New job at CheckFree

The Geek Squad badge has been retired and I just finished up my first week as an employee of CheckFree. I was contacted by my friend Adam, whom I worked with from Circuit City about an opening for a Desktop Support Analyst and after 2 interviews I recieved an offer that we were very happy about. CheckFree is owned by a Fortune 500 company called Fiserv and presents a great opportunity for me to develop new skills and grow within the company. It is nice to finally get out of a retail environment and I have been very excited every day. talking off my family's ears off about how much I enjoy it!

Florida Trip

Even though Tropical Storm Fay attempted to rain us out in Orlando it definitely did not keep us from having an awesome trip. We arrived at Uncle Bills new place just south of Orlando. They had a beautiful room waiting for us where we setup Karlie's portable crib and Janie's bassinet. The next morning we headed to Disney World with Karlie while Aunt Brenda took care of Janie for us. We were able to get some fun times in before the rain started coming down. Karlie's favorites were "it's a small world," and Monster's Inc. Laugh floor. The next couple days were rainy, lazy days but had lots of rockin fun with Rock band and just hangin' out. We did manage to squeeze half a day in a Sea World where me and Karlie went with Jeff and his family. Karlie liked pretty much everything there and her favorites were the Elmo show, Shamu, Walruses, stingrays, and the penguins. We spent our last 2 days at a condo on Melbourne beach where we enjoyed some sun finally. Karlie and Janie loved the beach. Janie chilled next to mommie in her Bumbo seat in the shade while Karlie and I splashed in the waves. Karlie was fascinated by the beach birds and spent about an hour chasing them up and down the beach. When she finally realized that it was hopeless she let me build a sand castle around her. We had a wonderful time and can't wait to go again! Here are some pictures from our trip and I will post some more videos from Sea World when I get a chance.

Karlie doin some computer work

If you have a baby you know how much they like the keyboard.  I have an extra one that I have let Karlie bang the keys on, one of those old and loud keyboards and she loves it.  The only problem is she wants to use the keyboard mommy and daddy use.  Welcome Baby Smash!  This free program allows your baby to use the pc worry free and makes it fun for them.  As babies smash on the keyboard, colored shapes, letters, and numbers appear on the screen and you can set options for laughing or speech.  If they use the mouse a bunch of colorful circles follow the pointer.  

Some other sites for your kids:

Quintura
A kid friendly search engine powered by Yahoo Kids, so all search results should be G-rated.

TOTLOL
A youtube for kids.

YUVA
Karlie is too young for this but for older tots a good way for kids to create art with shapes.  This "creative playground" (basically an online drawing program) lets kids create artwork using shapes that can be dragged, expanded, flipped, rotated, doodled, and so on. The resulting masterpieces can be saved in "sketchbooks," turned into e-cards to share with friends and family, or printed.Is not free but can try it for seven days and if your kid likes it only 29 per "artist".

Printable Car Activities
Some fun stuff to do with your kids while taking that summer vacation trip.

Free Sesame Street Ipod videos that teach kids valuable lessons
The iTunes Store is offering six free Sesame Street videos, each designed to teach kids an important life lesson. The videos range from 13-42 minutes; they're free to download and can be viewed on your PC or iPod.  You will need to have itunes installed to download the videos.  Also tons of kids audiobooks can be found here at Storynory.

Print your own coloring books
For those of you who love to color (or who have kids who love to color) coloring-book.info has a whole bunch of printable coloring book sheets.

Here is a video of Karlie mashing away at Baby Smash!...