.: bistan.net :.

Mackenzie started 4K this morning!  Of course, the morning has been well-documented with photos, some of which you see below.  It’s hard to believe how much she has grown since last year.

This is Mackenzie with her teacher, Mrs. Pam.  Not only is she the 4K teacher, but she is also the director for the entire preschool where Mackenzie has spent the past two years. Needless to say, Mackenzie already LOVES Mrs. Pam.

I’m just glad she’s still small enough to hug and kiss me goodbye. Next stop, prom night.

Tristan started first grade this morning!  We went to open house last night and were pleased to find out that he got the teacher that I wanted him to get.  She actually taught first grade at the school when I was in first grade and has taught first grade there longer than Kimberlie has been alive!

It’s hard to believe that I’m old enough to have a kid in first grade.  I can’t wait to get home and hear about his day!  I’m sure I’ll have to fill out tons of forms too.  Sending your child to school is more complicated than buying a house.  Mackenzie starts 4K on Monday and then our lives will be back to normal.

In case you haven’t noticed, I have blogged nearly every day this week.  And some days (including today), I have blogged multiple times.  I still have lots of things to post, including Mackenzie’s 3K graduation from last month.  I think I’ll go have a cookie now.

If it’s not obvious, I’m clearly avoiding school-work by blogging.  (I have two more projects to turn in before Tuesday.  One is 75% done and I haven’t started the other.) I’m also considering promoting this blog more to my friends, etc. via facebook and twitter, so I need to populate it with lots of content.

Next week, I’ll be blogging live from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Camden, New Jersey.  Stay tuned . . .

I’m alive. I promise.

For some reason, I ended up taking two summer courses.  I have two more weeks to get four more projects done.  Hence the silence here.

As always, I have a lot to say, so stay tuned . . .

Last night was Tristan’s kindergarten program/awards ceremony.  I can’t believe that Tristan has almost conquered kindergarten.  It seems like his first day was yesterday.

In case you can’t figure it out, Tristan was a cow in the Kindergarten Farm.  Now that you know that, you can crave Chick-fil-A too!

Here is a video of the short performance:

Tristan did get an award for Accelerated Reader.  But then again, about 90% of the kindergarten class got the award so perhaps they should rename it “Average Reader”.

Kimberlie and I went to Kindergarten Field Day this morning at Tristan’s school.  It brought back quite a few memories.  Enjoy the pictures and remember your field day as well:

We got a call from Tristan’s school this morning.  Our boy-genius (sarcasm) had put an eraser in his ear.  I drove all the way to his school, wondering whether I should take him to his pediatrician, his ENT, an urgent care facility, or the emergency room.  I wasn’t happy about it because I had important things happening at work.

I signed him out of school at 9:50 and took him home.  First, I took pictures (of course).  Then I was able to eventually remove the eraser with a pair of tweezers.  I took him back to school and checked him back in at 9:57.  He missed seven minutes of school.

Needless to say, I’m not too happy about it.

I had the priviledge of accompanying Tristan’s kindergarten class yesterday on their annual field trip to Dauset Trails. I was initially hesitant about going becuase I’m swamped at work, but I decided that being at my desk for those four hours wasn’t really going to put a dent in the mountain of work anyway. There’s more to life that technology. Right?

If you noticed in the pictures, Tristan is the star student for his class again!

That’s enough about Tristan for this week.  I promise that the next blog post will not be about him!

Here we go again. I blog about how I resolve to blog more. Then I make about 3 blog posts. Then you don’t hear from me for a few weeks. Then I make an excuse about why I haven’t been blogging and then I resolve to blog more.

I guess that means this is the excuse post. Let’s see . . . I’m swamped at work, swamped with class, and swamped in my personal life.

Work: I won’t bore you with the work stuff.  I doubt you care about Windows 7 imaging and Drupal modules anyway.

School: It was stupid to commit to doing this masters degree in the first place. My first masters degree didn’t get me anywhere, yet I sign up for another one. My classes this semester are Object Oriented Programming II and Advanced Graphic Design. “Advanced Graphic Design” is what Mercer calls a video game programming class when they want employers to pay for it.  Since my language of choice for the program is C#, I’m developing a game in XNA Game Studio 3.1.  I have a project in OOP2 due next week on secure code and wikis and a project in the game class due the following week on 2D game programming.  My game is pretty sweet and when I compile it, I’ll publish it here and you can download and play it too!

Running: My heel is still freaking killing me.  I can barely walk when I get out of bed in the mornings. I only ran 7 miles this week, but I need to knock out at least 5 tomorrow to exceed 70 miles for the month.

Personal life: We signed Tristan up for T-ball.  That should be interesting. I’m not particularly looking to spend 3 nights a week at a ballpark, but we want to get him involved in something.  Kimberlie is now up to 60 – 70 hour weeks so I have the kids by myself in the evenings for a while.  She works with two other Occupational Therapists.  One is in Africa for a month and the other just went out of maternity leave.  And then on Monday, as if we didn’t have enough going on, her mother died.  After this week, we are both certainly looking forward to a new week.

Pictured above is the Star Student from Mrs. Hiland’s kindergarten class at Heard Elementary School. Finally!

I’m so proud, that I’m completely overlooking the fact that there are 20 students in the class and it is week 19 of school.  And I’m overlooking the fact that the teacher likes me right now because I did photos of all of the kids during Cookie Day.  And I’m overlooking the fact that this is a short week of school (and even shorter for Tristan).