So we come to the end of 2006 which has had some great lows and some good highs. While there have been these good points throughout the year, not least of which, has been the birth of our son, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sorry to see the back of this year and look forward to 2007 being a better year overall not just for us but for many, many people we know.

We’ve had our Solstice celebration with just our immediate family, and we will be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my in-law’s, and then having Christmas with my family on the 27th after my husband gets off duty. He’s on days this week covering for another officer who is on holiday and it’s been a bit of a strange switch having him gone all day, even though I didn’t think I’d properly adjusted to him being back on nights yet.

I didn’t ever find time or chance to make a Christmas/Yuletide layout for the blog, but I did make a little online card featuring the munchkin. It’s:

I think next year I’ll start with the holiday stuff in October and then maybe I’ll have it all done. I’m working on one of those holiday newsletters, but it won’t be out before the New Year, that I do know. I at least have all the paper and quite a few pictures of the munchkin in various stages. It’s so strange to look at him now compared to how he was 8 months ago. I don’t feel his changed that much even though I know he has, but I don’t see it because I see him every day, of course. He’s standing up now, provided he has something to hold on to, he can take a few assisted steps, he’s definitely crawling, and he can sit up by himself, which has the added bonus that he’s stopped screaming the place down at bath time, he has two bottom teeth and is working on more, and he’s so tall! He’s in 12-18 mos clothes, and weighs about 22lbs. He’s also trying to talk, we’ve got ‘hiya’ and ‘mama’ ‘dada’ and various other scribble sounds that we can make words out of but they don’t make much sense yet.

Anyway, we hope that all our family and friends are having a safe and happy holiday, and being able to spend time with those they love and care about in as stress-free as possible circumstances. Love to all.

Spam Doubles

An article sent around my server host’s mailing list. I thought this was interesting considering how much grief spam’s been causing me lately >_<;;

We survived yesterday’s events. It was a very long day for all of us, although Declan at least seemed to enjoy himself for most of it. We had the EEG first and then the CT scan. We don’t get the results until Monday when we go to the neurologist for the follow-up appointment.

The hospital was amazing, definitely designed to cater to children. The CT room was painted to look as though it was underwater. All the hallways were decorated. There were toys in every waiting room.

It was amazing. It’s a shame that such a place is only visited in dire circumstances.

Today has been a day of trying to relax a little bit and ordering presents for family. We had a visit from my ILs dropping off some early presents for the munchkin seeing as he really doesn’t understand the whole deal right now and he’s growing so fast they thought he could use the clothes, so that was very nice.

I’m anxiously awaiting my swappee getting my second package. I know it’s arrived there, but I haven’t heard if she liked it yet. I have things ready to go for package three but I’m being good and holding off. I need to sort out a mini-letter/card to send to her in the mean time though.

So, let’s see…I won NaNo. I took the photographs at my friend’s wedding. I’ve got those all thumbnailed and put up. I’m figuring I need to learn Coppermine. It seems to be a very durable photo gallery, and really can you go wrong with the gallery the owner of your server hosting company uses? I think not. I’m figuring it’ll be easier to intergrate into the proposed family album site than PonyGallery was proving. If it’s not, and I can at least work out how to use it, I will forgo Joomla and use a different content management system, so that I can get that up and off the ground.

Ceruleansoul.com will NOT be being renewed in February when it expires. I’m not going to stop offering my services as a web designer because it’s something I LOVE doing. My host (drak.net) has been doing some lovely things lately like increasing everyone who hosts with them’s hosting allotment six times over, and also letting me switch out ceruleansoul.com as the primary account holder so that I didn’t lose my lifetime account ^^ so that’s what I’ve done, and that way it’ll (over the months) save some money that we don’t have, a certain amount per month for having the site as an add-on and a certain amount per year for not renewing the domain. So, if you tried to access the site in the past week and were getting some funkified error pages and so on that was why. For some reason during the switchover I got locked out of everything, and couldn’t fix the folders that I needed to right away so that things would show up properly :-p

So the new design site is ami-chan.net DESIGNS. I’ve changed around a bit the way I do things too. Site packages instead of just billing by hour. Although I do still offer site maintainance (web-mastering) at a billable rate. We’ll see how that goes. Now, off to find an actual order form script and check into Coppermine, before re-touching some special wedding shots for the happy couple.

Other than the wedding we’ve been pretty busy here due to sickness. I put up the Yule-Christmas decorations this past weekend and then Monday morning we found out that Declan has tonsilitis and the beginnings of an ear infection. This Thursday he has his EEG/CT scans. He has to be sleep-deprived and food-deprived, so Mum and Dad are going to be good-mood-deprived until about 3 p.m. that day I can see it now.

I’m happy though overall. I’ve been working on some things to try and keep myself de-stressed. They must be working because I was able to drive into the city today without having a panic attack OR getting eaten by the roads and getting horribly lost. I had a nice morning/afternoon going around the Fashion Square with a fellow Punkymom. That was very cool. She’s such a very nice person, and I’m glad to finally be able to meet someone in person who I’ve been chatting back and forth with for so long, especially given we have so much in common! I hope that we can do that again soon.

Also I’ve been getting a nice stream of tarot clients which has also been a boon. There’s nothing like being able to buy your husband a little something for the holidays with your own money. He tells me I earn enough of a share of his check changing poopy diapers, but still it’s nice to be able to do all the same. Now I must wrap it and put it under the tree before he accidentally stumbles across it!