Andrew and Brenda

So it’s been a really long time since a blog update. Longer than normal, actually. We’ve just had so much stuff going on, but I’ll try to wrap it all up here for anyone that’s not heard it all a million times already.

Biggest news is this past January, Brenda and I learned we were going to be parents! We’re now about 24 weeks in, and we’re due September 30th, 2009. We also know that we’re having a little girl, whom we’ve already named Kathedra Eileen, after both our grandmothers. We’re not entirely sure yet, but her nickname will likely be “Katie”.

We’ve had three ultrasounds so far and everything is on track, and mommy and baby are doing fantastic. We’re super excited and can’t wait to meet our little girl in just about three months!

Also, as if one major life change in one year isn’t enough, we’re about to buy our first house in Atlanta. We really wanted to be in a house by the time Katie comes, and this seemed a good market to buy in. We did a lot of searching online and looked at about 6 or 8 houses and made an offer, which they accepted. Since then we’ve gone though the painful process of getting the loan finalized, appraisal, inspection, etc.

We did just recently hit a snag, resulting in “firing” our lender. They were fine until right until the end, when they started throwing bigger numbers at us than they’d quoted. Way bigger. Our spidey-senses went off, and we ditched them. Good news is we’ve already gotten a new lender and it looks like we’ll be just fine. Our original closing was June 26th. At worst, it may get pushed back a week. Fingers crossed.

You can view my photos of the house here. And see the actual listing here.

Those are the biggest updates, by far. We also just had a very nice week’s vacation with Amy and Donnie. Seems like we were running every day doing stuff, including: a Braves game, Georgia Aquarium (including Titanic exhibit), Dave & Buster’s, bowling, a movie, mini-golf, shopping, and we even were able to show them the inside of our (hopefully) new house. A really fun (but exhausting) week. They were our first house guests of 2009, and there are still some who having been down yet (you know who you are).

I also just got back from a trip to Ohio. I spent one day at Engauge’s Columbus office, then attended the Spring Break developer conference at Ohio University. It’s the same conference I spoke at last year, although this year I was just an attendee. It was okay, but I probably won’t go back next year unless I’m a speaker again. Most of the sessions just aren’t advanced enough to warrant the time and expense. But on the upside, I got to use three days of the trip to spend with family and friends, so that makes it all worth it.

Oh yeah, and I also launched two websites of my own in the last few months. One is a service where you send me a photo of yourself, and I create a cartoon version (or avatar) of it. You’d use these as your profile picture on sites like Facebooks, Twitter, etc. I’ve sold several already. It’ll never make me rich, but one order is a box of diapers

The other site is for my brand new webcomic, Happy Accidents. I’ve been wanting to start one for well over a year and finally got enough motivation and/or inspiration to actually do it. I’ve done about 8 strips now and the reaction and feedback to them has been unbelievably good. Unfortunately, I’ve skipped the last month due to all this craziness that’s been keeping us busy. But I hope to get back to the drawing board very soon. (Note that this isn’t exactly a “family-friendly” comic strip. Just bear this in mind when visiting

All the animals are doing quite well. Murray is 14 now, and some days you’d have a hard time convincing me she’s not a puppy. Work is also going pretty well. I’m still not getting to be the “master” of any one thing, but being a jack-of-all-trades at least keeps things interesting.

So I think that’s about it. I’m sure I’ll think of something else and come back to edit this post. I’ll also be posting info on our new baby registry shortly after I finish this entry. Stay tuned for that and more baby updates!