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Well, I cannot believe it!  I am actually posting this blog post from my Netbook again, after two years of it either not running, or running on Ubuntu, which does not support an even half decent local blog editor!  I have been awaiting this day since the license on my copy of Windows 7 decided that it was not a valid copy, even though it came loaded on my TOSHIBA Netbook PC. 

Impression of Windows 8 so far?  Well, I cannot start anything from the menu except for the desktop because the screen resolution is too low.  So, basically I am buggered from the start screen!  I will admit, that does not hold the highest importance to me, but I cannot even start an e-mail client at this point!  We’ll see what else does not work! 

Kelsey J Bacon

Today I found a nice paisley to put in for the background of my Blog, and use for the color scheme.  After some editing in the backend of the blog, and getting the background to show up as if it were a single piece of paisley fabric, I found something that I am happy with for now! 

I also showed Kiry her Blog, the other day, really.  Anyhow, today I showed her a little about how to edit it.  Rather than dictating to me, she insisted on writing her entry herself, though I was able to put up a translation after each line.  It is the first time she has actually helped me with her Blog, which is designed to be her Childhood Journal!

It has been snowing quite lightly here today.  That’s good stuff as I am really eager to get some measurable snow on the ground!  I have really missed the seasons over the past decade!  This is only the second attempt at weather this season, and here it is already the 10th of December.  It just has not been feelin’ a lot like Christmas!

Our little Umber seems to be adapting well to the almost cold weather.  Here she is in the bottom of our field, where I would like to put a duck and goose pond for the coming summer. 

Jordan’s horse, Precious, is also doing well with her field full of ice cream.  Both horses are holding their weight on just fine. 

I actually caught Jordan at some manual labor!  This is a sight!  There just isn’t much snow on the ground to shovel!  Still, grandma thanked him for his efforts! 

Just off the front step was the only sign of Dylan doing anything outside for the day.  He is not much up for working outside at all, and when he does go outside, it is usually to accomplish some task that requires a sort of diminished mental capacity. 

We are lucky here that we are almost completely surrounded by mountains in every direction.  Can you spot the two goats in this picture?

The house has a roof that quickly clears the snow off of it. 

Kelsey J Bacon

Well, I have finally ordered the hard drive! 750 GB of space spinning at 7,200 RPM, hopefully giving the speed I need to watch a video on my netbook without the continuous skipping! Also, I am getting rid of Ubuntu and switching up to Windows 8. a few week or so after we moved to America, the Windows 7 license declared itself invalid, and stopped booting. Thank you Toshiba! But with Windows 8 System Builder available from Amazon for $85, all I can say is Thank You Microsoft!

The switch back to Windows is an important one for me, as a blogger, because of the needed support for Windows Live Writer. WLW allows local writing and layout design that cannot be done on the web based blog editor that’s built into the blog’s back end.

I obviously will benefit from the greater storage for my photography too! But with Windows on the netbook, I will also be able to load Photoshop, and do some editing there as well!

I also found my software for my color calibration device. This means I will be able to get these monitors back in line, as soon as I find the device itself!

Two years post move, and I am finally getting my computing situation back to where it was just before we left England!

By this time next week, if all goes well, I will be blogging from any location again via my netbook, and shooting and loading photos as I go!

Kelsey J Bacon

Data migration and organization, deleting duplicates and making space on hard drives while planning out a new workflow is time consuming and dull.  But I have got to get all this done if I am going to get back on top of my intended hobby!  Over the last few days I have moved a 1TB drive off a RAID enabled NAS, which is to say in lay terms that I took out a duplicate drive from a Netgear Stora, and put it into my PC tower, formatted it, and started moving files from the Stora to the drive in the PC.  File migration had to e done this way because a drive from a Stora is not readable on a PC.  Once the files were moved, it was time to move the second hard drive into the computer and format it.  Then I started moving all my files around so that they are more or less organized, though there is still a lot to do.  As Network Attached Servers go, I would not use a Stora again just for the fact that I am required to “log-in” and Netgear set the maximum number of users to 3 unless I pay for a yearly upgrade.  They wanted me to pay to access my own data on my own machines.  Forget that!  What’s more, the log-in software seldom worked correctly in making a local connection, and required a “Remote Connection.”  Who knows just what that means, and how much logging is being done by Netgear during such a connection!

So, Netgear’s Stora is falling away from our network, and I am waiting for some items to upgrade my Netbook computer to Windows 8, on a 750 GB Hard Drive.  Snazzy! 

Okay, that’s all boring stuff, but I needed to document it in my little journal here!  What all of this means is that my blogging and photographic workflow will be improved by Christmas! 

Where once sat a table in my bedroom. there is now a child’s play cot.  Where once there was free passage around the dining room table, there is now a stroller.  Where there was a place of quiet, there now is the cooing and crying of a tiny voice.  Where once there was happiness, now there is joy!  Where once there were arms filled full of hobbies and passions, there now are hands filled with love, and service to a fragile life.  Where once there was the freedom to come and go, now there are routines to adhere to both day and night.  Where once slept three children. there now sleep four, and for this I am filled with Thanks. 

Khallarnie is now two weeks and one day old.  So far she has been doing really well.  We were prepared for the dairy allergy with Soy formula.  There is a bit of acid reflux that, if we were in England, we would treat with Gaviscon Infant.  We are not in England, so we must find out the best acid reducer that we can in our local grocery store and fix it in baby’s bottle at an appropriate dose.  So far, we could be doing better as she hiccups when she gets hungry, and she spits little bubbles when she is full.  It is a minor issue in the grand scheme, and so despite the inconvenience, I am thankful for the health she has had these past two weeks. 

Dirty nappies are tossed into a bin in our bedroom, however, when we are not in our bedroom, there are a set of small and helpful hands ready to carry off an old nappy to the bin and dispose of it.  Those hands belong to a very special little girl who came along one day and stole my heart completely.  I am thankful for Kirynie.

My wife discovered the other evening that if she stood in the bedroom door and held the baby in her arms while the boys passed back and forth doing various jobs to help her out, the work would always come second, after a delay of a moment or two in which the boys would pass, pause, and leave a kiss on the baby’s head or cheek.  Never would one pass without a stop, and never did either stop to coordinate this kissing effort.  I am thankful for the love they have for their sisters, and to know that if for some reason I cannot finish raising these girls, they will always have two fine men to look to for help, for love, and for whatever they need to carry on.  I am thankful for Jordan and Dylan.

Feeding times come at two, six, and ten in the mornings and afternoons.  At two in the morning, there comes unfailingly a little hiccup, followed by another, and then another, increasing till they are quite large.  At some point, a whimper get included, and then a little whine, followed by a cry.  Off the bed I will bound, into a shirt and down the stairs to the kitchen, where I will prepare a bottle.  Four ounces of sterilized water warmed for thirty-eight seconds in the microwave, two scoops of Infamil Soy, a little Karo Syrup, and a quarter of a tablet of acid reducer, crushed into powder.  Shake vigorously at first, then slowly as I return to the bedroom.  Total time out of bed, about two minutes, unless I have to stop at the loo along the way.  Then I crawl back into bed, and pass the bottle over to Katrina, who checks the temperature, and then tell me to go back to sleep.  I cannot tell you  for just how many reasons, and how much I am thankful for Katrina! 

I am thankful for the old friends who once passed through my life, and also for the old friends who still linger.  I am thankful for the new people I meet each day.  I am thankful for the sound and the smell of the furnace as it kicks on, and the massive engine in the truck that starts each time I turn the key.  In short, I am thankful for everything that is a part of my life.  I am thankful for everything that gets added to it, and for everything that has been taken away. 

Happy Thanksgiving! 

Kelsey J Bacon

Khallarnie was born one week ago today, and time has been at a virtual stand still since.  The days are of course busy with child caring, and bottle cleaning and sterilizing, feedings, and nappy changes.  My focus is on getting all of her routines straight.  And because of it, time does not seem to be moving forward, while all along I know that these moments will be gone in a flash!

Khallarnie does have a bit of a meaning that  checked with Katrina this morning.  It comes from the name of a village in Ireland called Killarney, and meaning church of sloes.  A sloe is a fruit from a “blackthorn,” or a prunus spinosa.  So, “church of the fruit of the balckthorn” sounds just about an apt meaning.

Today we have to go see the doctor again. We are seriously awaiting our last visit with him, as we are eager to get this baby born and into our lives! The Holiday season is upon us, and this will be the first in our family born during the silly season. Today’s Bonfire Night, and it would have been a great day for a birthday, but so far, little one is not budging. Maybe when we are at the doctor’s office?

A lot of progress has been made towards the ‘settling in’ aspect of our lives. We are familiar with the local territory, and know our way around from city to city and all. We have our Sam’s Club memberships and have got a basic life plan in place, even if it is a de facto plan to start off with.

The baby was first scanned up here a few weeks ago.  I have got to say that 4D is more than a little amazing!

I was contacted over the weekend by someone interested in having me shoot photos of her wedding.  She is a fiance of a friend from about ten years ago.  Of course I said I would do it, and I will!  I am amazed though that someone was interested in my work and willing to hire me for their important day.  Amazed may be too much the wrong word, where flattered would fit in better.

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for the chores list today, I think this week will prove to be interesting.  The trick to getting to that interesting bit is to get started with those mundane chores so I can stop watching the pot boil!

KB

So, here it is 7:00 PM on a Friday night, and the country life where I am at is settled into still darkness, for the most part.  I can hear the movie the kids are watching in their room, and Missus is lay on the bed recuperating from another week at work.  There are still quite a few things on my to-do list that need finishing before winter is finally upon us, but the weather forecast is so mild for the next seven days that it’s hard to believe it is even autumn.  Some things can wait, such as moving the lawn furniture in, and finishing off that goat pen I have been working on behind the barn. 

We went to visit the doctor on yesterday, and the little baby is due to pop out at any time now.  the doctor seems doubtful that we will be visiting in office again before she does.  The minutes tick by so slowly.  I was a bit disappointed that we did not get a Halloween baby.  What is there for November?  Bon-Fire Night!  She could associate herself with Guy Fawkes, the failed bomber who tried to blow up…  Oh, wait.  That’s probably not the best hero for her. 

Well, maybe yesterday was the last visit with the doctor.  It would really be nice, and a relief to both of us, to get this baby born and out of my wife’s pained body! 

The minutes just tick by…  7:09 PM. 

Today we went down to see the doctor at Logan, and really had a pretty good time of it.  We would have liked to of done a home birth with a midwife, but cannot because of gestational diabetes, so we have to have baby in hospital and do so in a hospital that wil work with us on paying the bills as we are uninsured.  Logan Medical Center seems very willing and able to do this, and the care that we can look forward to appears top notch, so we are as happy as can be about that. 

Dr. Tandy Olsen seems a nice and pleasant doctor, with a very calm demeanor, He and his staff are very attentive, and friendly, and we can rest assured that he will be the one to carry Kit through to delivery, establishing the continuity of care that we did not have in the UK.  Although we have to pay for the care ourselves, we may qualify for a discount that will put the total cost within range even on our current income. 

The hospital itself seems state of the art, but we will see for sure what we think of it when we take the tour of the Labor and Delivery department on our next visit or so.  We are welcome at any time to see the facilities, and I look forward to it! 

Most exciting is that we have assurance now that there is care available for Katrina and the baby as gestation occurs, and that someone with a professional background will be looking after them both.  Where the facility lacks, they have no problem life flighting a patient to the University of Utah hospital where comprehensive care can be given.  These facilities are all a part of Intermountain Health, which President Obama specifically mentioned in his speech when introducing his plan for Universal Healthcare as a role model the nation should follow.  Everyone is friendly, they understand that we don’t have insurance, and yet they carry on as if we never even mentioned it. 

I’ll be able to let you know as time goes on how we progress with them.  For now, I hope we never have to make use of their more extreme measures, and that November will bring us a healthy, happy baby girl who is destined for a long and happy life! 

Kelsey J Bacon