will get through this together.” I feel really good about taking the time out to tell her I love her and to hug her. We are on a TV ban until things get better as I am convinced that TV is a huge source of our difficulties. Engaging her mind more is what will get us out of this rut. I just want my SuperGlue back!

***Switching Gears***

Betty bought a bit of butter
But she found the butter bitter
So she bought a bit of better butter
To make the bitter butter better!

Catching Up…

// March 28th, 2006 // 5 Comments » // Boston, John, Julie, Kat, Life, London, Rachel, Work

We had a small party for Julie on Sunday, Madagascar theme. She got some cool presents and the guests wiped the cupcake plates clean! Less weight for me to lose after the baby making marathon is ovah. Thank you! On total accident, I revealed the gender of a woman’s baby to her. Her husband knew, and he still hadn’t told her. In my head she knew, I was asking the husband about girl names the night before at dinner. I was telling all of our guests that they needed to eat at least one cupcake each and each of their children needed to eat 2.

I looked this expecting mother in the face and said, “You need to eat one for you and two for your daughter.”

“My daughter?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!”

There are no words to describe the wide eyed look she gave me, and then her eyes welled up with tears of joy. It was a really crappy moment for me to have done something like that, but she was completely ovewhelmed with joy and excitement. Both she and her husband were really cool about it, I doubt if they were upset with me that they could have said anything to make me feel worse than I did. I did have some of my girlfriends there to give me their “foot in mouth” stories that comforted me as much as possible.

I am fairly sure I have placenta previa again, but I won’t be going to the OB anytime soon to confirm. I’m 12 weeks pregnant, there is literally nothing they can do for me other than to put me on bedrest. Bedrest? Yeah, that will be followed to a T. I’m planning on staying off of my feet as much as possible, and HotHubby is helping out. He rules, even when he is grouchy.

My girlfriend has loaned me her 9yo daughter for today and tomorrow, as most of the schools in Colorado Springs are on Spring break. She is a really great kid, I feel sorry that she is stuck with a really eager (read: borderline annoying) 5yo, toddler and infant. I don’t think we’re that much fun, but we do have good movies and live really close to a nice McDonalds with a clean(ish) playplace. I mean, how clean can a McDonalds playplace be?

Friday is shave day for St Baldricks. I’m thinking about seeing if HotHubby can get a really short buzz cut rather than a full shave. Having his head shaved last year did horrible horrible things to his scalp. I’ll be sure to post pictures after we’re down some locks.

SuperGlue is doing well, she had a really good time at FireCracker’s party and has thoroughly been enjoying playing with the new toys that were given for the party. She has been in tap/ballet for several months and we’ve just enrolled her in gymnastics at the same facility. She will take gymnastics at the same time that FireCracker does her toddler gym class.

FireCracker officially turns 2 on Wednesday and I think we’ll do mac n cheese and a small family party with cake. She has gone from the most high maintence baby that I’ve ever encountered to being a really cool little girl that has more personality than I really know what to do with. I am so glad that she is turning 2. Most parents are sad as their chilren get older, I am the complete opposite. Every day, every birthday is a reminder of health and life. I love when they get older, if my children didn’t get older, something would be horribly wrong.

LittleMan is 5 months and a total cutie. He’s a really sweet boy and we really enjoy him. I’m definitely all babied out (my term for wanting to give birth to 2 year olds in the future), but he is pretty easy going and that has made things easier. He is happy if he can see me or one of the kiddos, but he’ll start screaming if he feels he is alone in a room. Very social kiddo.

HotHubby and I are happy and healthy. We are working on a Newsletter with the help of our Gorgeous Neighbor and that should go out by the end of the week. Marriage is going pretty well. If you were to ask me, I’d say HotHubby has been grouchy off and on. If you were to ask HotHubby, he’d blame the sporadic grouchyness on moi. Somewhere between the blame, is the truth. I’ll leave you to decide.

I should add that we immediately became grouchy after hitting “publish” on this blog entry. Go figure. I still say he is the grouchy one, though. (And he says “Yeah, and you’re the one with the laptop.”)…………..

Goodbye Yahoo

// January 30th, 2006 // No Comments » // Work

I’ve cut out most of my online distractions and now need to get rid of yahoo for a while. I’ve got a white board full of sites to tackle and I need to get “crack-a-lackin” (stolen from the Zebra in Madagascar). Life is going soooo well for us, we constantly remind each other of how lucky we truly are. The time has come to stop working in the business and start working for it. Tis the season of Business Development.

I’ll be sure to keep the journal going, it’s one of the few things in my life that keep me sane.

Organization woes.

// January 16th, 2006 // No Comments » // John, Julie, Kat, Life, London, Rachel, Work

I’m a pretty organized person. You have to be organized in the life of this Mommasita or everything falls to *PIECES*. We own a business, we’ve got three kick-ass children (!!!) and we homeschool. I have joined a homeschooling co-op that meets on tuesdays and am contemplating a different group that meets on thursdays (2 hours). On Tuesdays, HotHubby is taking the day off from seeing customers, but will keep FireCracker and LittleMan at home so I can take SuperGlue to the co-op and get a *TON* of work done.

(Repeat with me, folks… “Please have wi-fi. Please have wi-fi”).

I am working on a daily schedule for days we have no daily activities, so I can devote an adequate time to the children for lessons and give enough time to working to keep the customers excessively happy. The balance is not an easy one, and walking the line is nearly impossible. HotHubby has been devoting more time to his office work and is actively giving me more time to get my stuff done, child free. When he comes home today, I think I might abandon ship and take my laptop to the nearest wi-fi hotspot (Starbucks: YUCK!). The idea for coming up with a kiddo schedule came indirectly from my husband last Sunday. We were at our wits end and absolutely positively 100% *NEEDED* a solution. He had 10,000 things to do and I had about 10,005. He wrote on one of our boards a time schedule giving each of us kid free time to get our stuff done, and much to my suprise it WORKED! I know with my life that I can’t commit to a perfect schedule everyday, but having a solid outline will really benefit us.

Now if only we could hotsynch our pencil/paper day planners. I refuse to use my palm for organizing and he certainly hasn’t been in the habit of using his ipaq. It’s amazing to the both of us how high-tech our lives are, but we still have pencil and paper dayplanners.

On a side note, SuperGlue’s old school called yesterday to find out why she is no longer going (whoops! I forgot to call!) and HotHubby actually gave the real reasons, as opposed to beating around the bush. I was *SO* proud!!! I kind of felt badly for the teacher on the receiving end but it had to be said and I am sure HotHubby had tact when delivering the not-so-positive message.

I wish people could just SAY what is on their minds, rather than beating around the bush and being very passive agressive. I’ve started to take his lead with being direct.

Last night I went downstairs and knocked on the neighbors door on my way out and told the teen boy (who we have had a bunch of problems with) that I talked to the Boys and Girls Club (I told his sister I would) and that I found out it is only $5 a year. His sister (about 3 years older) thought it was about $25 a week and it turns out that the $25/week rate is during the summertime. I am sure they can afford $5 a year and I told him and his sister that him going to the B&G club is something he and his Mom should heavily consider. He is on his way to a life of crime and I don’t want to be there at the sidelines watching it happen. One of HotHubby’s customers is the local Boys & Girls clubs and we both think that the neighbor boy spending some time there would do him some good. Not having a male role model can be devastating (I am so thankful to HotHubby for being SuperGlue’s Daddy!). Despite our differences, I do feel badly for the kid downstairs but he is at a point in his life where he has to make a personal choice to stay out of trouble.

Another Friday night….

// November 12th, 2005 // 2 Comments » // Julie, Kat, Life, London, Rachel, Work

My gorgeous Toshiba laptop has died again. It was never quite right after getting it back from the shop this last time, but it has bluescreened and my fabulous husband is unable to fix. Having to fight with them again and be without it for another month sucks. It’s quite embarassing to be borrowing a laptop from my 5yo yet again. Hopefully most of my clients don’t read my blog. LOL

London is wonderful, I took a tub with him today which he really seemed to enjoy. Julie is teething her little head off and has been a BEAR to deal with come the afternoon/evening time. Rachel has been great, she really enjoyed her first week of school (except for calling me on Thursday from the office because she was sad and wanted to come home. Luckily I was able to bribe her with an ice cream and she finished out the day. Rach has an appt with the Doc next week, she hasn’t been seen in 18 months and I want to see if there is anything they can do to help her with the “E”.

Still waiting to be given a date for my small surgery. I could really use some notice so that John and I can work our clients around it. We shall see. I was sent 4 referrals last week, I’m quite pleased with that. I’ve been trying to come up with a great card design and have them 4/4, 14pt, double sided, uv coated… and I think I am nearly done. Wanna see? Complete with bleeds…