The Verran Family Blog

I still have another 2 weeks of holiday left. I cannot believe that I got 30 working days leave approved, but never the less, it has been awesome so far and I don’t know how I am going to be when I return to work on the 2nd of Feb 2009. But, during the 1 1/2 month holiday, we were away for 2 1/2 weeks in KZN, spent Christmas with my folks in the Strand and during the last 2 weeks of my holiday, I’m a kinda stay-at-home-dad looking after Josh while Bridgitte is at work in the afternoons.

But, this holiday is giving me time to think. Think about the podcast, think about the blog, think about how I am going to handle situations at work and no, I did not think about work at all. Gosh, when I get back, I have 1 1/2 months of e-mail to browse through and probably many problems to solve.

I am firm believer of working to live and not living to work. First of all, when you walk out the office door, you leave that mindset behind. I am a full believer in a balanced lifestyle and making sure that when you leave work, to go home and enjoy your time with your family and not trying to solve the millions of problems that your day job brings to your table. I used to be like that, a very long time ago. A time when I was single and didn’t have much to do at home and spent hours writing code at home or thinking about how to solve various problems. But life has changed, I’m married, I have a family now and that is where my priorities lay. There are times, when push comes to shove, you need to put in a little more time to meet deadlines, but it has always been a goal to manage that and try and prevent that as much as possible.

Some goals for 2009 so far.

• To maintain this balance, but still to chern out as much code, and even more that I did in 2008.
• Be the best dad that I can for Joshua and be a role model that he can believe in.
• Write more regularly onto this blog. Yeah, I’m not the greatest with words compared to the many blogs I read, but hey, nobody said that in order to blog, you need to have a Ph.d in English.
• Keep up The ZA Show Podcast. Since the birth of Joshua, the episode frequency has drastically decreased. What is good about a podcast is that you don’t have to maintain a schedule, but it is always good to try and put out a show a bit more regularly than once every 2 months.

Joshua is just over 5 months now and it is amazing how far he has come. He has become a real chatterbox. Making noises, screams, talk like a dolphin, amongst other noises. He reaches out for objects and enjoys putting his toys in his mouth. He gets excited and has an awesome giggle! Peek-a-boo is a winner as well as other weird noises coming from daddy and mommy. But the giggle, you must hear it. It is so cute! He has also started on solids too with the introduction of rice porridge. He is doing so well and although he is starting to master the tongue action, he is doing well eating.

Joshua had his first Christmas this year and that was celebrated with my parents. We stayed over at their house for two days and that meant bringing the dogs with us. So you can only imagine the amount of luggage, and the fact that I sat at the back of the bakkie with the dogs and a beer in my hand on the way there. But we had a great time and Josh really enjoyed it, but Christmas was a bit daunting for him.

Unfortunately, we had some bad news on Christmas eve. Bridgitte’s 92 year old grandmother passed away. It was a long time coming and the family is relieved that she is parted from the pain and suffering during the past few months. But we managed to have a good Christmas Day with pressies opened in the morning and an awesome Christmas lunch that afternoon with chicken, gammon and leg-of-lamb – amongst other firm favourites like potatoes, veggies and the works!

Two days after Christmas we left for Durban. Our luggage exceeding the weight allowance by 17 kg, we only had to pay for 7, but on the return flight, we exceeded the baggage allowance by 25 kg. We got off scot free without paying a cent. Durban was hot and thank goodness, we could cool oursevles down in the pool – Josh also got the chance to do that too. On old years day, we had the funeral and after that, we headed to Port Edward for 9 days. It was pure bliss and relaxing. Eating more than usual and drinking lots of the beer the order of the day.

Josh handled the heat and humidity much better than what we expected. Thank goodness we had air-conditioning in our room.

But all in all, an awesome holiday and although mine is not at an end as yet, it was still a one to enjoy. As usual, here are some pictures from the holiday.