What a week!

Please allow me to vent for a moment............

This week has been one of those weeks that I would like to pretend never happened. It has been very crazy and stressful! After spending last week in Atlanta, and driving to Grandpa's 90th Birthday in Shreveport on Saturday, I started this week driving to Meridian to see a client, who had one little problem she wanted me to look at, and of couse, I ended up there all day. All 3 kids got sick, and ended up on antibiotics, then I got sick. Poor David had to do everything. We had one server crash, another one needed a new hard drive installed, and another one now needs new RAM. So I am sooo looking forward to the weekend, only to find that my Quickbooks database has crashed and I will have to restore from backup from 3 weeks ago, which means I have to reenter everything for the past month!!!! AAAAAARRRGGGGG!

Thanks for letting me vent... Hopefully next week will be better....

Grandpa Gaston's 90th Birthday

Happy 90th Birthday Grandpa Gaston!

After a long week of travel to Atlanta for work, we traveled to Shreveport, LA for Grandpa Gaston's 90th birthday! Michael really, really, really, liked the cake, as you can see.... Michael, that is just scary!

Danielle was a little confused about the nametags. Because our family is soooo large, when we get together, we have to have name tags or we will never be able to remember everyones names!

Monica and Molly!

Elizabeth decided to decorate her glass.

Jacob and Lala. Great haircut Lala!!!

Here are kissing cousins Molly and Jacob. Molly loves to kiss everyone, and she was teaching Jacob how to become and expert kisser.

Kiss-Kiss

Danielle and Elizabeth are the kissing coaches... : )

Katie loves wearing uncle Chris' hat.

Jacob loved hanging out with all of his cousins.

Here are the girls posing for a family pic.

Liz hanging out with Uncle Terry, GG, and Caca.

David decorated his glass too!

Molly loves her cousins too... And now Danni is wearing uncle Chris's hat!

Liz, posing with the fam.

Grandpa's really yummy birthday cake.

Me, Lala, Caca, and Michael with Grandpa.

Grandpa looking great for 90! I hope I look that good when I am his age!

The girls and Grandpa... I think he feels like a celebrity because EVERYONE wants his picture!

The Gaston family with Grandpa!

We love you Grandpa! Hope you had a great birthday!

Katie's 9th Birthday

These are some pics from Katie's B-day party. Above, Katie and Anna share a smile, below, Ashlyn and Katie ride a roller coaster.

Grandma was able to come to Katie's b-day and we were so happy to see her!

The kids love the pizza at Gatti Town

The best cake ever! Katie's soccer ball cake - Chocolate and Strawberry, yummy!

Evie and Sloan love the pizza too!

Katie likes her balloons... and the icing on the cake!

Thank you Joanna for such a great cake!

Smile for the Camera Anna!

Danni loves the lion king.

Danni and Leighton enjoy the roller coaster.

4 generations together for Katie's party! Thank you for coming Grandma Daigle!

I know what you guys are thinking... what happened to the NYC pics? Or the Molly Birthday pics? Well, life happened. We have been so busy with our new clients, and all the new business, and Danni's cheer, and Katie's soccer, and all the school stuff, that I have not had any time to really blog. Even now, I really should be working. But, if you have a facebook, I have uploaded all the NYC pics there. I promise to blog again soon!

Back by popular demand!!

I had this blog entry on my myspace page, and after Alison's "Blonde moment" I thought I would post mine!!!!

Ok, so I was working at a local cell phone data center today, and here is how big of a computer dork I am…..

I was installing a new program in the server room, which is huge! It is one of those "clean" rooms –

They have a special dust thing that gets dust off your feet before you go in…

And no paper or boxes or anything like that is allowed in the room.

So, I am plugged up to one of these blade servers and I feel something on my arm, and I look down and it is a tiny little bug!

So I say,"Oh there's a bug on my arm!"

And the guy I am working with from Cell company kind of freaks out a little and says, "There can't be any bugs in here!

This is a clean room and we can't have food or boxes or anything that attracts bugs in here!"

To which I say – (drum roll please)

"Maybe it's a computer bug…"

Yes, I am officially the biggest computer dork in the world, because I was not even trying to be funny or make a joke….

It just came out!

After I realized what a total dork I was, I had to immediately play it off with a nerdy "ha ha ha snort snort."

And then I apologized for being such a nerd!

Hope my stupidity can brighten your day! Feel free to tease me about this mercilessly…

Business is Booming!

I have news! Our company, D2 Tech Solutions, is going to purchase another company!!! Crazy right?!? I am happy, but also nervous and a little stressed. With this purchase, we will gain 119 new clients! We currently have about 210 active clients. So, that will bring our total to 329! In order to manage all these new clients, David is becoming the new Office / Tech Manager. He will schedule all of our onsite calls and make sure all of our techs are where they are supposed to be and doing what they are supposed to do. He will also be our client liaison, and will be in charge of making sure our 329 clients are happy! We have also brought on new techs, which will allow us to better serve all of our clients and assist with their needs in a timely manner. I will admit, I am a little scared. I would never have though I would ever have purchased ANYTHING as big as another company. But, the opportunity was right - and I had to take it!

We took over all the new clients, and new techs yesterday. Things were kind of crazy, but I think it is going to work out in the long run! I think it was mostly crazy because of our insane weekend. The weekend started off great on Friday with a delicious dinner at The Peacocks. Saturday, we all had to get up early to work at my junior league project - a computer lab at the Fondren Boys home! The older girls helped and got service hours for school. There was a lot of painting, and moving furniture, setting up computers and internet filtering. After an exhausting Saturday, I was looking forward to relaxing on Sunday. Unfortunately, my 2 yellow labs had other plans!! The decided to dig out and escape under our fence. Usually, they come right back, but after 3 hours of searching and calling animal control, I finally decided that I had better get with the program and start typing and printing my 119 letters for my new clients. Because the labs had gotten out again, David decided that we needed to put up an electric fence. He and Elizabeth worked hard at getting the fence done, and finally the animal rescue league called and said that someone had brought the labs there. Danni and I rushed to pick them up before they closed at 4. After we finally got them home, we discovered that the internet was down, and all the TVs were out! It seems that in burying the wire for the electric fence, the comcast cable got cut. Of course the cable company never does anything quickly. We did not get internet back until almost the end of business Monday!!! And that makes it really hard for us to do our business!!!! Hopefully today will be better!

Oh, and I promise to post pics from our New York trip soon! We have been very busy as you can see! : )

Blondie and the pool!

Blondie loves the pool! Well, she actually hates the water, but she loves fetching her ball out of the pool.

Here is a video of her fetching the ball. She uses rafts whenever possible so she does not have to get as wet!

The girls have a blog!

Because of the great success of of the Blanks Brood : ) , Danni & Liz have decided to start their own! Feel free to check it out at:
http://thedramateens.blogspot.com/

So what's been going on with the Blanks family?

The Blanks have been busy! Ever since school has ended, we have been going full throttle with kids' activities, David umpiring, and trying to get the pool ready. I was expecting to be posting pictures from New York at this time, but we ended up having to put our trip on hold.

My Grandpa Daigle passed away on Memorial Day, Monday May 26th. He was a wonderful person and will be missed! He was such a loving and kind person. It was great to see all of my cousins, aunts and uncles all together, and get to visit with all of them, even though it was under sad circumstances. I know my grandpa is in a better place now, and I am glad he is at peace.

Many things have happened over the past few weeks. Danielle celebrated her 13th birthday. Katie finished up her division 2 soccer league. Liz finished up her summer softball league, and started summer school. All of the girls had to get physicals and shots for camp, and for athletics next year. And finally, the pool finally got finished!

Even the dogs had to go to the doctor. Amiee had the most surgery, she had a cyst removed from her eye, a hysterectomy, and had half of her mammory glands removed. (You don't even want to know what that surgery costs!) Here she is recovering from surgery. They found cancer in some of the glands, so she will have to go back and get the other side removed as well.

Danielle got a new camera for her birthday, so I'll be posting pictures from it soon!
Katie getting ready for her last soccer game.
Katie and her teammates hanging out after the game.
Liz, not wanting to be bothered - talk to the hand!
The pool is finally finished and even the dogs enjoy it!
The kids are swimming all day long, even into the night.
The new pool gets a thumbs up!

We are so excited that the pool is done and we are ready to relax!

As far as the girls' physicals go, everything went fine - but for each child, the Dr. had something additional she wanted me to do, either go to a specialist or run more tests... etc... I am sure all the tests will turn out fine, but you will be sure to hear all about it in future blogs!

Field Day 2008

Every year, Katie's school has field day to celebrate the end of the year. All of the children compete in crazy competitions. This year, Katie was on team Xavier. Here she is hanging out with her team... Katie in the "holey" bucket competition.
Don't spill!
Katie in the hula hoop chain game.
They have to keep their hands connected while and get through the hula hoop without letting go.
Katie loves field day!
And Katie loves having her picture taken - and extreme close ups!
Cheering for her team!
Katie and Principal Michel.
Hanging out with the competition.
Xavier won the entire competition! They one 8 out of 10 games, better than all the other teams! Congrats!