This has become a great tradition now that we all have kids. Even our neighbor joined in on the fun. I truly enjoy just getting some time to hang out with them and teach the young ones how to carve up a pumpkin.

Sunday we decided to skip church since my mom was willing to watch the kids and allow me and the wife to have a date afternoon. It was a great time. Me and Jess never get to spend time away from the kids and although we love them to peices, having a moment to sit and enjoy a meal with your partner in life is a precious thing. However, you’ll probably laugh, we took our date at Chili’s and then went to Sam’s club to do the weeks grocery shopping

Enjoy the photos.

Hi All,

I know it’s been awhile but we sure have been busy around here. I have been hard at work securing websites for my side business as well as maintaining my current websites and of course the most important one rfmd.com So far I have several new sites mediabrewer.com, The Neal Tractor Museum, Frye Heating and Air, and Paul Milam. They are all in different stages of completion like mediabrewer is up but not with the right theme, the tractor museum is in design, as well as Frye heating and air, and Paul’s site will be managed by me with a third party doing the actual development. So this is an exciting time to see if I can really handle doing all of this without letting my home-life or my work slip. So far I have been able to handle it all but it does cause me to be very busy so well see.

Jess has been hard at work trying to get into the groove of now having two babies to care for. We recently had to switch formula from one labeled advanced to one labeled good start because baby Same has been very fussy and gassy. We also switched bottles so that we where sure to knock it out. He seems to be doing much better now. Daniel is taking to the new addition very well. There are times that he requires one of us while we are trying to take care of Sam but for the most part it all seems to click together. At least he hasn’t asked us to send him back .

So about this weekend we started off visiting my mom’s (me-maw) so that she could get her baby fix and then set off early Saturday for a trip to the mountains. This is the first LONG trip we have decided to undertake after having baby Sam. Steve one of his paw-paws or his great grandmother (Maw-Ri) had never seen him before so we hoped to have him all dressed up for the occasion. When Daniel this would not have been possible as he used to get very car sick on long trips. I must say the trip went very well. He was fussy sometimes but for the most part he just hung out and looked out the window. We found an awesome yard sale along the way and got a pack and play as well as a mirror for my car that mounts on the headrest all for under $10. We then visited with Steve and his Maw-Ri for awhile Daniel amused himself there by throwing bottles around and they never looked happier to see a new baby. We then visited Steve’s brother as they had just bought a house. We then took a beautiful trip through Floyd and then went to maw-maw and paw-paw’s for a visit and to relax a bit before the hour and half drive home. Daniel and the girls played really hard and Sam kept Jess and maw-maw very busy. She will surely blog about this trip as well on merryheartcrafts.com so there will be some really cute pictures on there. We had a lovely outdoor meal. it was so nice, cool, and serene up there I didn’t want to have to come home. I also got to fix Maw-Maw’s computer so she could post to her blog. We stayed as long as we could before driving home and the drive home was very nice, Jess and I always love to be able to spend so much time together we get to catch up on each others lives without interruptions for the most part.

Today we are going to try and pick up the house from the tornado called Daniel that came through it and then rest and relax before I have to go back to work.

Hope your weekend went as well as mine.
David Bates

Update: Maw-Maw must be slacking as I got this post up before she could… and she said I never updated my blog

We then went to get strawberries, a new tank for the grill, and some hamburgers. We all eat and played until about 1pm when the mountain folk had to go. Daniel was very sad afterword… Until we informed him that he would be spending the rest of the afternoon playing with his cousin Zach.

We went to my Mom’s where I had a ton of son duties to perform as Jess, my mom, and sister prepaired the house for her baby shower next weekend. We all had a great time and the boys got super nasty playing in the sand. We had steaks and salad followed by icecream. It was an awesome Saturday.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

Stolen from Donna

Thanks for reading
David Bates

Or watch him die, your choice.

Story:

I came home the other day and my wife informed me that the downstairs toilet was stopped up. This was strange to me because I had just remodeled the downstairs bathroom and put a 3″ pipe from the toilet to the sewer so I had never anticipated it becoming stopped up. Curiously I went at the toilet with a plunger and after about 30minutes had no success. Now we have been potty training my son Daniel and he is fascinated by the toilet we have caught him trying to play in it and even trying to wash things in it but he has yet to master the art of the potty. So instinctively I started to assume that he had throne a rag down in the toilet and that must be what is causing the stop-up. I told my wife my thoughts and she agreed so the next day I went to my Mom’s to retrieve my arsenal of toilet tools including a 25′ snake and a plunger that looks more like a bicycle pump that is supposed to build up pressure and push objects through. The snake would only go a little ways down and would stop dead and the special plunger was no help either so I decided that the problem must lie further down the pipe and took the toilet up from the floor. I continued to try and snake the pipe itself and it went through it just fine… So now my curiosity was up and I turned the toilet on its side and was shocked when I saw a rubber ducky staring at me from the S-bend in the toilet. now mind you this is in the porcelain part of the toilet and was further back than my hand could reach. I tried everything snake, plunger, electric cable, close-hanger, knife, praying, water, and even dismantled the top of the toilet in the hopes it might give me better access. Nothing worked, nothing would even budge the ducky he was wedged in there. So after about three hours I gave up and tonight we have went and bought a new toilet to replace the one in our bathroom.

The Challenge to You:

Since I have no other possible ways to get the duck out and I am no longer concerned about the toilet itself I am starting to entertain very destructive ideas for the duck. They include items such as gas, M-80′s, Lead (propelled by a gun), and very large hammers as I said at the start of my post the ducks fate is in your hands you have 36 hours from the time I post this until I either dismantle the toilet gently saving the duck or he meets a of an unsavory flavor. I would like you to comment on this post or send tweets to @davidbates telling me if the duck should be saved or how he should die.

Update:
Ducky is now Dead See http://dlbates.com/DuckyDies for videos of his demise

So the title of my post may be a little misleading. I love Christmas and all of the memories you make during it. This Christmas however has been off to a rough start. Monday I decided to work from home for two reasons one was the snow and the second was I was feeling pretty sickly. I was happily typing away on code to attribute to my latest project when I got a call from my frantic wife where she informed me that my mother had slipped on ice on her steps, that I had just scrapped, and she believed broke her leg. I quickly informed my Boss I was not going to be able to be reached for awhile and headed to her aid. It took about 2 hours to get an ambulance to the house because of the snow and the holidays but when they got there she had been in pain for some time and had what looked like a bone pushing on her skin but not broke through. They with my help then loaded her onto a backboard and then the stretcher. The driver asked how much my mom weighed (as my family is hefty) and then called in for backup. I guess she scared him Soon the entire Bethany fire department was there to help. My Mom was in so much pain she didn’t catch any jokes I tried to crack to cheer her up. We got to the hospital and here is what the break looks like:

After that you may have guessed that my days have been filled trying to get her here and there but that is not it. Monday night after we got back from the Hospital my wife and son got a stomach virus… very bad so now I had three to take care of and I made until Tuesday morning when I myself got it. Now when I get sick I react a little differently than most people I know I simply goto sleep and continue to sleep until I get better. I don’t know why I do this and my wife hates it but it all works out. So after being in a dead-like sleep and missing Tuesday altogether I was able to get mom back to the doctor starting at 7:30 on Wednesday.

Now I must say that the previous paragraphs make it seem like I did all the work. I don’t want that to be the case as my wife and my sister has helped equally if not more than I. I also don’t want it to sound like I haven’t had a good Christmas I have. Spending time with my family is always good no matter what the circumstance and my mom is pretty funny when she is drugged

Now as for today I went to Lowes to do a little last minute Christmas shopping. I got my mom a safety rail for her bathroom so she can get around on her peg leg and got my father-in-law a little something too. I got to eat a nice smoked pork shoulder with the family and now I have to go downstairs and play Santa for my little boy. He is fast asleep with vision of trains and cars in his head.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
David Bates

Well, now I am worried, worried that I now might actually be out of water (*%$#?) and that we may have to move. Let me say before I move on to that my landlord is great and that this entry is in no way intended to reflect poorly on him. My landlord has said that he has hired some “well people” to come and check out the pump as he did not have the equipment to do so and that he should know something by the end of the week. So for the time-being my wife is in VA and I have to stay with my Mom who is now uber-conscious of the drought.

Anyway whish me luck with it and all else is well.
Thanks for reading
David Bates