Russellsphere

Thankfully Verizon came early today and fixed our phone line without any cost to us. Its amazing how important the phone is (especially when your Internet routes through it). I charged up my super camera last night, so I’ll be taking some updated pictures of the kids and updating tonight. Since now I have Internet :) – Everyone was asleep when I whipped out the camera, so no picture taking tonight ;-)

We spent most of the Memorial Day weekend just resting from the previous weeks epic vacation. On Sunday we did all go to Joes Crab Shack which was alot of fun. We had a new fence installed Friday, however they cut through our telephone line, so we had no telephone or internet (DSL) for the last few days. They can’t repair it until Wednesday (Verizon….). In any case, the fence is very pretty, and Nicholas has already tried to escape from it. The Twins are doing well, Emily is working very hard to crawl, she can roll over and get herself into some pretty interesting situations and Lauren is laughing at everything. However, their teething is really hurting them :(

I have created a webpage with our pictures (MANY pictures) so if you have a slow dial up modem, it will take awhile. They can be found here-> http://russellsphere.com/home/florida06/ . The stingray attack I did not catch on film, but I am here to tell you that it is one of the most painful experiences I have ever had. Until that is I put my foot in a bucket of hot water, which instantly cured it. On another note, we have finally sold our Dodge Grand Minivan, so we are back to 2 vehicles, and no longer have to go on welfare :)

I have some quick pics here as a taster of our vacation. I am almost finished editing the movie and collecting my thoughts about our epic adventure.

As you have probably guessed by now! I had no Internet access while on vacation, and thus no way to update my blog, but I have many pictures and stories to share. Just not right now, as we are all so very, very, very, tired. An exhausting vacation full of interesting moments. Including a stingray attack on my toe that I will never forget. I have 4GB of pictures and movies to sort through, and will be working on this so I can update :)

Well Day One of our vacation, and I have recovered from my 24-hour of stomach flu (viral stomach infection). Thank Goodness I got through that, but hopefully the kids/wife won’t get it!! I am at work this morning, but I leave early to pick up Jennys mother (she is going with us), and then we leave for Lumberton, NC at aroun 2pm. Should get there around 7pm, and we rest for the next phase of the journey to our rented house close to Disney World. This will be my 9th visit to Disney World, Nicholas’s 3rd, Twins 1st, Jennys Mother 1st, and Jennys been 12 times I believe. It helps that my work with IBM Lotus Notes have their conference at Disney World :)

Tomorrow afternoon we head to Lumberton NC, which should take roughly 5 hours, rest up and then complete the rest of the journey to our rented house in Orlando which should be around 8 hours. I am a little concerned about the wildfires in Florida (obviously a tragic thing) – however it may affect our journey since portions of I-95 were closed. Although Ive been checking www.fhp.state.fl.us and I think we will avoid the worst parts of the fire. Added to this woe, Ive been struck down by a stomach virus, although minor, I should be recovered by tonight.

I just finished our Blackberry project. A Blackberry is a device that connects to ones corporate email solution (we use Lotus Notes), during our testing it worked great. It wasn’t too difficult to setup, the most difficult aspect was sorting out all of the security options and passing through our firewall. It was an interesting project, although – I wouldn’t want to buy one, the service to connect to our Enterprise Server is $40 a month!