Birthday Girl

Bella turned 6 officially yesterday. She reluctantly tumbled out of bed to find some presents waiting: a new set of silky pajamas (with Owls!), a set of dried bird eggs, some polished rocks, a hunk of petrified wood, a 1" diameter copper ball... you know, typical things kids love (!?!?). But you know Bella - she loved every bit of it.

She came home with a backpack FILLED with drawings that her friends in class had made for her... Which struck me as wonderfully creative of her teacher. She's a lucky gal.

We had a sitter for Isaac, and we went off to Chuck E Cheese - Bella's request. We had so-so food, and burned through 200 tokens (winning a pretty decent 900 tickets in the process. And no, dad didn't really help with that - she had this rain-man like way with the "pure chance" ticket games and won scads of tickets). Bella got a whole bag full of prizes - she's the kind of gal who will not even LOOK at the 500-1000-5000 ticket "big prizes" up on the shelf: She was happy with 4 10-ticket plastic frogs, 2 100-ticket clay sets, a 100-ticket troll head pencil, and the like.

We got home in time for Pamela to run off to watch the Debate with friends, and for me to put two wound up kids to sleep. Isaac is going through some big brain development right now and isn't sleeping very well: thrashing about late, and up at 5am. It's a phase and I'm sure once those lego bricks in his brain lock in with the new skills, he'll be back "in phase" with our universe again.

In Jimmy News: I attended Bodypump this AM as a civilian - just participating for the first time in a week. I loaded up the weight and really felt it by the end. OOoof. Just got confirmation on my second set of training - BodyAttack which is a no-step aerobics training: Coming up in under 4 weeks (must work on my cardio! 2 full days of running around!). Plus I have CPR training in 2 weeks! So people better be healthy around here, dang nabbit.

Had a big full-day meeting with my "real job" to plan out the next quarter and some vision for next year: There's going to be a lot of travel in the coming weeks unfortunately. I'm actually doing WORK out in Tacoma, plus trying to get a prospecting trip up to New Hampshire... I'll be Platinum Elite before the end of October, actually. When you're elite, they actually give you pity miles when you DON'T get upgraded to first class. And you're allowed to fly the plane once a quarter. One of those two perks is real, actually. But in good news, we're looking to add a support staff under me, who will do a lot more of the "onsite" work for me. We just need to get it through the budget.

And that's the news for now...