Sometimes it's really nice...

to have your boss(es) recognize that their actions have reactions and then see them act to remediate said actions. Could I possibly be more vague? :)

35 weeks

So, most of Rebekah's buddies know this and most of mine don't care that much but Rebekah hit a milestone this week. So, I guess if she goes into labor she can go to the normal hospital instead of going to the further away and pricier one in Boise. Current stats are: baby clell is 5'7 oz. and baby trinity is 5' even.

Easter Madness

The Grant Ballard family had a wild and wooly easter. We had an all day event at a friends house. We'd never been over there as a family but it went well. Forrest and Titus played with a couple other boys that were there and rode bikes, played in the dirt, and blew bubbles. Lots of bubble blowing. Probably violated some EPA ordinance or something, but we'll keep that just between us. The girls roamed around and participated in their first ever easter egg hunt. They picked it up quickly and had the hardest time getting the egg in the bag (darn walmart plastic bags). To be honest, it was actually quite amazing how "peacful" it was. I use quotes because it's kind of like peace in the middle east or any combat zone. It's just a slower pace of war and violence. There was little fighting between kids and for the most part, I didn't have to discipline very often because the kids were good at playing together and had lots of different things to do. There were a lot of adults to generally keep the kids in line so I wasn't constantly going around playing policemen. The girls did really well, and didn't even get a nap today. Yeah, they had had it by the time we got home (around 7) but were really good pretty much the entire time. And they got to hang out with another pair of twins that were 3 years old. Rebekah did pretty well. No contractions since this morning. She just showed me a bump on the bottom of her belly. I guess from the Ultrasound she found out it was Trinity's bottom :)

34.5 weeks!

just a wee bit scared

Well, I took Rebekah to the doc today. We tried to get the babies monitored, but they couldn't find Trinity. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't seem to find her. They even got an ultrasound machine (an old one) and tried. Finally, they got her Dr. and he could find the baby with the ultrasound, but they still couldn't get her monitored with the little fetal monitors. So we finally went over to where they had a good ultrasound and the expert did all sorts of measurements. That lady didn't seem to have any trouble with her better equipment, but we were pretty scared for a bit. The ultrasound turned out ok, but the girl is smaller than the boy and they don't like to see that. So, now  Rebekah has to be monitored twice a week to make sure that Trinity isn't in distress. The good news is that both babies are over 4lbs with baby Clell almost at 5lbs. So, the stress has increased a lot, but the babies both seem to be ok and that's good news. The ends is in sight, but unfortunately it looks like it's gonna be a bumpy landing.

Finally! Some pictures

Libby on the Left

Renny loved this cart

Liberty wouldn't leave my side for very long

Forrest is patting Serenity in this picture

Liberty picking herself up from a fall. No tears :)

Renny running around

Titus on the trike

Babies Update

Yeah, that doesn't really roll off the tongue. I'll leave it to my sis-in-law Amy (English major) to tell me what it should be...

Rebekah went to the doc yesterday and things still look good. Heartbeats were a little lower but the doc didn't seem concerned. the next four weeks are crucial. If Rebekah can make it to 35 weeks before going into labor we can have a (semi) normal experience. Otherwise, if she has problems they'll pump her full of drugs and steroids to stop the labor and then kick her over to St. Lukes like last time. Ugh!

Please pray for grace and health for both Rebekah and the babies. Rebekah just has to deal with the pain and she's been a real trooper. I felt the boy last night and wow, it was freaky. not just a little kick. He was doing somersaults and ninja moves and stuff. I thought he was gonna go all Sigourney Weaver Alien on me. I had to stop myself from jumping up and grabbing my flamethrower. (No, I don't really have a flamethrower but I do have matches and some hairspray. that'll do the trick)

Baby Clell only has two arteries in his umbilical cord which is not atypical, but that does mean he is a higher risk baby. Titus was the same way and came out normal. Well, he's got more cuteness and mischievousness (is that a word?) than is normal, but that's ok.

anyway, we'll keep plugging away. We're trying to round up child care and stuff. That's kind of coming together but volunteers are welcome.

up late

I'm staying up late because one of our c02 detectors went off. A little freaky, because we couldn't figure out anything wrong. We have a wood stove, so that was probably producing it, but we couldn't get it to stop. I finally took it outside and tested it and it still went off! Well, that seemed suspicious. Unfortunately, the other detector started going off too. I swear, it was sympathetic alarming or something. After yanking the batteries and putting them back in, it quit going off and then I never could get it alarm again. So, hopefully we're ok and not going to die in our sleep or anything. That would be a real bummer.

Correction

Rebekah just corrected me. She's @ 29 weeks. I can't keep track. it keeps going up for some reason. Like the inverse of the stock market.

Daddy's girl

by Grant

Liberty is a chip off the old block. She is sooo lazy. Watching her try to get out of the carseat is both frustrating and hilarious. And just now I put some crackers on the table right by her face. Instead of reaching up and grabbing them as I thought, she tried to suck them off the table with her mouth. I of course, indulged her a little by giving the cracker a nudge into the chasm of death (cracker death that is).

BTW, anybody on facebook can follow my blog easily because I have it importing into my facebook notes section. That is so cool. So non-techies that don't understand rss feeds can still stay on top of my inanities with a minimum of inconvenience.

I had somebody ask today what the gender is of the new twins (previously called beta twins in blog posts of yore). One male and one female homosapien is what they tell me. So, 3 boys and 3 girls. 1 dad. 1 mom. 1 female cat. I guess our next dog needs to be of the male persuasion...

Clarification

Rebekah is @ 28 weeks. the previous blog post about weight of the babies was determined by the ultrasound.

I was unable to attend the appt. w/ my wife as I had to be at work to disable a coworkers account and change passwords. I feel like the last man standing in IT. It's not far from the truth. We have a fair number left, but i'm the primary system engineer for about 200 servers and dozens of ancillary systems. I have to babysit the backups this weekend for all that stuff I just mentioned. Argh. But at least I have a job, right? :)

Self immolation

by Grant

What causes people to self-destruct? It's sad to watch. It's heartbreaking if you know the person well. Giving in to all your wants and desires is the surest path to misery and destruction.

Good news

the babies are 2 pounds and 14 ounces and doing fine :D

Uh oh

by Grant

Within the past two weeks we've had a bit of shake up in upper mgmt. The CEO stepped down and his brother's taking over. The CFO is doing something else and another guy was promoted into that spot. The temporary HR manager (who was running an efficiency program earlier) has been permanently put in the post. Now we have some sort of building wide meeting. All meetings these days are bad. But the IT director left for the day so I guess that's good.

In other less anxious news, I went to a car auction on Friday w/ a friend. I don't know if those vehicles went for too much or not, but paying thousands of $$ for a worn out vehicle isn't my idea of a smart move. Most were bank repos and old with high miles. A lot of them had some sort of damage. It was as if all the good vehicles got picked over by dealers and then the rejects got auctioned off to suckers. There were some pretty good deals, but I tried to buy a 22 year old van in pretty nice shape and some psycho lady was prepared to bid to the moon (or so it appeared). I had passed up minivans because thought I could get this cheap, but she wanted it bad. So, I let her have it. What was funny is that I went to lunch and when I came back the auction was almost over and there were still people waiting in line to sign up. Crazy. I'll bet they felt rather chagrined to find out they'd missed everything.

BTW, Beka is still hanging in there but she is not getting hardly any sleep. Typically she's not falling asleep until 4am. Crazy. I would have lost it and been in a padded room if that was me. God sure gives grace.

Beka update

by Grant

  Well, Rebekah is having a harder time. She pulled a muscle the other day (we think) and is in a lot of pain. Basically she's bed-ridden. Well, she's couch-ridden. I had to come home today and work but by doing that she was able to get some rest. Working in the afternoon works pretty well because the 3 youngest are asleep.

anyway, she feels a bit better now so we're gonna go out to eat for my birthday. All that I've had to eat today was some peanuts so if we don't get out of here soon, I'm gonna gnaw my arm off. After all, they're doing wonders in prosthetics these days...

Office Space...

...Should be required viewing for executives. This movie speaks to me so much more each time I watch it. I just regret the language in it. Mostly in some gansta rap playing when some guys take out their anger on a flaky printer in an empty field.

Pretty decent saturday. I got up early and activated the electronic babysitter for the boys while Rebekah slept. Her sweet slumber was interrupted a couple hours later by the boys pushing a little basket around screaming. I got some pictures as the boys slid around and crashed. They were having fun. I was enjoying the fact that they weren't fighting or bugging me.

I spent two or three hours this afternoon trying to resurrect my gerber multitool from a cremation attempt by my wife last year. She claims it was an accident, but we didn't burn something of hers now did we?
Anyway, we burned some boxes and the Gerber was in the boxes. Luckily I fished it out, but it had melted plastic into the mechanism and was non functional. So I got a propane torch and my dremel tool and went to work. It took me a couple hours, but the final result is functional if not fashionable.

Oh, and back to life at the WG (my work). Somebody actually quit this week. Fed up with it. Not my department, but I'd known the person for a few years. Good news (I guess) is that if there are any more layofss, one of the guys in my department is volunteering. Young guy with lots of options and he's probably being a bit facetious, but I know that he'd be fine with it. He says that he thinks his stress level will be less if he just stays home and plays "Call of Duty 4" all day. I tend to agree.

Church tomorrow!

yeah, i know

by Grant

My last post was incredibly stupid. I blame it on some sort of a nervous breakdown. Even if I keep my job, which although it may be more solid than I had thought is no means guaranteed, others are suffering and will continue to suffer.

Anyway, Rebekah is still hanging in there although she's about had it with Titus. Anybody want him? He's really cute. Housebroken and everything.


I joke, I joke.


/sotto voce
But seriously, offers can be sent to my personal e-mail account iamnotreallytryingtogetridofmychildren@gmail.com

Some good news!

by Grant

It's all about me. me. me. Sorry, I'm just very happy. Hey, that rhymes! I met with my new boss and she said that I was considered core and she wanted to utilize me more. So, that's all I can ask for. It may not seem like much, but I take it to mean that I have a job for at least a few more months. Whoopee!

Thanks again for your prayers. Maybe now we can buy an 8 passenger vehicle!

Small amount of good news

by Grant

background: On Wednesday of last week, right after the layoffs but before any announcement a vendor cut power to the entire data center. This is a total disaster as we have 150 normal servers and several other systems that went down hard. Most will come up ok, but our primary system is known to get corrupted. To make matters worse, the guy that takes care of that system was out on vacation without his laptop. To make my life worse, I was supposedly his backup.


I did pretty good in my book and I guess the powers that be agreed with me because I (along with 4 others) were singled out in an e-mail sent to all the IT (that's left) and the CEO/VPs.

One small bit of good news on a monday that's shaping up to be ugly as other divisions cut more people today.


Thanks to everybody that's praying for me (and my family). And to the heathen unbelievers, you know who you are, thanks for at least taking the time to read my blog post.

argh!!!

I just lost my blog post, so I'm just gonna summarize it quicklike as I'm tired and have to bathe my kids for church tomorrow.

1. Work is bad
2. Rebekah is OK. She's at 26 weeks right now.
3. Kids are good except Titus broke his finger.

Black Wednesday

They laid off 20% of IT (Information Technology). I'm still employed for now.