geek day, baby night

it's been a full day. (the next paragraph is relatively geeky. skip down if you're more interested in baby/family stuff).

early this morning Ed and I headed to an all-day geek event for work, namely a Microsoft TechEvent and MSDN thing. being Microsoft developers we get to take in these free presentations now and then. we have a good streak of bringing home decent door prizes (I won a PDA last time, which went strait to eBay), and there are always t-shirts and other schwag. the content of the actual presentations is usually somewhat pertinent to our work, although often it's either over my head or doesnt apply to what we do, or both. but today was very good for us, as it addressed the new versions of our database software (SQL 2005) as well as our programming platform (ASP.NET 2.0). for the first time at one of these, I knew exactly what they were talking about, could see the benefit of the upgrades, and even could ask some relatively intelligent questions. so we're looking forward to the new versions, and as Ed marveled, some of the features of the new stuff may be the first time we'll use a Microsoft product as it's intended (without bending over backwards with workarounds for our purposes). we shall see. oh and Ed won a nice laptop bag.

when I got home the fun began. Michelle had a get-together here tonight (which happened to be almost exclusively the wives of Coptix). so she was busy getting stuff ready, and I was on baby duty as well as trying to help with the dishes and whatnot. but there was also an event this evening for work that we needed as many work folks as possible to attend. so instead of going myself, I volunteered to watch Fuller so his parents could go. double baby duty!

it was actually a lot of fun so see the boys interact, and to marvel how different they are. then again it's not that surprising, because the boys' dads personalities are pretty different too. then Jaron showed up with his mom, so he joined in on the fun too. having 2 kids to tend to was eye-opening for what we're about to experience, but chasing after 3 kids isn't easy. I have new respect for the Wells. thankfully these boys are all low-maintenance, at least until bedtime fussiness kicks in. but after playing and whatnot, I got Fuller and Caleb put to bed, and handed off Jaron to his mama.

then I retired to the backyard to hang out with the dog and pluck on the banjo a little while the girls had fun together.