Arrr, me hearties. Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day. We be big Disney fans and me boyos love that scurvy scallywag
Captain Hook.
The little landlubbers also love Jake and the Neverland
Pirates, I thought this be quite appropriate.
Especially because me boyos
met Sharky and Bones at Disney Social Media Moms Celebration.
So pepper ye speech with “arrrr’s” and “avast’s” me hearties. Shiver me timbers!
On Saturday night, after the kids were in bed, I began moving TechyDad.com and TheAngelForever.com from our old host to our new host. This meant first backing up all of the files from the old host’s servers. (I usually keep backups locally, but they had gotten out of date.) This alone took some time. Then, I backed up the databases. Finally, I restored the whole thing onto the new hosts’ server. A connection string change (to point to the new database) and name server update later, and our websites were up and running.
If I make it sound like a quick job, however, it wasn’t. I began work at around 9pm and went to bed at 1:30 am. At this point, I had about 4 hours worth of file transfers to go. Luckily, these weren’t essential files. Had you been able to see TechyDad.com at this point, you might have noticed photos missing in blog posts or images missing from the sidebars. Still, the blog posts would have been readable and WordPress would have functioned just fine.
Since I didn’t need to be present for this file transfer to run, I left my computer on and went to bed, falling asleep at about 2am. At about 5am, I was woken up by B. She wasn’t feeling good (horrible headache) and needed my help. I got her some medicine and she went back to sleep. Despite my exhaustion, however, I just couldn’t fall asleep.
I finally fell back to sleep around 6am only to be woken back up at 7am. I laid in bed for as long as I could, but sleeping in was not an option. We needed to get ready for NHL’s birthday party.
There were several moments during the party where I found myself unable to focus and/or dizzy. Many times when I’d have liked to have snuck away for a “short” nap. (Short meaning telling yourself only 5 minutes and then waking up 3 hours later.) After the party was over, I felt the crash come hard. Still, I pushed off exhaustion.
As I sit typing this, B is sitting with the boys, trying to get them to go to sleep. I’m thinking that I really should process some of the photos from the party for a blog post. I just can’t think straight enough, though. Instead, here’s B’s post about the party. (Mine will come later.)
I won’t leave you empty handed, though. Thanks to a recent gift from Mimi to JSL, I think the Hava Nagilla will be sung quite a bit in our household:
Hopefully, by the time you read this, I’ll be well rested and coherent. If I am, then hava nagilla (let us rejoice)!
Today, over on B’s blog, I’m guest-posting a Tuesday Tales review of Rory’s Story Cubes. Before you head on over there, though, here’s a quick video review by NHL. As a bonus, he ad-libs a story after rolling the die.
Disclaimer: We purchased Rory’s Story Cubes on our own and were not compensated in any way for this review. All opinions expressed above (and in the video) are our own.
As a perk of the warmer weather, I took NHL and JSL to a local park two times over the weekend. Of course, I took my camera and video camera with me and took many, many photos as well as a few videos. I’ll run a few of the photos tomorrow for Wordless Wednesday. For now, I dare you to watch this video full screen and not get dizzy!
Wednesday was the Snowpocalypse. After a decent snowfall on Tuesday, and a ton of snow still on the ground from previous snowfalls, we were scheduled to get about 15 inches of snow. Needless to say, schools were closed and everyone hunkered down. I wound up working from home since the commute into work would have been hazardous to say the least.
B shoveled our walkway, sidewalk, cars and driveway out while I worked. She came back in, sore from the shoveling and I made sure that a cup of hot chocolate from our new Keurig was waiting for her. Sadly, I didn’t get to play with the boys as much as I’d have liked to. After all, I was “at work” even if I was technically in my bed. Before it got dark out, though, I decided to take a break from working, bundle up and head outside. You see, we have a problem with ice dams and so the snow on the roof needed to be removed.
For those of you who don’t know what ice dams are, picture a roof covered in snow. The heat from the house warms the roof which melts the snow. The melted snow runs down the roof to the portion of roof that isn’t over a heated room. Since that portion of roof is colder, the snow re-freezes into ice. As more and more water runs over the ice, the ice gets bigger and bigger. When the ice dam gets big enough, the water can’t get over the ice and pools up. When this happens, the water can back up under the shingles and into the house. Needless to say, this is a bad thing.
So out I went with my roof rake, a very long handled implement used to pull snow off from the roof. I did all around the house, but the best part was when I did the front of the house. JSL was able to see me from his bedroom window. Since I had little room to work in, the snow kept coming down on my head. JSL thought this was the funniest thing he had ever seen! Don’t take my word for it, though, B shot a video. See if you can tell where my pockets filled with snow. I didn’t realize this until much later.
After I was done with this, I headed for the side of our house where I had to step in snow drifts that were, if you’ll excuse the expression, crotch-high. Nothing like being half-covered in snow to make you cold! I had heard that snow was insulating and that tunneling in snow should keep you warm. Apparently, my toes didn’t get the memo though because they were going numb. Granted, that might have been because the snow went into my boot, melted and soaked my socks with cold water.
After finishing the roof on the side, came another fun
part: walking in the backyard. As you might expect, we don’t shovel our backyard. So this would show me just how deep the snow really was. So, how high was it?
Knee-high, which for me is about 22 inches deep. Yes, we have a video of this too!
I cleared our roof as much as I could before noticing that the roof rake had broken. Nothing major, just a nut that had come loose somewhere. (You think a needle in a haystack’s hard to find? Try finding a nut in a yard full of snow!) A quick trip to Home Depot today and the roof rake’s all fixed. Of course, after I was done roof raking, I had to go back and shovel up all the snow I had dumped off our roof.
With snow you basically have two kinds. Heavy, wet snow is good for snowballs/snowmen but is a pain to shovel. Light, powdery snow is easy to shovel but doesn’t stick together enough for snowballs/snowmen. This snow was heavy. Very, very
heavy. Somehow, though, it was powdery also. Yes, this snow was a pain to shovel and also wasn’t good for snowballs/snowmen. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: TOO MUCH SNOW! In fact, here is a little message for Old Man Winter:
My Aloha Friday question for today is: Did you get any snow by you? If so, how much? Also, are you sick of the white stuff yet?
Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.
Aloha #73
